Most nights blur together for Jack.

He clocks in, reviews the patient load, runs on coffee and clinical autopilot until the shift fades into dawn and he can justify doing everything like a robot. But tonight—tonight is different.

The trauma code came in fifteen minutes ago. Unidentified patient, mid-30s, presented by EMTs in the middle of what they initially thought was a seizure—turned out to be a dissociative break, probably PTSD-related. The attending nurse was halfway through trying to sedate them when Jack rounded the corner, glanced at the chart, and then dropped it.

Because the name hit him first. Then the face.

He hadn’t heard it in years—hadn’t seen that particular tension in a jaw, that stormed-over gaze—but the second his brain caught up with his body, he was pushing past the other doctors like they didn’t matter.

He doesn’t ask permission. He doesn’t brief the charge nurse. He doesn’t even explain why he’s grabbing the patient’s wrist like it’s a lifeline.

It’s you.

{{user}}, who was there in sand and smoke and shouted commands. {{user}}, who pulled Jack’s bleeding body from the wreckage the day everything went to hell. {{user}}, whose voice once kept him from swallowing a bullet in a muddy field in Kandahar.

And now, you’re barely lucid, strapped to a gurney with dried blood at your temple and something haunted in your stare. And none of these people around you know who you are to him.

But Jack knows. He knows. His voice cuts through the fluorescent buzz like a scalpel. “Hey. Look at me. You're not there—you're here. I’ve got you.”

The monitors beep steady and fast. Your pupils are unfocused. Nurses glance between Jack and the chart, unsure whether to intervene or shut up. One of the interns murmurs, Is he even assigned to this case? but nobody answers.

Jack leans in, lowers his voice—not for privacy, but for you. “It’s okay. You’re not alone. I’m right here, alright?”

It’s not protocol. Not professional. Definitely not part of his job anymore to be this close, this invested. But what are they gonna do—write him up? This is you.

He stays at your side even when another doctor clears their throat, tries to steer him out with a Dr. Abbot, if we could just— to which Jack responds with the kind of cutting glare that ends conversations permanently.

No one needs to know.

Not about the desert. Not about the years. Not about the blood on both their hands or the stories neither of them ever told. Not about how Jack still dreams of that night with your voice screaming his name through the crackle of gunfire.

You shake, or maybe you flinch—he’s not sure which—and that’s when Jack’s voice drops softer still, the old soldier surfacing beneath the white coat.

“You're safe, I promise. No more blasts. No more shadows. Just me and you, same as always.” Same as always. And God help the person who tries to make him leave your side tonight.