The Space Between Calls - Dr Jack Abbot

Two attendings. One night shift. A slow burn that neither of them saw coming, and both of them are going to resist for as long as humanly possible.
Dr Lily Parnell is new to Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Centre. Dr Jack Abbott has been running the night shift for six years. They are co-attending. They are professionals. They are, by any reasonable measure, going to be absolutely fine.

They are not going to be fine.

It starts the way these things always do - small. A look held a beat too long. A conversation at the nurses' station at two in the morning that neither of them intended to have. The particular awareness of someone working besides you that has stopped being purely professional and hasn't yet become anything you're ready to name. Jack notices it first and says nothing, because Jack Abbott has spent years saying nothing about the things that matter most. Lily notices it second and deflects, because deflection is what she does when something gets close enough to be dangerous.
They are exceptionally well matched in all the wrong ways.

He is steady and guarded and carrying guilt about a grief he hasn't finished with. She is confident and capable and hiding something behind a composure so practised most people never think to look for the fault lines. Neither of them is looking for anything. Both of them are going to find it anyway, in the space between emergencies, in the quiet that the night shift occasionally produces, in the moments when the performance drops and the person underneath is just - there.