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It’s really Samira’s own fault, is the thing. Nobody to blame but herself, etc., etc. In fact, that could be true about many things, now that she thinks about it, but right now, it’s about the fact that she just fell down the stairs.
‘Fell’ is a bit overdramatic. One of the cleaners had left a mop halfway down the final flight of stairs and Samira was rushing and she saw it just a second too late before it clipped her ankle and she went over on it, making a futile grab at the handrail as she did. She lands on her ass at the bottom of the stairs, which bruises her pride more than anything else, and she actually thinks she’s fine until she tries to stand up and an inadvertent groan comes out of her.
Okay. So she’ll sit back down for a minute. God, she really shouldn’t have been rushing - ironically for Slo Mo - but she’d been upstairs to see a patient and her newborn after the patient had been brought in with heavy vaginal bleeding. She’d been terrified it was a miscarriage but it had been preeclampsia, and they’d caught it in time, so when the patient had requested to see Samira after giving birth, she’d gone.
Only while she was up there, McKay had paged her to let her know that one of her patients - a forty two year old man - was being discharged, and he’d asked to see Samira before he left. He’d been brought in with severe chest pain and terrified he was having a heart attack - they’d done an ECG and found sinus tachycardia and Samira had been able to figure out that it was a pulmonary embolism. The D-dimer had given a false negative result but he’d been sent for a CT pulmonary angiogram, and they’d managed to spot it.
He’d been in for five days having anticoagulant injections and Samira had sat with him a lot - whatever Robby said, she still thought there was value in listening to patients, and he’d had a fascinating life - and she really wanted to say goodbye to him before he left.
Looks like that isn’t going to happen now.
Samira leans forward to feel around her ankle - pain, tenderness and swelling, great, so probably a sprain - and tries to put weight on it, but stops, hissing. It hurts too much. Great. So what the fuck is she supposed to do now?
She fumbles out her phone, checking for messages - nothing. Tipping her head back, Samira gives in and calls Dana, asks for someone to come and get her - “I don’t need a gurney,” she says, because the mocking would probably be endless, “just someone to lean on” - and then waits for the storm to hit.
At least this didn’t happen on the night shift.
She’s almost relaxed, resigned and waiting, when the door slams open and Robby says, “What the fuck were you thinking, running down the stairs?”
“I wasn’t running,” Samira protests half-heartedly, because she wasn’t, but she wasn’t fair off, and Robby just looks it all over - Samira, the mop, the stairs - before kneeling down and for a moment, crazily, Samira thinks he’s going to, like, lift her into his arms and everything goes a little dizzy.
It passes almost before it starts and Samira can see that Robby is holding an arm out to her, which she takes, and he supports her as she stands up, leaning on him. He’s solid but she can feel him shaking minutely and she wonders what he got called away from.
“I didn’t mean that you had to come,” Samira says, a little nervously, “when I called Dana.”
“Of course I came,” Robby says, but he doesn’t look at her when he says it and Samira has to concentrate on limping after him, trying not to put too much weight on the wrong ankle. He leads her to Trauma 2, of all places, and lets her climb onto the bed herself even if he holds onto her elbows as she does, letting her get herself settled.
“I don’t need to be in a trauma room,” Samira says, because it’s true, but Robby doesn’t even acknowledge it. It’s like he can’t hear it, like he’s underwater or something, and she resists the urge to lean forward and wave her hands in front of his eyes to see if he can even see her.
Of course, he can see her. His hands are around her ankle - Samira’s stomach flips, and she tries to ignore it. Big hands, warm, steady, wrapped around her ankle and pushing very gently to see where the pain is, as if she couldn’t just tell him, like she isn’t a doctor herself.
Still - when she tries to speak up, to say something, the words die in her throat and she leans back against the bed instead, trying not to think too much about the contact.
“You need a CT,” Robby says, and Samira turns her head to roll her eyes at Mel who is here and hovering, because it would make more sense for Mel or even one of the students to be doing this, not their attending.
“I don’t need a CT,” Samira says, “I didn’t hit my head.”
“And an X-ray and an MRI on the ankle,” Robby says. He’s still holding onto her ankle and his eyes are darting about and Samira’s taken back very suddenly to the MCI the day of Pittfest, when Jake and Leah got brought into the ED. There’s something familiar about his expression now, but she can’t tell what, or - more to the point - why.
“It’s just a sprain,” Samira says.
“And why the fuck was a mop left on the stairs?” Robby says, and he puts her ankle down now - very gently, and Samira feels cold at the lack of contact - before rounding on - well, everyone stood outside the doors, watching, like they don’t have patients to get to. “That is unacceptable, and someone needs to go take care of that right the fuck away - if I find out who was responsible-”
“Mike!” Abbot’s sharp, sharp enough to cut him off, and Samira allows herself a brief moment of closing her eyes. This is so much drama for a sprained ankle.
“She fell over a mop,” Robby says, still angry, and then Abbot’s saying something to him, too quiet for Samira to hear and she opens her eyes to see Abbot’s hand on Robby’s wrist, Robby’s head bowed, Abbot talking close in his ear - too close, she thinks, but at least the assorted hospital staff outside the room have dispersed.
“Okay,” Robby says, when they’re done. “I still want you to have an X-ray and MRI to be safe, but if you’re certain you didn’t hit your head, we don’t need a CT. I don’t think your ligament is fully torn, so just RICE, okay?”
It’s like whiplash, having Dr Robby back - the way he can flip between emotion and calm is something that has always fascinated Samira, and she’s glad that he isn’t yelling anymore but this doesn’t feel right, either.
“Lucky it’s your day off tomorrow,” Abbot says, even as Samira widens her eyes at him - he shouldn’t know that, not in front of anyone here - but he just grins at her, unrepentant. “Bad luck that your shift was almost over.”
“I don’t need an X-ray,” Samira says. “I didn’t hear a pop or anything.”
“If you carry on complaining then I’m going to rethink that CT,” Robby says mildly, but there’s still something behind his eyes that Samira doesn’t recognise. (Doctor eyes, she’s always thought of them as - she never really understood how someone could have kind eyes before she met Dr Robby). “How are you going to get home after? You won’t be able to -”
Samira looks at Abbot before she can stop herself - they drove in together that morning - and something flickers in Robby’s expression before he says, “Okay,” and walks out of the room.
“Jack,” Samira says desperately, not even knowing why, and then Abbot’s next to her, stroking her hair back from her face.
“It’s fine,” he says, and kisses her forehead, quickly, fast enough that she can’t even yell at him because no one could catch it. “Sweetheart, don’t worry.”
“Did I do something wrong?” Samira says, before she can stop herself, and Abbot laughs, shaking his head.
“You didn’t,” he says ruefully and then walks off, turning around to wink at her before he leaves the room.
It’s hours later, after an X-ray and MRI, that Robby comes back - Samira’s been moved out of the unnecessary trauma room, at least, but being in a bed and watching everyone she work with walk past and look at her has been one of the least enjoyable experiences she’s had to date, and that includes PittFest.
“Okay,” Robby says, not making eye contact, his hands in the pockets of his hoodie. “It’s been brought to my attention that I may have overreacted a little earlier.” He smiles at her, helplessly, Samira smiles back. There’s still something missing, though, like part of him is locked away behind a wall.
“Can I go home now?” she says, and Robby nods.
“The MRI didn’t show any injuries to cartilage or tendons around your ankle, and the X-ray ruled out a bone fracture, confirming that it’s just a sprain. You still need to stay off it for at least twenty four hours-” as though Samira doesn’t know how to treat a sprain “-ice it and elevate it when you get home.”
Samira doesn’t usually want to go home - it’s always so quiet and dark after the urgency and noise of the ED - but she feels pretty done today and she’s tired and Robby has been weird, and she just wants to lie down on her own bed and fall asleep watching something mindless on her laptop.
Matteo shows up with some crutches and Samira has to suffer the indignity of figuring out how to use them while trying to get through the ED - she’s not exactly the most coordinated person, which is in part how this all happened in the first place, and she can tell that Matteo is trying not to laugh when she accidentally does a sort of hop.
“Okay, okay,” Samira grumbles, “you can laugh, I get it,” but he still only smiles, and lets her put her arm around his shoulders. It doesn’t really make it easier, as they’re different heights, but it makes her feel a little better at least.
Abbot’s waiting for her by his car and he comes over to unwind her from Matteo and help her into the passenger seat.
“Should I be jealous?” Abott says, amused, once Matteo is out of earshot and Samira rolls her eyes, turning to stow her crutches in the backseat (again, overkill - you don’t need crutches for a sprain, but thanks to her wonderfully overprotective coworkers, here she is).
“Should I?” Samira says, and Abbot frowns a little, turning the key and starting to back out of the parking lot.
“About what?”
“You were whispering very closely in Robby’s ear,” Samira says, and it sounds like even less of a joke than she meant it to. Abbot glances at her, one hand on her leg and one on the wheel, and he says, “You want to have this conversation right now?”
Samira hadn’t known that it was a conversation at all, but her ankle is aching and her head hurts from the lights and the fact that her shift technically ended five hours ago, so she says, “No,” and turns over in her seat, trying to get comfortable.
“Okay,” Abbot says, his hand firm on her thigh, and he squeezes just enough to be reassuring. “We’ll talk about it in the morning.” He looks at her then and grins, wicked, and Samira thinks in spite of herself God, I love this old man.
And then, we’re going to have so much fun.