Chapter Text
-7:00 AM-
“Look what the cat dragged in,” Walsh’s eyes lit up when he walked through the doors, “it’s the old pasty vampire with the peg leg. Aren’t you supposed to be on the night shift?”
He rolled his eyes at the habitual insult and jerked his head in greeting at the two women in the nurse’s station. “And you’re supposed to be in the OR, you goblin.”
“I’m heading out,” She said smugly, “taking Valentine’s Day off tomorrow. Got an expensive dinner planned with the hubby.”
“Good for you,” Abbot muttered.
“Saw a guy come in with a root vegetable up his butt just now. God speed, dingis.”
“February fourteenth is a holiday invented by corporate America to put romantic idiots like your husband in debt,” He called after her, even though he had secretly swapped his usual nightshift tomorrow with Collins months in advance so he could also take Valentine’s Day off to prepare a four-course meal for Robby like a romantic idiot himself. But only Dana and Collins knew that they were together, which if he rounded down like you do in a second grade math problem, meant that essentially no one knew.
Walsh laughed and flipped him the bird without even turning around.
“Hey you.”
It was Dana. She looked weirdly antsy.
“What’s up?”
“Did you change your number? I tried calling you last night and some random college kid in Nebraska picked up.”
“Oh, I might have forgotten to pay my phone bills for a few months. They probably gave the number away.”
“I’m sorry, you what?” She sputtered, “how the hell do you get around in this world, Jack?”
He shrugged. “Pager, radio, my police scanner–”
“And me,” someone said behind him.
He turned around. Michael Robinavitch stood there, his own backpack slung over the same shoulder as his. They stared at each other. Robby smiled. It made the corners of his eyes crinkle.
“Good morning, Dana,” Robby said over Abbot’s shoulder, “feels weird we’re not meeting in our usual spot, Dr. Abbot.”
“What are you doing here?” He asked, “I thought you were taking the night shift today.”
“Oh, last minute change,” Robby shrugged, “Collins got food poisoning from a sketchy Hinge sushi date, so I offered to take her shift tomorrow.”
Son of a bitch. So much for his dinner idea and that expensive hunk of meat sitting in his refrigerator. Why was Collins into miserable losers like him? She even dated the same guy he was banging now.
“Anyway, I’m gonna put my bag down,” Robby said, “want me to take yours too?”
“Sure, thanks brother,” Abbot said on autopilot and let Robby liberate his backpack from his shoulder. He and Dana watched him shuffle off to the locker room.
“Still calling him ‘brother?’” She muttered the moment Robby disappeared from their line of sight, “It’s been, what, six months since you two stumbled into bed together?”
“I explicitly asked you to keep me updated about his schedule this week, Dana.”
“Why do you think I was trying to call you last night, genius?” She hissed in his ear. “What do you want me to do, switch on the bat signal on the roof?”
“That’d be helpful, yeah.”
“Get a freaking phone, Batman. It’s 2025,” She said, rolling her eyes. Dana angled her body and blocked Abbot off from the two women staring at them curiously from the nurse’s station. The way gossip spread around the ED made him suspicious some of the ladies could read lips.
He pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled through his mouth. “Fuck, what am I gonna do now?”
“Were you planning to propose?”
“No, it was– you know what, nevermind. This was a stupid idea.”
“Jack, are you pregnant with his baby?” She asked with a straight face, “if so, you should break the news.”
“Dana–”
“Look, I think it’s sweet that you’re still trying at your age with an emotionally unavailable husk of a man like Robinavitch,” She patted the back of his hand, her expression sympathetic. “But you’re both ED doctors, and he’s in his fifties, not a teenage girl. Robby’s not exactly expecting you to fireman-carry him onto a bed of rose petals tomorrow evening and ravish him all night long. Just make it up to him with a tasteful reservation at an expensive restaurant next week or something. My husband and I are certainly not braving the crowds on Valentine’s Day, and we’ve been married thirty years.”
He shook his head, “But it’s the first one, Dana. I gotta set the bar for–”
“Why are you two still standing around?” It was Robby again, stethoscope looped around his neck, eyes sharp and already in attending mode. “Abbot, come on, man. Look at the charts. They’re piling up. Start moving please, preferably before Gloria gets on my ass about ‘efficiency’ again.”
“Are you working tomorrow?” He had to confirm for himself, just in case–
“Yep,” Robby nodded, “double shift. Livin’ the dream, baby.”
He winked and shot finger guns at them.
“Boss, you ok?” Donahue asked as he breezed past with three bags of saline clutched to his chest, “you've been weirdly cheerful for the past couple of months. Are you drinking again?”
Robby scowled. “No.”
“High?” Princess asked from the nurse’s station.
“On life,” He said, smacking Abbot’s shoulder with the back of his hand.
It was a minor miracle how regularly scheduled sexual activities and the occasional hand around his dick improved a man’s unraveling psyche. Maybe Abbot should publish his findings in a peer-reviewed journal.
“Wow.”
“What?”
“That was bad, even for you,” He deadpanned and shuffled out of Robby’s swatting range.
“Come on, Jesse liked it.”
Across the ED, Jesse shook his head.
“I’m working tomorrow too,” Abbot decided. Dana raised her eyebrows at him. “Shen and I are switching.”
“Really?” Robby asked, “did he fall down the stairs or get hit by a car?”
“No, what?”
“Valentine’s Day is John’s favorite day to work,” He explained, “he usually reserves it with the scheduling folks a year in advance. Says it adds years to his life to see all the stupid morons come in with romance-related ailments. It’s usually just a lot of weird stuff stuck in even weirder places.”
“That’s psychotic. You should schedule him for a psych evaluation,” Abbot said. Then he leaned in and murmured, “you want him working the double with you tomorrow or me?”
“You, obviously,” Robby said and cleared his throat, looking a little flustered at the admission.
“Good, I’d have pushed you off the roof if you picked him, Robinavitch.”
“Jesus.”
“Boys, the man with the zucchini stuck up his ass still needs one of you to work your magic on him,” Dana reminded from the sidelines. “He’s standing in Room Six.”
“Get Langdon,” Abbot said over his shoulder, “he’s got the small silky hands of a twelve-year-old girl.”
“Dr. Abbot,” Robby reprimanded over the faint murmur of laughter from the staff within earshot.
“Fine, I’ll handle this one,” He sighed, breaking eye contact.
Robby caught his bicep and squeezed. The gesture was sweet and intimate. His smile was soft around the edges with affection. “Thank you.”
Abbot’s scalp tingled. He nodded jerkily, eyes doing a routine sweeping scan of their surroundings for anyone that might be watching. He caught Mel’s gaze from across the room.
“Dr. King, down to help extract a zucchini from a grown man’s rectum on this fine Friday morning?”
Mel blinked. “Oh, sure. I’ll get him in line for an x-ray.”
“Dana, you can handle the…?” He gestured vaguely, hoping she’d pick up the hint about switching his shifts tomorrow with Shen so he could be with Robby on Valentine’s Day like the sucker he was.
“Yeah, I got you,” She waved him off and grabbed her reading glasses, “go put your hand inside that young man’s butt.”
-8:00 AM-
“This is actually a cucumber, you can tell from the absence of the thick stem characteristic of a zucchini,” Mel informed him when they fished the girthy vegetable out of the stranger’s back end. It was shining with a thick slippery coat of lubricant and intestinal mucus under the glaring lights.
“Yeah, it’s organic,” their patient mumbled face-first into the bed, “I got it from Whole Foods.”
“Good to know,” Abbot patted his hip and signaled for him to get up, “put it in a salad next time.”
-
“Got a guy with a steak knife in his left buttock in Trauma Two. Robby’s in there with Santos,” Dana told him when he walked by, “I switched you with Dr. Shen for tomorrow. He said you owe him drinks for depriving him of his greatest joy in life.”
“He needs mental help, Dana. Not more alcohol.”
“Hey, you’re limping already,” She called after Abbot, “feeling ok, Jack?”
Nothing got past Dana’s eyes. He winced when a particular step sent jarring discomfort shooting up his thigh and into his hip. He was really feeling the missing limb today.
“I’m fine. It’s probably going to rain tomorrow,” He said and walked into Trauma Two to find a six-foot-three man in a pink bunny suit lying on his front, screaming bloody murder.
“Hi again,” Robby said.
“Do I even want to know?”
“He was planning to surprise his wife for Valentine’s Day but she mistook him for an intruder when she found him on the bed,” Santos informed Abbot, biting her lip in a valiant effort not to burst out laughing.
“At 8:00 am in the morning?” Abbot asked. “Where’s the wife?”
“With police out in the lobby. Apparently she just flew back from taking a red-eye for a work trip in Europe.”
“Well damn, I admire the commitment, sir,” Abbot said to their screaming patient, “don’t worry, you’re in great hands with these two, although you are the second ass injury in under an hour for us today.”
“We got a bit of a theme going this year. Folks are celebrating early,” Robby observed, “Santos, why don’t you get started cutting off the costume?”
“Wanna join in the fun, Dr. Abbot?” She asked, peering intently between them.
“Nah, I’m just here to grab a box of extra large gloves,” He said and slid behind Robby to search the supply station.
“Those big ass hands are bleeding us dry, Abbot,” Robby clicked his tongue, “Extra large is thirty cents more per box, gotta order ‘em from a different distributor. You going to help me justify to Gloria why we’re giving you special treatment?”
“You love my big ass hands, Robinavitch,” He smirked and took his sweet time rummaging around the shelf with Robby pressed against his back, “tell her that’s why.”
Abbot gave them a parting salute and walked out just in time to see a man covered from head to toe in gold and pink glitter being pushed inside on a gurney. It was smeared all over the scowling EMTs as well.
“Alright, I’m not…” He took a step back and yelled in the general direction Mel had been in ten minutes ago, “Dr. King, I got a great new case for you!”
-9:00 AM-
Santos: I think Robby and Abbot are fucking.
Whitaker nearly dropped his phone when he saw the message. He peered nervously around the corner. There was no one coming. Wiping the sweat from his upper lip with the inside of his elbow, he hurriedly typed back: why can’t you drop this already? You’ve been going on about them possibly being together for months.
Santos: because my intuition is NEVER wrong. They were flirting over a man with a knife in his butt just now. abbot said robby liked his hands
Whitaker: wait, who put the knife in the guy’s butt
Santos: NOT THE POINT HUCKLEBERRY
Santos: it was the wife. hilarious misunderstanding. she might be going to jail. i’ll tell you about it tonight
Santos: fuck, gotta go brb
“Whitaker.”
He flinched. The phone finally fell from his fingers and clattered to the floor. Yolanda Garcia folded her arms over her chest. He was five days into his surgical rotation and despite having interacted with her in the ER previously, she still terrified the shit out of him.
“Texting your girlfriend?”
“No, just my roommate. I don't have a girlfriend.”
“How’s Santos doing down there by the way? It can get crazy in the ED around Valentine’s Day.”
“Uh, she said they had a butt stabbing victim. The wife might be going to jail?”
“That’s the one coming up to the OR,” Garcia said, “apparently she nicked an artery and severed a bunch of nerves. I’m seeing a divorce on the horizon, but probably not jail. Wanna come with me to get the guy?”
“S-sure.”
-
Collins picked up on the third ring.
“How’s the food poisoning, champ?” Robby asked. He was on the pathetic patch of grass outside the ambulance bay. There was a brief lull in the mad rush of patients, an eye of the storm type situation, and he was going to take full advantage of the tiny break. He heard her groan on the other end of the phone.
“Not throwing up anymore, but there’s still non-stop diarrhea.”
“Is your sister there?”
“Yeah.”
“Good, tell her to keep you hydrated, and don’t forget to replenish electrolytes.”
“Thanks, mom.”
“Hey, can I ask you something?” Robby said before she hung up on him. She did that a lot, hanging up without proper goodbyes. It used to bother him to no end during their brief time together.
“What?”
“I think I fucked up with Jack,” He admitted, chewing on his lower lip and pacing anxiously in the dead grass. The ground was still damp and spongy from recent rain. “I mean, he doesn’t seem upset or anything, but I should have told him in advance that I was taking your shift tomorrow. He found out from Dana, and I also didn’t prepare anything for you know our first…”
“Valentine’s Day?”
“I mean do men my age even do…Valentine’s Day?”
“I wouldn’t know, I’m not a man your age, Robby,” She said sarcastically, “also, does it not occur to you how sexist it is that you’re calling a woman to ask for romantic advice?”
“But only you and Dana know about us.”
“Ask Dana then.”
He rubbed his forehead and groaned, “I can’t talk to Dana about this, she’s gonna laugh at me.”
“And you think I’m not going to?”
“I was hoping you’d be too weak from the non-stop diarrhea.”
“Har har har.”
“Heather, please.”
“Uh, I don’t know, men like blowjobs regardless of their age, right? Give him a blowjob, make it fancier than your usual ones if you give them at all. Light a candle, put on some smooth jazz or, oh, play a WWII documentary. I get a sense that’s more his style.”
“Jesus Christ, woman.”
“Ok, if you suck at it, pun intended, then maybe something else you’re actually good at. Make him food. Do you cook?”
“I can put stuff in the microwave and press buttons.”
“Yeah, that’s not it.”
“Give him a massage, Robby.” That was Heather’s older sister. “I always appreciate it when my husband does that.”
“The kind with a happy ending or just the regular kind?” Heather asked. "Robby, do the one with the happy ending."
Her sister gasped. “Girl, what the hell?!”
The automatic doors parted and Javadi came stumbling out, still looking like a spooked baby deer even after months of rotations in the hospital. She scanned the empty ambulance bay, clearly looking for him.
Robby sighed, “alright, I’m gonna have to go back in. Hydration and electrolytes, you menace. Get better soon. And thank you, Ana. Noted on the massage.”