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The knocking wakes her. Sharp, insistent, the kind that cuts through the fog of exhaustion and tears the comfort of sleep away from her mind. Go away, she thinks, pressing her face deeper into her pillow. While she considers finding her powered-off phone buried somewhere in the living room couch’s cushions, the idea of letting the rest of the world in after a night of peace frightens her.
But the knocking doesn’t stop.
With a groan, she peels herself upright.
She still considers ignoring it. Whoever is on the other side of that door can come back tomorrow if they have to, but her feet carry her forward anyway. Habit, maybe. The same instinct that (usually) makes her check her phone even on her days off.
But her old med school alarm blinks red from across her room, showing 10:45, and the emergency department doctor in her knows this isn't something to ignore.
The apartment is dark, the only light bleeding in from the streetlamps outside.
When she yanks the door open, Jack Abbott’s silhouette fills the frame. Abbott?
“What--”
“Look, I debated just leaving after knocking,” he interrupts, running a hand through his disheveled grey hair. His voice is too raw for the hallway. “But this night has been hell, and I don’t think I can make it back down the steps as quick as possible with my leg until I get some sleep--”
“Abbott.” Her own voice cuts through his rambling. She folds her arms, her dark skin prickling with unease. “Is this about the teenage girl’s abortion? Robby and I got it figured out. You don’t have to worry about being reported.”
His face does a complicated grimace and flinch, like she's just shoved a needle into a bruise. “I hoped I wouldn’t be the one to tell you, but--” He exhales, sharp. “There was a mass shooting at PittFest.”
“What?”
“Robby's stepson--”
Her heart plummets, a second freefall she hadn't thought was possible again today. The image from Robby's desk flashes before she can stop it--Jake’s face, grinning under that ridiculous Pirates cap Robby gives him, the one Adamson left behind. No. No, not him too.
“Please tell me he’s not dead.” The words scrape her throat.
Abbott shakes his head. “Jake’s fine, but the girlfriend didn't make it. As much as Robby tried, there was nothing left for him to save.”
Oh God.
“Oh my god.” She moves before she realizes it, spinning back into the apartment, her hands scrambling through the couch cushions. Her phone. She needs her phone. “Oh my god, is he--”
“Ellis said the kid yelled at him.” Abbott’s voice follows her, grim. “So I don’t think Jake or Janey will be able to be there for him anytime soon. Dana has her own family. I tried my best, and at least I got him off the roof--”
“The roof?” She freezes her search for the phone to stare at Abbott in furious shock. “Please tell me you didn't let him go home alone after that, Jack.”
Abbott doesn’t meet her eyes.
“He seemed fine. At the park. Had a beer with everyone, had a laugh.” He rubs his jaw, the stubble rasping under his palm. “But then I kept thinking about all the guys from my old unit who lost their lives back home instead of in combat, and--”
She doesn’t let him finish.
“Have you at least called him?” The words come out a hiss, venomous. She finds the phone but abandons waiting for it to power on before shoving it in the pocket of her sweatpants and starts hunting for her tennis shoes.
“He's either screening my and Dana's calls, or he has his phone off.” Abbott sighs. “Dana says you might still have a key?”
She wants to snap at him. Wants to scream. But fear has a cold hand around her throat, squeezing tighter with every passing second. Adamson. The miscarriage. Jake. The weight of it all presses down, and suddenly, she can’t breathe.
She finds the key--the one she never got around to returning, and the one he never asked her to--underneath takeout menus in her junk drawer. Her fingers close around it just as her phone buzzes to life.
Hundreds of notifications start screaming at her, a horrific symphony of you're too late, you're too late, you're--
“Thanks, I--” Abbott starts, but she already shoves past him, locking her apartment door with shaking hands. “You don’t have to--”
“Shut up.” The words are razor-edged, fear taking over her usual filter of politeness. “Can you drive?”
He blinks, caught off guard, but after a beat, he nods. “Yeah. Yeah, of course.”
The ride is a blur. Streetlights streak past, the city bleeding into one endless smear of red and white. She clutches the key so tight in her hand that she thinks the ridges of metal teeth might break skin.
“How many?” Her broken voice asks Abbott.
He knows what she means without her needing to clarify. He's always been good that way. “One hundred and twelve.”
“Jesus Christ.” Her eyes fill with tears. “I should have been there, I should--”
“Only six casualties.” Abbott cuts across, his voice firm before it goes kind. “If there's one thing I've learned about you, Heather, it's that you'd never leave a shift early without a goddamn good reason. Don’t blame yourself. We had it handled.”
She shakes her head, wiping tears from her face as she looks out the window, a bitter laugh cutting through as she says, “This is what I get for taking advice from Robby.”
Abbott's attempt at a smile falls flat. “He’ll be okay.”
Her voice cracks. “If you really believed that, you wouldn't have shown up at my door.”
“No, if I really believed that, I would have called EMS.” Abbott challenges.
The truth doesn’t comfort her when all she can think is that she can’t survive losing both a baby and Robby on the same day.
Less than thirty minutes later, Robby's apartment door swings open under her trembling hand.
The scene hits her like a chest x-ray revealing multiple fractures:
Robby a collapsing star, all that furious energy turned inward to burn him alive as he sits on the floor against his couch. He sits surrounded by a graveyard of empty beer bottles--his usual expensive, pretentious whiskey replaced by cheap convenience store six-packs. His scrubs cling to his body, drenched in sweat and spilled alcohol. Chillingly, his shoes are soaked in old blood.
She moves before her brain registers the stumble--muscle memory from a thousand codes and collapses. The room tilts with him, a nauseating lurch that makes her own balance rebel as she lunges forward.
Her hands find his shoulders just as his elbow buckles, the solid weight of him almost dragging her down too. The carpet rasps against her knees where she catches herself.
God, you idiot, she thinks, helplessly empathetic despite herself. Her fingers dig into his shirt, cotton gone slick with sweat under her palms. She feels the tremor running through him--not the fine shake of exhaustion, but something deeper, something structural. Like a building coming undone at the beams.
"Easy," she snaps, but her voice cracks.
His breath hitches against her collarbone, too hot, too fast. The scent of antiseptic and alcohol clings to him, that unholy mix of ER and aftermath. Her thumbs press into the divots above his scapulae, half to steady him, half to prove he’s still there. Still solid. Still alive.
(She doesn’t think about the roof.)
His forehead grazes her sternum, and for one fractured second, she lets herself curl over him--just enough to shield, just enough to hide the way her own hands shake.
Each breath comes in ragged, irregular gasps. Tachypneic, 28/min--his radial pulse hammers beneath her fingertips when she reaches for his wrist.
"I should have saved her. It's what I do." He slurs into her shoulder, his words thick with alcohol and anguish. His trembling hands cover his face. "I should have been the one with him at PittFest. Should have been the one who got shot--"
Her heart shatters, but she looks up at Abbott, who still hovers in the doorway, and nods that she’ll take it from here. He hesitates for only a moment before closing the door behind him.
They both know she has practice.
This is recycled guilt, after all. Adamson's death now layered with Leah's.
"I failed Jake today. And you. I let you down first." His voice cracks like a breaking sternum. "If I was better--if I didn't--you'd have--"
A wet, shattered sound escapes him. She isn’t sure he’s even aware he speaks.
(Acute intoxication, her training notes. Dissociative episode. Psychological decompensation.)
She uses her hands--the ones that missed the massacre, that weren’t there to stem the bleeding--and pulls him closer.
"Breathe." She murmurs against his temple, her own lungs aching as tears fall with his. "Just breathe."
His bloodshot eyes find hers through the alcohol haze, pupils dilated with grief and cheap beer. "Jake hates me. And he's right." The words slur together, sticky with self-loathing.
"It's only been a few hours, Robby." Her thumb presses against his radial pulse again. 118 bpm, thready but present. "He's a teenager in traumatic shock. You're both in shock."
"But I didn't save her." His voice cracks like a rib under compressions. "I'm incapable of saving the people that matter. First Adamson--" A wet, shuddering gasp. "--now Leah. I can’t even be a real father when it matters."
The implication guts her.
"He's right to hate me," Robby chokes. "I'm not his father. Just like I'm not--" His breath hitches, the realization sobering him for one terrible moment. "Fuck. I'm so sorry Heather, I didn't mean--Fuck."
Her grip tightens around his body as he tries to push her away to protect her from him. She presses her lips to his sweat-slick temple. The taste of salt and hops doesn’t deter her when it still means he’s gloriously alive. “It's okay. Just breathe.”
Her body moves before her mind can protest--one hand finding the heated skin of his neck, her fingers slipping automatically into the damp curls at his nape. The familiar texture sends a jolt through her, that old muscle memory of how he always shivered when she touched him there.
Her other hand comes to rest against his chest, palm flattening over the sternum where she counts rib fractures on a hundred trauma scans. Beneath her fingers, his heart thunders against his ribs like a caged thing. Too fast. Too irregular. The thin scrub fabric does nothing to mute the heat radiating from him, her skin burning where they connect.
Breathe, you stubborn bastard.
She presses down slightly, as if she can manually regulate him through sheer will. The memory hits her suddenly--this exact motion during his first panic attack after Adamson died, the few days remaining when they still shared a bed and he still let her see him break. Back when he curled into her touch instead of freezing like he does now.
His stuttered inhale gusts against her collarbone. She smells the beer on his breath, the hospital soap clinging to his skin underneath. That clinical-clean scent they all stop noticing years ago, layered now with something sharper. Adrenaline. Despair.
Her thumb moves without permission, tracing the taut tendon along his neck. A reflex. A mistake. He goes utterly still beneath her hands, and for one terrible second she thinks he might pull away.
Then his forehead drops against her shoulder, his entire weight sagging into her grip like a marionette with cut strings. The surrender knocks the air from her lungs.
Oh.
Her palms burn. She doesn’t let go.
The weight of Robby’s forehead against her collarbone is familiar in a way that makes her ribs ache. Collins shifts carefully, her back protesting against the awkward angle of his couch, but she doesn’t pull away. The discomfort grounds her in the moment.
"You need sleep," she murmurs, her thumb automatically finding his radial pulse. 88 bpm now. Slower. Steadier. The alcohol and exhaustion finally drag him under.
She should leave.
(She doesn’t.)
Instead, she reaches for the throw blanket tangled near his feet--the same one he bought back when they shared stupid inside jokes. She drapes it over them both, her movements slow, deliberate, to avoid jostling him.
Robby stirs anyway, his breath hitching. "Heather--?"
"I’m here." Her hand settles on his shoulder, anchoring him.
He exhales, his body sinking heavier against hers.
Her phone still buzzes in her pocket--the world still trying to tell her how much she failed it. The ER still swallowing the wounded and the dying.
Collins silences it with one hand, the other still resting lightly on Robby’s back, feeling the rise and fall of his breathing.
Just until the alcohol wears off, she tells herself.
She doesn’t mean to fall asleep.
The living room is dark when she jerks awake, the dim glow of the city through the blinds the only light. Her neck aches from the awkward angle, her cheek pressed against the top of Robby’s head.
His breathing is slow, even. But when she shifts, his fingers tighten around her wrist.
"Stay."
His voice is rough, raw.
She freezes. His grip slides down to her hand, his thumb pressing into her pulse point--mimicking her earlier check. His eyes are shadowed in the low light, but the intensity in them is unmistakable.
"You’re not okay," she says quietly.
Robby’s laugh is hollow. "No shit."
But there’s something fractured and reckless in his expression that makes her chest tighten. Despite her best efforts, she pictures Robby standing on the edge of the towering hospital's roof.
"Come on," she murmurs, standing and pulling him up with her.
He doesn’t resist, letting her guide him toward the bedroom. The sheets are cold, the pillows barely indented. He collapses onto the mattress, his movements sluggish with exhaustion.
Collins hesitates at the edge, then folds herself onto the other side, leaving a careful twelve inches between them. As she told Dana, after all, Never again.
"You don’t have to--"
"You're not the only one with an empty apartment and too much grief to be alone." She interrupts with a sigh, the confession escaping her before her drained mind can stop it. “And at least if I'm here for you now it helps me forgive myself for not being there for everyone tonight.”
A wounded noise tears from Robby's chest. Suddenly his hand is in hers, their fingers tangling as he rolls to face her. He still keeps the respectful distance otherwise, but the way his eyes look at her makes her feel as though he's only millimeters away.
"Heather." Her name sounds like a prayer in his ruined voice. "Don't let that place destroy you too. You needed to be home. You deserved that."
Says you. “Says you.”
He flinches as if struck, tears cutting silver tracks through the stubble on his cheeks only visible because of the moonlight peaking through the blinds. “I let it destroy me tonight. God, Langdon is right--”
She frowns. “I thought you sent Langdon home before me?”
“He came back.” Robby's tone became surprisingly vicious, a terrible match for what seemed like should have been a good thing. “Came back just to prove I'm more fucked up than he is.”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
Robby's eyes flicker to hers, a silent look of, ‘Do not repeat this’, and spat, “He's been diverting benzos for months.”
“What?” Fleetingly she remembers the kid's disproportionate response to being called an adrenaline junkie just this morning. “Shit.”
Robby shakes his head in that almost manic way he does when he's furious at both the world and himself, adding, “And you want to know what's worse? I'm just as fucked up as he is, having goddamn panic attacks in the makeshift morgue that the whole staff will know about by tomorrow. I failed. I froze.”
"Michael." She squeezes his hand hard enough to bruise, her whisper fierce with the tenderness she's spent five years pretending no longer exists. "When will you stop punishing yourself for being human?"
A hollow laugh rattles in his chest.
"When they start handing out Nobel Prizes for mediocrity." His thumb brushes her knuckles--a reflex, that old dance of deflection--but then his breath hitches. The joke curdles into something jagged. His voice fractures like a rib under compressions. "Or when people stop dying because I fucking wasn’t enough."
(Beneath it, the quieter truth: I don’t know how to want less than everything.)
She bridges the gap to cradle his face. His stubble scrapes her palms. "Your job is to try. And then--" Her thumb swipes over his cheekbone. "--let someone else take the weight when it's too much."
His exhale shudders through both of them. "I don't know how."
"Then learn. By practicing." She tugs him forward until his forehead rests against hers. It reminds her of the ambulance in dangerous ways, but she owes him this at least. This is for him.
It's a convenient lie.
Her subconscious doesn't let her keep it, her free hand drifting to her abdomen.
"You know what I did when I left early today?" Her voice is calm when it slips against her wishes. Detached. The way she announces time of death. "Drove to CVS for Epsom salts. Put on that Billie Holiday record you used to pretend you hate. Sat in a bubble bath until the water went cold."
Robby’s pulse jumps under her fingertips.
"I counted tiles instead of contractions," she continues. A mirthless smile. "Canceled an online order for a baby stroller I was dumb enough to buy this morning."
His face does something complicated-- that particular brand of empathetic devastation only Robby could muster. "Heather--"
"I know. I needed to be home. And you needed to be home. And that place--" A scoffing laugh escapes her. "--will always convince us we need to be there. None of us got what we deserved today."
He lets out a long exhale, looking down at the sheets, nodding.
“But we might tomorrow.” She whispers, trying to believe it herself. “So please, for the love of God, Robby, don't you dare give up on tomorrow.”
"Over-drinking isn't proof of suicidal ideation," he mutters with that infuriating stubborn medical precision, jaw clenched. She can't tell if he's trying to convince her or himself.
"Not clinically, no." Her thumb finds his pulse point again. "But standing on rooftops after losing a patient you knew? That's textbook and you know it."
His body goes rigid. "Jack told you? I'm going to--"
"Don't. Don't you dare blame Abbott for caring. That man's lost more friends to suicide than we've lost interns to burnout." Her voice slices through his anger. "He recognized the signs because he's been there. Just like I recognized them when I walked in tonight."
The fight drains from him suddenly, leaving his shoulders slumped. "I wasn't...I didn't..."
“Maybe not.” She says softly, hoping if she at least gives him this leeway he won't bolt. “But either way, please don't push everyone that wants to help you out tomorrow morning.”
He exhales through his nose.
"And since we both know I'll never keep my phone off again,” She sighs, guilt still gnawing at her from the inside out. “The next time you feel like standing too close to an edge, you call me. Even if it's 3 AM. Even if we haven't spoken about anything personal in weeks. You call."
Robby's breath hitches. Then his fingers intertwine with hers, his forehead pressing against their joined hands. The surrender in that simple gesture speaks louder than any promise could.