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"No," Jack said. "No fucking way, tea doesn't do this. I've had tea before. My grandmother drank tea every day of her life, God rest her, and nothing like this ever happened to her."
"I wish I had more in-depth answers to give you," Kiara said, and the frustrating thing was that Jack could tell she was sincere. "But the CDC isn't exactly being forthcoming about this. They were very insistent that we bag samples of everything you came in contact with today, and right now the only thing we've identified that you all have in common is that tea. They've got an investigative team en route from Atlanta as we speak—"
Jack snorted. He knew how much trust he'd place in the CDC under the current administration, and it wasn't a whole hell of a lot. They'd probably decide this had all been caused by miasmas, or because the moon was in Saturn, or some other bullshit.
"—and hopefully we'll know more when they get here. I'll let you know their ETA once I have it." With one last apologetic look at the both of them, Kiara left the room.
Jack supposed he should be thankful that he and Robby, as the most senior attendings, had merited a whole room to themselves while this was playing out. The others were out in the cubicle area, no doubt attracting all the ED's worst rubberneckers, because Jack worked with some gossipy fucking ghouls. Which maybe wasn't entirely fair of Jack, because all things being equal, he knew if he'd been told that a box of tea in the break room had somehow caused Langdon to swap bodies with Perlah, and Santos to do the same with Whitaker, he'd have wanted to see for himself. Why would he willingly pass up the opportunity to see Langdon swear a blue streak in Tagalog for no apparent reason?
It was just that right here, right now, Jack was looking across this too-small room to see Robby staring back at him, silent and panicked, through Jack's own eyes, and Jack apparently wasn't equipped to handle much more than that right now. Neither, it seemed, was Robby's body. "Does your chest feel like this all the time?" Jack asked, rubbing at it with the heel of his—Robby's—his hand. "Because it feels kinda like I'm having an MI even though I'm pretty sure I'm not. This seems like an issue."
"You'll live," Robby said. It was the first time he'd spoken in a while, and as weird as it still was for Jack to hear himself speak in Robby's voice, it was even stranger to hear Robby rasp out words using Jack's. He was still sitting on the gurney, fingers white-knuckled on the edge of it.
"I'll live?" Jack blinked. "What the hell. Man, I know you're capable of a better pep talk than that."
"Is that what I'm going for?"
"Is that what—is that what you're going for?" Jack had had arguments with people in his third language while jet-lagged and in the same clothes for 55 consecutive hours that had been less frustrating than this thirty-second conversation with the man he lived with. Robby wasn't even doing it deliberately, Jack was pretty sure, which made it worse. "Well, you fucking tell me because—"
Jack was rescued from saying something he'd maybe regret by the door opening again. It was Princess, looking apologetic as she said that the CDC had declared that they'd need yet another blood draw from each of them.
"Who knew Atlanta was home to so many vampires?" Jack joked.
"They got priced out of New Orleans," Princess said dryly, finding a vein in the crook of his—Robby's—arm with practiced ease. "That French Quarter rent is steep. Can I get you two anything?"
"Nah, we're good, thanks," Jack said, when it didn't look like Robby was going to use his words even while Princess drew blood from his—Jack's, Jack's—arm. "How's everyone doing out there?"
Princess shrugged. "Okay, I guess? Dr Collins just made Santos cry, though."
That got both of them staring at her.
"What?" Robby said at the same time that Jack said, "How?" Santos had that mean little streak in her that'd make her a hell of a doctor in three to five years, once she figured out how to harness it instead of be driven by it, but that she was still mostly using to deflect like fuck in the workplace. Emotional vulnerability wasn't exactly in her professional skill set.
"Those hormonal surges shouldn't be trifled with," Princess said knowingly as she labelled the vials.
"Amen to that," Jack murmured. Not that he would dream of trifling with Heather Collins at the best of times, let alone when she was several hours into a stressful shift while nearing the end of her second trimester.
"And I guess Whitaker's body's got fewer defences to, you know"—Princess waggled her free hand in the air like that said something that words couldn't, and Jack had heard what Collins' tongue was capable of on the rare occasion when her professional veneer cracked, so hell, maybe it was—"so Santos started crying but ooh, she was pissed about it. It was like seeing one of those little big-eyed furry creatures at the zoo fall into a pond and then get really mad about it."
"Now there's a picture," Jack said as Princess left. He paced the length of the room a couple of times, and then got weirded out by the sensation of doing so on two equally responsive, equally-present feet. He stopped in front of Robby, and had the once-in-a-lifetime, he hoped, experience of looking down at the crown of his own head. "You know, it occurs to me that we're kind of fighting about this. Or more accurately, you're trying to make us fight about this. What gives? It's not like any of this is your fault."
"I know," Robby said. He didn't sound like a man who's been absolved from any lingering sense of guilt as to who had been the one to crack open that new batch of tea.
Jack let the silence stretch out just enough to make Robby shift uncomfortably on the gurney before he said, drawing the vowel out, "And?"
"Why aren't you more upset about this?" Robby said. He seemed to be looking everywhere in the room except at Jack.
Jack shrugged. "Could ask the same about you. You lost a couple of inches and a lower leg before noon on a Wednesday, that's bound to ripple anyone's pond."
Robby made one of those frustrated little vocalisations of his, which was very strange to hear coming out of Jack's own throat. "No, that's not... I'm not... You're not..."
"Hey, hey." Jack had made his peace, mostly, with losing his leg, but there was something to be said for the ability to hunker down so easily. He rested his—Robby's—hands on Robby's—his—knees, and waited for Robby to meet his gaze. It was a weird kind of double vision: looking at his own face, same as looking in a mirror, but seeing someone else entirely looking out from behind his eyes. "Whatever it is, just say it and we'll deal with it from there. Okay? Generally works for us."
(It was how they'd kissed for the first time, after all: Robby sitting on Jack's front porch, left leg jigging up and down so fast it was almost a blur, fist white-knuckled around his car keys, and saying, "My therapist thinks there are some things I should tell you, so, uh, here goes."
Jack figured he owed Robby's therapist one of those Edible Arrangements or something.)
"I feel bad," Robby said eventually, haltingly. "Because I know being inside my body has to feel.... bad. For you. And I'm sorry."
"Are you actually..." Jack squinted at him. "Are you apologising to me for what your autonomic nervous system does?"
Robby shrugged.
"Because that's not a thing you can control, my friend, even on days when you haven't been through an unexpected consciousness swap." Jack manfully suppressed a joke about how being inside Robby always felt good to him, because he knew he wouldn't have an appreciative audience for the bit right now. Give him another medal. "Panic doesn't feel great no matter what way you come at it, inside or out, but I'm not judging you for it. You get that, right?"
Robby shrugged again, looking miserable.
"Okay," Jack said, deciding to try this from another angle. He stood and reached out a hand to Robby. "C'mon. Up."
Robby shot him a dubious look.
"I know for certain that there's nothing wrong with your hearing, Mike."
Robby grumbled but stood, only wobbling a little.
Jack took a moment to silently congratulate himself on his body's proprioception skills, and then opened his arms wide. "Okay, bring it in."
Robby looked at him, then over at the door to the hubbub of the ED beyond, and then back to Jack. "You want us to hug it out? Here?"
"I'm doing a thing," Jack said, wiggling his fingers. "C'mon. Trust me?"
Robby sighed like Jack was making strange and unreasonable demands on him, but he took a half-step forward into Jack's embrace. Jack hugged him tight. He could feel, physically feel, how Robby held out on him for a good thirty seconds. When he finally relaxed into it, it was with a shudder, turning to press his nose into the crook of Jack's neck.
"Right," Jack murmured, running one hand in big, loose arcs up and down Robby's back. "Listen carefully to what I'm asking you here. I want you to tell me how this hug feels to the body that you're in right at this moment."
"Nice," Robby said.
When nothing more was forthcoming, Jack squeezed him a little tighter.
"Oof, okay, fuck," Robby said, wriggling a bit until Jack subsided. "It feels nice, okay? You're warm. You smell nice, if that's not completely narcissistic to say. Resting my head here feels familiar."
"Hmm," Jack said, closing his eyes. "Respiratory rate?"
"Normal."
"And just out of curiosity, what do you think we'd find if we measured your heart rate right now? Blood pressure?"
Robby stirred against him. "I feel like you're trying to make a very unsubtle point, you asshole."
"Those sweet-talking skills, that's how you won me," Jack said, tightening his hold just enough to make it clear that the hug wouldn't be over until he said it was over. "But I'm just going to note, pretty obvious that this isn't a new thing, right? My body knows your body. It likes it."
"That's not—"
"Likes it a whole fucking lot, in fact, so if you could refrain from talking shit about its taste, that'd be great." Jack shifted a bit, taking one of Robby's hands in his and pressing his fingertips against the pulse in Jack's wrist. "You find anything concerning here? No? No."
"This isn't filling me with confidence about how you work up a patient," Robby grumbled.
"Anyway," Jack said loudly, "my point is, I'm not any more weirded out or disgusted by swapping bodies with you than I would be with anyone else. And I really, genuinely like you, you nut. And also—"
"How many points can you fit into one single point?"
"Also, I kind of dig getting to feel up close and personal how much you like me in your bones. If this had to happen—"
Robby snorted.
"—then that's kind of a nice silver lining."
"Dr. Jack Abbot, noted philosopher of the Emergency Department."
"And he deflects, folks, which is how I know that he knows that I'm right but he's too much of a stubborn fuck to admit it."
"Smug asshole."
"You know it," Jack said, and pressed a kiss to Robby's temple, and tried not to enjoy too much the feeling of needing to lean down to do so.
They were still standing there, arms around one another, when Jack experienced a good five seconds or so of stomach-churning vertigo, staggered, blinked, and found himself once more looking out of his own eyes at Robby's beloved face.
"Ha," Jack said. "The CDC team is going to be so pissed they didn't get to solve this one."
"That's your takeaway from this, huh?" Robby was trying for snarky, but Jack knew him far too well to fall for that one. That was a mix of relief and amusement right there: shoulders loose but the crinkles around Robby's eyes deepening. If Jack played his cards right and managed to escape the clutches of the CDC hacks, that meant pretty good odds for him getting laid this evening. Go him.
"Well, you know me," Jack said. "Philosopher-king of the ED."
"Is that how I phrased it?" Robby said. "I don't think that's how I phrased it."
"Famed for my original wisdom," Jack went on, pleased.
"Uh huh," Robby said. He untangled himself from Jack's embrace and went to peer through the glass in the door. "Well, King's clapping and Whitaker's doubled over with his hands on his knees like he just ran a marathon, so I think we can assume it's worn off for everyone."
"Another victory for the filtration capabilities of the human renal system," Jack said, even though some small part of him—the part that was helpless to resist the lure of cheesy romcoms when channel-surfing at four in the morning—was sad that everything had been resolved with the passage of time instead of requiring the healing power of a close embrace. If nothing else, the look on Santos' face on being told that she'd have to hug things out with Whitaker would have been funny as fuck.
"Well," Robby said, "Ready to head back out there and dispense some of that glorious wisdom of yours to the undoubtedly heinous backlog of patients that's amassed in chairs while we were caught up in whatever the hell this was?"
"Sure," Jack said. "I'll start with the ancient proverb about the truths you can learn from walking a mile in an amputee's shoes."
Robby made an appalled face. "Jesus, Jack."
"I love you, too," Jack said, and followed him out.