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The rain had started as a fine mist, the kind that barely felt noticeable. Robby had been standing at the edge of the hospital roof for twenty minutes now, his hands gripping the cold metal railing as the city spread out below him in all its messy, chaotic glory.
Pittsburgh always looked different from up here - smaller, quieter. Simpler. The noise and chaos of the ER floors below felt like a distant memory, even though he'd only ended his shift thirty or so minutes ago.
He should go home. Shower. Sleep. Try to forget the last few days. He should do a hundred things - anything - other than replay the sound of Jake's voice cracking, asking why he hadn't saved her. Anything other than feeling Leah's cooling body under his hands as he worked long past reason, refusing to admit she was gone.
Refusing to admit he had failed.
Instead he was on the roof.
"You're in my spot again."
Robby let his head hang low as he heard Jack's familiar voice behind him. Of course he would find him here. The man had an uncanny ability to show up exactly when Robby was at his lowest.
"We'll have to start making reservations if this keeps up," Jack continued, his footsteps slow and deliberate as he approached. "Maybe a timeshare sorta deal."
Despite everything, Robby almost smiled. Almost. Instead, he just gripped the railing tighter and watched the rain create small puddles on the rooftop surface. "Your shift starting soon?"
"Yeah, just wanted to get a breath of fresh air before diving into the mess you day shift people left me." Jack moved to stand beside him, close enough that Robby could feel his presence, see him out of the corner of his eye, but not so close as to crowd him. "Although it seems you're hogging my brooding space."
Robby nodded absently. He knew Jack was really here because someone - probably Dana - had mentioned seeing him head up to the roof. They all knew what the roof meant, even if none of them outright said it.
"Bad shift?" Jack asked, though they both knew it was clearly more than that.
"They're all bad shifts lately." Robby's voice came out rougher than he intended. The rain was picking up now, turning from a mist into actual drops that splashed against his face and arms. His clothes were getting soaked and the rain was cold, but he couldn't bring himself to care.
"Some are worse than others."
That was true enough. But Robby knew that it wasn't the shift that had him up on the roof tonight. In fact, the irony was tonight hadn't been bad. It had been quiet, even. Which, there was the problem. There had been no adrenaline to drown the silence. No patients to hide behind. Probably the first call shift since the day of PittFest.
Which had meant Robby had just his thoughts to keep him company throughout the shift, constantly circling back to the conversation he'd had - over a phone call, not even in-person - before work, the one that hollowed him out more than any shift ever could.
It really hadn't been a bad shift at all. And that had made it hurt all the more.
"Jake asked me..." Robby cut himself off, exhaling as he shook his head. 'Asked' was the wrong word. Jake hadn't asked. "He told me not to go to Leah's funeral."
Jack was quiet for a long moment, and Robby could practically hear him processing this information. The rain was coming down in earnest now, plastering their hair to their foreheads and turning the rooftop into a slick, treacherous surface.
And yet, neither of them moved to find shelter.
"And what did you tell him?"
"Nothing." Robby's laugh was bitter and hollow. "What could I say? That I tried everything? That I worked on her for minutes past the point where any reasonable doctor would have called it? That I ignored all of you telling me that she was gone, that I was wasting precious time and resources on someone that we couldn't save? That I kept going because I couldn't accept that she was gone, that I had failed Jake?"
"All of that sounds like a good place to start."
Robby finally turned to look at Jack, rain streaming down both their faces. "He's seventeen, Jack. He's just seventeen and his girlfriend is dead, and in his mind, it's because I wasn't good enough. Fast enough. Smart enough." He turned back to the city sprawl below. "...and maybe he's right."
"Bullshit."
The word was said with such quiet conviction that Robby actually looked at Jack again. Jack's jaw was set in that stubborn yet familiar way that meant he was preparing for an argument, and his dark eyes held the kind of fierce loyalty that Robby had never quite felt he deserved.
"Come on," Jack continued, reaching out to grab Robby's shoulder with a firm grip. "You know there was nothing you could have done to save her. She took a round to the chest. By the time she got to us, she'd already lost too much blood. And even so, you kept trying long after the rest of us accepted it. You did everything. It wasn't your fault, Robby."
"Tell that to Jake." The words came out sharper than Robby intended, edged with all the pain and frustration he'd been carrying since that awful conversation in the makeshift morgue. "Tell that to the kid who looked me in the eye and said we're not friends anymore. That I'm not his father. Which... he's right. I'm not. I'm just his mom's ex from a few years ago." Robby sighed, leaning heavily on the guardrail. "He doesn't want anything to do with me anymore. He's made that clear."
Jack's hand was still on his shoulder, warm and steady despite the cold rain. "He's grieving. And, as you said, he's seventeen. Seventeen-year-olds say stupid things. Especially when they're in pain."
"Do they?" Robby could feel something cracking inside his chest, all the hastily-built walls he'd built around his emotions starting to crumble. "Because it felt pretty fucking final to me. Like he'd been waiting for an excuse to cut me out of his life for good. And I sure as hell gave him one."
"You don't believe that."
"Don't I?" Robby pulled away from Jack's grip and took a step back. "His mom and I broke up years ago. The only reason Jake and I stayed close was because he wanted to have that relationship - and I damn well tried to be that father figure for him. But now... now he has a reason to walk away. A good reason. His girlfriend is dead and I'm the one who couldn't keep her alive. I failed him."
The words tasted like ash in his mouth. Failed him. That's what it came down to, wasn't it? Jake had trusted him - not just as a doctor, but as the closest thing to a father he'd had - and Robby had let him down in the worst possible way. The one time Jake needed him to be perfect, to be everything he'd always pretended to be, and Robby had come up short.
The rain was really coming down now, turning into the kind of downpour that drummed against the roof and ran in streams off the edge of the building, creating a white noise that should have been comforting but somehow made everything feel more isolated. Robby closed his eyes. He knew Jack was right, in theory. He knew. But knowing meant nothing when all he could see was Jake's face the moment Robby had told him that she was dead. When all he could see was the look that said Robby was nothing more than a stranger now.
"That kid was the closest thing I had to a son," Robby said, opening his eyes, his voice breaking slightly on the word 'son.' "And now he hates me. Do you know what that feels like?"
The question hung in the air between them, raw and desperate. Robby closed his eyes and let the rain wash over his face, let the water run down until he couldn't tell the difference between rain and tears.
"Robby. Listen to me," Jack said, raising his voice slightly to be heard over the rain. "I've watched you work for years. I've seen you save people that had no business surviving. I've watched you fight for patients that everyone else had written off. You're one of the best doctors I've ever worked with."
"Then why is she dead?"
"You know this. Because sometimes people die, Robby. Sometimes they come to us too broken to fix, and there's nothing we can do except try our best and hope it's enough. I know you're not taking this like a doctor, but you know this. You've always known this. We can't save everyone."
Jack really was right, of course. In his rational mind, he understood that not every patient could be saved. He'd lost people before - too many to count - and while it never got easier, he'd learned to carry that weight without letting it destroy him. You had to, if you wanted to make it in the career he'd made his life.
But Jake wasn't everyone. Jake was his - or had been, anyway. The kid who'd chosen him, who'd kept choosing him even after his relationship with Janey ended. Jake had been the kid who showed up at the hospital just to hang out, who called him when he had problems at school, who'd asked his advice about girls and jobs and life, Jake was the kid who'd somehow become the most important person in Robby's life during the two years he'd dated Janey - and the years that followed.
And Robby had failed him.
Losing that relationship felt like Robby was losing a piece of himself.
"He'll come around," Jack said quietly. "Give him time to grieve. Time to figure out that he's feeling this way because being angry at you is easier than being angry at the universe. But, Robby, I've seen the way he looks at you, the way he talks about you. That kid loves you, brother. That doesn't just go away because of one horrible day."
"What if it does?" The words came out as barely more than a whisper. "What if this is it? What if I never get him back?"
"Then you'll survive it. Just like you've survived everything else." Jack stepped closer again, and this time when he put his hand on Robby's shoulder, Robby didn't pull away. "But I don't think you'll have to. Jake's a good kid. He's going through hell right now, but he's not stupid. He knows who you are. He knows you would have moved mountains to save Leah if you could have - hell, you certainly tried. He'll come around, and when he does - you'll be waiting for him."
Robby wanted to believe him. God, he wanted to believe that this rift with Jake wasn't permanent, that the kid would eventually realize that grief was making him lash out at those around him. But the look in Jake's eyes the day of Leah's death had been so cold, so final. Like he was looking at a stranger instead of the man who'd taught him to drive, who'd just recently helped him with his college applications, who'd been there for every important moment in his life for the past years.
"I keep thinking about what I could have done differently," Robby admitted. "If I'd been faster. If I'd tried a different approach to the bleeding. If I'd-"
"Stop." Jack's voice was firm but not unkind. "That's not going to help, and you know it. That's just you torturing yourself disguised as problem-solving. You can't change what happened, Robby. She died. You did everything right, and she still died - she was always going to die."
They stood in silence for a while, both of them getting thoroughly soaked by the Pittsburgh rain. Robby's scrubs were plastered to his body now, and he could feel water running down his spine and pooling in his shoes. The physical discomfort seemed appropriate somehow - external evidence of the internal chaos that had been consuming him since that phone call.
He should be miserable. Instead, he felt oddly peaceful for the first time in hours.
Maybe it was the rain washing away the smell of the hospital - that mixture of disinfectant and fear and human suffering that seemed to cling to everything in the emergency department. Maybe it was having Jack there beside him, solid and unflappable as always. Or maybe it was just the relief of finally saying out loud what had been eating at him since the moment Jake turned his back and walked away.
"You need to go home," Jack said eventually. "Get out of these wet clothes. Take a hot shower. Sleep for at least twelve hours."
"I don't know if I can sleep."
"Then don't. Sit in your place. Order some unhealthy takeout food. Watch something mindless on Netflix. Just... don't stay here. This place isn't good for you right now."
Robby looked out over the city one more time. From up here, in the distance, he could see where PittFest had taken place. Too many people had died at that festival, including a seventeen-year-old girl who'd been looking forward to seeing her favorite bands with her new boyfriend. It hurt so much that someone so young and full of life could just... stop existing. One moment laughing and dancing and calling her boyfriend's quasi-stepfather to say thank you for the tickets, and the next moment lying in the middle of an overwhelmed E.R. while that same man desperately tried to restart her heart.
"The thing is," Robby said quietly, "I really thought I could save her. Right up until the end, I thought if I just worked a little harder, tried a little longer... I mean, she was seventeen, Jack. Same age as Jake. Her whole life ahead of her. Too many kids died that day, Jack."
"I know."
"She called me Dr. Robinavitch when they FaceTimed from the festival. It was the first time I'd ever talked to her, and she was so polite. So grateful for the tickets. She seemed like a good kid." Robby grimaced. "I never actually met her in person, before..."
Before she was dying on his table. Before he was fighting a losing battle to save her while Jake waited across the room, trusting him to work a miracle that Robby didn't have in him.
"Robby..."
"Jake loved her."
"Yeah, he did."
Robby wiped rain from his face and finally stepped back from the railing. His legs felt unsteady, probably from standing in one position for so long, but also from the emotional exhaustion that had been building for hours. "Do you really think he'll forgive me?"
The question came out smaller than he'd intended, like a child asking if everything would be okay.
"I think he already knows there's nothing to forgive. He's just not ready to admit it yet. He just wants someone to blame, you know it feels easier that way." Jack gestured toward the door that led back into the hospital. "Come on. I'll walk you to the front."
"What about your shift?"
"It's quiet down there. And Dana will understand if I'm a couple minutes late."
They walked across the slick rooftop together, their footsteps echoing off the concrete.
"Jack?" he called out as the man held the door leading down off the roof open.
"Yeah?"
"Thanks. For coming up here. For... everything."
Jack nodded, and for a moment his usual stoic expression softened. "Hey, that's what we do, right? Look out for each other."
"Yeah," Robby said, following Jack into the warm, dry stairwell. "I guess it is."
As the door closed behind them, shutting out the rain and the city and the weight of the last day, Robby felt something shift in his chest. Not healing - it was all too fresh for that - but maybe the first step towards it. Maybe the first tentative move toward believing that he could survive this, that Jake would come around, that tomorrow would be better than today.
It wasn't enough to fill the Jake-sized hole in his life, but it was enough to get him down the stairs and back out to the rain-soaked street - with an umbrella shoved into his hand by Jack - and home to face whatever came next.
And sometimes, that was all he could ask for.
And maybe, eventually, there would be Jake again, ready to forgive and be forgiven.
But that was tomorrow's worry. Not today's.