Chapter Text
You peel off the gloves, the snap echoing louder than it should. The corridor hums with the low drone of the ER. Monitors beeping, gurneys wheeling past, someone calling for a crash cart down the hall. You toss the gloves into the bin and rub your wrists, faint red marks where the latex had pressed into your skin.
The smell of antiseptic clings to you, mixed with something faintly metallic. You’d just finished helping close a chest wound— a knife fight, maybe? You stopped paying attention halfway through the story. They’d gotten the bleeding under control, clamped, sutured, moved him up to trauma. Nothing heroic, just another body that needed patching.
Work has been numb lately. Well, maybe not numb— just dulled at the edges. You’ve been operating on autopilot for weeks, running from patient to patient, voice calm, hands steady. Not living. Not sitting down to ask names, or what happened, or whether they have someone waiting for them. The warmth you used to bring into the room has thinned into something clinical. You’re aware now, painfully, of what you’re being paid for.
You glance up at the patient board, scanning the list. The next case scrolls in: fractured wrist, head lac, chest pain. All ordinary. All fine. You’d rather something boring. Something that lets you disappear into motion. Focus has been costing you more and more lately; your mind feels like a beat too slow for your hands.
You don’t notice Dana waving until the third time she says your name.
“Hey— sweetheart. Earth to you,” she says, half-laughing, half-concerned.
You blink hard. Her face softens when she sees your expression. “Christ, I thought you had AirPods in.”
You let out a breath that sounds like a laugh. She’s always treated you like one of hers— motherly, bossy, warm in a way this place rarely allows. But lately, she’s been looking at you like you might crack if she pushes too hard. You’re not sure if you hate it or need it.
“No, no— just zoning out,” you say, forcing a small smile. “I’m fine.”
Dana doesn’t answer. Just studies you quietly, head tilted.
You catch movement in the corner of your vision— Michael, leaning against the counter, watching the two of you. His gaze lingers too long before flicking away, and something in your stomach twists, sharp and nauseous.
“Come smoke with me,” Dana says finally. Not a question. A mercy disguised as a command.
You breathe out, almost a sigh of relief.
You need a cigarette more than you need air.
You’ve convinced yourself that you can feel his gaze— a phantom weight at the edge of your awareness.
Like when people say to act as if someone’s always watching, only for you, he’s the one watching. Not that he actually is. You doubt he is. Robby has always been meticulous about boundaries— the kind of man who keeps his life in neatly separated boxes, who folds his private feelings into silence. Maybe around the anniversary of Adamson’s death he slips— eyes darker, voice shorter— but that’s one day out of three hundred and sixty-five. The rest of the year, he’s peachy. Controlled. Untouchable.
Still, when you’re not buried in work— when the noise quiets down enough for your mind to start wandering— you imagine him there. You imagine that he’s watching again, the way he used to. And somehow, that’s what’s kept you going. That ghost of attention. That memory of being seen.
Because once, you really were.
Back when you first came to the Pitt— you and Trinity, Victoria, Dennis— it had been obvious, almost embarrassingly so, that you were his favorite. He’d never said it, of course. He didn’t need to. You could feel it in the way his gaze lingered a fraction longer on you than anyone else, in the way his tone softened when he called your name across the ward.
He’d hover beside you during rounds, correcting your technique with quiet precision— a hand guiding your wrist, a small nod when you did something right. Perfect, he’d murmur sometimes, low enough that only you could hear. And you’d feel it for hours after, like a pulse beneath your skin.
It’s ridiculous, how something as simple as being seen can alter the entire rhythm of your life. You used to move differently knowing he was there. Stand a little taller. Speak with more care. You’d find yourself scanning a room just to catch the outline of his shoulders, the tilt of his head, the faint crease between his brows when he was deep in thought.
Even now, when you brush your hair to the side before walking past him, it’s not vanity, it’s memory. You do it because you want him to see you. Because you’re still used to him being breathless for a second when he did.
You’ve met that version of him— the one who felt. The one who slipped and let it show. And having known him like that, having watched him look at you like you were the only calm thing in a room full of chaos, you can’t seem to un-know it.
So you keep trying to convince yourself it was real. That he really looked at you that way. That it wasn’t imagined, or a projection of your own need. That you didn’t just dream it in some lonely, fluorescent-lit hour.
Because if it was a dream— if he never felt it at all— then you’ve built your entire ache around a shadow. And you don’t think you could bear to find that out.
The wind bites at your skin the second the doors slide open, sharp and real after hours of stale, conditioned air. The night sits heavy around the hospital— that in-between darkness where even the city feels half-asleep. Dana hands you one of her cigarettes and you hum in gratitude, leaning in so she can light it for you. The flame flickers between you, bright and brief. You inhale deeply, the smoke scratching your throat before it settles into something like relief.
For a while, neither of you say anything. The buzz of fluorescent lights leaks from behind the glass doors, but out here, the world feels quieter. The wind rustles the hem of your scrubs. Someone’s laughter from the other side of the parking lot fades into nothing.
“You don’t think you’ve been working too hard?” Dana asks finally. Her voice is casual, careful— she’s trying to sound light, like it’s just small talk. You know she’s watching you from the corner of her eye.
You tense instinctively. You’ve never liked when things tilt toward personal. “I’ve been working just as much as the others,” you say, exhaling. “Which is too hard.”
Dana lets out a soft laugh, one that doesn’t reach her eyes. Maybe the hospital just got to you. No one stays untouched here— everyone starts to carry the quiet ghosts of patients, the endless urgency, the smell of antiseptic that never washes out. But Dana remembers the version of you that used to hum under her breath, the one who smiled through exhaustion, who carried warmth like it was instinct. She misses that.
“You’ve worked two doubles this week,” she says gently.
You glance down at your shoes, watching the cigarette burn slowly between your fingers. “I’ve got nothing else going on,” you murmur. “It’s good making bread.”
The words come out with a small shrug, almost joking— the kind of thing people say when they want to close a topic. You don’t add the rest.
You can’t sleep without him.
You can’t close your eyes without feeling the shape of that absence— the quiet where his voice used to be, the weight of what was never allowed to happen.
Dana hums, unconvinced but kind enough not to push. She takes another drag, exhales, and the smoke unfurls like a ghost between you. For a few minutes, the silence is companionable— the kind that exists between people who’ve both seen too much. The kind that doesn’t demand anything.
You breathe in again, slower this time, letting your body relax for the first time all day. Your lungs fill with the taste of nicotine and cold air and something old and unnameable.
When Dana finally speaks again, it’s quieter.
“You know,” she says, flicking her cigarette to the ground and crushing it under her shoe, “this place— it doesn’t stop taking. It won’t tell you when you’re empty. You just have to notice for yourself, before there’s nothing left to give.”
Her words hang between you, simple but cutting clean through the noise.
You look at her, unsure whether her gaze is compassion or recognition— whether she sees right through you or just enough to know not to ask more. The way her eyes soften makes you want to look away.
Then, from somewhere behind you, the sharp wail of an ambulance breaks through the night. Instinct takes over. You drop the cigarette, watch it spark once against the concrete, then crush it under your heel.
“Time to work,” Dana says, already turning.
You nod, following her back inside, the automatic doors swallowing you both whole. The warmth of the hospital rushes up again— bright lights, sterile air, the same exhaustion waiting to pick up where you left off.
And as you tie your hair back and wash your hands, you catch a glimpse of him through the glass panel of the trauma bay. Head bent over a chart, sleeves rolled up, silver catching in his hair.
For a second, you let yourself believe he looks up because he felt you watching.
But he doesn’t. He never does.
It had been a day of everything and nothing.
The kind of shift where every patient blurred into the next.
By noon, you’d already stitched a dozen lacerations — kitchen knives, glass bottles, one particularly unlucky carpenter whose chisel slipped in the wrong direction. Your hands worked automatically, muscle memory guiding every loop and tie, while your mind drifted somewhere far outside the hospital walls.
Then came the trauma call — a multi-vehicle accident on the ring road. You stood shoulder to shoulder with the team under the bright, merciless light of the trauma bay. The smell of blood and saline and singed rubber from someone’s torn jacket. You inserted a chest tube, fingers slipping for a moment before finding the right plane between ribs. The suction gave a soft hiss as the air escaped. Another patient — the teenage boy — coded for forty seconds before his pulse crawled back. The sound of his mother crying down the hall had followed you long after.
Between the chaos, there were the small, constant interruptions — the elderly woman with dizziness and a perfect manicure, the drunk man spitting insults until security came, the child who refused to be touched unless his mother sang to him.
You moved through them all like someone underwater. Slow, detached, efficient.
Your body did the work, but your mind was elsewhere.
The Pitt had always been like that — an orchestra of controlled panic. Phones ringing, gurneys rolling, the steady rhythm of monitors chirping like mechanical birds. The smell of bleach never left your scrubs. Your throat burned from too much coffee, too little sleep.
You used to love this rhythm. The certainty of it. The feeling that your hands could fix something, that you were useful, necessary. That you mattered.
Now it just felt like noise.
When the trauma bay finally went still, you stood for a moment by the sink, scrubbing dried blood from under your nails. The water ran red for a second, then clear. You watched your reflection in the metal panel above the sink — hair pulled back too tightly, dark circles under your bloodshot eyes that hadn’t been there a year ago.
Behind you, someone laughed — sharp, short, too loud. The kind of laughter that came from exhaustion, not humor.
You pass through the ER doors again, the taste of smoke clinging to your tongue. The fluorescent light washes everything the same shade of grey — skin, floor, faces.
The next few hours blur. A man with a deep laceration down his forearm; a child with a fractured wrist; a woman wheeled in mid-seizure. You move automatically, the way you used to dance before you learned to count the steps. You ask, you stitch, you clean, you write, you press. Your words fall into muscle memory — calm, professional, kind, but hollow at the edges.
When you finally sit down to chart, you realize you’ve been holding your breath. You press your fingers to your temples, and your mind starts spinning again, the way it does when there’s nothing left to do but feel.
The locker room is quiet. You reach for your bag, unzip the small inner pocket, and take out the amber bottle. You hold it between your fingers for a while before unscrewing the cap. There’s no ceremony to it anymore — no guilt, no hope. Just another part of the shift.
You swallow the pill dry.
You tell yourself it’s only chemical, that the sadness isn’t about him, it’s just your brain. But you also know that he’s threaded into the chemistry somehow — that your serotonin still remembers his touch, that your neurons still misfire at the sound of his voice.
You feel stupid for that. Two months, and still this — this heaviness, this ghost sitting in your chest. You should’ve metabolized it by now. You should’ve metabolized him.
You glance at the clock. You were supposed to clock out ten minutes ago.
Instead, you pull your hair back into a bun and grab another set of gloves. There’s a new trauma coming in — motor accident, mid-twenties male, blunt chest injury.
You tell yourself you’ll stay for the double. You’ll keep working. You’ll outlast it.
Because at least when you’re busy, you don’t have to think about how quiet the world gets without him watching you.