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Bent over some charting at the charge station, Robby sensed her before he heard her: the air rearranged itself to accommodate her particular brand of chaotic mischief and settled over him like a very itchy blanket suffused with the smell of stale cigarettes.
“Hey there, fruitcake. Aren’t you supposed to be on a table for Christmas dinner tonight?”
Robby refused to turn around. He let out a long sigh. The wheelchair scooted closer.
“Hey fruitcake, I’m talking to you.”
“Myrna, as you can see, I’m busy making sure my other patients have thorough notes so we can continue to treat them properly.”
“If you come real close I’ll show you something you’ll like.”
“I’m sure Drs. Whitaker or Santos would be happy to check you over, Myrna, just wait your turn.”
“But I want it to be my fruitcake.”
Robby scanned for anyone to pawn her off on. Dana, Princess, and McKay were working with a screamer in central 6, Perlah was doing battle with someone on the phone, Santos had just disappeared down the hall, and a gaggle of new med students were following Dr. King around like ducklings. Whitaker ducked out from behind a curtain and approached the board with his hands on his hips.
“Whitaker!” Robby rounded the desk in a hurry and clapped him on the shoulder. The squeaking of the wheelchair followed, but he let himself enjoy—just for a moment, nothing untoward—the way Whitaker looked up at him with those big hero-worshiping eyes. And the way they still would even when he did this: “I think Myrna has something to show you.”
“Nah, this is a fruitcake special, big boy,” Myrna said.
Whitaker peered past him and his eyes went even bigger as he struggled to keep a neutral expression. He shook his head minutely, like a warning.
“Hey, what kinda place are you running where a doctor won’t even look at me when I’m talking to ’em? You think I’m ugly or somethin’? Fruitcake?”
“Myrna, you know the score. You’ll be seen in order of urgency, now just—”
The only warning Robby got was the panic breaking over Whitaker’s face as he reached out, but it was too late. Myrna rammed into the backs of his legs. His knees buckled and he went down.
Right into Myrna’s lap.
She cackled and held up a sprig of mistletoe with her free hand.
“Don’t be shy now, fruitcake!” she said, and puckered up.
Robby got a hand between their faces just in time only for her to lick his palm. Whitaker was already levering him up, and Robby half stumbled into him, back twinging from the way he landed on the armrest. He glared at Myrna and wiped his hand on his pants.
“Goddamnit, Myrna!”
“Ma’am, where are you supposed to be?” Whitaker asked. “I’ll help you get there, okay?”
“‘Ma’am,’ he calls me!” Myrna said, gaping up at Robby. “I’m not even forty yet, tell him, fruitcake!”
“I really don’t think you should call someone—”
“I’ll call that sugar plum fairy whatever I want, you got that, kid?”
“Ma’am, I mean, miss, I mean—”
Robby sidestepped them and headed toward security when Myrna bellowed in a voice that vibrated the foundation of the hospital.
“Michael Robinavitch, you will pay attention to me!”
He spun around, flabbergasted. Ahmad finally wandered out to see what was going on.
“Hey, someone’s gotta keep an eye on her, man, you know that,” Robby said. “Watch out—she’s in fine form today.”
“I won’t be ignored!”
“Sorry, Doc,” Ahmad said. “I’ll handle it.”
As Ahmad swooped in and wheeled her away, Myrna had to get the last word in:
“I curse you, Michael Robinavitch! You want ugly? I’ll give you ugly!”
Robby shook his head. He made a shooing gesture at everyone who had stopped to rubberneck at the spectacle.
“Show’s over, get a move on, don’t you have some lives to save?”
He winced and pressed his hands into the small of his back, arching forward to stretch it.
“Are you okay?” Whitaker asked, hovering. “I should have warned you, I’m so sorry.”
Robby waved his apologies away.
“It’s not your fault, Whitaker.”
The pain at the base of his spine was suddenly sharp and intense and it sapped his breath away. He gasped and then felt something in his back twist and crack. He shouted and fell to his hands and knees. His back was breaking. His body was breaking. His nerves were on fire. Distantly he was aware that he was screaming, that Whitaker was shouting, that there were doctors and nurses swarming him, but soon enough he didn’t know anything at all.
Robby woke up in a hospital bed. He blinked bleary eyes at the ceiling as the hospital and all its attendant sounds and smells seeped back into his consciousness. He sat up, and the movement yanked at something in his hand that stung. He held his hand up.
His unbelievably gigantic, hairy hand. He had an IV line in it, but it was suddenly the least of his worries. He flipped his hand over to look at the palm and found it nice and normal, kinda pink with no hair on it. But the other side looked like he walked off the set of a werewolf film back when they still did practical effects—thick tufts of hair, all askew as though he were ridden with cowlicks, covered every bit of his hand, his arm. He looked at his other arm, which was similarly wild.
He wriggled his feet until they popped out of the bottom of the hospital sheet, and they, too, were massive and covered in fur.
“Hey!” he shouted. “Hey! Someone help me, what’s going on!”
His mouth felt weird, like something about its topography had changed. He worked his jaw and touched his face. His beard felt normal. His nose felt normal. His eyebrows felt normal. But he wouldn’t know ’til he looked in a mirror.
He swung his legs off the edge of the bed only to discover they had a much longer reach than they usually did. He ended up kicking his own IV, which hurt his hand, which made him yelp. It was just saline so he unhooked it. He stood up and took a few ungainly steps toward the curtain. He hit his head on the curtain rod and his hiss of surprise came out like a growl. When he finally pulled the curtain back and stepped out, a man in a gurney started screaming, a child shrieked, and someone whipped out their phone to start recording. He backed up and bonked into a machine, bounced off it, then got so tangled in the curtain that the entire bar it was attached to crashed down.
Robby’s attempts at disentangling himself only caused more chaos, and he didn’t know how but he might have been roaring. Dr. King jogged up to him with her best happy to help! smile and stilled him with hands on his elbows.
“Hi Dr. Robby, it’s so great you’re up and about, could I talk to you for a minute?”
She hustled him back into his room, but now the curtain was gone and Robby could see everyone looking at him. Mel—dear, blessed Mel—did her best to block their view as Mateo arrived and tried to put the curtain to rights. While getting in a few sneaky glances at the freak show.
“Mel, what’s going on? Why am I—what happened to me?”
That sunny, earnest face, something that genuinely made his days better when she was on with him, gave him the same look now that he’d seen hundreds of times before—placate, soothe, dodge. His heart sank.
“We’re not quite sure yet, but um, we’ve got a blood panel in the works, and someone is speaking with Myrna to try to get her to tell us what she did and how to undo it, but the good news is you’re up and talking and your brain’s intact! Yay!” She held her hand up. When he just stared at her, she lifted his wrist and swatted him palm to palm.
“Wait, you think Myrna did this to me?”
“Well, she did curse your name and say she’d—” Mel cleared her throat and winced.
“What did she say? What did she say, Mel, I don’t remember.”
“I don’t think you’re ugly!” Mel blurted. “I think you’re cute! I mean, not like—not that you’re not—that’s not the point, the point is, you’re definitely not ugly, Dr. Robby, you’re just, hm, surprising? But in a cute way, like when you see a new animal you’ve never seen before and you just have to take a second to get used to it? Oh, have you ever seen a tarsier? I just found out they existed and I’m very excited.”
“Mel, can you just be straight with me? Why am I hairy and like a foot taller than usual? Holy shit, that’s so stupid, am I hallucinating? Am I in a coma?”
He reached out one (incredibly hairy, obviously a figment of his imagination) finger and poked her shoulder.
“Well from my end it feels pretty real,” Mel said. “And in most philosophical movements we are called upon to recognize that while reality is a subjective experience, other people do exist and have feelings, so I can confidently say this is really happening. But don’t worry! We’re on it. Can I bring you anything? Are you thirsty?”
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Robby said. He supposed it was true—he could always take a piss after he saw whatever was in the mirror.
Mel’s chipper demeanor faltered.
“I’m not sure that’s the best idea right now,” she said.
He fixed her with a look.
“You gonna stop me from relieving myself in the appropriate receptacle, Dr. King?”
“It’s not—I can get you a bedpan. Give me one second.”
“Mel! Mel I’m going!”
“Wait, wait, Dr. Robby.” She blocked his way, wringing her hands. He growled, though he really didn’t mean to. Mel wasn’t fazed by it, at least. “Look, I’m sorry, but your appearance is pretty alarming right now, and we think it’s best if you—”
“I’m your attending physician, Dr. King.”
“Technically you’re off duty and Dr. Shen is my attending physician right now.”
Robby took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He steepled his hands together in front of his mouth.
“Dr. King. Mel. I need to see what’s happening to me.”
She pulled out her phone.
“Would it help if I took some pictures?”
Was he that obvious? He stood up tall and squared his shoulders, which is when he noticed that the hospital gown only came down to about mid-thigh, and his newly-fuzzy (okay, maybe the fuzz wasn’t new, but the length and extent of it was) ass was flapping in the wind. He forced himself not to cringe.
“Okay,” he said.
Mel beamed at him and angled her phone from several directions, and also stood on a chair and got close ups of his face. She sent them to his phone, which pinged on a tray on the other side of the bed.
Robby scooched backwards around the bed so he wouldn’t moon his R3 and grabbed his phone. When he opened up their text stream and was met with three full body shots and three angles on his face, he may have screamed. He definitely crashed into the bed, which he was just realizing was one of the large, reinforced ones for heavier patients. Mel came up to his bedside and patted his shoulder.
“Why don’t I go see if there’s any progress on the Myrna front,” she said.
Robby kept swiping back and forth between the pictures. He looked like some kind of throwback on the evolutionary ladder. The missing link.
He was completely covered in dark brown fur edged with silver except his palms and face. He was so tall his head nearly grazed the ceiling lights, and he made everything else in the room look like a play set. His face was largely unchanged, though he looked like he was cosplaying some sort of unkempt mountain man with an unbelievable shitload of hair, and something was off inside his mouth. He pulled up his own camera and bared his teeth.
Sure enough, his canines gleamed long and dangerous in a mouth that seemed suddenly crowded with teeth.
“Fuck me,” he muttered.
He squeezed his eyes shut. Wake up, Robinavitch. It’s time to wake up. Wake the fuck up! He slapped himself, and then tried it again, harder.
“What are you doing?”
Robby jolted at Whitaker’s voice.
“Holy shit, Whitaker.”
“Sorry.”
“You shouldn’t hit yourself.”
“Those doctor’s orders?”
“I’ve been one for—” Whitaker checked his watch. “—seven months now, so yes.”
“I need to wake up. You need to wake me up out there.” He scoffed and shook his head. “Why am I talking to you like you’re here? Fuck, I really am cracking.”
“I’m gonna go ahead and overlook the implication that I’m not real and ask you how you’re feeling. Anything hurt? Aches and pains? How’s your head?”
“I guess I’m a little achey, especially my back and limbs,” Robby said.
Whitaker took a pen light out and raised his eyebrows as if to ask Robby’s permission. Robby sighed and gestured for him to approach. All moments were teaching moments at PTMC, even his abject humiliation.
Whitaker checked his pupils, felt his lymph nodes, and listened to his heart. At the way Whitaker had to root around in his mass of body hair to hear anything, Robby had to assume he really was this hairy all over.
“How does someone get sudden onset hypertrichosis?” Robby said, and then laughed at himself. “It doesn’t exist! It doesn’t exist. This is so stupid. Wake the fuck up, Robinavitch.”
Whitaker caught his wrist before he could give himself another slap.
“That doesn’t work even when you really want it to in real life, like when you’re in class and your elderly professor is droning on three feet away,” Whitaker said. “Why would it work in a coma dream, if indeed that’s what this is?”
“So you admit it,” Robby said.
Whitaker set Robby’s hand down on the hospital bed with a pat like he was someone’s grandma.
“Look, I know this sucks,” Whitaker said. Robby snorted. “But if you keep saying stuff like that you’ll be sectioned, and then you get to be all—” He gestured at Robby’s general creaturetude. “—in psych. Is that what you want, sir?”
“What have we talked about with you calling me that?”
“Sorry, sir, old habits die hard.” Whitaker was unsuccessful at suppressing his smile.
Robby was close enough to see that Whitaker had a faint spray of freckles across his nose and cheeks. His hair was a weathered bronze, a veritable wheat field in the sunshine, and it had grown long enough to turn up at the ends. Robby could smell the clean human musk of him more strongly than he ever had, and, not for the first time, he noticed that Whitaker’s shoulders were broader than the rest of his stature could account for. Robby forced himself to look at the far wall, though it really didn’t help the way Whitaker’s scent was winding through Robby’s blood like the good drugs.
God, like he needed another challenge from this body.
“Okay, so what’s the differential, Dr. Whitaker?” Robby said. “If sudden onset hypertrichosis and—what is this, Marfan? Gigantism?—are medically impossible, and I’m somehow not dreaming all this in a coma, what could we be looking at?”
Whitaker grimaced. Robby was going to have to talk to him about his poker face when talking to patients about shit they didn’t want to hear, but in the meantime—
“What? You know something, what is it?”
“It’s not precisely rational, but it does look like Myrna actually put a curse on you.”
Robby stared at him.
“And you’re threatening me with an involuntary hold? Whitaker, what the fuck.”
“I’m not threatening you, sir, I—”
Dana snapped the curtain open and then closed again and came up next to Whitaker, arms crossed and fixing Robby with a long-suffering look.
“Standard bog witch curse,” she said with all the nonchalance of reporting a broken bone. “Myrna and all her gold lamé don’t look it but turns out she’s full-blooded bog witch back at least ten generations. She got a load of the bright lights big city life a long time ago and never went back, so.” One shoulder rose and fell in an insouciant shrug. “Gets her kicks where she can, these days.”
“This is a joke,” Robby said. “Someone’s fucking pranking me, right? Oh my God, wake up!”
Whitaker had to get on his tiptoes to pry Robby’s fingers out of his hair.
“Don’t do that,” he said softly. Robby made the mistake of meeting his eyes. They were huge and tragic, as usual, but the violent flush of his cheeks rendered them an electric blue whose sheer damnable knowing seared Robby down to his gut. He went prickly-hot all over as Whitaker held his gaze.
“The good news,” Dana said, loudly enough to have Whitaker springing away from him, “is that a standard bog witch curse has a standard bog witch curse-breaking. I’ll round up the troops.”
“Wait, there’s a cure?” Robby asked.
“There’s a way to break the curse,” Dana said.
“So, a cure.”
“Two different things, Cap’n,” she said. She had to reach up to pat him on the shoulder. “Chill out, have a juice box, I got this. Whitaker?” Dana jerked her head, and with that they disappeared behind the curtain.
“Absolutely the fuck not,” Robby said to Dana, Whitaker, and the gathering of residents, nurses, techs, and fucking Jack with a shit-eating grin on his face, all of whom were lining up to kiss Robby.
“It’s the only way,” Dana said. She waved Myrna’s mistletoe at him like a threat.
“Like hell!” Robby said, and by the look on everyone’s faces, maybe there was a lot more growl behind it than he intended, but he wasn’t gonna worry about that right now. “This is a walking HR violation!”
“No one’s being coerced,” Dana said. “Everyone’s here voluntarily. We all just wanna do what we can to get you feeling better, so whaddaya say, Rob? Give it the old college try?”
“This is ridiculous,” Robby said. “I cannot allow this.”
“Then who’s gonna steer this old boat, Cap?”
“I can work just fine! Come on, I’ll finish my shift right now!”
“What, and give every patient a heart attack when they get a load of you?”
“They’ll get used to it!”
“For God’s sake, Robby,” Dana said, using her worst ‘disappointed mom’ voice. “We’re trying to help you the only way there is, do you get that?”
Robby clenched his teeth.
“Do you have any idea how humiliating this is?” he said, low, for her ears only. It came out like a rumble.
“Oh, get over it, you big galoot,” Dana said, and rocked up on her toes to press a kiss into his fuzzy cheek. When nothing happened, she gave him an apologetic smile and patted his face. “You do know I love you though, right kid?”
Robby’s throat was suddenly thick and his eyes hot. Unable to speak, he only nodded. Dana winked and stepped aside, and Mel bounced up. She took the mistletoe from Dana.
“Hi, Dr. Robby,” she said. “Where would you like me to kiss you?”
Robby forced himself to swallow past the lump in his throat and mustered up a tired smile.
“I think the hand will do, don’t you, Dr. King?”
She grinned and pressed a dry little kiss to his knuckles. He remained exactly as he was. She apologized as if she had actually failed him and then left to make it in time for Christmas dinner at her sister’s program.
Samira took the mistletoe, got on a step stool, looked him in the eye as if he were personally issuing her a challenge, and glanced a kiss across his cheekbone. Or on the fur where his cheekbone should have been. He didn’t change.
McKay and her kiss breezed in and out with a smirk and a shrug.
Langdon stood at the edge room enjoying himself way too much. When the mistletoe came his way, he only yelled, “Nope!”
Jack rocked up with the mistletoe looking exactly like a cat who’d chomped straight through the canary.
“Lookin’ good, brother,” he said, all teeth.
“Don’t call me that when you’re about to lay one on me,” Robby grumbled.
Jack enclosed Robby’s head in his hands and laid a real smacker in the middle of his forehead. It, and the rest of him, stayed hairy as fuck.
“If ever there was a guy who could turn my head…” Jack said.
“Yeah, yeah,” Robby said. “Get outta here.” If he swatted him away a little too hard, well, he could blame his sudden transformation for making him underestimate his strength.
Princess braced herself for the kiss she planted on his cheek but looked genuinely disappointed that she wasn’t his true love. Garcia and Walsh arrived just to make fun of him. Santos walked up to him as though she were facing the firing squad, only to panic and run away, shouting back an apology. Several of the techs and housekeeping landed one on him, occasionally while making stink faces so bad Robby started to wonder if in addition to looking like the zoo animal, he smelled like it too.
Mateo, Donnie, Ahmad, and Jesse were the last to pass him and the mistletoe around, but then they didn’t clear out. Robby spread his hands and eyed them with raised brows.
“Okay, so. Dr. Robby, would you say you were more of a Bigfoot or a Sasquatch?” Donnie asked.
“Donnie, man, I keeping telling you that’s the same thing!” Ahmad said.
“Then why do they have different names?”
“I don’t know, why do you go by Donnie when I know your mama named you Brent?”
“I told you that in confidence!”
“Or maybe a Yeti?” Mateo asked Robby.
“No, no, no, he’s not white!” Jesse said.
“Brother, he ain’t Black,” Ahmad said.
“His fur is,” Donnie said.
“Abominable Snowman is the white one, guys, come on, this is basic shit,” Mateo said.
“Once again, the Yeti and the Abominable Snowman are the same damn thing,” Ahmad said.
“How many times do I have to say that those two are separate but related species?” Jesse said.
“Out, out, get out, Jesus Christ!” Robby bellowed. He covered his face with his hands, and when the stampede out of his room stopped, he dragged them through the thick bramble of his hair and cracked an eye open. The only people left were Dana, head tilted at a maddeningly sympathetic angle, and Whitaker, who looked like a puppy about to be kicked. Dana slapped the mistletoe into Whitaker’s chest.
“Oh, I—no,” he said. His face ran through a complicated set of emotions, including but not limited to panic, nervous laughter, and a polite smile, but he hugged a notebook to his chest and took a step back. “Sorry, I can’t.”
“Come on, kid, think of it like a medical procedure,” Dana said.
“Dana,” Robby said sharply. She shrugged and goggled at him as if she had no idea what the problem was. Whitaker’s denial burned worse than any stink face could, but Robby refused to look that in the face. “Whitaker, thanks for your help today, you can go home.”
“Actually I’ve got some charting I need to finish.”
“Fine, fine. Have a good Christmas, okay?”
“Thanks, Dr. Robby, you t—um, you have a good night. I hope you feel better soon.”
Robby closed his eyes and rolled his neck. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. When he opened his eyes again, Whitaker was gone and Dana was staring at him with a capital-L Look on her face like he was the stupidest motherfucker alive.
“What,” he snapped.
“Nothing,” she said. “Do you want me to call Collins up at Presby?”
“Fuck no, leave her alone, I mean it. I’m going home, I can’t keep sitting here.”
“The rest of night shift’s still gotta take their turns with you. I think Shen’s testing out the most romantic Chapstick flavors.”
“Dana, for fuck’s sake, my ‘true love’ isn’t at this hospital! What does that mean anyway, true love?”
“There’s no harm in trying,” she said. “What else can we do?”
“I don’t have one, do you get that? No one loves me like that!”
Dana pressed her lips together. She inflated and deflated with a deep sigh.
“You ever think about letting someone, babe?”
“Dana.” His voice cracked. “Please just let me go home.”
He needed to lick his wounds in peace. And think about how he was even gonna live this way.
“All right,” she said, petting through the hair on his shoulder. “But you’re gonna cause a panic going out there looking like that. And good luck getting on the train at seven foot or whatever you are right now.”
“Fuck.”
“Um.” Whitaker poked his head into the room again. “I have a terrible idea.”
Whitaker drove him home in the bed of the truck he inherited from one of his brothers for graduation, an old beater that had done a lot of time on the farm. The thing was definitely older than him. Hell, it might be older than Robby.
Despite sub-freezing temperatures, Robby wasn’t feeling the cold except in his face. Still, by the time they got to Robby’s place, icicles had formed at the ends of much of his hair. Without any input from his brain, his body shook them off like a dog, which ended up raining ice down on Whitaker as he exited the truck.
“Fuck, sorry, man,” Robby said.
Whitaker coughed out a laugh and swiped at the tiny beads of ice that had pelted him. He popped open the tailgate so Robby could step out.
“Don’t worry about it,” Whitaker said. “Better than bodily fluids, right?”
“I really appreciate you taking me home,” Robby said. “I hope you’re not missing a nice dinner for this.”
“Oh, no, I didn’t have plans,” Whitaker said. “I know I didn’t exactly get a choice, but I don’t mind working Christmas with, um, everybody. So.”
Robby frowned.
“I thought you would have…what about Santos?”
“Santos has a complicated relationship to Catholicism and an inexhaustible desire to rant about, quote, ‘what a scam all that bullshit is.’” He let out a weird titter of a laugh. “Thankfully she has date plans tonight, so it’s just gonna be me and a nice TV dinner. Maybe I’ll watch Die Hard.”
“Come in and have Chinese with me,” Robby blurted. He couldn’t bear the thought of being seen tonight; worse was the thought that Whitaker might be alone on a day that actually meant something to him.
Whitaker’s eyes found a way to go bigger and rounder. Robby, suddenly aware that he was looming, took several steps back toward his house.
“You don’t have to,” he said. “But I wouldn’t mind the company. Actually I’d really appreciate it.”
“Okay,” Whitaker said. “Yeah, that sounds good.”
When Robby smiled, fangs and all, Whitaker only grinned back up at him with the usual stars in his eyes.
Robby got a feast delivered, fully intending to force Whitaker to take most of it home. They set the spread on the dining room table and Robby sat on the floor so he wouldn’t have to hunch too much to reach anything. Whitaker took a seat in the chair beside him and Robby still had a few inches on him.
Over the course of their meal, Whitaker kept suppressing amused little smiles, as if the sight of such a creature in a modern house was the most hilarious thing he could imagine. Robby supposed it was. He also supposed he’d have to get used to it, since he was never getting out of the curse. A curse! As if he’d wandered into a storybook this morning and couldn’t find his way out. This fever dream of a day was feeling realer by the minute, and he could no longer convince himself his consciousness had been reduced to a bunch of synapses firing in a dying brain. Dread, like a balloon, threatened to burst inside him, and he grasped at anything to think about except his body, his career, the fact that he had a long future of freakish solitude stretching out before him. So, he asked Whitaker about his family.
Robby learned the Whitakers ran a dairy farm founded in 1911. It was still standing despite the Great Depression, the recession in the ’70s, and the crash of ’08, only to be teetering on the edge of closure now, in the wake of COVID. Whitaker told him about Broken Bow’s annual Christmas parade, and the year he played the baby Jesus on the nativity float but got so nervous he threw up on the Virgin Mary, who was played by the girl his brother Simon had a crush on. Simon had never forgiven him.
“You must miss them,” Robby said. “Your family.”
Whitaker froze like sighted prey. After a second, he cleared his throat and set his utensils down.
“It’s complicated, with them,” he said.
“Yeah,” Robby said. “Family always is. I shouldn’t have pried, I’m sorry.”
Whitaker laughed, though there was no humor to it.
“The most basic conversational volleys don’t count as prying,” he said. “I guess it’s just like…there’s all this nostalgia. There are the funny stories you trot out. But there’s also all the stuff you don’t say, because it’s not…” He shrugged unevenly, trying to force a smile. “The thing is, I want to miss them. But the actual reality is that I want them to be people worth missing instead of this fantasy I had of a functional family. And then I feel like the worst person in the world because I’m mostly just relieved I don’t have to keep pretending.”
“You’re not,” Robby said. “I promise you you’re not, Whitaker.”
“You could call me Dennis,” he said. “Just like. If you wanted, you know.”
“Okay. You’re not a bad person for putting some distance between you and your family, Dennis. You’re just…protecting your own sanity.”
“They’re the ones who don’t talk to me,” he said. “They’re the ones who made sure—” He cleared his throat again when his voice went hoarse. He wouldn’t look at Robby. “What about you?” he asked, injected cheer into his voice. “You got big brothers who drew dicks on your face? Little sisters who cried if you didn’t paint your nails to match theirs?”
“Ah. Not really. Or, I don’t really know them. I actually don’t even know how many there are—my dad was the master of leaving one family and making another.”
“Oh. Gosh, I’m sorry.”
Robby waved a hand, the ghost of a smile passing over his face. Not that Whitaker was looking, all hunched over his plate like he was.
“I never really knew the guy so I was more angry than hurt about it all, but it broke my mom’s heart. She never really recovered. She’d leave me with my grandmother for longer and longer periods until one day she just didn’t come back at all. She might still be alive out there, who knows? I’d trade her in a heartbeat for one more day with my bubbe.”
Whitaker gave him the tragedy eyes again, mouth agape.
“God, I’m sorry,” Robby said hastily. “I didn’t mean to lay all that on you. I swear it doesn’t bother me anymore, it’s just…”
“Complicated,” Whitaker said.
“Yeah.”
“Your bubbe though, she really loved you.”
Robby almost laughed.
“You sound very sure of that,” he said.
“Oh, I am,” Whitaker said. “The way you talk about her, the way you, you reach for her when you need comfort—”
Was it more than a year ago that this kid found him cracked and wibbling on the floor of Peds? And now this.
“Fuck, Whitaker, why are you always front and center for the worst moments of my life?”
Whitaker’s head snapped up, cheeks gone livid.
“God, fuck, I’m sorry,” Robby said. “I didn’t mean that, I’m sorry, man. Dennis. It’s not your fault I’m a fucking mess and keep giving you front row seats to it. It kills me that you keep seeing me like this.”
“What, human?”
Robby scoffed.
“How can you look at me right now and call me human?”
“That’s all I see, Dr. Robby. A guy trying his damnedest not to let anyone else take some of the weight off his shoulders.”
Robby tried to speak, but nothing came out. He could only shake his head.
Whitaker stood, and then Robby was looking up at him for once. Robby’s breath caught when Whitaker’s hands ghosted over the long hair on his face, cradled the base of his skull.
“We can carry it with you if you let us,” he murmured.
“Dennis…”
“I hated it,” Whitaker said. “Watching everyone line up to kiss you like it was a chore, like you aren’t the beating heart of that ED. Like it wouldn’t be the highest goddamn privilege to be yours.”
The smell of him, warm and alive and so, so close. Robby felt drunk on it, even as he held his breath.
“I couldn’t bear to do it there,” Whitaker went on. “I couldn’t bear for everyone to know how pathetic I am, loving you how I do.”
“You’re not,” Robby said. “God, you’re really, really not, Dennis, but you could be with someone so much better than me, someone who isn’t—”
“Shut up, Dr. Robby,” Whitaker said.
Big hands, calloused and sure, wound through the thickets of fur in the back of Robby’s head and tilted him back for a kiss that wiped all thought from Robby’s brain. Whitaker plundered him, claimed him, clutched him close for more. All Robby had to do was give himself over to it.
When they finally parted, Whitaker was towering over him, and Robby couldn’t read the look on his face though his hands still cradled Robby’s head with such reverence.
“There,” Whitaker said. “Maybe it was all a dream after all.”
Robby’s arms were human again, his hands. He snatched them off Whitaker’s waist so he could check his face, his hair. He stood, and he was a normal height again. He rushed over to the window, where he could see his reflection in the glass. His very normal reflection. He also saw Whitaker gathering his things. He whirled around.
“Hey, where are you going?”
“I should head out,” Whitaker said. He shrugged his coat on and moved toward the front door. “Thanks for dinner, Dr. Robby.”
“Wait, what? Why? Dennis.”
“Just getting out of your hair, it was really generous of you to have me over.”
“Dennis, wait, come on.” Robby grabbed his wrist.
“Please let me go, Dr. Robby.”
“Would you fucking look at me please?”
Whitaker closed his eyes for a long moment before forcing himself to meet Robby’s. His face was a riot of red and blue and gold. He looked like a runny watercolor painting.
“What are you doing?” Robby asked.
“I fixed your problem,” Whitaker said.
“Okay? Why does that mean you have to go?”
“I’m not looking to make anything difficult or weird for you. I know you don’t want this.”
“Who said that?”
“You don’t have to say it for it to be obvious.”
“Jesus, Whitaker, if I said what I really wanted, I’d be hauled off to HR and fired so fast the Earth would be knocked out of orbit.”
Whitaker ventured a glance at his face, looking hunted.
“So say it now,” he said.
You’re wide awake, Robinavitch. Now make it count.
“You smelled so good I almost fucking mauled you in that hospital room today,” Robby said. “I wish I could blame it on Myrna and her fucking curse, but it’s always been there, it’s always threatening to boil over. I can’t keep myself from touching you. I can’t keep myself from wanting you. Today it was just…closer to the surface.” Robby hauled in a deep lungful of air and forced himself to meet Whitaker’s eyes. “Fuck, Dennis, the way you look at me. I tried to tell myself I was a delusional old pervert, but…”
“How do I look at you?” Whitaker whispered.
“Like you know me,” Robby said. “Like you love me anyway.”
Whitaker’s mouth trembled. He seemed poised to swallow Robby whole but afraid of that impulse at the same time. Robby traced his zygomatic arches with his thumbs.
“Yeah,” Robby said. “Just like that.”
Robby kissed him, galaxies bursting into being behind his eyelids. He was expanding. He was transforming. He was bigger than he’d ever been.
Myrna’s mistletoe slipped from Whitaker’s pocket and withered to dust on the floor.
End