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The responsibility, they seem to have decided, is going to fall to a woman.
Per Dana, you're adult men, do your own dirty work, but some faces are awfully hard to resist when there's sweet-talking to be done. So Dana's doing the rounds, sounding out whoever she can find that might even plausibly be up to the task. As if her job isn't hard enough without the addition of emotional labor.
Straight out of the gate, she bumps into Santos.
"Hey, whoa, where're you going in such a rush?" Santos asks, steadying Dana so she doesn't fall over.
"I gotta find a woman for a thing," says Dana.
Santos steps backwards, opening her arms. "Yo, here I am," she says. "One woman, and as a bonus, I happen to be a woman who loves women. Like, would seriously be fine if men disappeared from the face of the earth. Not that I hate anyone over their gender, it's not like they can help what they are, and some of them are even pretty awesome."
"I'm sure Whitaker will be glad to hear it," Dana says. "You know he's pretty much adopted you."
"Please, I adopted him first."
"But for this particular purpose, Santos, I need to find another woman." Dana claps her on the shoulder as she passes. "One that would consider dating a man."
Santos drops her arms. "Ohhhh," she says. "Can I help you?"
Dana looks backward over her shoulder as Santos starts to tag along. "Do you want to help, or do you want more shit to gossip about?"
"...both?"
"You know, fair."
So it turns into Dana and Santos looking for the right woman for the job. Santos is going to find out sooner or later what Dana's doing and why, so she might as well control the intelligence.
The next person they find is Heather, charting between patients. Dana jerks her head: step into my office, except there is no office, just an empty bay.
Santos hangs back, leaning against the bed, and Heather looks between the two of them.
"What's going on?" she asks, soft enough not to be overheard. She's always been a quick study, able to pick up what Dana puts down. Dana must be radiating this-can-go-no-further for Heather to react like that.
"I'm looking for a woman who can have a heart-to-heart with another woman," says Dana, "and Santos is too..."
"Queer," Santos supplies. "This is apparently a straight people problem." She swings the bell end of her stethoscope from side to side, utterly unconcerned with what the problem might be.
Heather rears back, eyebrows raised. "Is it a patient?"
"It's a colleague with an inappropriate crush," Dana says.
"Shit," says Heather. "I've been watching her mope since Pittfest, but I didn't think it was interfering with her work. I mean, she's too professional for that."
"There's moping?" asks Santos, grinning. Ghoul.
Heather grinds the heel of her hand against her forehead. "She's probably the only person here who misses Langdon right now, and I don't think anyone else would have noticed, but I watched her trail him like a puppy all day, and... this isn't about Dr. King," she says, finally catching on that Dana is both surprised and not at all surprised. I mean, she has eyes, she saw the same things, but King and Langdon are at least the same age and stage of training, more or less. Just one of 'em's tragically married and equally tragically an addict. Which, Dana reminds herself, Heather doesn't know. She never thought she'd be sympathetic to CIA agents until she took this job.
"King will get over it," says Dana. "But, um, you're getting warm?"
Please, God, don't make her say out loud why Heather would be a fantastic candidate for this one.
Thankfully, Heather looks to be invested in keeping a certain ex-boyfriend a secret. Her eyes widen just a fraction. "I can't say I'm fully clued in, but I absolutely cannot be the one to do this."
And that ex-boyfriend is the reason why. Later, once Santos has chased down someone or something more exciting, Dana will thank Heather for giving a good goddamn about Robby's privacy. Santos is too smart for her own good; she'd figure it out if Heather were even a shred less discreet. Heather can't give this lecture from the heart precisely because then Santos would be one more person carrying a secret she has no business knowing.
"You can't send Javadi, she's an infant," says Heather. "She's been stuck under Shamsi's thumb so long that she's just figuring out boys, never mind men."
"Seriously," says Dana. "Do you think King...?"
"I think she doesn't understand what she's feeling," says Heather.
Santos looks horrified. "Snow White's taste is in her mouth." Then she makes a face. "And I just got a mental picture grosser than anything that's ever gonna roll through here." She mimes needing an emesis basin.
"So adult of you," says Heather. "Look. You could ask one of the nurses, but I think they have enough to deal with. Case in point: you."
"Thank you!" says Dana.
"And I think Kiara's in with an unhoused family." Heather purses her lips. "McKay knows about mess." She bops Dana's arm with the chart pad she's been holding and ignoring this whole time. "Why don't you try her?"
"Sure, that's great," says Dana. "Not that she knows about mess, but. You know. Positive older female influence."
"Like you with an M.D.," says Heather.
"Holy shit, Dana, take the compliment," says Santos. "Giving you mad props."
Santos respecting McKay is a surprise, Dana won't lie, but then Santos is the type who would find it kind of badass that a doctor was on an ankle monitor, and McKay did pull that stunt with the IO drill to silence it in the middle of Pittfest.
So Dana says, "Thanks, and we'll get right on that."
"Always happy to help," Heather murmurs, getting right back to her charting as she leaves the bay, right ahead of Dana and Santos.
Whose face goes brighter. "Hey, speaking of fairy tale princesses, 'sup, Slo-Mo?" She waves down the corridor to Samira Mohan. "Dana, she's a woman. She could totally do this."
Nope. Nonononono. Dana grabs Santos by the elbow and drags her out of Samira's line of sight.
"What? Where are we going?"
"We have to find McKay for this," says Dana, "trust me."
Santos mouths, "Trust?" before she turns a brilliant red in the face. "Oh, shit," she says, "she's the colleague, isn't she. She's the one about to get the Come to Jesus talk."
"I can neither confirm nor deny that," says Dana. "Especially since there's good money riding on whether this turns out to be something or nothing."
"Wait, you only think she's into --" Santos thinks, probably cataloguing all the current bets. " --even I'm not stupid enough to say it out loud. Not on Dr. Robby's shift."
Less than a month on Robby's shift and she's already caught up on the lore. Her Tagalog must be exceptional.
"Why can't night shift do it?" Santos asks.
"Parker Ellis is only soft and cuddly by your standards," says Dana.
"There are no other women?" Santos looks like her eyes are about to fall out of her head.
"We're a little understaffed at the moment," says Dana, tugging her by the back of her scrubs towards triage.
McKay is working chairs again, which Dana knows she kinda sorta likes and kinda sorta hates. Maybe she can lean on Robby to let McKay in on some real emergencies if McKay comes through for her now.
She's having a chat with Mateo and Donnie between patients. "...so I said, Chad, if you don't burn that 'Bonus Mom' t-shirt, I will. Off her back. Oh, hey, Dana."
Dana wrinkles her nose. "'Bonus Mom' t-shirt?"
McKay flaps her hand. "Fuckin' Chloe."
Dana nods. "Fuckin' Chloe. Hey, I got a favor I need to ask. Would you...?"
McKay grins at the nurses. "Be right back."
They get an appropriate number of paces away, that is, enough paces that what Dana's about to say will get lost in the din.
"So, there's this situation," Dana says.
"Mohan's hot for teacher," says Santos.
McKay blanches. "No."
Dana resorts to pouting. "You didn't even hear me out."
"I'm a boy mom," says Cassie, adjusting her ponytail. "I don't do girl problems. I didn't even do them as a kid. I sucked it up and kept going when I got rejected by a boy. My dad -- may have gone a little wrong teaching me to do that, but it's gotten me where I am today."
Santos tilts sideways. "On an ankle monitor with a deadbeat baby daddy?"
McKay pinches the bridge of her nose and tilts her head back. "God forgive me for all the shit I've said to my residents and attendings over the last few years," she says. "If this is my karma, God, please forgive me."
Dana decides to let Robby tell her about the reason for Langdon's sabbatical. She probably wouldn't be able to handle "my colleague was a whole-ass addict and he didn't come to me for help". Robby barely handled it. If not for Jack Abbot and his ability to make sense out of nonsense, Langdon might not be in rehab with the chance of getting his job back after.
Dana's stomach sinks. She hates that this is happening. She hates that she can't wave a magic wand and make all of their problems go away. Instead, she asks, "Esme?"
"Out with the street team today," says McKay. "Can we make it night shift's problem?"
"That's what I said!" Santos fistbumps her.
"We are not dragging them into this." Dana grinds out the next, entirely reluctant sentence: "It's gonna be me, I guess."
Both McKay and Santos clap her on the back. "Eh, maybe you'll get lucky," says McKay. "It might be a professional crush, not a crush-crush. Not like what Javadi has going for Mateo."
"I don't want to know, I don't need to know, they are adults and hopefully not hurting anyone," says Dana.
"No casualties yet. I'll keep you in the loop."
+ + +
It is half past four and the q-word would be appropriate, if it weren't highly inappropriate in the Pitt in general. Dana can't take one more day of Robby's hangdog expressions.
She finds Samira in the break room, snatching a brownie from the plate Perlah brought to share. Dana lets Samira actually eat the brownie before saying the dreaded four words:
"We need to talk."
Samira gulps back her last bite of brownie, then nods. "Sure," she says, all open countenance and good cheer. "Hold on, let me grab something from the fridge to wash this down."
Dana holds on. Apple juice, she sees. Sensible. Healthy. Not likely to overwhelm the flavor of the brownie. Some distant part of her recognizes that she might, in another life, have been a wine taster and it wouldn't have sucked.
They sit down together at the table.
"It's like this," says Dana. "Some of the staff have noticed--"
Santos barrels in through the closed door. Mercifully, she shuts it after herself. "Hey, what'd I miss?"
Dana narrows her eyes at Santos. "How did you know?"
"Oh, you know. Break room door being closed when it never is. Don't worry, I hung a sock on the doorknob."
Samira raises both eyebrows. "Some of the staff have noticed something, including Dr. Santos?"
Dana will never know how Santos has this much energy this deep into a twelve-hour shift. Sane people, outside-world people, are clocking off around now. Nobody who works in the Pitt is sane.
"Sis, I gotta say, whatever you have going with," and here Santos drops her voice to a stage whisper, "Abbot?"
Samira does turn a gratifying shade of pink.
"It's affecting morale." Santos pulls out a pack of gum. "Anyone?"
Dana shakes her head. Samira doesn't say a word. Santos pops a square into her mouth.
"Anyway, I don't know if you've caught on, but seeing you and Abbot together is killing Dr. Robby," she says. "He looks like you got him right in the third intercostal space, left side, with the same scalpel I dropped into my girlfriend's foot."
"Didn't take you long," Dana says, because of course Trinity Santos has managed to score herself a surgeon in an appallingly short amount of time. "Speaking of inappropriate."
"What? Not my department, not my superior in any way, shape, or form," says Santos. Cracks her gum. Takes a minute to look smug about it, the little shit. "But this is not about me. This is about you and McLegless."
"Me?" Samira asks.
"McLegless?" Dana asks.
"I've caught him adjusting it on my occasional nights," says Santos.
"Well." Samira flattens her palms against the table. "Well. That is. If you are referring to the former Major Jack Abbot, now an attending on the night shift, you would be correct in thinking that we are spending a lot of time together." She casts her gaze down, toward the space between her hands. "We are on a first-name basis outside of the ED. We do, in fact, go for drinks."
"Honey," Dana says.
"But we're not dating."
Santos actually falls backwards in her chair. Teach her to tilt it back on its hind legs like that. Je-sus.
Samira looks up. "This goes no further or I swear to God one of us will resort to violence, and if you're lucky it will be me."
Goes no further? In this place? Oh, Mohan. But Dana nods. "I can safely say I won't tell a soul."
"Usually we're drinking about the people we can't have." Samira's eyes well up. Gawdamnit. "He lost his wife in 2023, and the only other person in the world he would even consider for a relationship is in a bad place themselves, and he doesn't want to be the reason they fall apart, because if what they have goes wrong, both of them stand to lose a lot."
"Nice use of pronouns to throw us off the scent," says Santos, who has righted her chair and is now sitting in it properly. "What about you?"
"We flirt because it gives us both a reason to laugh, but the reason I went to him in the first place was to ask him what Dr. Walsh's first name was."
Santos opens her mouth. Shuts it. Snaps her gum. "They can't stand each other," she says. "Also, my gaydar never fails this hard."
"Well, she's the first woman I've ever fallen for," says Samira, "so 'gay' is not exactly the word." A tear streaks down her face.
"Hey." Santos speaks softly, something Dana has never personally witnessed, but Whitaker claims she can do from time to time. "Hey, it's okay. I don't know why you didn't think you could come to me about it. I am your new queer baby sister. I am your tour guide. And Yolanda can totally hook you up with Emmy."
That gets a wet laugh out of Samira. "Emmy, huh?"
"They go to Pride together every year," says Santos.
"You're just an intern," says Samira. "It would be beyond wrong of me to put this on you. You're here to learn."
"And bullshit!" Santos insists. "Don't forget the bullshitting." She gets up and grips Samira around the shoulder. "We're gonna rock this. You're gonna have a date to Pride next year for sure."
"But I don't--"
"If you are about to say 'belong there', hush. Yes, you do."
Samira hushes.
Dana glances between the women. "I'm glad that seems to have worked out for the best," she says. "Just. Can you have Jack tell Robby it's not what it looks like? No other details, he can frame it as 'I'm totally not doing this stupid thing you thought I was, haha', incidentally, does he even know about Robby's massive heart-on for him?"
"I can safely say that he is oblivious."
"Okay. Okay, so you keep it that way, you don't, whatever, ball's in your court now, just don't break my ED." Dana gets up. Oof, she needs a good stretch break and a smoke. "I'll leave you girls to moon over... other girls. I cannot believe how little I've gotten done today because of this."
"Are you kidding me? Even at reduced capacity and totally distracted, you are our queen."
Samira knows exactly how to butter Dana up.
"That's sweet," says Dana. "Thank you. I've been back here like a week and I'm still fuckin' bruised, I hate that for me."
"Driscoll's gonna pay," says Santos. So casually, like any other person would remark on the color of the sky. "The Pitt's got your back, Dana. Because you've got ours."
+ + +
Dana is lucky enough to be around, several days later, for the conversation that ensues.
She knows it's coming because Jack isn't swaggering today. He's walking with purpose, but something about him is very oh-son-come-in-for-a-hug and doesn't she just feel that way about everyone here, to some extent?
Robby's been hanging out in front of the board, hands jammed deep into his hoodie pockets. Other men with income to burn would splash out for -- Dana can't believe this is a thing -- a prestige hoodie. Jesse and his wife have been seen in those expensive five-stripes from some small brand in California, and they sure as hell don't have income to burn but they don't have kids, either, just a cat and a very pampered hibiscus tree. Damn DINKs.
Robby is standing around in a hoodie that is older than Javadi at least, probably figuring out whether he can really leave or if there's one last thing that needs doing, when Jack sidles up to him.
"I'm not gonna ask if we're good, brother, 'cause I know you've got something on your mind," he says to Robby, dropping his bag of tricks at his feet. There is a decided nip in the air, and as hot as he reportedly runs, Jack has conceded to the weather and thrown on a jacket. Now he unzips it and mirrors Robby's pose. "Li'l birdie told me you've been keeping an eye on me and Mohan."
Robby flinches. "Good evening to you, too, Dr. Abbot."
"Listen well. I'm only gonna say this once, to stop the hamster in your head from running itself to death on the wheel that is your thick skull." Jack sighs. "You've been hearing rumors about me and little Samira."
"Little, Jack?" Robby looks at him then, down his nose.
"R3s and below are little, don't argue with me," says Jack, staring him straight in the face. "And actually, your current crop is undersized. I'm taller than Whitaker fer fucksake."
"Okay," Robby says, that familiar half-laugh in his voice that he seems to reserve especially for people he thinks are Being Ridiculous. "So what are you saying? Any truth to the rumors?"
"We're friends," says Jack. "Do you honestly believe I'm the kind of sleazeball that would chase after a woman half my age as, what, some kind of twisted rebound? No way. Karolina never would've married me if I were that person, and you know if I'm makin' anybody proud, it's my dead wife. I miss her, I love her, and I'm just getting to the part where I can have a life again. But not with a resident."
"She'll be an attending in a couple of years," says Robby.
"We. Are. Friends. Both of us like it better that way." Jack pokes Robby in the sternum. "So you don't have to run around thinking I'm a total fuckin' chud."
There's the real Robinavitch smile. "What's a chud when it's at home?"
Jack shrugs. "Douchebag. Asshole. Lowest of the low. All the kids are saying it so I Googled. I can do that, you know. I asked Gemini, 'What is a chud?'"
And the real Robinavitch laugh. "Bet that shocked her down to the pixels."
"The fuck you know what a pixel is, you can't even see one without your readers on."
Dana is satisfied enough to turn away and let them banter their way through handoff. Robby's not okay. Robby's probably not going to be okay for a long time. But he's okay with Jack, and that's good enough for her.