Chapter Text
1: Robby gives up his ticket to Pittfest, but still takes the day off work.
Robby got the Pittfest tickets for Friday intentionally. The previous year he hadn’t had a reason to not go in to work, but couldn’t bring himself to face the halls where Montgomery Adamson had walked. So he’d stayed home, frustrated but unable to cross the threshold into the world. Pittfest was the perfect excuse.
Then Jake asked, faintly embarrassed, about taking Robby’s ticket for his new girlfriend; the quick smile, the restless hands. Jake had no reason to know what Today is to Robby, Robby and Janey had worked together so well to keep the true scale of the Covid crisis from Jake even as their romance withered on the vine. For Jake, Covid was the frustrations of online school and distance from his friends. It wasn’t the white room, proning the patients amidst the background of low oxygen alerts.
Of course Robby gives Jake the ticket. He thinks about going in to work after all. He hates the hold this day has on him. He hates the compassion in Dana’s eyes when she says, “I’ll see you when I see you,” and not, “See you Friday.”
But he’s already taken the day off. Let Dr. Liu or Dr. Weber handle it.
Robby’s eyes shoot open at the usual time, but he doesn’t get up right away. He stares at the ceiling, wishing he could sleep in; his body certainly needs it. He is alone in the condo, and briefly wishes for the sounds of someone in the next room, Janey lightly scolding her cat, Jake running late for school. Maybe he should get a cat.
He does manage to fall back asleep for a short time. Makes himself a full breakfast for a change. Jake pops by to get the tickets, flattering him by greeting Robby as “the man, the myth, the legend.”
“Yeah, yeah, so when do I get to meet the girl who got my concert pass?”
Jake turns bashful, more boyish than the young man he’s becoming. “Soon, I promise.”
Robby hands over the tickets, and a little extra cash. “Have fun. Hey, I know it goes without saying, but please be safe. Don’t take anything from anyone." He's seen so many overdoses.
“I promise. And thank you again for these.” They embrace, confirm basketball on Sunday, and then Jake is gone. Robby is left with the usual undeserved sense of paternal pride.
Then Robby puts a bag lunch in his backpack, gets in the car, and drives out to Ohiopyle state park. The drive takes an hour and half, easy in the early fall warmth. Peak fall colors are some weeks away and the park is quiet, the parking lot nearly empty. Robby stretches, eats a protein bar, and turns off his phone. The signal is unpredictable in state parks anyway.
He chooses a trail. He walks. He feels the urge to use his AirPods but leaves them in his pocket. He’s needed this. His grandmother had always wanted to go walking in parks. Even after she needed a wheelchair, she requested as many county and state parks as they could make it to each year.
Robby found the wheelchair accessible trails for her. She taught him to listen to the wind in the leaves, and here at Ohiopyle, to the rushing water of the river, the distant roar of waterfalls. As her memory faded, a grassy clearing ringed by trees could still calm her. He feels her presence in places like this.
Robby keeps walking. When his brain drifts towards wondering how the team at the Pitt is getting on, he makes himself stop. He breathes in sharply, through his nose, clenching his hands into fists for a count of four; and then exhales through his mouth and relaxes, feeling the tension drain away. A bird chirps from some branch out of sight; his grandmother would have known its species from its song.
He isn’t particularly checking the time, other than to stay hydrated and gradually work through the sandwich in his backpack, the crisp apple and baggie of pretzels.
It’s a bit after 5 p.m. when he returns to his car, and with a tinge of regret turns the phone back on. On the road Jake calls and while Robby can’t FaceTime from the car, he can hear the happiness in the kid’s voice. He thinks about what to do in the evening, maybe stop at the grocery store on the way home and catch up on some journal articles.
Just before 6, his phone starts blowing up with texts and—his stomach seizes up—the MCI group text from the hospital.
Robby pulls off the highway at the next exit. Stays in the car, doesn’t even turn it off as he dares to look. Texts from Dana, from Abbott, from Collins, from Langdon: shooting at Pittfest. No message from Jake. And he’s still a solid half hour away from the city.
No answer from Jake, not even a ring as it goes straight to voicemail. “I’ve heard,” Robby says after the beep, heart in his throat. “Call me when you can. Let me know you’re all right. Connect to Wi-Fi, cell towers might go down. I—” He hangs up, the phone drops from numb fingers, and he swears as he fishes it from the floor.
Who to try from hospital? Abbott—hadn’t he worked last night? Is he even on tonight? Collins—with their history, might be the wrong message. Dana? Everyone would be looking to her. He texts Dana anyway. “Outside the city, heading your way.” The message doesn’t deliver. He texts Jake. That message doesn’t deliver either.
His breathes are going shallow. “Fuck!” Stupid, selfish. He should have gone in, he should be there and helping right now.
There’s a gas station at the exit. Ignoring the screaming instinct to rush back to the highway and floor it towards Pittsburgh, Robby drives to the gas station. He has a big first kit in the trunk, but still grabs two cases of bottled water and all the gauze in stock.
In the car, he turns the radio to an AM station. Shooter at large but after nearly 10 minutes the shooting has stopped. Scale unknown, possible hundreds shot. Hosts asking each guest if it was terrorism. Officials not giving anything away.
He should be there, he isn’t where he’s supposed to be, he’s failing them. Who is them? Anyone. Knowing it’s pointless, he keeps dialing Jake. He bought the tickets, his fault.
He drives as fast as he dares. 33 minutes later, minutes of the worst imagining, a half mile from the hospital, traffic is gridlocked. Robby pulls up onto a sidewalk median; he’s not going to add to the roadblock. He flings open the trunk. Two cops are doing their best to direct traffic; one heads his way.
Before she can speak, Robby calls to her. “I’m a doctor, how can I help?”
Her badge says Collins, and a back corner of his brain notes it to tell Heather Collins later. “Do you have ID?” this Collins says, and Robby fishes around in his wallet.
“Not my hospital badge, it’s at home, but general ID, yes.” He shows his driver’s license and the alert from the hospital. She jerks her head to the nearest car. Robby throws on a rain poncho on over his clothes. It has pockets; he puts on a heap of gloves from his first aid kit into one pocket, gauze and bandages and scissors in the other, and heads to the car.
First car—no, Jake isn’t there. It’s crammed with five 20-somethings. One has a broken or sprained ankle, three are banged up from the stampede out of the festival, and the last looks to be in shock but her pulse is strong. Robby directs them to go to an 24 hour urgent care. The driver, wild-eyed, says, “I don’t know how to get there without my phone!” Robby leaves Cop-Collins to direct him and moves to the next car.
No Jake. Two shoulder gunshots, one more serious than the other. He cuts the shirt’s fabric out of the way on the priority two patient, applies pressure and wraps gauze around the injury. “Open your voice memo app” he tells them, and records his triage impressions for the hospital.
The other cop is holding the intersection, stopping anyone uninjured from entering the block, making space for those well enough to drive away.
Cop-Collins and Robby work in something more like tandem, her running ahead to try to clear a lane for the shoulder GSW to get through, providing directions to urgent care when Robby directs it, fetching water from Robby’s car for a person looking pale and faint. As they draw deeper into the tangle of vehicles, she also drags Robby’s first aid kit closer.
They clear one block, and then another. He switches gloves after each bleeding patient, dropping the used pair to the pavement below. Three pressure dressings, a tourniquet to a right leg. Lots of bruises and scrapes that Robby sends towards urgent care or tells to wait behind the more critically injured.
Young man, close to Jake’s age don’t think it, GSW to the chest, priority 1 tension pneumothorax. Robby does a needle thoracostomy and stays with the man as Cop-Collins helps open the way for them.
As they roll into the ambulance bay, he hears Dr. Shen’s shocked voice saying his name, mutters out something and goes alongside the patient into the Pitt.
So many unfamiliar faces—god, is it the start of a rotation and some poor med student’s first day?
“Just can’t stay away, can you?” Dana. Dana—with a prominent black eye.
“What happened here?” Robby asks as he peels off the poncho and the most recent pair of gloves, washes his hands.
“I’ll just say, it was already a shit day before all this.”
“I’ll need to hear about that. I don’t suppose Jake is here? He was at Pittfest.”
“Not that I’ve seen.”
Others are noticing him now—a quick nod from Abbot, a relieved smile from Langdon. Collins—his Collins—looks ill, her high cheekbones drawn.
Robby draws on a sterile gown and tells Dr. Liu, “I’m just another pair of hands for you. How can I help?” And he goes to work.