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Dennis is two months into his emergency medicine rotation, and they’re -- making it work. The hours are long, but they’ve always been long. Robby knows it’s hard, can tell it’s hard, it’s hard on him too. But it’s not all that much harder than having a baby at 24 with a man old enough that Dennis’ parents were sufficiently scandalised. The hours and the stress are manageable when they get to go home and drop the teacher/student act, or the boss/employee act. They go home to the family they’ve been building since contraceptives failed in what Robby refuses to refer to as a midlife crisis hook-up gone wrong, resulting in an unplanned pregnancy and shotgun marriage.
They’re happy. It took a while to get there, to get into the swing of being in love, with a surprise baby on the way. But they are happy. As much as anyone can be, given the circumstances of the world and the constant stressors from their profession.
It was pure good luck that put Dennis at PTMC for two placements in a row. The thought of having to be away from his husbandand figuring out how to raise their child through that distance was enough to give Robby heartburn. It’s still hard, though, to go through every day pretending they don’t mean anything to each other. That’s what’s to blame for the way Robby can’t quite get through a shift without grabbing Dennis, getting his hands on him. It’s to compensate for the way they lie to literally everyone around them, and the way they’ll keep having to lie for at least the rest of Dennis’ residency. Maybe forever. Probably not forever. Hopefully. It’s dizzying to think about; they haven’t got that far into their future planning. Hell, they’ve never had any future planning, just a surprise baby, a surprise relationship, and a surprisingly content domestic life.
*
It’s just a normal day. Dennis and Robby rode into work separately, a couple of minutes apart, after waking up Andy, eating breakfast, and greeting Andy’s nanny at the door. Robby had let Dennis sleep in a little and was blessed with the sight of him fumblingly trying to get his shirt and pants on at the same time, hopping around in a panic, for his effort.
The shift hasn’t been overwhelming so far. The team handled the night shift hand off, working around Langdon’s absence the way they’ve learned to. It’s been a couple of hours since Robby has even seen Dennis, beyond a very brief case he’d run by him.
It’s normal, everything’s normal.
“Robby,” Dana calls out as he passes her by at the nurses' station. “Incoming. A little girl was brought in from chairs, nanny says she hit her head about 15 minutes ago. The nanny was frantic enough that Lupe let her skip the line. I sent Whitaker that way a minute ago too. The nanny already went home, not sure why.”
Robby nods, making his way to the room Dana pointed him in the direction of. Cases with little kids are rough; with any luck, it’ll be nothing more than a bump on the head.
Robby bursts through the glass doors into the patient room, already halfway through the automatic motion of rubbing sanitizer in his hands. He stops cold when he gets a good look at who, exactly, is lying on the hospital bed. It's his daughter, Andy, lying still, her tiny body swamped by the much larger bed she's lying on. She’s hooked up to a pulse ox monitor, the machine almost too big for how little she is. Dennis is already there, his arms wrapped around his body, eyes wide with stress.
“Don't”, Dennis says, before Robby can get anything out of his mouth. “It's okay. Just -- don't.”
“What happened?” Robby starts to say, trying and failing to keep the panic out of his voice, but another resident is already filing into the room. McKay.
“3-year-old female, took a tumble down the stairs this morning. Brought in by her nanny.”
Robby suddenly feels sick, like he's going to throw up if he risks opening his mouth. At his complete silence after catching him up to speed, McKay looks at him worriedly. “Dr. Robby, are you alright?”
Robby swallows harshly, “Uh. Uh. Yes. Plan of action?”
Mckay gestures like she wants Dennis to answer, but he's silent too. McKay looks so confused, there could be a blinking cartoon question mark floating above her head, flickering in neon lights.
“Uh,” Dennis says finally. “I can't -- treat the patient.” He looks like his skin is crawling. Their baby is looking at him tearfully, but she isn't reaching out for him, just blinking confusedly at their surroundings. She’s always been such a chill kid, doesn’t cry much, but Robby can still tell she’s upset. Confused, but alert. Robby tries to ignore the influx of panic, of what could be wrong, of how much could be wrong. She fell down the stairs, for god's sake. It’s a purely parental instinct, not much doctor professionalism about it.
“Why's that?” McKay asks, when Robby still doesn't say anything, her laser focus shifting to Dennis for the time being. Finally, their baby reaches for him, a tiny, wordless, sad cry in her voice, and Dennis sits down without a second thought, wrapping her up in her arms immediately.
“She's -- uh. This is. This is my daughter. I can't treat her. Conflict of interest.”
“Right,” McKay says, very slowly, like all of the people around her have suddenly lost their minds. “Okay.”
She turns to look at Robby, but he still can't get anything to come out of his mouth. That's his daughter. Any second now, she's going to call him “daddy” or reach her little pudgy hands towards him, and he'll be helpless to do anything but comfort her.
“Okay, “ McKay, clearly realizing no one around her is going to be any sort of help. “Well. Little Miss here is alert and aware, her motor function and her reactions are good. There are no major lacerations or contusions from the fall. We'll do a general workup just in case, some Tylenol for the head pain, and send her up for a CT. We'll monitor her for a while to make sure her condition stays stable.” Dennis is nodding along the whole time, eyes wide and frightened, Andy pulled close to his chest.
“Get to it,” Robby finally says, and turns tail to all but run out of the room.
On his way out, he hears Andy's tiny voice say “Daddy.”
“It's okay,” Dennis shushes her. “Daddy's working right now. You'll be okay.”
Yeah. That one's gonna haunt his dreams.
*
Robby makes it 5 minutes before he starts hovering. For all that he's trying to stay away from Andy and Dennis, make sure they don't get caught or do anything suspicious and have to deal with HR, he can't actually stay away. His eyes are basically glued to the glass walls of the room she's in. As far as he can tell, everything's fine. But still. His daughter’s in the hospital. In his ED. And he can't even hold her through it.
“So,” Santos says suddenly, her voice pulling Robby out of his reverie as fast as lightning. She's leaning precariously over the desk, peering at the screen of patients above the nurse's station. “What's up with Whitaker? He's been sitting with that kid since she came in.”
“Family emergency,” Robby says, before his brain-to-mouth filter kicks in. “He’ll probably be off the shift for the rest of the day.”
Santos turns her head to look at him, eyebrows furrowed. “What? He's still here.”
It's honestly shocking the news hasn't spread quicker, the way gossip tends to make its rounds in this department. Although McKay isn't as much of a gossip as the nursing staff tends to be, or even Santos, for that matter, and she’s the only person who actually knows that’s Dennis’ daughter in there. He's probably going to regret talking about this with Santos, but she’s persistent. Might as well get it over with.
Robby nods his head towards the room. He catches movement when he does, Dennis saying something to Andy, head ducked down so he can say it softly, where she's cradled to him, clinging to his arms with her little fists. He watches Andy say something back. Whatever it is makes Dennis laugh, his eyes still heavy and fearful, characteristic eye bags striking against the pale tone of his skin under the LED lights, but a little lighter for a tiny second.
“That's his daughter. Got brought in by the nanny about 20 minutes ago. She took a fall. We couldn't expect him to take care of other patients with his kid in here like that.”
Santos's eyes are huge, her eyebrows raised higher than Robby thought physically possible.
“Yeah. No. Of course. Couldn't -- expect him to work through that. For sure. Excuse me for a second.” Santos backs up, eyes still on Dennis, definitely not paying attention to what direction she's slowly walking backwards towards.
“Goddamnit,” Robby mutters to himself, but before he can try to do any damage control on that situation, a new trauma comes bursting through the door.
*
Robby is passing by the staff lounge. It’s been an hour, and they’re still waiting for the results of Andy’s CT scan. Robby knows Dennis went up with her to get the scan, even though he couldn’t actually be in the room with her, and he can’t help but wonder hopelessly if she was scared. Currently, Robby is doing all he can from a distance. He's got a juice box in hand and a coloring book he poached from pedes upstairs. His half baked plan is to drop it off for Andy - the juice is apple, her favorite - and get out of there as fast as possible. And if it seems like nobody's watching, maybe give her the tightest hug he can. And maybe one for Dennis, too, if he’s not too mad at Robby to accept it.
“No, it's just that I thought Whitaker was like, alone or something. And I definitely thought he had a crush on Dr. Robby. A reciprocated crush.”
Robby steps, hurried before, stutter. That’s Santos's voice, floating through quietly from the open door next to him.
“Should we be talking about this?” Mel’s voice this time.
Santos snorts. “Probably not. But isn't it crazy? Huckleberry’s got a kid. A baby Huckleberry.”
Mel hums, and Santos takes that as a go-ahead to keep talking. Robby slows his walk to a barely noticeable crawl of a pace. He shouldn’t be trying to eavesdrop; that’s definitely not helping how upset he’s felt since Andy came in. But, c’mon. They’re talking about his family. There’s no way he’s not listening in.
“I always thought he never wanted to go out with us because he’s like -- a repressed farm boy. Now he’s a repressed farm boy with a baby! Do you think he has a secret wife?”
Robby decides, actually, he doesn’t want to hear this anymore, just as Javadi rounds the corner and calls out his name.
“Dr. Robby!”
The second his name leaves her mouth, he hears Santos abruptly stop talking in the staff room. He’d laugh if he didn’t feel so generally frantic.
“Dr. Robby,” she repeats. “The CT results are back for the little girl. Whitaker overheard Mckay say that she has them and is going to go over them soon. He asked me to grab you, I guess to move the process along -- or something. I don't know. He looked really upset.”
Robby rubs a hand against the back of his neck, a nervous habit that Dennis always points out to him, teasingly, at home. His neck is tense, hell, his whole body is tense and aching.
“Right. Yes. Thank you, Javadi. I'll go talk to him now.”
Robby walks away to the background noise of Javadi turning into the staff room and saying, “Oh! What are you guys talking about in here?”
*
Robby doesn’t run to the room where Andy is staying, but he does ignore Dana when he hears her call out his name. It’s not really intentional; he’s very tunnel-visioned at the moment. There’s a reason Dennis isn’t working right now; he wouldn’t be an effective doctor with his thoughts constantly on his daughter. Robby isn’t faring much better; it’d probably be better for the entire department if he just gave up and went home, his ability to compartmentalize severely hindered. But that would be too suspicious. And Robby would never let himself do that. He’s worked through worse before; he’ll get through the shift. Hopefully.
“Hey,” Dennis says when Robby makes it into the room. The door is open, and Robby has half a mind to close it. Not that that would do much; the doors are glass, after all.
“Hey,” Robby repeats back to him, his voice gruff, more emotion dripping from the singular word than he has control over. “How’re you holding up?”
“Oh, you know,” Dennis mutters. He’s sitting next to Andy’s bed now, fingers carding through her chin-length, loosely curly hair. She looks like she’s alright, all things considered. Dennis appears to have pulled up a video on his phone for her to watch; her eyes track the brightly colored, animated characters. “Nurses keep coming in to check on us, but I’m pretty sure half of them are coming in to try and figure out how the hell I have a daughter. Trinity came by earlier. She wants to know if I have a secret wife.”
Robby feels a bubble of hysterical laughter bubble up into his throat. He tamps it down.
“Do you have her scan results yet?”
Dennis nods. He looks so tired, even though he’s been sitting for the last hour, no longer running around between cases. Stress can do that, Robby knows. He certainly feels exhausted himself.
“Sort of. Perlah dropped by to say McKay has them and will be by soon. And that, unofficially, not to be too worried.”
Robby nods, his arms crossed in front of his chest, wrinkling his hoodie. The one Dennis likes to wear at home, actually.
“Is the screen bothering her? Head okay?”
“Yeah. No. I mean, the screen isn’t bothering her. Her head’s okay. I think we can rule out a concussion.”
Robby looks around quickly, does a scan of the bustling outside of the room he’s standing in. No one’s watching them, as far as he can tell. He moves quickly, before he can think too hard about it and hesitate, perched on the edge of Andy’s bed.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he says quietly, bringing a hand up to rub up and down her back. She perks up straight away, attention completely off the screen.
“Daddy!” she says, excited, reaching for him right away.
“Look what I’ve got for you,” Robby whispers to her, the tone he usually uses to tease, whispering in faux conspiracy tones to make her giggle. He procures the juice box from where he shoved it in his pocket, and the coloring book from where he’d set it down when he came into the room.
“Juice! Coloring!”
Robby laughs, a huff from the center of his chest. It’s the calmest he’s felt since she was admitted. He hands both items to her, and she immediately waves the juice around.
“Dada!” she exclaims, looking at Dennis now. “Dada, look! Juice!” Dennis smiles encouragingly at her. It’s the sweetest sight Robby has seen all day.
The calm dissipates when McKay walks back into the room. She cocks an eyebrow at Robby sitting on the edge of the bed, and the way he’d snatched his hand back from her way faster than would look inconspicuous. Robby stands up unsteadily, trying to look nonchalant, and almost certainly failing at that task.
“Alright, well”, McKay says, pulling up the CT scan results. “Everything here is clear. It doesn’t look like Andy has a concussion based on my observations, and it definitely doesn’t look like she has a brain bleed or anything more severe. I think we can get started with some discharge paperwork, especially since she’ll have a doctor looking after her at home.”
“Right,” Dennis says, nodding along. “Right. Yeah. Good. Am I going home for the day then?”
McKay looks to Robby for confirmation. He clears his throat. It’s hard to split focus between looking at Andy and her confused little face at having her dad sitting next to her one second and then halfway across the room the next, and his expectations of still being in charge.
“Yes, I think that would be best. We can’t expect you to save lives while your little girl is hurt, can we?”
Dennis chuckles, rueful. The smile doesn’t reach his eyes.
“Good,” McKay glances between Dennis and Robby again for a moment. “Dr. Robby? A word? Outside?”
Robby nods, leading the way.
“Listen,” McKay starts, pitching her voice down amongst the incessant noise of the backdrop of the ED. “Are you alright? You’ve been -- distracted for hours. Is this about Dennis?”
Robby huffs out a laugh, it sounds fake even to his own ears. “No. Don’t worry about it, Dr. McKay.”
He starts walking away before she can get a response out of her mouth, leaving her confused face behind him.
*
Robby is supposed to be checking in another room, Mel’s patient, a construction worker with a pretty severe forearm laceration from a work accident. But he doesn’t quite get there, pausing mid-stride when he hears Andy. She’s crying, halfway to a toddler temper tantrum, particularly audible with the door still propped open. She may be a chill kid, but she’s still a toddler, still has big emotions for her tiny body that she doesn’t always know how to express, and Robby is very familiar with that particular tone of her cry, all petulant and upset.
Robby doubles back. Mel will be fine for the time being; there are residents around to help if she needs it. It’s a shoddy excuse, and it’s not all that convincing to Robby himself, but it’ll do.
Robby stops at the door to her room. He knows she’s just about set to be discharged, just needs all the paperwork done and processed. When he looks in, she’s clinging to Dennis, where he holds her in his arms, swaying her back and forth the way he used to bounce her when she was a baby.
“I know I know I know,” He’s saying, exhaustion and desperation clear in his voice and on his face. “I know, baby. It’s okay.”
Andy has her fists balled up in the material of Dennis’ scrubs, pulling at them, all upset.
“Daddy!” She’s saying, in between her cries. “I want,” a big gasp for air, a sad hiccup. “Daddy. I want daddy!”
“I know, baby. But he’s working, remember? Daddy’s working, but he’ll be able to go home soon. I want him too, but we have to wait. We’ll be okay, baby. We’ll be okay.”
“No no no no no no!”
Something shatters, right in the middle of Robby’s chest. All of his resolve just -- breaks. What’s the point of any of this? What’s the point if he can’t even comfort his daughter or comfort his husband, for that matter? What’s the point if people have already been whispering about Dennis all day? What kind of husband and father is Robby if he can’t share the burden?
Robby pivots and walks right up to the two of them.
“Hey,” He says quietly. He knows that Andy’s crying has already drawn some attention, Dennis’ mystery life a point of intrigue for all of the staff around them. People are watching them like hawks, watching the way Robby reaches for Andy. An action with far more familiarity than even a kind, well-meaning doctor would offer. He’s not just trying to comfort a crying patient; he wants to hold his kid. “I can hold her for a little bit.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Andy’s crying has quieted down to whimpering. She’s already reaching her hands out towards Robby.
“Yeah. Yeah, who cares? Gloria’s gonna put my head on a pike, but I think my paperwork already says I’m married. What’s one more thing for her to be mad about?”
Dennis rolls his eyes at him, but hands over Andy anyway. The feeling of her curling in towards him is a relief, like lying down after a long, aching shift of being on his feet all day.
“Hey, sweetheart. What are you giving your dada so much trouble for, huh?” She doesn’t say anything, just lays her head on Robby’s shoulder. Robby feels Dennis lay a hand on his lower back through the material of his hoodie and scrubs. It is undeniably weird to feel so domestic in this setting, where they pretend they’re nothing more than the doctors they have to be.
“Are you okay?” Dennis asks him.
“Not really. You?”
Dennis pitches forward until he can rest his head on Robby’s shoulder.
“Not really. We’re never going to hear the end of this. People thought I had a secret wife. What the hell are they gonna think about my controversially older secret husband?”
“I’m sorry,” is all Robby can offer.
“Don’t be sorry, it was gonna happen sometime, wasn’t it? I just want to go home.”
Right on cue, Dana comes in.
“Hey there, princess,” she says to Andy, her eyes peeking over Robby’s shoulder. “You ready to go home?” She nods meekly in response, fists still clenched tight in Robby’s hoodie.
“Dana--” Robby starts, but she waves him off.
“Oh, save it. Just go home. I called Jack already, Cassie thought something was up. He’s gonna come in a couple of hours early, we’ll manage until then. Gloria’s gonna lose her mind when she hears about this, which hopefully won’t be for a little while longer. We’ll just deal with it when we get there.”
Robby breathes deep. “Yeah. Alright. Alright, let's go home.”
“Don’t think you’re off the hook for keeping all this a secret,” Dana says as she makes her way back to the nurse’s station, eyes already on the patient board. “But you guys make a cute family. I’ll give you some grace. For now.”
Dennis gathers everything up, leaving the patient room to go get their things out of their lockers. They go so far as to leave Dennis’ car in its parking space, loading up the car seat the nanny left when she brought Andy in into Robby’s car.
The ride home is quiet, Andy falling asleep quickly in the backseat. It’ll be a nightmare trying to get her to sleep for the night, but for now, she’s too tired for them to bother trying to wake her.
“Hey,” Dennis says, turning a little to face Robby from his spot in the passenger seat. “Did you see Trinity’s face when we were leaving? Her mouth was like -- hanging open. That’s the most shocked I’ve ever seen her. My phone has been blowing up. Everyone’s texting me. Our next shift is going to be crazy.”
A fist around Robby’s heart, that he’s been feeling all day, squeezes painfully.
“Are you mad?”
“What? No. We were both trying to keep this a secret. It didn’t work out. It’s just -- a new chapter or something. We’ve dealt with harder things. We can deal with this too"
“Yeah,” Robby responds, reaching over to take Dennis’ hand in his own, giving it a grateful squeeze. “A new chapter.”