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PITTFEST + 1 DAY (5:47 AM)
The fluorescent lights hum like a failing ventilator, bleaching Robby's Chief Attending office that he pretends he doesn't have (too easy to be caught by Gloria, too far from patients) into something sterile and cold. Robby braces his hands against his desk, fingers splayed like he's trying to keep the world from spinning. His reflection in the black computer monitor shows a stranger--dark circles like bruises, untrimmed stubble scraping raw against his palms when he rubs his face, eyes hollowed out by twenty hours of hell.
Twelve hours since the shooting. Eleven since Leah died. Ten since Jake screamed at him. Seven since Collins found him drowning in cheap beer and his own failure.
He doesn’t catalogue it on purpose. His brain does it anyway, stacking time into neat, unbearable units.
He should be home. Should be curled around the ghost of Collins' warmth in his bed, chasing the memory of her fingers in his hair last night instead of sitting here, playing disciplinarian.
He hates Frank for being the reason Robby's back at the hospital already, forced to face the fact that he's too chickenshit to see when Jake was discharged last night. Hates that his responsibility here meant he couldn't figure out some excuse--however flimsy--to keep Collins in his apartment just a little longer. ‘Stay for coffee’ he could've said. ‘The roads might be bad with the crime scene blockades’. Anything to prolong the fragile truce they'd built in the dark. The memory of her breath against his neck makes his chest ache with something too close to hope.
Abbott tracks Robby down to his office, probably tipped off by Lupe, the saint of a front desk nurse. He leans against the doorframe, arms crossed, prosthetic leg planted slightly forward in that combat-ready stance Robby's come to recognize. The shadows under his eyes mirror Robby's own, but then again Abbott hadn't exactly gotten sleep after luring Robby back from the roof's edge.
"Why are you here, man?" Abbott's voice is rough with exhaustion. "Of all the days you're scheduled off to finally not work..."
"Disciplinary meeting." Robby's voice comes out rougher than intended, the words scraping his throat raw. He clears it, but the ache remains.
Jack's eyes flash with something dangerous. "Gloria's pulling this shit the morning after--?"
"Not for me." Robby closes his eyes, exhaling through his nose. The antiseptic hospital smell burns his nostrils, mixing with the lingering scent of Collins' shampoo from where she'd pressed against him last night. The contrast makes him nauseated. "Langdon."
The silence stretches just a beat too long. When Robby opens his eyes, Abbott's eyebrows have climbed toward his hairline. "What the fuck did Langdon do that you're here today?"
Robby rubs his jaw, the stubble scraping against his palm. Everything in him still aches with a dull, blunted anger that threatens to rise like bile. He flexes his fingers, remembering how they'd trembled around the rooftop railing. How close he'd come--
"I need you to stay here. In the room."
"Robby." Abbott's voice drops into that tone he uses with combative patients - calm, measured, but firm. "I know I'm an attending but that's not exactly--"
"Jack," Robby interrupts, finally looking up. His vision swims slightly from exhaustion and the remnants of last night's alcohol. "Just stay. I’m not in the mood to be… reasonable.”
The word is such a gross understatement it feels like a lie.
The unspoken 'please' hangs between them, bitter on Robby's tongue. He's not used to asking for help with his own shortcomings. Not from Abbott. Not from anyone. The admission tastes like failure.
Abbott watches him with that sharp, precise combat vet assessment-- reading the tension in Robby's shoulders, the way his fingers twitch toward fists, the barely-contained tremor in his left knee. After a long moment, he gives a single nod. "Yeah, fine."
Jack walks further in the office and lets the door click shut behind him.
Robby drags a hand down his face and turns back to the desk just as there’s a knock. The door creaks open and Langdon steps in with that carefully constructed casualness he's apparently perfected while hiding his addiction-- shoulders hunched just enough to suggest fatigue rather than guilt, hands shoved deep in his pockets to conceal their tremor.
Robby fucking hates himself for not noticing the signs sooner.
The kid’s scrubs are freshly laundered, the black fabric crisp and unwrinkled, a calculated choice to project normalcy. As if he'd actually gone home, showered, and changed like this was any normal day. Like he thought he could just slip back into the rotation unnoticed.
It makes something ugly rise in Robby’s chest.
Frank's face tells the real story-- pale beneath the fluorescent lights with that sickly gray undertone of withdrawal, skin clammy with a sheen of sweat he can't blame on the hospital's erratic AC. His fingers twitch where they grip the chair back, the tremor only half-hidden by his tight grip.
Langdon's gaze darts between them, those blue eyes sharp with assessment. He lingers on Abbott a beat too long-- trying to read whether the other attending knows everything or just enough to be in the room. His shoulders tense slightly when he can't decipher Abbott's neutral expression.
"Dr. Abbott," Langdon says with forced casualness, nodding like this is just another morning briefing. The tremor in his voice betrays him. "I didn't realize you'd be--"
"Sit down, Frank." Robby cuts in, voice a gavel.
Langdon hesitates, fingers flexing against the chair back. Robby can practically see the calculations running through his head-- how much to admit, how much to deny, how to play this now that Abbott's here as a wild card. His performance wavers for just a second, the confident mask slipping to reveal the desperate man underneath.
"I thought--" Langdon starts, then stops, reconsidering his approach now that he's facing two attendings instead of one. His eyes dart to the scattered files on Robby's desk, the way Robby's clearly not planning on staying for work today. When he speaks, his voice has lost some of its defensive edge, replaced by careful testing of boundaries: "Look, if this is about the missing lorazepam--"
The air between them crackles with barely-contained fury. Robby can feel Abbott tensing beside him, ready to intervene, but all Robby can focus on is the way Langdon has the goddamn nerve to pretend to look confused, like he doesn't understand why he's here, like he hasn't been stealing drugs and lying to their faces for who knows how long.
At least when Robby falls apart, he's never endangered patients to feed his own weakness.
Langdon purses his lips. "I didn’t mean--"
"Fucking stop!" Robby's fist comes down on the desk, making the clutter jump. "Stop pretending."
Langdon's eyes widen slightly at the outburst, his gaze flicking to Abbott again-- searching for sympathy, for an out. But Abbott's face remains impassive, arms crossed, giving nothing away to someone who hasn't known him as long as Robby. The realization seems to dawn on Langdon that his usual manipulations won't work here. His breathing turns shallow, the first crack in his carefully constructed facade, revealing the raw panic beneath.
"You stole narcotics. Lied about it. Put patients at risk," Robby lists like a judge reading off charges at a hearing. Abbott’s posture stiffens, but Robby doesn’t check to see what's hiding in his expression. "And instead of coming to me, you waited until you were caught."
Langdon flinches, but his gaze flicks to Abbott again--testing, probing for weakness. When he finds none, he looks back to Robby. "And what? You're here to scare me straight? Like you're not just as--"
Abbott's voice cuts through, low and dangerous. "Careful, Frank."
"You think I wanted to become this?" Langdon’s voice drops, raw. "You think I fucking woke up and chose to be a liability?"
Robby steps forward and Abbott steps half in Robby's way, a silent warning. "No. I think you chose to lie about being a fucking liability."
Langdon flinches like he’s been struck. The words hang between them, accusation and confession tangled together.
"You’re right," he whispers, blue eyes hardening as ice again. "But you don’t get to stand there and pretend you didn’t see it. You’re a doctor, Robby. You know what addiction looks like."
Robby scoffs, fury making his own hands shake. “You are unbelievable.”
"Okay. Enough." Abbott steps between them, one hand up like a traffic cop. "Frank--30-day inpatient. Random piss tests for five years. Mandatory NA. That’s the deal. Take it or drop out."
Langdon’s chest heaves. He looks past Abbott to Robby, eyes red-rimmed and furious. "And what about you? When do you start fixing your shit?"
Robby’s jaw locks.
Abbott cuts in, sharp. "Not the time, Frank."
"No, it’s exactly the time!" Langdon’s voice breaks. "Did he explain where he was last night when no one could find him? When you and I and the rest of the staff were trying to save patients? He was in Peds--"
Robby moves--fast--but Abbott is faster. His arm shoots out, catching Robby across the chest, shoving him back a step. "Michael. Stand down."
For a heartbeat, they’re frozen: Robby vibrating with rage, Abbott’s forearm a steel bar between them, Langdon panting like he’s just run a code.
Then the door opens.
Gloria, part of the disciplinary meeting that Robby had wanted to avoid, strides in with her crisp white coat and disapproval radiating off her.
"Gentlemen." Her gaze flicks between them--Robby’s clenched fists, Abbott’s defensive stance, Langdon’s face. "Are we done with the theatrics?"
*
"You look like shit," Abbott says, voice rough with exhaustion in the aftermath.
He feels like shit.
The office is finally empty with no one other than them again, but it doesn't feel safe like it should. It's still part of the building that holds the trauma of last night and somewhere he desperately doesn't want to be.
Robby slumps into his chair. The leather creaks under his weight. He grabs one of the pens from his desk just to grip something and stop his fingers from shaking. "I was going for 'functional disaster’."
Abbott doesn't laugh. Just watches him with that too-knowing stare, the one that makes Robby want to peel his own skin off. He sees too much. Always has. "Langdon said you were in Peds last night?"
Robby tenses, but doesn't speak.
Abbott presses on, voice dropping. "Which I would ignore if one of my nurses hadn't seen you on the floor of Peds as well."
The memory hits like a sucker punch.
The makeshift morgue they'd set up in Pediatrics after the shooting, the rows of sheet-covered bodies, Leah's hand slipping from beneath the white cloth when he'd pulled the sheet back to check. The way his knees had given out. The way his lungs had locked. The way the shema had stuttered out of him until Whitaker of all people rescued him from himself.
A muscle jumps in Robby's jaw. He forces his grip to loosen before the pen snaps. "Nurses talk too much."
"Robby." Abbott's voice is blade-sharp now. "Look at me."
Robby doesn't. Can't. If he meets Abbott's gaze right now, he'll see the reflection of last night--Abbott talking him back from the roof's edge with non-threatening, almost nonsensical talk about bees. The way Robby had almost argued about the value of jumping just to feel something other than the crushing weight of failure.
"Was it a panic attack?"
Silence. The overhead lights flicker, casting jagged shadows across the desk.
Abbott exhales through his nose, harsh. "Christ. And then you went to the roof after?"
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Robby had known that Jack would end up putting some of the pieces together, but he hadn't expected it to be this morning.
Robby only shows the strain of his Sisphyean life in pieces. Abbott had known about the roof, but not the panic attack. Langdon had known about the panic attack and not the roof. Collins had known about the abortion before Jack had told her about the roof and Leah. Ellis had known about Jake screaming at him in the waiting room, the words ‘You're not my father’ carving out something vital inside him. Dana had known about Adamson, had watched Robby fail to save both him and Leah.
Everyone got a piece. No one got the whole picture. It's the only way he's found to keep people from leaving.
"Needed the air."
Needed to see if getting close to death would help him feel alive.
Jack exhales a rough breath. "Tell me you weren't up there to jump."
Robby's breath comes too fast. Control it. Control it-- "I wasn't.”
“Bullshit.” Abbott swears. His prosthetic clicks as he steps closer, sudden and sharp. Anger jumps out as he hisses, "You fucking let me believe that you were just finally letting out bottled emotions.”
Robby flinches before his mind chooses brittle, defensive anger over grief. "What do you want me to say, Jack? That I thought about it? Fine. I thought about it."
Abbott's eyes flash. “And if I hadn't shown up?”
The silence hangs between them, jagged and raw.
Robby’s vision tunnels. Ink bleeds from the cracked pen between Robby's fingers, staining his skin black--like the blood he couldn't wash off after Leah coded in his arms. Like the ink on the death certificate he had to sign.
Abbott’s face does something complicated--anger, fear, grief--before it hardens into resolve. He grabs Robby’s shoulder, grip bruising. Robby could shake him off. He doesn’t. There's something terrifyingly anchoring about the contact, about the way Abbott's grip feels like the only thing keeping him from floating away.
"You don’t get to do this,” Jack growls, voice low and lethal. "Not alone."
Robby's throat burns. He wants to laugh until he cries. Wants to scream until his voice gives out. Wants to sleep for a thousand years and never wake up to this nightmare.
"I'm tired." He whispers, the words ripped from somewhere deep and broken.
Abbott's grip tightens. "Then rest. But don’t you fucking quit."
Robby closes his eyes. The ink feels like blood without his eyes telling him otherwise, making the moment more poignant.
"...Yeah."
The word is both a surrender and promise without being either, but for now, it's enough.