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When Dennis next awakens, it is to the sudden shrill ring of Robby's cell. It is over-loud and startling, and Dennis is transported immediately to the events of the night prior. His body jerks involuntarily.
"Just my phone," Robby reassures him as he gropes blindly around his nightstand until he finds it, pulling it close to his face and squinting at the screen.
“Shit, sorry, kid, I've got to take this,” he states, nudging Dennis’s shoulder gently.
Dennis sits up. He can feel the creases of Robby's t-shirt still imprinted on his cheek. He is the closest thing he has been to well-rested in months.
“Yeah, of course,” he says muzzily. “Sorry, I'll go.”
Robby's hand locks round his wrist. “That’s not what I said. I said I've got to take this. Stay.”
Robby maneuvers himself to the side of the bed, his feet thudding to the floor as he leans over his phone. Dennis flops back onto the still-warm pillows. Robby isn't looking at him, but he keeps one hand on Dennis, spanning his ribs.
“Jake?” Robby says into his phone and Dennis stills. He doesn't want to listen in, but Robby told him to stay, and there's not much else to distract him.
He can't make out Jake's words, but it sounds like he might be distraught, or maybe crying. Dennis feels for the kid, the dread and the adrenaline, the hope and the despair. It is more than anyone should ever have to handle.
“Hey, hey, slow down, man," Robby urges, his voice still gruff and gravelly with sleep. "I've got you. Take a breath."
Robby pauses while the teenager continues.
“I know,” Robby begins, soft and purposeful. “I'm so sorry. I know what she meant to you.”
Dennis suspects the call is going well, or as well as something like this can, given the circumstances. He reads relief in the micro-relaxation of Robby’s posture and the patient cadence of his voice.
Dennis is grateful for this small mercy. After yesterday, it was clear that Robby needed a win, or hell, even a draw. The escalating pressures of the hospital administration, whatever the hell the blow-out was with Langdon, the loss of Leah, and by proxy, Jake. Dennis swallows a surge of guilt, knowing he is only adding to the list of people Robby will try to put before himself. He wishes uselessly that he was in a position to be something other than a burden.
“Thank you for saying that," Robby continues. "I know you didn't mean it, or I had at least hoped you didn't. It's not like I don't know that I am not your dad. Of course I know that, but I like being part of your life. You matter to me."
Robby pauses again. He waits. His fingers tap a nervous rhythm on Dennis's intercostals.
“Sometimes anger feels easiest, man, I get it. It is big of you to explain it, especially when everything is so fresh,” Robby shakes his head frustratedly, as though Jake is in the room with him. “No. No. I am not upset with you, alright? I hate what happened to Leah, I hated you being there, witnessing all that.”
Robby pushes the edge of his phone into his forehead for a minute, expression pained. “Yeah, I did, I really did…I know. It's okay, man. You were hurting. You still are. Means she was important.”
Dennis drifts back off to the sound of Robby’s most earnest listening noises, as he lets Jake say whatever it is he needs to say.
When Dennis rouses again, the call seems to be winding down. “I love you, too,” Robby is saying. “You sure you don’t need me to come over?... No, that's fair, man. I'll check in later, okay? You don’t have to answer, but just promise you'll let me know if you need anything, hey?... Yeah... I love you. We'll talk soon…Yeah, talk soon, Jake. Love you.”
Robby tosses his phone onto the bedside table and sighs. Dennis ponders the depressing reality that even though he was only privy to one half of that conversation, he is still convinced it was a significantly more honest and loving discussion than he has ever had with his actual parents. He is torn between envy and anger, but neither can take precedence over his concern for Robby. Dennis knows that conversations that unguarded are never easy.
Robby slumps back against the headboard, shoving the heels of his hands into his eyes with a guttural exhale.
“You okay?” Dennis asks cautiously, shuffling up the bed so they are sitting shoulder to shoulder. He is reassured when the other man leans into his touch, instead of away from it. Dennis toys with a hole in the side of the knee of Robby’s sleep pants, the tip of his finger finding coarse hair and the stark tendon of the biceps femoris. He waits for Robby to bat his intrepid hand away, but the rebuke doesn't come.
“Yeah,” he exhales, dropping his hands to his lap. “I am, shockingly, okay. Or okay enough, all things considered.”
Dennis thinks Robby’s going to stop there, but instead he blinks slowly, gaze distant.
“I, shit, I really needed that fucking call.” The words are so low that Dennis has to strain to hear them, even in the quiet of the bedroom. Dennis stills his hand, present but unobtrusive on Robby’s thigh. He doesn’t say anything, afraid of breaking the spell like a hunter snapping a twig, causing the deer to bolt, because Robby really does feel like a wounded animal to him. “All last night, through the whole thing, every patient, every procedure, every single code…he was all I thought about. I saw him dead on a stretcher so many times in my Goddamn head that I was half convinced it was real. And then to have him live, only to be lost to me all over again? Especially when I tried, I fucking tried, I would have put my own heart in that girl’s chest if I thought it could help.”
Dennis shifts closer, propping his chin atop the other man’s shoulder. Robby tilts his head in turn, letting it come to rest against Dennis’s.
“Christ,” he mutters with a note of self-disgust, “if I hadn’t noticed you sneaking around, I’m honestly not sure how last night might have ended for me. So yeah. I really needed that call.”
Dennis’s mouth goes dry. He’s faced suicidality in med student role plays, in real life in clinic, during his psych and ED rotations, and he knows the standard advice inside and out: ask about suicide directly, by name. Determine if it is passive or active. Equire about method and means. Engage in safety planning.
Robby would see through that in a second.
“Then I’m glad you followed me,” Dennis offers instead. “And I’m glad you heard from Jake.”
Robby doesn’t say anything more.
“Teenagers say a lot of things they don’t mean,” Dennis begins tentatively. “I’m pretty sure there is a proportional relationship between how much they care about a person, and the degree to which they lash out. He wouldn’t have gone at you like that if he didn’t care about you, didn’t trust that you could take it, like, all his anger and grief, and keep on loving him anyway.”
Robby hums dismissively.
“I know you know all that already,” Dennis goes on. “I know you do. But knowing it and hearing it from someone else, I don’t know. Sometimes it makes a difference.”
Robby humors him with the suggestion of a half-smile, a there-and-gone-again upward tug at the corner of his mouth.
“Yeah? Were you a rebellious teen?” Robby asks softly, but with a teasing edge. He’s purposefully leading them away from talk of Jake, from talk of just what Robby might have done last night, but Dennis doesn’t want to push if Robby doesn’t want to go there.
“Hardly,” Dennis scoffs. He knows he can’t quite hide the bitterness. “Compliant to a fault.”
Robby raises his eyebrows and Dennis feels his face grow hot at the insinuation. “Oh?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Dennis back peddles. “We were talking about you.”
“And now we are talking about you,” Robby counters. “I’d like to know more, if you're willing to tell me. You’re still a bit of a puzzle to me, Whitaker. I don’t know a lot of rat-catching, Isaiah-spouting medical students.”
Dennis shifts, unseating Robby’s head from where it rested on his. The prodding makes him feel uncannily like a patient, as though with a thorough enough history, the secrets of his insides will start to take shape in a way only Robby can decipher. It’s discomfiting and makes Dennis squirmy and vulnerable, but Robby was just honest with him, really honest, and it feels only fair that Dennis reciprocates.
“I guess you could say that I would never have laid into my parents the way Jake did you last night," Dennis begins. "I couldn’t have trusted them to...I don’t know. Their love was always conditional. It felt easy to lose. It was easy to lose." He trailed off, trying to figure out how best to explain. "You know about, ah, Christian Science?”
“A bit,” Robby replies. “Not always much for western medicine, right? Affliction of the body is an affliction of the soul type thing?”
“Yeah, give or take,” Dennis nods. “And my family, they are at the intense end of the spectrum. Like when we were kids, my brother Luke broke his tibia. My parents never took him to the doctor, and it set poorly and left him with a limp, not great for any kid, let alone a kid expected to pull his weight around the farm."
“And I’m guessing juvenile psoriatic arthritis wasn’t a treat to deal with in those circumstances either.” Robby recognizes. He words are laced with an anger that Dennis wasn’t expecting. “That seems like a hard one to pray away.”
“Yep,” Dennis grants. “No matter how hard I tried. Not a surprise, but at the time it felt like one. I think I truly believed that if I could just pray enough, in the right way, if I could just root out the sin from myself, and work on myself spiritually, then I could make it all just go away. Instead, it just kept spreading, more plaques, new joint involvement. My parents, um, they said I liked the attention.” The confession bubbles out of him like spring melt over pebbles, inevitable. “That the reason I didn't get better was because of my envy and my avarice. That the more I wanted the attention of the congregation, the worse it all would become. I spent half my days praying, crying, begging God to make me better. I don’t mean I was begging Him to heal me. I was begging for Him to help me be a better person, to be complain less and withstand more, to accept my disease as fit punishment, to be good. Nothing changed, though. Once, when I was about 14 or so, my dactylitis got so bad that the skin started weeping, sloughing off. I remember being out of my mind with pain, and not even being given a fucking Tylenol. A teacher took me to the ED. He pretended to be my uncle, and the doc there gave me some prednisone, some Septra for the superimposed infection. I don’t know what would have happened if he hadn't done that.”
Robby takes Dennis’s hand then, unflinchingly. A pained noise tries to rise up in him, but Dennis bites it back down. He doesn’t talk about this stuff. Dennis is amiable and earnest. Dennis keeps his head low and his nose to the grindstone. Dennis focuses on his studies, and cares about others, and doesn’t bother anyone else with his needs. In fact, he does his very best to convince himself that he doesn’t have any needs at all. So how can it feel like Robby is meeting every one?
Dennis exhales slowly, trying to stop himself from entertaining the muddy, overbearing medley of emotions that interrogating this stuff always stirs up. “Those first few weeks of treating it properly, medically, I was a mess. I was certain I was breaking faith with God, that the more the swelling reduced and the fissures healed over, the more permanent the marks on my soul became. It was like I was admitting my deepest weaknesses, proving I wasn’t clean and pure enough for His grace, and after starting meds, I never would be. I can never un-take them.”
“It’s pretty understandable to have a crisis of faith when that very faith is the cause of a crisis,” Robby summarizes succinctly. “Isn’t the whole thing with Christianity that nobody is clean and pure?”
“Yeah,” Dennis huffs. “And my theology degree helped show me that, helped me pick out the threads of my childhood religion that weren’t actually compatible with God’s love. I still want to believe, you know? I think I do, I find a lot of solace in scripture, in the idea of something vast and benevolent. I've just come to see prayer as an adjuvant and not a substitute, because it was medicine that gave my life back. Maybe that was a different sort of answer to my prayers.”
The pad of Robby’s thumb sweeps over the peaks and valleys of Dennis’s hypertrophic MCPs.
“It could have been worse,” Dennis hurries to clarify, not wanting Robby's pity. “I’m lucky I went to college, lucky I got started on methotrexate before my dexterity was totally shot. My hands and feet ache sometimes, still, and unfortunately, my LFTs started to go up with the methotrexate, so I had to stop that and switch to Humira, which has been great, but—”
“Prohibitively expensive,” Robby fills in.
“Yeah,” Dennis sighs. “That.”
Robby continues to smooth his thumb over the eroded and vulnerable joints in Dennis’s hands. It feels like recognition, validation, that these hands he wants to use so badly to heal could have been rendered useless by his parents’ stubborn neglect.
“None of that was okay,” Robby tells him solemnly. “You were a kid. God never wanted your suffering.”
Dennis turns away, saline tears clinging to his lashes.
“I know you know that,” Robby echoes, “but knowing it and hearing it from someone else—I’ve heard it makes a difference.”
Dennis musters up a watery smile.
“You were a kid,” Robby says again, “and you deserved proper medical care, not constant guilt and useless fucking prayers.”
Dennis can't say anything without coming apart, so he simply doesn’t. He clutches tightly to Robby’s hand and Robby lets him.
“Are your parents still in your life?” Robby asks.
Dennis shakes his head. “No. I tried. After college, I went home for the summer, but they were so furious when they found out I’d started treatment. They said I could choose, them or the meds and I…I couldn't do it any more. I couldn't go on believing that this fluke of biology was somehow my fault.” Dennis’s voice breaks and then Robby’s arm is around his shoulders, pulling him close, rocking him. He presses his lips like anointing oil to Dennis’s hair.
“That wasn’t right, baby,” Robby murmurs, and Dennis chokes out a sob at the fucking tenderness of it all, the incredulity that he is deserving of any of this focused care. “You were hurting. You were hurting, and it was their job to fix it, and they failed you, not the other way around.”
Dennis smooshes his face into Robby’s chest. His cheeks are wet and he knows he is making a mess of Robby’s T-shirt, but he just can’t seem to get close enough.
“You've really been through it, hey, kiddo,” Robby says, voice hoarse with empathy.
“It's fine,” Dennis tries, wiping his face and trying to pull himself together. “I’m fine now, I should be grateful.”
“Jesus, Whitaker, grateful for what? For being tortured and gaslit by your parents’ willful negligence? The worst being over doesn't make it fucking fine,” Robby retorts.
Dennis curls back into him like a pill bug, and Robby strokes broad palms down his back and arms. The touch soothes him, and within a few minutes, Dennis manages to even out his breathing. Robby doesn’t stop touching him, holding him, petting him. Dennis wants to store up every scrap of contact, to save it for when he needs it most.
“After all that, you still went into medicine,” Robby muses. “Thought you might not want the reminder.”
“Before treatment, my whole life felt futile, Sisyphean,” Dennis considers. “But now, with medication? My hands can actually work, so I want to use them for good. Who knows, maybe a part of me is doing penance, trying to make up for my betrayal, but I try really hard not to think like that. I like medicine, you know? I realize it is the most clichéd thing in the world to say I want to help people, but I guess the novelty of helping people, really helping them, hasn't worn off yet.”
“God, you're sweet,” Robby murmurs, burying his nose in Dennis's hair.
Dennis bristles. He forces himself to pull away from the comfort of Robby’s chest, to look the older man in the eyes. “I know I’m a rookie in the ER, but I don’t think I’m naïve.”
“I didn’t say that you are naïve,” Robby replies, evenly. It is clear he is taking Dennis seriously, and Dennis is grateful for that. “I don't think you are. I think you can be just as sweet and sincere as you are, and also be a realist, because you’ve acquired a true, hard-earned perspective. You’ve walked a tougher row than a lot your peers.”
Dennis shifts his gaze away, blushing at the unexpected compliment.
“I don't know,” he shrugs. “Everyone's got something, right?”
“See?” Robby chuckles, “thoughtful, compassionate. And sweet.” He slides his hand back into Dennis's hair and Dennis can imagine his nervous system like an animation, a wriggly red scribble easing into a smooth blue line with every touch.
“Do you have to work today?” he asks, eventually.
“Yeah. Jack said he'd hold the fort so I could have a late start. I'll head in in a couple of hours.”
“Can I come with you?” Dennis asks.
Robby gives him a skeptical look, and adopts his most infuriating preceptor voice. “What are the post-call guidelines, Dennis?"
“It's ER, so it is not technically post-call,” Dennis hedges.
“Then what are the restrictions in place when a student gets home from a sixteen hour shift at one in the goddam morning?”
“That I am supposed to treat the next day like it's post call,” Dennis admits. “But lots of rotations ignore that. Basically all of the surgical specialties, IM…”
“I don't compromise on the mental health of my med students, which I know sounds like bullshit after a day like yesterday,” Robby tells him. “But the rules are there to protect you, I especially don’t want you coming in today. The same goes for all the learners who were on shift with you, so don't feel like you'll be missing out, or are getting special treatment. None of them will be setting foot in my ED until tomorrow at the earliest. You’ve earned yourself a day off, kid. I know those don’t come along all that often in internship, so enjoy it.”
“I guess,” Dennis relents. He knows Robby is only trying to look out for him, but it still feels like a rejection. “Do you want me to take off once you're gone?”
“Hm?”
“Like when you head into work, do you want me to get out of here? I don’t want to be hanging around your place without you if you're not okay with that.”
Robby drops his head back against the headboard with a frustrated thud.
“No, I don't fucking want that, Whitaker. I asked you here so you have a place to stay until we figure something else out. I'm not exactly giving you a place to stay if I kick you to the curb every time I step out the front door.”
“Okay,” Dennis replies. “Sorry.”
“There’s nothing to apologize for, you’re not in trouble," Robby sighs with exasperation. "I appreciate how thoughtful you are, but I wish I knew what I did to make you think I would act like an asshole of that magnitude.”
“Nothing!” Dennis protests, “I mean, I don’t think you’re an asshole. I just don’t want to overstep, and I don’t want to presume anything, or be in the way.”
“Christ, your parents really did a number on you. Do you always feel like this, like you're an inconvenience by just existing?”
The question catches Dennis off guard. Of course he doesn’t want to be a nuisance, doesn’t want to need too much, but that’s just being considerate, isn’t it? “I don’t know, maybe," he evaluates. "These last couple of years have been hard. I was good at academics, but clinical learning is so different, it's like I’m constantly standing in the wrong place, getting underfoot. It’s even worse in the OR, so just be glad you haven’t witnessed me in there.”
Robby laughs. “We’ve all been at the mercy of an unimpressed scrub nurse. But you’re a medical student, it’s your job to be in the way, okay? That’s how we learn.”
“I’ll try,” Dennis concedes.
“Atta, boy.” Robby ruffles his hair and yawns. “I should shower. You want me to show you how to work the espresso machine beforehand?”
“They are usually intuitive enough,” Dennis replies. “Especially since I have been basically living off stolen coffee for the better part of a year.”
He means it as a joke, but Robby’s expression sobers. “I wish I’d known sooner.”
“How could you have?” Dennis asks. “You just met me.”
Robby gives him a look that suggests that explanation is far from sufficient, like Robby is rarely reminded he is not actually an all-knowing, all-seeing god.
“You can’t save everyone, Robby,” Dennis says quietly. “And I think it hurts you to try.”
“Jesus, you’re coming out swinging this morning,” Robby’s tone is casual, but Dennis can tell he has hit a nerve.
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that,” Dennis retreats.
“Maybe not." Robby lets out a disbelieving little huff. "Doesn’t mean it’s not true. Probably an ego problem, even imagining I can.”
He is aiming for levity, Dennis can tell, but he doesn't want to let Robby off the hook, not about this.
“It’s just, like, an impossible amount of pressure," Dennis points out. "Sorry, Robby. I just don’t like thinking that one phone call from a teenager and one stray medical student are the only things keeping you from killing yourself.”
Impossibly, Robby laughs.
“What?” Dennis blusters, flushing and embarrassed. Had he misread entirely what Robby had been driving at earlier?
“You’re right,” Robby says, running a hand over his face. “Can hardly believe you'd have the audacity to call me on it, but you are not fucking wrong. Most days I hold it together just fine, but sometimes, like yesterday, I'm a step below trainwreck.”
“Oh.” Dennis bites down on his lip, not knowing where to look. He really didn’t expect Robby to capitulate.
“I’m not going to kill myself, kiddo, okay?” Robby reaches out, a tentative hand to Dennis’s cheek. He strokes his thumb over Dennis’s cheekbone, a covenant. “Yesterday was a spectacularly awful day. And I do get morbid sometimes, and I will sort that out, alright? I’ll talk to, God, I don’t know, Jack, probably. I’ll get some adult supervision for my mental health. It’s what I would tell any student or resident to do, and it's hypocritical of me not to. I ought to set an example. So I will, yeah? I don’t need you feeling like you’ve got to take responsibility for me.”
Robby slides his hand along Dennis's neck, settling on his shoulder. He gives it a comforting squeeze.
“You do know that I am a grown-up, right?” Dennis pushes. “I vote, I drive. I could raise a kid, or enlist, or, I don’t know, buy fucking property. I know I’m not a doctor yet, and I know I'm broke, but that's due to circumstance, not my own carelessness. I'm capable, I'm resilient, and I can take responsibility, for myself, and for somebody else. Even you. If you needed me to, I could. I would.”
“I know that,” Robby acknowledges quietly. “I’m very aware that you’re a thoughtful, intelligent, and incredibly insightful adult. I don’t take that lightly, Dennis, I don’t. But you’re also my student, and I think, for this, I need to speak with a peer, and someone who has known me for more than two minutes, maybe, hey?”
Robby cups his cheek again and Dennis turns into the touch.
“Sorry,” he says, words muffled by Robby’s palm. “I can get a little sanctimonious sometimes.”
Robby drops his forehead to Dennis’s hair. “I needed a push. Consider me pushed, okay? I will look into things. I don’t want you worrying about me. Is that fair?”
“Yeah,” Dennis agrees. “Yes, alright.”
Robby pulls back, affixes his gaze to Dennis’s for a suspended moment. He leans in and drops his mouth to Dennis's forehead. Another fucking not-quite kiss. Dennis wishes he knew what the he and Robby were even doing here, but he expects he won't be getting answers on that this morning.
“Thank you,” Robby whispers. “Now, go figure out the espresso machine. I will be down in a bit and can make us some breakfast.”
Dennis relaxes at the shift in the tone, at how easily Robby reclaims the role of commanding officer, with Dennis at the ready, awaiting instruction. He wasn’t lying when he said that he could take responsibility, but he knows Robby is protecting him, and there is a sort of devotion in that.
“I can make breakfast,” Dennis volunteers, wondering if he should be offended. It is not like he is going to leave a mess or scratch up the no-stick pans.
“I am sure you can,” Robby tells him, “but you are not going to.”
Dennis starts to argue again, but Robby cuts him off with an irritated groan. “Christ, I am just trying to do something nice, can you leave it alone already?”
“Oh,” Dennis says sheepishly. “Sorry. You don't have to. You have already done way too many nice things for me.”
“And I'm gonna keep on doing ‘em, kiddo, so you'd better get used to it.”