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It had come to Robby’s attention that Langdon had learned a new trick.
He had noticed it himself, once or twice since he got back from his sabbatical, but there was still enough tension between the two of them that Robby was still keeping his distance, so he more or less dismissed it the couple of times it happened.
Some of the nurses had started complaining, though. That was harder to ignore.
“Does he even appreciate how hard it is to do a 22 gauge?” Princess whispered to Perlah off to the side of the charge desk.
Perlah shook her head, a sympathetic smile on her face. “He’s trying to be helpful. Make the patient more comfortable. It’s sweet.”
“Comfortable?” Princess hissed. “It took me almost ten minutes to get the IV in. I could barely see what I was doing and I thought the tourniquet was going to snap. But yes, thank god the light was off.” They switched to Tagalog after that, and Robby was called away to an incoming trauma, and he mostly forgot about it.
****
Santos was the first to come complain to him directly about it.
It was late in the shift, and Robby had been watching her and Langdon snap at each other for the past five hours or so. It really wasn’t much of a surprise when she stalked over to her desk and slammed a folder of papers down, emitting such an enormous, dramatic huff that Robby was forced to look up at her, peering over the tops of his glasses.
“Yes, Doctor Santos?” He prompted with a sigh.
“You need to talk to him.” She barked out immediately.
“Talk to who?”
“Langdon.” She dropped her elbows onto her desk and pressed her fingers into her temples, shutting her eyes. “God, my head is pounding.”
Robby took his glasses off, rolling his stool over to her so he could lower his voice, a familiar worry creeping in. “Is there something serious going on?”
“Yes,” She said, scowling. “It is serious. I just had to suture an ear lac in south fourteen in the dark. I had to squint so hard to see what I was doing that I have a fucking migraine now.”
“Language, Doctor Santos.” He corrected immediately.
“Sorry,” she grumbled, dropping her forearms down to the table and looking at him. “So you’ll talk to him, then?”
Robby raised a skeptical brow at her. “This doesn’t really sound like a problem for your attending, does it? Maybe this is a good opportunity for you to learn how to navigate difficult conversations with your peers in a less combative manner, hm?” Those were the exact words that Doctor Al-Hashimi had used when providing feedback during Santos’ most recent performance review, and he could tell that she did not appreciate having them parroted back at her.
She glared at him. Robby smiled back. “Dana keeps some Tylenol at the charge desk if you need it.”
****
It was Gloria that forced his hand on the issue, a few weeks later.
“Doctor Robby,” she greeted him one morning before he had even had a sip of his coffee, a corporate-looking smile plastered onto her face. “I was hoping I might catch you. Have a minute?”
“For you?” Robby answered, imbuing as much sarcasm as possible into his tone. “Oh, always.”
“We received a rather interesting comment on one of the patient feedback reports last week.” Gloria continued, following him to the lockers. “I was just hoping that you might be able to shed some light onto it.” She held out a tablet in front of him.
Robby sighed, pulling his reading glasses out of the front zippered pocket of his backpack. “Let me see.”
Robby didn’t really see what the problem was, at first. He scrolled through the survey on the tablet, noting the usual complaints about the wait times and the cleanliness of the waiting room. Not really his problem, as far as he was concerned. Hire more nurses, hire more facilities staff, replace the fucking AC for God's sake. The patient reported positive feedback about the attitude of the nurses and doctor, and placed their overall satisfaction at a seven. Above average, for his team.
He was about to hand her the tablet back and tell her that he had bigger problems to worry about when he noticed it: a small scribbled comment at the bottom of the page.
Doctor and nurses were knowledgeable and competent. However, the doctor stared at me a lot during the pre-exam questions and then insisted on turning out the lights? Made me feel sort of weird, idk.
Robby shut his eyes wearily.
“Do you know anything about this?” Gloria asked him.
He bit back a grimace as he handed Gloria back the tablet. “Yeah, I think I might. I’ll handle it.”
It was going to be a long fucking shift.
****
It took Robby one full shift of paying attention to figure out what the hell Langdon was even doing. At first, he had assumed that it was maybe an eye-sensitivity thing. The bright, fluorescent lights of the hospital were sometimes grating, and Robby didn’t have the best vision himself, so he could sympathize with the desire to lower the constant eye-strain.
That theory fell sort of flat once he realized that it wasn’t with every patient.
From his vantage point at his desk, Robby spied on Langdon for the third time that shift as he picked a new patient off the board. He seemed to have a pep in his step that day, a lingering smile that kept creeping up his face as he grabbed a new pair of gloves, as he jumped in to help out on a new trauma, as he sipped on his third can of Red Bull. Under normal circumstances, Robby might have found it charming. Today, he was fraught with the knowledge that he’d probably be the one to wipe the dopey look off later, with yet another tense confrontation by the lockers.
For now, he watched carefully as Langdon pulled the door open to the patient room, nodding to Jesse and introducing himself to the patient.
Robby checked the board. Ronald, 22, Neck Pain.
The curtain was open, so he could watch as Langdon sat down at the stool by the bedside. He could see the patient talking, answering questions, reaching up to touch his neck, shifting in the bed uncomfortably, grimacing a bit as Langdon maneuvered his head. Then, he watched as Langdon paused, nodded at something, and turned around, walking back towards the door.
Robby heaved a sigh as he flicked the light off in the room.
Then, (and this was new) he watched as Langdon searched the ER from the other side of the window, squinting out into the room and scanning the faces until–
His eyes lit up. He flashed someone a thumbs up, and a grin.
Robby traced his gaze across the room to see Mel returning his look with a smile of her own, waving back at him shyly.
What the hell?
Langdon pulled the curtain closed after that, cutting off his view.
Robby had seen enough.
****
He waited until the end of the shift to say something, worried that if he started the conversation before then they might get cut short by one of them being pulled away for something. He was hoping to be able to catch him alone, but as soon as the night shift staff started arriving, Langdon pasted himself to Mel’s side, trailing after her as the two of them chatted each others’ ears off.
Robby followed them to the lockers, feeling like a bit of a creep as he tried not to eavesdrop on their conversation, which appeared to be a play-by-play of a stent that Mel had done in trauma earlier that morning.
“Langdon,” Robby interrupted, watching the way his whole body tensed up at the sound of his voice. “Got a sec?”
Langdon was already frowning at him by the time he turned around. “Yeah,” he said warily. “I’ll catch you later, Mel.”
“Okay,” Mel replied, clearly disappointed, backing up away from them with a furrow in her brow. “See you tomorrow, Doctor Langdon.”
Robby led them slightly away from the lockers, around a corner where their conversation could unfold more privately.
“Is it piss in a cup time already, Robby?” Langdon asked him sardonically, sounding annoyed.
Robby shook his head, crossing his arms across his chest. “This is something different.” He couldn't blame Langdon for his immediate defensiveness, so Robby offered a bit of reassurance. “You’re not in trouble.”
“Okay?” He prompted, drawing the syllables of the word out as he watched Robby hesitate uncomfortably, unsure of how to start. “You’ve got me on the edge of my seat here, man.”
Screw it, he thought. Rip the band-aid off.
“We’ve gotten some complaints about you turning the lights off in the patient rooms.”
Langdon’s nervous scowl smoothed out rapidly, turning into something that looked far more caught. It was an expression that Robby had become unfortunately familiar with. “I’m not, uh—I’m not sure what you—”
“Langdon.”
A frustrated puff of air, followed by a sheepish look. “C’mon Robby. Does anyone actually like those lights, anyway? They’re cool-toned.”
“Why don’t you just tell me what’s been going on?”
Langdon’s fingers tightened around the straps of the hideous, clown-like backpack that had haunted many of Robby’s reoccurring nightmares. “It’s supposed to, uh. Help. Certain people.”
“Certain people.” Robby repeated. “What kinds of people?”
“Different people. Neurodivergent people.”
“Christ,” Robby muttered under his breath, scrubbing his face with his palm.
“The ER can be a very bright and noisy place, Robby!” Langdon argued, like he was reciting the words from a script.
“Yes, I understand that, Langdon,” Robby replied calmly, trying to stay even-tempered. “But you can’t just go around profiling our patients as neurodivergent.”
“I’m not profiling them.” Langdon recoiled, looking insulted.
“Oh, you’re not?” He challenged. “Why don’t you walk me through Ronald, 22, neck pain, then? Noticed you flip the switch for that one, today. How’d you make that call?”
The immediacy of the blush that exploded across Langdon’s face told Robby most of what he needed to know. “Well, that one was… I mean I was pretty sure–He just was–” He stuttered, reaching up to rub at the back of his neck.
“Yes?”
Langdon sighed in defeat, looking off to the side. “He told me he was going to a ‘Magic: The Gathering’ event tonight.”
There was a long, pregnant pause.
“Right,” Robby said eventually. “Very clinical, Doctor Langdon. I’m sure Psych would agree.”
Langdon threw his hands up, exasperated. “So, what? I’m not allowed to try to make my patients more comfortable now?”
“No one’s saying that.”
“And how come it’s just me, huh? Is Mel gonna get this speech, too?”
Robby gave him a doubtful look. “Is that what you want? For me to go talk to Mel, too?”
That seemed to take a lot of the wind out of his sails. “No,” he admitted right away, his shoulders sagging a bit. “No, that’s not what I want.”
Robby felt a little guilty at the utterly dejected way that Langdon was now hanging his head and staring at the toes of his tennis shoes. “Listen, Langdon,” He began, clearing his throat. “I know your heart was in the right place with this one. And I know that you and Doctor King have become…” He struggled to find the right word. “Close.”
Langdon made a strangled noise and took a step back, looking like he was about to bolt. “Oh, god. I’ll stop, Robby, it’s fine, you don’t have to–”
Robby held up a hand to stop him. “I am well aware that she is much more knowledgeable than most of us here, save for perhaps Doctor Jefferson and his team, when it comes to dealing with our neurodivergent patient population. I know that she has published multiple journal articles on the subject.”
Langdon had stopped backing away from him like a frightened deer, so Robby took that as encouragement to continue.
“What I will do is this: I will talk to Doctor Jefferson and Doctor King, and I will see if they would be willing to provide some peer-reviewed reading material and prepare a list of helpful tips for handling cases that involve patients who are confirmed to be on the autism spectrum. And then we will distribute that material to the whole staff, so that everyone can be aware of the best practices when it comes to managing our patients’ comfort, alright?”
Langdon looked a little stunned. A little impressed, even, maybe. Robby tried not to be offended by it. “Yeah,” he agreed, nodding. “Yeah, that sounds great, actually. I think Mel would definitely love that.”
Robby fought the urge to roll his eyes. “That wasn’t really what I was shooting for, there, Frank, but I’m glad you think so.”
“Oh! Oh yeah, no, I mean it’ll be great for everyone. Great for our patients, too, obviously–”
“Alright, I think we’re probably done here.” Robby decided before he could stammer his way into anything more incriminating. And then, because he felt like he had tortured him quite enough that day, he told him, “You’ve been doing good work around here, lately. Keep it up.”
Langdon's eyes widened. “Thanks, Robby.” He breathed, staring at him like he had never once been complimented before in his life.
Feeling sort of guilty, sort of proud, sort of frustrated, sort of amused, and mostly deeply, unrelentingly uncomfortable, Robby gave Langdon a final tense smile before turning back around and leaving him in the alcove of the hall. As far as awkward confrontations with his residents went, Robby would say that one had clocked in at around a four on the pain scale.