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Little Michael Robinavitch was two years old when he was sent to live with baba and deda. He missed his mama and papa, of course, but he forgot them soon enough. His days were busy spent praying the Shema with his baba every morning and learning Hebrew and Russian on his deda’s lap every evening until he got too big. When he was a big boy, he got to help baba take care of deda!
He wasn’t allowed to touch the samovar, though. It was too big, and hot! Hot! Hot! his baba would scold him.
And then deda passed away on his tenth birthday.
It was just him and baba, after that. For a while. Until it wasn’t, and he was sent to live with Duke, a mechanic just like his papa, and his deda, had been.
Little Trinity Santos was six years old when her baby sister was born and someone first laid less than gentle hands on her. She was nine when her mama, in her anger, left her outside the shopping center. It didn’t take long for someone to notice a sniffling child flushed red under the hot July sun waiting for her mother.
She was taken away, after that. Separated from her baby sister and bounced from home to home, no one really wanting an angry little girl, no one wanting to take the pair. She missed her sister, didn’t miss her mama as much. Eventually, mama got custody of them again, and Trinity made a new friend.
Her new stepfather had loved their little sleepovers, too, and would steal into her room to play with them. But shhh, Trinity, it's our little secret, right?
At twelve, she went back into foster care and never went back to her mama. Didn’t get to stay with her sister, either.
And she pretended not to care.
“What’s going to happen to them?” Santos asked, arms wrapped around herself as she watched the two small girls huddled on the bed. They’d both been patients, but all the separate exams and questioning had been completed and they needed the beds so they’d been placed in peds together to free up space.
Abuse. Sexual and physical. Neglect. Things Robby hated to see, but had seen too much of in his thirty years as a doctor.
They were just waiting for CYF to come take the kids. The parents had been arrested earlier.
It never got any easier.
“CYF will come collect them soon,” said Kiara. She was quiet. Robby knew she hated this part of the job. It was always the hardest part. “They’re just finishing some paperwork and getting a family lined up. They’ll get taken care of.”
Santos scoffed. “Sure. They splitting them up?” she bit out.
“They don’t like to separate siblings if they can help it,” Robby told her. He’d seen it plenty of times to know the script by now. “They’ll have an emergency foster family so they don’t have to sleep in Susan’s office tonight. Then they’ll determine if they can go to family or be placed in a more permanent foster home.”
Santos licked her teeth. “Okay. I can go talk to them—Prepare them—”
Kiara laid a gentle hand on Santos’ shoulder and gave her a soft smile. “It’s part of my job as a social worker.”
She shrugged Kiara off. “But…”
“Hey.” Robby crouched a little to get in her eyeline. “You did good. You caught the abuse and treated them. Now it’s time to let Kiara do her part, hmm? Besides, your shift is over. You should catch up on your charting.”
“But, I need to—”
Robby shook his head, holding his hands out to start corralling her towards a station. “Come on, come on,” he said lightly. “You don’t want to stay here too late, do you?”
“No, but—”
“Ah-ah! No buts. You do your handoff?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.” He pulled out the chair for her, frowning dramatically when she didn’t automatically sit. She heaved a heavy sigh and collapsed even more dramatically into the chair, giving him a sarcastic look as he helped her push in the chair closer to the computer. “Now.” He pulled out the chair at the next station and logged in so he could do his charting, too. It wasn’t his station, but Shen was there looking through charts. Eh. He wanted to keep an eye on Santos, anyway. He didn’t like how her hands shook, or the way she brushed tears from her eyes when she thought he couldn't see her. “We’re going to chart, and then I’m taking you out for a drink. Ah-ah! What did I say about buts? That was a rough case and I’d like to take you out to decompress.”
Santos sighed again, cheek planted on her fist as she watched him put on his glasses. “Really? Drinking your problems away?”
Robby shrugged, glancing at her over his glasses and scratching at the back of his neck. “Didn’t say that. I said a drink. And food, if you’d like. I’m thinking burgers?”
“You do that with all your shitty interns?” Santos grumbled, turning back to her computer.
“Not the shitty ones, no. Only the ones I like.”
He quirked a smile at her when she turned to look at him. He ignored her, turning his attention to his charting. If she really didn’t want to go, he wouldn’t make her. They finished their charting in silence and Robby watched with no small amount of amusement as Santos texted Whitaker to let him know she wasn’t coming home quite yet and to fend for himself for dinner.
There was a bar that served burgers not too far from the hospital. It was brisk and dark outside already for being early November. They didn’t talk on the walk over or while they waited for a seat. Didn’t talk at all until they’d put in their orders and had gotten their beers back.
Robby studied Santos across from him. Honestly, it was a surprise that she had agreed to join him. He was glad for it, of course, but… He also wanted to know how to make these cases easier for her. This wasn’t the first time that she had been so shaken after a child abuse case. She was worse off when there was sexual abuse, and he had his sneaking suspicions about it. None that he wanted to make her voice, but he wanted to know how to help her.
He cleared his throat after their waitress dropped off their beers. He circled his bottle around on the table, listening for the quiet sound of glass on wood under the din of the bar. Santos fiddled with her own can across from him.
“Stop starin’ at me,” she grumbled, eyes hot as she glared up at him.
Robby cleared his throat again and looked down at his bottle. “Sorry. I guess I’m just trying to figure out where to start.”
“Hmm?”
“Had an ulterior motive,” he confessed, glancing up to gage her reaction. Her can stilled in her hands. “Just—I wanted to know how I can help you.”
“Help me?”
“Mhmm.” He took a sip, letting the beer sit on his tongue for a moment before swallowing. He leaned forward a bit so they wouldn’t be overheard. It was loud enough that they wouldn’t really be overheard, but he didn’t want to take his chances. “I’ve… noticed,” he said, pausing when she flinched but continuing anyway, because it needed to be said, “that some cases are harder for you than others. So… I just… want to help you navigate that. Figure out what we can do to make it easier for you.”
Her face twitched. Disbelief, maybe. And then she sighed and bit her lip and Robby just waited patiently for her.
She wouldn’t quite look at him. A sigh shuddered out of her as her finger traced along the rim of her can. “I was in foster care for… most of my childhood,” she started slowly. “I was nine the first time. Got bounced around. Got separated from my baby sister… And then we got returned to our mother.” She swallowed thickly. “She got remarried while we… And then he… Uh. Yeah. I had this friend and he liked to…”
Robby reached out a tentative hand, but didn’t quite touch. His hands fluttered uselessly in front of hers. He could take a guess what her stepfather liked to do. “You don’t have to say, Trinity,” he said quietly, voice thick as he took his hand back. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”
“Yeah. Well.” She sniffed, using the back of her wrist to wipe at her nose. She turned away, eyes watering. “Got taken away again at twelve. I didn’t see my sister again until she turned eighteen and I was in med school. Just a few years ago. They, uh… Wouldn’t let me take her.”
“Thank you for sharing that.” Robby drew in his own shuddering breath, considering. His own time in foster care wasn’t that bad. Circumstances weren’t nearly as bad, either. “My parents were murdered when I was two,” he offered. Santos watched him with wide eyes. “So I grew up with my grandparents. My grandfather died on my tenth birthday,” he said, trying to play it off humorously. From Santos’ horrified look, he missed the mark. “My grandmother died a few years later. I didn’t have any other family, so I went into foster care, too. Only had the one home, though. Duke.” Robby laughed, shaking his head at the memories. How Duke taught him how to fix a car, fix a motorcycle, do his taxes, how to balance a checkbook. In another life, he probably would have been a mechanic, too. “More of a roommate situation than him doing any real parenting. Taught me how to be a man, though. Prepared me for college and how to handle money and all that shit.”
He waved his bottle around carelessly at her trembling lip. He didn’t know what else to say.
Santos, though, murmured, “I’m sorry that happened to you.”
He tipped his beer bottle at her and she tapped her can against his glass. “At least Duke is still kickin’ around. Gonna help me restore a motorcycle.”
“My mom’s too mean to die,” Santos joked. “Unfortunately. She’s in prison, though.”
Robby chuckled under his breath. “Happens sometimes.”
Santos finished her beer and heaved a sigh. “I just need to—suck it up, I guess. I’m just being stupid.”
Robby kissed his teeth, considering. He didn’t usually make it a habit of opening up to people. Santos was the only one from work who knew he’d been in foster care. Not even Jack or Dana knew. It just… never came up before. He drew in a breath, said, “Intubating older men—specifically fathers—is one of the things about this job that hits me the hardest. Duke may have been my foster dad, but we never had that kind of relationship. But… Uh. Dr. Adamson. Monty—He was like my dad when I joined the Pitt.” The breath shuddered in his throat. He had to swallow around the knot in his throat and he couldn’t look at Santos. “He died. During Covid. I was the one who turned off the ECMO. So… Intubation and turning off…” He cleared his throat, thanking their waitress as she set their food down. Waited for her to leave with another round of beers ordered before continuing. “I wanna say it gets easier, but… It doesn’t, really. You can find ways to try to cope, though. And you can lean on people. You can lean on me.”
“Do you?” she asked around a bite of her burger.
“Do I what?”
“Lean on people?”
He licked his teeth, giving her a little laugh. “No. No, I do not.”
“Why would I follow advice you don’t use yourself?” she asked, more teasing than serious. Her eyebrow was raised in challenge.
“Touché.” He took a fry and twirled it, watching it whirl between his fingers. “You should follow it because I don’t.”
“Yeah, okay.” And then she lowered her burger and looked up at him earnestly. “It’s nice to know I’m not alone, though. Even though it’s not exactly the same…”
“Yeah,” Robby agreed, murmuring his thanks as their beers were dropped off. It was nice to know he wasn’t quite alone in that regards. Like, sure, statistically there were other doctors who had been through foster care, but Santos was the first he’d really felt a connection to about it. He picked up his beer and held it out for her to tap her can against. “To surviving?”
Santos smirked at him and tapped her can against his bottle. “To surviving.”
Robby popped his fry into his mouth and grinned.