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When Jack was serving in Afghanistan, there were long periods of time when nothing happened. And when he said nothing, Jack meant nothing. He’d follow a team out into the rough brush of the mountains and their only job was to sit and wait, either for a convoy of trucks to pass by or a rag tag group of rebels to clamber over boulders to their next village. Those recon missions, the ‘watch and wait’ kind, were the ones Jack dreaded. He could handle the action just fine. That’s when his thoughts got sharp, when he moved with clarity and purpose. Sitting in the dirt with nothing but the wind for company made him so edgy his captain threatened to leave him behind on details.
He thought about scrub brush, silent stakeouts and dry, desert heat as he watched Robby walk away, the gold chain at the back of his neck twinkling like a warning light. Not for the first time since he’d heard about the sabbatical, Jack wondered if indecision disguised as respect for their friendship would come back to haunt him. He had survived a lot, could survive a lot, but wouldn’t survive a call from a state trooper or a hotel clerk telling him a Mr. Michael Robinavitch had been involved in a terrible accident.
“You manage to talk him out of it?” Dana stood next to him, taking away the chart he’d been staring at for over ten minutes.
“No,” he said, unable to meet her eyes.
“You worried?”
The grim twist of his mouth answered her question. He was desperate to reassure her, wanted her to reassure him.
You’re worried about nothing.
He just needs a good long break from this place.
He wouldn’t do that to us.
With a light touch of her finger tips, she moved them towards the staff lounge, the chaos of the ED suddenly the last thing on his mind. For the past ten months, they, he and Dana, had been watching, waiting, observing their patient on an almost daily basis; taking his emotional temperature, examining his physical fortitude, and arriving at the conclusion that an intervention would be overkill, that their charge wasn’t in immediate danger, that another day of monitoring for the worst possible outcome would suffice.
“He’s making jokes, you know. Real funny ones,” Dana said, pouring them each a cup of coffee. “Told Whitaker that if he didn’t come back, he could have his swinging bachelor pad.”
“When?”
“Just now. Whitaker told me.”
It had glanced off him at the time, he’d been too worried about Hiro, but he remembered Robby dismissing Al-Hashimi. I won’t be here long enough to find out.
“It’s textbook stuff,” Dana said. “Handing off the ED, giving Whitaker his keys. Not wearing a god damn helmet.”
“He’s not like that,” Jack said, but Dana caught a niggle of doubt.
“You sure?”
Jack sipped his coffee, bitter and weak at the same time. During PittFest, Dana had begged him with her eyes to do something, to help Robby. When she looked at him now, her eyes didn’t implore but they questioned. “Leaving might be the best thing for him,” Dana said. “Maybe he needs to get as far away from this place as possible.”
“You really think that?”
“He’s trapped,” she said, tone apologetic, like somehow it was an indictment on Jack. “He’s trapped in here, with us, with all his ghosts. Pretty soon he’ll turn into a ghost himself.”
He imagined Robby wandering the halls of the Pitt like he did now, heavy, looming, unable to ever leave.“How about you, you worried about him?”
“Yes.” Dana didn’t hesitate. “That’s not new. I worry about him, worry about you, worry about these new little chickens all over my ED.”
Jack spoke, working to keep his voice even. “You worried he’s going to do something stupid?”
“Are you?”
When she said it like that, Jack’s heart kicked up, rapid fire, like an arrhythmia. “I don’t know.”
“That’s not a ‘no.’”
His second year in the service, when he was just out of basic and on the cusp of his first deployment, Jack had been sitting in the mess hall on an average Tuesday, halfheartedly complaining about the food, when a sergeant he didn’t know sitting three seats over had jumped up, tackled an MP and grabbed his gun. Fork still mid-way to his mouth, Jack had watched the sergeant's face contort as he raised the muzzle to his temple. Trays were overthrown, food splashed along his uniform and everyone around him lunged towards the two men. Someone went after the sergeant's legs, someone else grabbed his gun arm. No shots went off, the gun secured, but the sergeant had wailed with frustrated despair, his howl something Jack would never forget. It took four men to subdue him. Two men held down his arms, another his legs, one stopped him from crashing his head into the ground.
“I don’t like him being away for so long,” Jack mumbled, finally.
“Away from you or the ED?”
He flushed, considering a lie, settling on the truth. “Me.”
“So tell him,” Dana said.
“Tell him what?”
She rolled her eyes. “Well, I’m not gonna say it if you’re not.”
With his worry in hand, Jack found himself standing at the edge of the ambulance bay, his feet stuck to the melting asphalt, unable to walk away. He was exhausted, his shoulder burning with pain, his leg chaffing from being on his feet all day. The three hours he had before his shift started weren’t going to make a dent in the way his body ached, but Jack couldn’t make himself call an Uber, couldn’t walk away knowing Robby might already be gone by the time he came back. He turned back towards the entrance, only to find Robby sitting on the low wall between the bay and the street, his brow creased, skin red with heat.
“Thought you left,” Robby said.
“I’ve been trying to.”
“Something keeping you here?”
He sat next to Robby, close enough to feel the residual heat. They stared at the peek-a-boo skyline in the distance, heat shimmer blurring their view. “This place isn’t good for you. Not right now.”
He nodded, “That’s why I’m leaving.”
“You need something different.”
“Mmmhmmm.”
“There’s a difference though,” Jack said rubbing his hands, “between running away from something and running towards something.”
“I’m not running. It’s a vacation, Jack.” His face twisted into a sly grin. “I should have brought this up earlier, but I can’t remember the last time you took a real one.”
“I take a weekend off every month,” Jack shot back, to which Robby snorted.
“That’s for the reserves. That’s just a different kind of work, Jack. And don’t tell me you have a hobby. Running around getting shot at isn’t what your therapist would call downtime.”
“You really want to talk about who’s getting therapy and who isn’t?”
Robby sighed and rubbed those big, golf ball sized knuckles. “No, I guess not.”
He knew what Dana wanted him to say; tell him you love him, tell him you want him to stay, change his life with the promise of nights spent coiled around each other. Instead Jack could only say, “It comes with you. Everything inside you right now is gonna follow you like a heavy rucksack on that bike. Putting some distance between you and this place might be for the best, but this is all inside you, man. It’ll come across the badlands.”
“I know. I’m counting on it.”
That stopped him, mid-speech. Robby twisted his hands. “It comes with me and maybe I can finally bury it, Jack. Maybe I can leave it all there.”
“It might not be that easy,” Jack whispered. “Leaving this place, this town,” he paused, swallowed, “leaving me, might not be a miracle cure.”
There was genuine surprise, sorrow that flashed across Robby’s brow. “Leaving you is the only hard part,” he said so low, so soft it disappeared into his chest. “I’m not looking for miracles.”
Jack didn’t ask what he was looking for, wondered if it was the same wordless thing Jack was also searching for, in his own way. Peace. Clarity. Absolution.
“I want to be able to sleep at night,” Robby finally said.
Jack remembered the sergeant, kicking and screaming on the floor. He’d gone feral, clawing at the men holding him down. Jack had a wild vision of tackling Robby to the concrete, sitting on his chest, till he beat Jack with his fists.
“You gonna be okay?” Jack asked.
Dipping his head, smiling that horrible, empty smile, Robby nodded. Everything felt slow, drugged. Jack wanted to call the men in white coats.
“I’m coming back,” Robby said, but it didn’t mean anything. Couldn’t mean anything if Jack had guilted him into saying it, forced him into a lie. When he turned back to Jack, there wasn’t promise or any kind of hope in his eyes, but an apology.
“Listen to me,” Jack said, suddenly desperate. He dug his fingers into Robby’s knee, hot sun lighting up the back of his hand. “I am here. I will always be here. Tell me you understand that. Don’t leave,” his voice cracked. “Don’t leave without knowing I’ll drop everything, everything Michael, to come to whatever backwater town you’re stuck in if things get harder than you can handle.” A tear slipped down the corner of his eye, and Robby nodded. “I wish I could read your mind, but I can’t. So you’re gonna have to do the hard thing. The really, really hard thing. You’re going to have to tell me when you need help. You’ll have to call. I can guess, I can try, I can check in every day, but the heavy load is on you, brother. Tell me you need help, Michael. Tell me you need help and I will be there.”
Robby shook his head violently, blowing out wet breath. “I will, Jack. I will.”
“God damn it, please.”
Robby nodded again, shifting away from Jack’s touch, like he couldn’t bear the pressure. Jack could do it now, call Mercy or Persby, ask for their in-patient services and have Robby hate him forever. Instead, he took Robby’s hand and held it against his own heart. It hammered in his chest, pounded against the cage of his ribs, like an overheated steam engine.
Robby splayed his hand against Jack’s chest and for a brief moment, shut his eyes. Jack covered Robby’s hand with his own and pressed down firm. “Michael, you don’t have to go.”
Like the sergeant, Robby’s face buckled in pain before he slid his hand away and got up. “Wait for me,” he said, walking back into the Pitt. “If that’s not asking too much.”
Jack watched him walk away a second time, the chill of uncertainty chasing away the summer heat. He closed his eyes and lifted his face to the sun, let it warm his hair, his ears, the bridge of his nose. He could wait, he told himself. He could wait.