Work Text:
Beep.
Crap.
Beep.
Shit.
Beep.
What the actual f—
Dennis stared at the badge scanner, perplexed. He swiped his card again, waiting for the green light.
Beep.
Nothing. He tried again.
Beep.
“Whitaker?”
The ambulance bay access door opened and Cassie walked out. “Heyyyy!” Dennis said happily. “The…freaking badge thing…s’not working.”
“Yeah, Looks like it. Can I, uh, see your badge?” A weird request, but Dennis was happy enough to comply. He liked Cassie because he could tell she was a good mom, just by the way she talked about her son. It felt nice when Cassie smiled at him, told him good job after talking him through a new procedure. Her eyebrows went funny as she stared up at him from beneath her long bangs. “Well, no wonder it wasn’t working, this is your driver’s license.”
Dennis squinted at the card in his hand. “Oh.”
“What are you doin’ here, bud?”
“I’m lookin’ for Dr. Robby.”
“Yeah? He’s, uh, off shift, just like you.”
“I need tuh…ask him a quesshon.”
“Oh, boy. Okay, Dennis, let’s get you to a room and look at your hand first.”
“My hand?”
“It’s bleeding.” He looked down at his hand and flipped it over, trying to find the blood. “Your other hand.” Cassie gently lifted Dennis’ left hand up over his heart and wrapped a towel around it before he could get a look at the damage. “Jesus, you’re freezing. You don’t have a coat? It’s snowing!”
Dennis was slowly realizing how he was drunk…drunk was how he…how drunk he was. “Ohhh…oh, no…shouldn’t be here…I need…t’go home.” He pulled away, but Cassie had a firm grip as she steered him further into the pitt.
“Nope, you’re staying here for a bit. Here, sit.” She pushed him down into one of the exam chairs and grabbed a blanket from the warmer to wrap around his shoulders. “Better?”
“That’s so warm,” he breathed. “How did you do that?”
“Oh, lord. How much have you had to drink?”
Dennis blinked. He couldn’t really remember. He thought the night had started with some beers, but…had he gone out? There was that bottle of whiskey hidden in his nightstand…maybe that…“I think it was like…half full?”
“What was half full? Dennis? What were you drinking tonight?”
“Hm?”
“Do you know how you hurt your hand?”
“I…didn’t?”
Cassie lifted his left hand up to eye-level again, and oh…his stomach rolled at the sight of blood dripping down his wrist from totally saturated gauze. “There’s some glass and gravel in the cuts.”
“There was a car. I think I was c-crossing the street?”
“Did you get hit by a car, Dennis?”
She was saying his name a lot. Like, a lot. That was weird. “Uh. No. Just knocked me’over. Dropped my hooch.” Dennis giggled a little. Hooch was a funny word.
“Scale of 1-10, how badly does it hurt?”
“It doesnnn’t.” He was still staring at his hand, which she was layering with more gauze.
She sighed heavily. “Okay. Blood test and a banana bag first. And a temperature,” she added, squeezing his knee. “Jesse’s workin’ tonight, I’ll grab him.” The curtain swooshed open and closed again, and Dennis leaned back in the chair, wrapping the blanket around his shoulders. He was getting a little cold. Or warm? Something.
Jesse came back with a banana bag and IV setup, but had forgotten to grab the vials for the blood draw and left again to get them. Dennis saw the bag and his fingers twitched. He should…he should help, right? Practice his IVs? He was one-handed, but…Dr. Robby could probably do it one handed. And Dennis had a really easy vein on the inside of his left arm. He grabbed the catheter and held it to his arm, readjusting for 20˚ and…missed. Ouch. He tried again. Ouch. He tried again.
Jesse came back in time for the third ouch. “What the hell, man? What are you doing?”
“Practicing.”
“Ah. Cassie said you were a little drunk. Let me take care of you, okay? Give me the catheter—thank you—and your arm—other arm.” The less bloody one. Jesse slid the IV in on the first try, and opened up the flow valve on the bag of fluids. “And a vial for the lab.” The man was a legend with a needle, Dennis needed to remember to ask for tips next time…if he even remembered anything from tonight. Jesse took his temperature and frowned, grabbing a second blanket from the warmer to drape over his legs. “You good? Need anything else?”
“I need to talk to Dr. Robby.”
“…right. Uh, I’m going to get Cassie back. Hang tight.”
Hang tiiiiggghhhttt. Jesse was so cool. Dennis wished he could be half as cool. Maybe someday, if he let Trinity cut his hair like she was always begging him. “Dennis?” Cassie was back. “Time to stitch up your hand.”
“I need to talk to Dr. Robby.”
“You said that. Anything I can help with?”
Dennis frowned. “I need to talk to Dr. Robby.” There was a bite to his words that he hadn’t intended, but he had come here tonight for a reason, and no one…no one was helping him.
“He’s not here right now, Dennis, it’s 3 AM. Maybe after we get you fixed up, you can go home and get a bit of sleep, and then call him in the morning?”
The words weren’t fully penetrating. All Dennis heard was go home, so he shrugged the blankets off and swung his legs over the side of the chair, pausing a bit when the room spun. “Yeahhokayyy,” he slurred.
“Woah, Dennis, stop. Back on the bed, yeah? Just…uh, you know what, stay put. I’m going to see if I can find…someone.”
“Dr. Robby?”
“Maybe,” she said cryptically, pulling the blankets back up around him. “Keep these on, I’ll be right back.” Dennis studied the pattern of the curtain that Cassie had closed around him. It was some kind of spirally print, and it just kept going, and going, and going…it was making him dizzy. He jumped when the curtain was dragged back, and squinted up at…Dr. Abbot? Holy shit, was he in trouble?
“Whitaker,” the man said evenly. “Cassie said you had something you wanted to talk about?” Dennis bit his lip. Abbot seemed…angry, maybe? “Kid?”
“Uh,” he said dumbly.
“Robby is home sleeping. If I need to wake him up, I can, but why don’t you tell me what this is about while I sew up your hand?”
That…made sense. Dr. Robby was sleeping, because it was stupid early in the morning, because Dennis had spent like six hours drinking, because he couldn’t sleep, because…he shook his head. “It’s nothin’.”
“Had to be something important, since you’re blackout drunk and wandering the streets in the middle of the night on a Tuesday.” Dr. Abbot was examining his hand, cleaning up some of the blood. “I may not be Robby, but I’m pretty good at listening.”
Dennis considered that. Dr. Abbot seemed nice enough; Dennis didn’t really know him. Maybe he could just…try. “Have you heard about the guy that got a heart transplant, and suddenly, like, fell in love with classical music? And he became a totally different person, and had a whole—” Dennis waved his free hand around in the air “—like a whole personality switch.”
“There was an article in JAMA, I think. Something about cellular memory.”
“Do you believe in it?”
“Dunno. I suppose anything’s possible. Lido coming in.”
Dennis didn’t even feel the injection, even though he saw the needle sinking into his palm. “Do you think it works for livers?”
“Livers? Not sure why it’d be any different, it’s all organs. But I guess you could get philosophical about it, if you want to, about where the stuff that makes you you resides.” Jack looked up at Dennis, searching. “What’s got you thinking about liver transplants at 3 AM?”
The alcohol that had been swirling his mind all night seemed to burn off in an instant, leaving Dennis bathed in a cool clarity as he watched Dr. Abbot pick glass out of the cut in his hand. “My brother.”
“Yeah? He need a liver?”
“Yeah.”
Cassie had snuck back in the room and was leaning against the wall, observing. “Does he need a personality transplant too?” she asked mirthfully.
Dennis almost smiled, but the humor couldn’t fight its way past his distress. “…yeah.” A tear slipped from his eye without realizing it, and Dennis jerked his (good) hand up to wipe it away. He prayed that Cassie and Dr. Abbot would ignore it.
“Let me guess,” Abbot said drily. “He asked for a bit of yours?”
“Uh…” Dennis swallowed hard. If only it had been that easy. “No. Well, not him. My mom…she did. I don’t really talk to him, anymore, ever since…” he trailed off. This is why he wanted Robby. “They’re Missouri synod. Um, Lutheran, but like, really strict. And I’m…I like…” men, his brain supplied. The word sat on the tip of his tongue, but he didn’t need to finish for Abbot to start nodding.
“Robby knows? About you?” Dennis nodded. “I’m going to call him, okay? Get him over here. McKay, can you stitch him up and get another temp?”
“Sure thing.” She dabbed at the last of the blood on his hand and opened a suture pack. Dennis stared as the edges of the cut came together under Cassie’s practiced hands. He remembered learning about the J-shaped incision of a liver donation in a class last year, stretching down the center of the belly and curving left. Or right, if you were the patient looking down at yourself. “How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Hm?”
“Are you feeling cold? Does your hand hurt? Head? Anything else?” He shook his head, not feeling much of anything. “Do you want to lay down for a bit, until Robby gets here?”
“No,” he murmured. “M’okay.”
“Want me to stay with you? It’s dragging tonight, I totally could.”
“No, thank you.”
“Alright. I’m going to check on you soon, though, I promise.” She rubbed his shoulder softly, her hand lingering to scruff up the soft blanket so it snugged closer to his cheek. The thought from earlier came again, unbidden. Cassie was a really good mom.
He had never really thought of his own mother as a bad mom…she just was busy. She had five boys and a husband to feed and care for, and held down a part time job as a remote medical transcriptionist on the side, to help pay the bills. She was a saint. She loved all her kids equally.
Well, she said she did.
It wasn’t a surprise that she had been the one to ask. “I had them test me first” she had said when she called. “Before your father or any of your brothers. They tested me first. But none of us were a match. Lee can’t get on the registry, because of…because of the drinking, Denny.” She had taken a deep, wavering breath that Dennis knew hid tears. “Your brother needs you. Your family needs you.”
They hadn’t acknowledged the elephant in the room, that Dennis hadn’t spoken to his brother in years. They never did, because acknowledging it would mean that they would have had to confront the truth.
Dennis was gay.
Dennis was gay, and his brother Lee had been arrested five years earlier for spray painting the word faggot cock sucker on the car of some poor kid in the next town over who had made the mistake of coming out in rural Nebraska. There hadn’t been any consequences, but it changed things in the Whitaker family. Dennis’ relationship with his brother grew frosty, and although his family was too polite (or too far in denial) to force Dennis’ secret into the open, they all knew what he was. A faggot cock sucker.
It had been easiest for everyone when he left for college. Dennis could tell the tension in the house had lifted, because his Mom sounded happier on the phone and his other brothers texted him about the Huskers again, like they actually missed having him around. He had driven home for Christmas every year, and they would fake being a normal happy family, eating turkey and chopping down the tree from their wooded acre.
Util this last Christmas, when he hadn’t returned to Nebraska. He was sick of having to make himself small, and meek, and straight, in order to make his family happy, so he stayed in Pittsburgh…and he ended up miserable anyways. Late on Christmas Eve, Robby had asked why Dennis had volunteered for shift, and Dennis, in a less-than-festive mood, had let the story pour out of him.
So, Robby knew. He knew. He wasn’t the only one who knew; Dennis had drunkenly confessed his queerness to Trinity on, like, their third night living together. But if he told her this, Trinity would tell Dennis to fuck ‘em, let his brother fucking die without a second fucking thought. Her family was different.
Dennis huffed out a breath and wiped away some tears that he hadn’t noticed falling. The blankets had lost their warmth, and the banana bag had curbed the drunkenness enough that his hand was starting to throb. He leaned backwards in the chair, pulling the blankets closer against the chill that was freezing him from the inside out.
He was a few slow blinks from sleep when the curtain shrrrrked open, revealing Cassie with more warm blankets. “Hey, Dennis, how are you doing?” He stared up at her, mind working too slowly to come up with a response. “You with me, bud?”
“Yeah,” he whispered.
“Let me get those cold blankets off, good, thank you…and then get these on…there. Feeling warmer?” He nodded. “How’s your hand?”
“Iss fine,” he slurred.
She stared at him, in that deep discerning way she liked to use on patients, then nodded. “Robby’s on his way, okay? Any minute now.”
Dennis nodded again, but his stomach flipped. Robby was coming. Robby had gotten out of bed, at 3AM, because Dennis had asked him too. Shit. Oh, shit, what had he done? Robby was going to be pissed. He’d be too nice to say anything, but…shit.
Shit, shit, shit, shit.
“Whitaker?”
Shit.
“Dr. Robby,” Whitaker murmured.
Robby shut the curtain behind him and stepped closer, scanning into the terminal so he could see Whitaker’s chart. He looked at Dennis over the top of his glasses. “How are you feeling, Dennis?”
“Um.” His mind was molasses again, thoughts getting stuck before they could make their way out.
To his embarrassment, Robby picked up the thermometer and held it to Dennis’ head to get a reading. “Almost 97,” he said. “Your blankets still warm enough?”
“Yeah.”
“Abbot told me he looked at your hand, nothing too bad.” Dennis looked at it too, running the fingers of his good hand over the bandage as Robby pulled a wheely stool over and sat down. “So. You gonna tell me what’s going on?”
“I’m sorry for getting you out of bed. I was…I’m…”
“A little drunk?”
“…sauced,” Dennis admitted with a wry smile.
“It’s okay.” Robby’s voice was so gentle; Dennis wanted to puke. “You feeling better now?”
“I guess. A little more, you know, with it.”
“Jack said you had something important to talk to me about.”
“My brother…he’s, uh…sick.”
“Lee?”
Robby remembered? Dennis’s mouth hung open longer than he would have wanted if he was sober. “Um. Yeah, Lee. He has cirrhosis…ALD, an’ he needs a transplant. He…well…my mom called me…she asked…” Robby’s glance traveled down to where Dennis’s good hand was covering his abdomen protectively.
“She asked if you would donate?”
Dennis nodded.
“And you didn’t say yes?”
“I…I didn’t know what to say. Told ‘er I’d think about it.”
“And how’s that going?”
“Got drunk instead.” Dennis glanced up at the bag of fluids, which had run empty, and reached over with shaking fingers to unhook the IV.
“You might not even be a match.”
Dennis smiled ruefully. “I am. Same blood type.”
“Well, no one can force you to donate.”
“No,” Dennis agreed. He stared at the curtains again, too many thoughts swirling around in his brain. “Do you think people can change?”
“Hell of a question, kid.” Robby was studying Dennis, his gaze careful and measured. “I think people can change, if they want to, but not everyone does.”
“Lee doesn’t want to change. He’s proud of himself. Everyone in the town is. When he defaced that car, they thought it was hilarious. He says, just, vile things, and people agree with him. Even my mom, she just sort of smiles and shakes her head.” Dennis wasn’t sure if it was the memories or the receding drunkenness, but he suddenly felt nauseous.
It must have shown on his face because Robby grabbed an emesis bag from the holder on the wall. “You need Zofran?”
“No.” Dennis closed his eyes for a second, but the room started to spin even worse, so he opened them again and planted his hands flat on the bed until the nausea quieted. “He’s not a bad person. Not like, bad bad. He’s never beat anyone up. He doesn’t deserve to die because he can’t find a liver. I just wish that I didn’t have to give him mine. I don’t want any part of me inside him.” The nausea was back again. “Not if he’s like that.”
“When’s the last time you talked to him?”
“About three years ago? Right before med school. They threw a party for me, before I left, and Lee said…he said don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. But it was more like a threat, you know?” Robby made a soft noise of agreement. “I see him at Christmas, and it’s like he knows…about me. He’ll walk out of room if we’re the only ones left. I don’t even know why he wants my…my gay fucking faggot liver.”
Robby winced. “I’m sure you’ve thought about what happens if you don’t donate.”
“Then he dies, and I’m free to live my life. Except I won’t just have lost a brother, I’ll have lost my whole family. They’d never forgive me, an’ I don’t think I’d forgive myself.”
“There’s a psych eval,” Robby said carefully. “Before you donate, there’s a whole battery of tests. If you fail one, you’re ineligible. And with HIPAA, no one would know which one.”
“I’d know, an’ I’d never be able to look my mom in the eye again.” They settled into silence. Dennis leaned back, staring at the ceiling. His head felt less fuzzy, but…he kind of wanted the fuzziness back. Things were feeling a little too clear. “And I don’t want him—I don’t want any of them—to pretend that they love me, or care about me, or accept me, just because I gave them a pound of flesh.”
“What if it really does change him?”
Dennis tilted his head to glance at Robby suspiciously. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”
Robby shrugged. “No. But I’m a cynic. You’re the optimist here.”
“Not today.”
After another minute of silence, Robby sighed. “It doesn’t sound like you have a lot of options, kid.”
Dennis huffed humorlessly. “That’s the whole point. There are no options; they’re stealing my liver, right out from under me. I wish…” he cut himself off, not quite ready to say it out loud. “My mom raised us to be generous, and kind, and to put family above anything, and God above that. It’s funny…how people interpret things differently, because Lee and I were raised in the same house, by the same woman…but if the roles were reversed…”
“You don’t think he’d do the same?”
“I honestly don’t know. Family means something to me.” Ever since Christmas, he had been thinking about exactly what that something was, and if he’d be able to find it again if…when…he came out. And until that time, he was going to hang on to them tooth and nail. “I just don’t know if I mean as much to them as they do to me. I wish…I wish I knew, for sure, that if they would love me if…” he couldn’t say it out loud, still.
“I’m sorry you’re going through this, Dennis.”
Dennis hummed. “Thank you. Thanks for comin’ in, I’m sorry for waking you, I wasn’t really, uh…in my right mind, and I know the decision was already, like, made, but I think you…helped,” he finished lamely.
“I’m glad. How’s the hand?”
“Throbbing. I’ll take some ibuprofen when I get home…you think I can get out of here?”
“I’ll check. I don’t see any reason to keep you.” Robby stood up and stretched, then drew open the curtain. Dennis scrubbed his good hand over his face, exhaustion hitting him. He’d have to call Trinity for a ride home, and she wasn’t going to be happy with him…about any of this. There was an alternative that was mildly appealing…heading to the bar across the street and resuming his drinking where he had left off three hours ago.
Robby returned with his paperwork, followed by Cassie. She took his temp again and nodded. “Almost back to normal. You feelin’ better?”
Dennis nodded. “Thank you, Cassie.”
She rubbed his thigh and gave it a small squeeze, the tenderness surprising him. “Glad you’re okay. You got a ride home? Trinity on her way?”
“I’ve got him,” Robby said quietly. “I’m headed out anyways, need to swing by my house before shift.”
“That’s okay, Dr. Robby, I can call—”
“For the sake of future patient satisfaction scores, let’s let Dr. Santos sleep.”
Dennis smiled ruefully and let himself be led to Dr. Robby’s car. They arrived at his apartment not fifteen minutes later, Dennis unlocking his door as the sun rose. “Dennis—” Robby started. “Even though it doesn’t feel like a choice, it still is. And for what it’s worth, I think you’re making the right one.”
Dennis blushed. It had been a hell of a night, and to hear that from his mentor was…nice. “Thank you, again…for everything. I’m sorry—”
“It’s fine,” Robby interrupted quickly. “You’re not alone in this. Whatever you decide, I’ll be there for you—we all will.” He didn’t say it, but Dennis felt it. Everyone in the pitt, everyone that had taken care of him tonight…it was family of a different sort.
And they would always have his back.