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The front wheels of the hospital issued wheelchair got caught on the door frame as he tried to wheel through his new (temporary) accommodation; he’d tried, even begged for, crutches, for that tiny scrap of independence, but the Physiotherapist had just told him he ‘wasn’t ready yet’.
Wasn’t ready…
He hadn’t been ready to lose his foot either, or to have his career as an Army Medic cut short, but that hadn’t stopped those from happening. He hadn’t been ready to become a widower at just thirty-two either, but it seemed God had other plans; Over all the years Jack’s been alive, he’d always been a devout Christian, a firm believer in a higher power of some kind, of righteousness and Heaven and Hell. Raised in a conservative Catholic family, he hadn’t known anything other than Church every Sunday, smart shoes always polished the night before while his older sisters cleaned the house with Mom and while his Dad sat slumped in his armchair, one hand clinging to a cold glass bottle of beer, condensation covering his fingers. Jack had been the only son, but he’d been shorter than all the other kids in his grade, born premature, always catching colds, always trying to catch up, and that - to his father - automatically made Jack a disappointment.
Jack still remembers being thirteen, coming home from Baseball and hearing his father drunkenly complaining to his mom about him: too small, too chubby, too shy, too weak, like a faggot-
He hadn’t cried at the time - that would just be another thing for his father to hate - no, he’d decided that was it. He wasn’t going to be small or chubby or shy or weak or any of the other insults he’d heard about himself dozens of times before; he was going to be strong - strong enough that his father would never lay hands on him again - assertive and confident, arrogant even. The Army would straighten him out, toughen him up, make him a real man. The Army would save him.
The day he’d told his father he was going to join up was the day his father told him he was proud of him for the first time. Over the course of the next five years leading up to his eighteenth birthday, his father obsessed over the idea of his son enlisting; his son would be honourable, strong, finally deserving of his love. His father had taken him to the gym every day after school, sent him on runs every morning, taken him to the boxing gym every weekend, made him join every sports team his high school offered, and had actually smiled at him whenever Jack got in the car after training.
It was working - Jack was gaining muscle, losing the chubby belly that his mother used to rub until he fell asleep, he could run for miles and miles, could take down classmates twice his height in schoolboy fights, his father stopped hitting him with the belt, they actually… got along for once. He taught Jack how to drive manual transmission, taught him the ins and outs of engines and machines (his father was a Mechanic, the sole provider for the family). And then? Then the army looked at his grades, his smarts, and said they’d take him as more than just a soldier; they’d take him as a Combat Medic, send him through Medical School and pay for the full damn thing.
And so Jack was the first in his family to go to College, the first to move out of Louisiana. His older sisters stayed in Louisiana, of course, settled down with husbands - Beth was pregnant with her first born when Jack had left, and Mary was trying for a baby with her husband at the time too. Because that’s how their parents had raised them; Boys make something of their lives and become men, girls have a duty to settle down and become wives and mothers, nothing more than that.
College had been great; Jack was popular (if that even counted for anything past high school), smart, had his share of fun and stories to tell in the future, and met one of his best friends there; Michael Robinavitch, or Robby, as he preferred to be called. Jack had thought he went by ‘Robby’ simply because nobody could pronounce ‘Robinavitch’ correctly, so he’d learned the exact way to say it and always made a point of saying Robby’s full name… until he found out that Michael just preferred ‘Robby’... then he’d looked like a right ass. But Jack and Robby were inseparable; they were roommates after the first year, and they evolved - gradually, over time - to… something more.
Robby was exactly the kind of guy Jack’s father had raised him to hate; Jewish, not interested in sports, raised by his grandmother and thus making him ‘feminine’ and a ‘sissy boy’. But Jack didn’t care. His father was hundreds of miles away, probably sitting in his armchair with a beer dripping onto the floor, half asleep in front of some game show, an ashtray on the coffee table.
Jack and Robby’s first kiss wasn’t planned, but it wasn’t rejected either. It had been Jack who had kissed Robby - arrogant, overconfident, a bruised graze on one cheek and a split lip from a bar fight not even an hour beforehand. Jack was the troublemaker, Robby was the one who had to patch him up every time. Jack had been sat on the kitchen counter, Robby fiddling with the first aid kit, checking for fractures or whatever under what little light there was; Jack had leaned forward, curls flopping down in front of his face, arms flexing and smashed his lips into Robby’s - it hadn’t been gentle, it had been frenzied, like at any moment Jack had expected his father to burst in, like Jack had been ready to scramble away, to throw a punch and shout a slur and go to Confession and then just pretend it never happened…
But it did happen. And it happened again, and again, and again.
Then Med School came to an end; Robby went off to do his Residency, Jack went off on his first deployment - they didn’t even have one another’s phone numbers anymore. Just a pat on the back outside their old accommodation block, and then a parting of ways.
It didn’t take Jack long, after coming back from his first tour overseas, to settle down with his own wife; all the other men in his unit told him a wife was important, kept photos of their wives and families tucked under their caps; the one that really stuck with him was a Sergeant John Henderson - mid thirties, deemed by the other men in his unit to be a psycho - who had come into Jack’s makeshift OR (a tent on a somewhat clean patch of sand) with two bullets wedged in his shoulder, and another wedged in his bowel. Sergeant Henderson was the first patient Jack lost out there, and the entire time he was bleeding out as Jack worked on him, he’d been screaming and crying for his wife, begging Jack to call her, to bring her there - in the end, he’d settled for holding the photo he had of her between his bloodstained fingers, praying to a God that Jack had still believed in at the time. Jack had asked his commanding officers if he could be the one to call Henderson’s wife, but they’d refused his request.
So Jack got married - Georgia, her name was. A girl from the grade above in High School - they’d reconnected when Jack went back to Louisiana after his first deployment. It took two months of dating until Jack was down on one knee at near midnight in the park across from their old High School. She’d said yes, of course, and they were wed within the year - just a small ceremony, Jack’s mom and sisters and their husbands - his father had passed from lung cancer while Jack was overseas. It had been quick - Jack got the letter from his mother that his father had been diagnosed in July, and by November he was gone.
Jack hadn’t even been that upset by it - he hadn’t even come home for the funeral, he hadn’t cried, he might’ve even been… relieved. But he never told anybody that.
Not even a month after the wedding, Jack was back on deployment, signing up for as many stints overseas as he could. Georgia understood… probably. She never complained about it, she just made the most of the time she had with her husband, and made the most of the pay checks he sent home. Then, in April of 2007, she told Jack she was pregnant, just days before he was to leave on another tour. He’d tried to negotiate with his Commanding Officers, but they shot him down, refused to give him time off to be with his pregnant wife. So he’d gone on tour. Received letters from Georgia every week telling him about her symptoms, sending him copies of the Ultrasounds. He counted down the days until the baby’s due date, thinking about the kind of dad he could be, thinking about how he could teach this kid everything he knew, how this kid was going to be his whole world.
He kept photographs of Georgia and the ultrasound photos tucked in his cap all the time, just like what the other men did with their own families.
But July of 2008 ruined all that. There were no letters for three weeks; then he got called into his Major’s office, sat down with a box of tissues set on the desk between him and his superior.
“Captain Abbot,” the Major had begun, not even looking Jack in the eye - they weren’t close at all, this was probably only their third or fourth interaction, “I have unfortunate news regarding your wife and your unborn child…”
Jack’s heart had been ready to beat out of his chest right then and there as he nodded, blood rushing away from his face as he considered the word ‘unfortunate’. His voice was squeaky like he was that chubby thirteen year old again, and not a war hardened army medic with years of experience under his belt now. He raised one eyebrow, prompting his superior to go on, not quite trusting his own voice.
“Your wife suffered a miscarriage on the 24th of June,” the Major continued, a solemn look on his face as Jack’s entire world fell apart in front of him, “And unfortunately there were complications involved, and she died.”
There it was again… ‘unfortunately’ as though this was a simple thing of bad luck, like dropping your keys down a drain or missing the last bus home.
Georgia - sweet, kind, lovely, beautiful Georgia, who had never complained, had never begged Jack to stay, who had not a bad bone in her body - had been taken from him, their child along with her. A child who was supposed to have the brightest future Jack could offer them, who was supposed to grow up to be brilliant, loved and cared for.
The seconds, minutes and hours passed like years after he walked out of that office, though it was only a few days until his next ‘unfortunate’ event occurred. Jack couldn’t wait to… die. To go to the afterlife and be with Georgia and their child… but would he even go to Heaven? He saved people every day without thanks, sure, but could that make up for everything he had done as a teenager under his father's influence? Could that justify every fight he’d been in, every time he’d run from consequence, from people who loved him - Robby, Georgia, God only knew who else…
Finally, on July 4th, just days after he’d received the news, he almost got his wish to die. Spirits had been high that day - with the other men, at least - Independence Day reminding them all exactly why they were there. Men were laughing, joking, messing around - morale was higher than it had been in months, promises of extra rations that evening and maybe even some beer and whiskey. Jack didn’t care.
He’d been patching up a young man - Private Jacobs who’d cut his hand on a piece of barbed wire - when it all happened. Jacobs had been whinging about stitches, he was squeamish, twenty-nine years old - only a few years younger than Jack, so he didn’t know quite why he thought of him as a ‘kid’. The noise came right as Jacobs was sniffling about the antiseptic stinging - a noise that sounded like fireworks, like Independence Days long gone back home in Louisiana, colours exploding into the night sky overhead, messing around with the other kids and the firework rockets, fighting over who got to light them.
Except there was no bright, vivid, beautiful colours overhead, no sound of the National Anthem, and the only USA flags hung nearby were flag posts of aggression, not pride.
Jack got blasted off his feet, sent back flying into the tarp walls of the makeshift OR. He was barely conscious, fields of white and black in his vision as he crawled to shield Jacobs, who was no longer whimpering but screaming fully. He shielded Jacobs like how he should’ve been able to shield his wife, his unborn child, if only he’d pushed harder to stay home from deployment – he would’ve been able to catch the symptoms, he could’ve saved Georgia, maybe he could’ve even saved their baby.
Everything felt too bright, too dark, too vivid, too dull, too dry, too wet… gunfire sounded in his ears, as well as the voices of men, shouting things like “IED” and “I can’t fuckin’ see… are there any casualties in there?”
Jack didn’t even have the energy to scream or cry out – he’d begged God for death, and now it was staring him right in the face… it almost felt inviting, knowing he could leave, give up, stop fighting. He’d been fighting since the day he was born, and now death felt like his reward.
But Jacobs kept screaming and crying out – he wasn’t badly injured, Jack had taken the brunt of the explosion, Jacobs just had what was likely a few broken ribs and a nasty concussion, on top of that hand that he’d come to the tent needing treatment for in the first place. It was Jack who was bleeding out, Jack who was dying. And that was just how it should’ve been.
What happened after that, Jack only remembers in fragments – being airlifted out, taken to Germany to Landstuhl Regional Medical Centre, waking up in the OR for just a few moments, then being subsequently knocked out just seconds later. No next of kin was called – it was still Georgia, and she wasn’t there.
The first full, lucid moment Jack had was in the ICU at Landstuhl, waking up in unimaginable pain, but not even crying out, just accepting the agony for what it was; he could’ve sworn he heard his father’s footsteps thundering down the hall towards him, leather belt swishing in his hand, buckle jangling as it shook. Everything felt… wrong, out of place. Like Jack had been taken apart and put back together without an instruction manual, inside out, and like he was also on fire…
That moment of lucidity only lasted a little while though, as then he was in the recovery ward, being talked at by Surgeons and Physical Therapists who said words like ‘below knee amputation’ and ‘severe second degree burns’ and ‘internal organ damage’ and ‘possible long term neurological effects’. They spoke as though Jack wasn't a doctor himself, but he didn’t bother correcting them, because that would involve admitting that he was listening, and admitting that this was actually happening, and admitting that he was, in fact, still alive.
Jack got shipped back to the USA a few weeks later, weeks spent mute and ignoring everyone around him, ignoring the world around him, ignoring his own needs and his own body. Jack didn’t have an official place of residence now; the Landlord (asshole) of his and Georgia’s apartment had repossessed the place, putting all of his and Georgia’s belongings, memories, lives, into boxes shoved into a Storage Room that he would no doubt put the cost for onto Jack’s list of things to pay for. So Jack was a homeless Veteran, physically disabled, neurologically altered, with a family he hadn’t been close to since he left to go to Med School.
The Army found him a place, a little one room apartment that was tiny enough that the kitchen and living room were within the same ten square feet of space. The army called it ‘less space to have to navigate’... Jack called it a cave that they could dump him in and forget about now that he was no longer of any use to them.
So that’s how Jack found himself in his shitty hospital wheelchair, castor wheels thudding into the doorframe as he tried to both navigate the chair and the apartment. The noise was loud enough that Jack – with his still fucked up hearing from the blast (perforated eardrums) – heard it and bowed his head in shame. Jack’s baseball cap was pulled down low, covering his face and the still healing scars on it, a thick hoodie covering his torso and arms despite the August heatwave, Adidas exercise shorts on because he couldn’t get anything else over the stump despite the face that he didn’t need exercise shorts because he couldn’t exercise anymore. Behind him to the left, one of the other front doors creaked open that he didn’t hear, a tall, pale, bearded man stepping out, glasses high up on his nose, dark brown hair short and neat where it was clearly trimmed to be away from his eyes – a practical man, wearing practical clothes, with a practical demeanour.
“Hey, bud,” the guy stepped forward, making Jack jump as he crouched down to be level with him, “D’ya need some help? Doorways can be finicky-”
Jack wants to tell him to stand up properly, to not call him ‘bud’, to just fuck off and leave him alone… but the words don’t come. They never do anymore, not properly. Doctors dismissed it as psychological trauma, gave him therapy brochures and shrugged it all off.
The guy was quiet now, clearly waiting for a response that wouldn’t come, maybe an introduction or a request for assistance. His eyebrows were raised in a way that reminded Jack of someone else… someone whose name he just couldn’t recall.
“I should probably introduce myself first, huh?” the guy went on, clearly unfazed by the lack of response – clearly this wasn’t his first rodeo with someone so uncooperative, “My names Michael, I live just next door,” he pointed back behind him to the door that he’d just come out of, not that Jack cared enough to follow his hand, “And I’m guessing you’re my new neighbour, huh?”
Jack, again, didn’t respond, didn’t even bother nodding or shrugging or any other nonverbal type of communication, he just kept his eyes fixed on his legs – or leg and a half.
The guy - Michael - crouched down a little lower again, his eyes scanning over Jack, coming to settle on his old, distressed baseball cap and the design on the front – some old crap he stole from his roommate in college and never gave back – his roommate probably didn’t even notice.
“University of Illinois, huh?” Michael smiled softly, brown eyes glinting as if remembering the good old days, “I went there, best years of my life. I’m pretty sure I have a cap just like that somewhere…,” he shook his head fondly, then straightened up to full height – he was tall, probably about six foot one, and that just reminds Jack even more of how small he is when he’s in the chair; height had never been something Jack was blessed with in the first place, but now he could hardly stand, he couldn’t even hope to measure up to other guys anymore, “C’mon,” Michael continued, so far being the only one to actually engage with this conversation – Jack realised the guy probably thought the was mentally disabled as well as physically disabled, as Jack hadn’t responded or even looked him in the eyes since meeting him a few minutes ago, “Let’s get you inside, yeah, buddy?”
Jack scowled. Buddy. Like he was a kid, unable to take care of himself, unable to-
Except that was true, wasn’t it? He couldn’t even get through his own front door, couldn’t talk, couldn’t hear properly, couldn’t walk, couldn’t stand up, couldn’t…
Michael softly grabbed hold of the handles of Jack’s wheelchair and started pushing him along, taking him inside his new apartment – the place was bare. That was the first thing Jack noticed about it. There was a single arm chair in one corner of the room, a tiny dining table with two chairs at it, a shitty old radio on the surface, a single bed in one corner of the room, a tiny room off to the side that was the bathroom – Jack could see just through the door, there was a toilet, sink, grab rails and a shower with a plastic seat inside, they hadn’t even bothered to get him a proper shower seat, must’ve put the grab rails in and called it a day – and the kitchen? Well the kitchen was a fucking travesty; Jack used to love cooking, once he moved out and his father stopped calling it a ‘sissy boy hobby’ – in college, Jack loved cooking, would buy cheap recipe books, watched cooking tv shows. But this kitchen was just bare - two counters, cabinets above them that Jack wouldn’t be able to reach without standing up (which he couldn’t do on his own), an old hob and a fridge that buzzed softly and Jack would genuinely bet money would have a smell of old rotten eggs and at least a dozen questionable stains inside.
Michael blinked and winced slightly as he rolled his new neighbour in – Jack could tell that Michael’s own apartment was much bigger, cleaner, and nicer than this, not that Michael commented as such. Michael just smiled softly, parked Jack in the middle of the floor (the space felt entirely too cramped with just the two of them inside), and knelt down to his level again, “Can I get you anything, bud? Water, something to eat…?” Michael spoke slowly, softly but clearly, like he wasn’t completely sure Jack even fully understood – he still hadn’t even responded just once.
Jack, still deliberately angling his head away and keeping his cap drawn low, covering his face, finally responded… kind of. He just shrugged slightly - almost missable - and fiddled with his wedding ring where it still clung to his ring finger. The doctors had managed to take it off without cutting it after the explosion, which was one of the only things Jack was grateful for.
Michael, clearly happy to finally have received a response – even if it was just a tiny one – smiled and stood up back to full height once again, nodding as he said, “Alright, bud. I’ll head back to my place just across the hall, but feel free to come find me if you need anything… or just want someone to talk at you for a little while, huh?”
Jack didn’t respond, not that Michael even expected him to.
The next evening, Michael was back. He didn’t quite know why. He didn’t even know his new neighbour’s name, he just knew that he seemed… lonely. If there was one thing his grandmother had taught him, it was the importance of looking out for other people, especially vulnerable people.
He left his own apartment and walked the six feet to his new neighbour’s front door, ringing the doorbell softly and waiting ten, twenty, thirty seconds.
No response.
After a minute, he tried the bell again, and knocked softly, calling out, “Hey, it’s Michael… just checkin’ in,” he glanced at the plate of mac ‘n’ cheese he held in his left hand, “I brought leftovers… nothing fancy, but…”
He pressed his ear to the door, getting worried now; his neighbour was in a wheelchair, clearly a below-the-knee amputee, and from the lack of response he was getting yesterday, he’d assume not entirely there. The guy could’ve had a fall, could be stuck in the bathroom, could be confused, scared, could’ve passed out…
Michael gave up waiting and decided he’d just have to go in, deciding he’d kick the door in like his old College roommate taught him… until he tried the front door and it was unlocked anyway.
Oh.
He entered the apartment quietly, eyes adjusting to the completely darkened room – he could just about make out the bed and the dining table, and the single cardboard moving box on the floor at the foot of the bed – a box that hadn’t been there yesterday. Michael’s fingers fumbled across the wall as he tried to locate the light switch before finally flicking it on, darkness being chased away and revealing his neighbour sat in the wheelchair… in yesterday’s clothes… exactly where he’d left him.
“Hey,” Michael spoke softly, quickly crouching down in front of the chair after leaving the plate of food on the empty kitchen counter, “You okay, bud?”
Michael’s eyes thoroughly looked over every area of his neighbour from the bottom up, his heart feeling heavy as his eyes glanced over the stump of his right leg, examining as thoroughly and calmly as he could; then he got to his neighbour’s face. He hadn’t properly got a glimpse at his neighbour’s face yesterday, his baseball cap covering it and his head angled slightly away from him; but now that he was looking, it seemed… familiar. Hazel eyes, a spattering of freckles like constellations or like flecks of paint, and short, messy reddish-brown curls, untamed and smelling like hospital antiseptic. Those hazel eyes finally met Michael’s, dull and almost… lifeless. As though he was done with life, but life wasn’t done with him. Scars littered his face, small but deep, one by his hairline, one on his cheek, on right through his upper lip. But no matter how familiar this guy seemed, Michael just couldn’t place him. Besides, he meets a lotta new patients every day, so it’s hard to remember each and every face.
“Hey,” Michael spoke again, concern probably evident in his features as he continued examining his neighbour, worried as to how the guy hadn’t moved at all since yesterday, had yet to verbally respond at all or demonstrate any kind of reaction at all, “C’mon, I need a response, buddy… gotta make sure you’re okay.”
The neighbour nodded, finally, giving the first positive response yet. Michael’s heart settled slightly - he hadn’t even realised it had been pounding in the first place.
“Can you tell me your name, bud?” Michael tried, now doubting whether this guy was even capable of verbal communication. Poor dude… he seemed barely younger than Michael himself; was this a recent trauma, or had he always been like this? Did he have no one to take him in? No family, no friends? How could someone just leave a disabled person on their own like this?
The neighbour's eyes glanced over to the dining table, where a single form rested – that hadn’t been there yesterday. Maybe someone had come round; a carer or a family member or a nurse or-
Michael was standing up again, brushing off his knees and heading to the small dining table. He picked up the form and read through it.
Captain Jack Abbot
DOB: 29/12/1975
Army Combat Medic (Discharged due to Injury)
Next of Kin: Georgia Abbot (deceased)
Michael’s eyes widened.
Holy fuck.
He knew this guy - Jack - seemed familiar somehow.
This is his old roommate. That’s his old cap he’s wearing. They went to the same fucking college. They had sex more than anyone else Michael had ever been with; he probably knew more about Jack’s body than his own…
Or at least, he used to.
Jack always talked about how he was going to deploy overseas after med school, but… this is an entirely different thing. He’d come home from the war and yet it was still going on inside of him. He’s not the same troublemaker roommate always getting in fights, messing around, overconfident and arrogant, grinning that boyish grin whenever he wanted something he knew he couldn’t have.
This is the remains of a soldier who only physically escaped the war, not mentally.
“Jack?” Michael stammered, heart pounding harder than before because this… this is ridiculous. He hadn’t seen Jack in… what must’ve been at least ten years now, “Hey, holy fucking shit it’s me. Michael Robinavitch? Robby?”
He was crouched back in front of Jack now, hands planted firmly but softly on his shoulder, careful not to jar him or hurt him at all; and that’s when he saw it in Jack’s eyes.
Recognition.
He watched as Jack’s lips twitched, moving slightly as though they were trying to form words but couldn’t quite remember how.
“...R-by?” Jack choked out, his voice rough and barely audible from disuse, eyes wet and actually looking like they were alive for the first time since they’d met (again) yesterday.
“Yeah,” Robby choked out, smiling wide and like an idiot, one tear escaping from one of his eyes and gliding down his cheek, “Yeah, man… Holy shit. What did they do to you out there, huh?”
Jack simply whimpered in response, head bowing back down, and Robby couldn’t stop himself wrapping his arms around the smaller man. He wanted – no, needed – to comfort Jack, to make everything okay. Jack never cried in Med School, not even when Robby asked him about the scars all over his back and legs – cigarette burns and belt lashes, like a map of abuse from when Jack was a little kid to when he managed to get away. Jack had just smiled, grinned that boyish grin, and laughed, making a joke about ‘learning his lesson’ and then deflecting the attention back to Robby.
How could this happen to Jack? The sweetest guy in the universe? Sure he had his faults, but… Jack had been so kind; he’d insisted on learning exactly how to pronounce Robby’s last name, had asked about Hanukkah (Jack openly admitted to not knowing about that kind of thing, having been brought up in a Catholic and Conservative household), had always made sure the food he cooked was Kosher, had always made the effort to understand before judging.
Robby raised one hand, gently taking off the baseball cap that he now knew Jack had stolen from him ten years ago and carding his fingers through Jack’s defined curls; they’re just as soft as when he and Jack had shared that dorm room, sleeping in the same twin bed, spooning close, bodies solid and warm – Jack had been shorter but broader, insisting upon being the ‘big spoon’ because he saw that as ‘manly’ (what he meant, but never admitted and probably didn’t even realise, was that being the big spoon meant he could pretend to be straight, like something his father would still be okay with, something he couldn’t be punished for).
Jack leaned forward fully into Robby’s embrace, sniffling, whimpering still, tears staining Robby’s shirt as he just let himself cry for the first time since… since ever. Not that Robby knew, but Jack hadn’t cried in the hospital, hadn’t cried in the Major’s office when he was told about the death of his unborn child and his wife, hadn’t cried when his father died, hadn’t cried as a kid when he was getting beaten – because boys don’t cry. They man up.
“Oh, brother…,” Robby croaked out softly, tears flowing freely and mixing with Jack’s, “You’re alright. Just let it out, okay? I’m here…”
Robby smiles softly as he watches Jack eat the mac ‘n’ cheese he brought over; it’s just from the box, not from scratch or anything, cooking had never been his strong suit – Jack had always done the cooking back in Med School. Jack is clearly struggling slightly with the dexterity required to use the fork, but Robby knows better than to offer help, and Jack is just about managing – he has to let him have his independence.
“So,” Robby started, still watching Jack eat but letting his eyes glance back over the few scars covering Jack’s head, “Amputation, I can tell, but I’m guessing brain damage too, huh?”
Jack looked up at him slightly, with what must’ve been his best attempt at a scowl… but really just looked like a grumpy kid, what with the cheese sauce around his mouth. So… that was a yes for brain damage – minor, though, as far as Michael could tell; he wouldn’t have been able to move in here on his own if the brain damage was severe. Or at least… Robby hoped so.
Robby tried to give a comforting smile, like the one he gave to kids in the ER, “Alright… let’s talk about me instead, huh?” Robby joked, knowing that this would be another one sided conversation – but at least, in his head, he hoped Jack wanted to reply, to engage, but it was just his brain stopping him. “Where did we leave off… End of Med School…
“So, I did my residency at Big Charity… then I went to Pittsburgh – still working there now, at PTMC, for the last couple of years,” Robby continued, a sad smile on his face as he went on, “My grandmother passed a few years back, so it’s just been me. I tried reaching out to you, even, I got worried about you, but nobody knew your number and there are at least several thousand ‘Jack Abbot’s across the continent. You didn’t keep in contact with anyone from Med School….so I had nobody to help me track you down.”
Jack looked a little guilty at that, head bowed again, fork scraping across his plate as he tried to stammer out, “S- sor- ry”
Robby reached across the tiny, round dining table, his hand covering Jack’s trembling one, “Not your fault, Jack… Fuck, I mean you had bigger problems, huh? War and all…”
Jack looked up again, eyes meeting Robby as he gently placed his fork back down on the table, “I… IED…”
Robby’s eyes widened, fingers stroking back back of Jack’s hand gently, trying to comfort him, “Fuck, man… that’s not fair…”
Jack nodded slightly, rolling up his sleeves as much as he could, just past the elbows, showing Robby the still healing burn scars covering his arms.
Jack didn’t deserve that.
And Robby would give anything to fix that.