Work Text:
I'll stay by your side
Frozen in time
Hearts into fire
You are my greatest adventure
Wait My Love, I'll Be Home Soon by Atreyu
In his dreams, Jack Abbot can fly.
Then he pushes off the ground with his two perfectly healthy legs, stroking his arms through the air like a swimmer, and soars away. He realizes that it really is just as they say: the world looks completely different from above. Everything seems so much more orderly; the details stop mattering so much, and he likes it.
But then he wakes up, and waking up is a disappointment every single time. His body lies heavy in sweaty sheets, and his leg stump burns with pain, as if someone were setting the bone saw to work at that very moment. Jack sighs and stares blankly upward. The room is dark, but a narrow strip of light stretches from the topmost blind—which won’t close all the way—up the wall to the ceiling. Jack does what he’s been told to do, what usually helps: he focuses on that single point of light on the ceiling, and he breathes.
In for four seconds. Out for six.
Ten seconds until Jack realizes that his breathing isn’t the only sound in the room. When he sleeps during the day—that is, on most days when he isn’t engaged in some other activity that keeps his mind occupied and his thoughts in check—so, when he sleeps during the day, the bedroom has to be dark and quiet. Now it’s as dark and as quiet as it can be, but there’s still a sound, and it’s strangely soothing.
A second breath, very gentle; not in sync with his, at least not in the literal sense. But somehow, it still is.
Jack turns his head. There lies Robby. In this light, it’s more Robby’s silhouette, a shadow that only vaguely becomes Jack’s partner once his eyes have adjusted a bit more to the dim light in the bedroom. Robby lies on the bed in his street clothes, his chin resting on one arm; how long has he been lying there, watching Jack? He must have just gotten home, which means his shift is over. Which means that Jack…
“Are you watching me sleep?” Jack asks in a strangely hoarse voice.
“Jack,” Robby says instead of answering, “you won’t go to work today.”
It’s a very matter-of-fact, sober statement. It suddenly dawns on Jack that he hasn’t thought his thought through: if Robby is already here, he’s either finished his shift on time or even a little early—ridiculous, that never happens—or Jack has overslept. An equally ridiculous thought. That never happens either.
And yet here he lies, confused, trying to figure out which of two improbable events might have occurred. Only then does he grasp Robby’s words. He didn’t say “you can’t”, he said “you won’t”.
“What time is it?” Jack asks, without thinking to turn his head.
If he was in his right mind, he’d look at the alarm clock on Robby’s nightstand. In some ways, Robby is old-fashioned, though he calls it traditional. The alarm clock has illuminated numbers when you press a button, but Jack currently feels neither the strength to turn his head, let alone lift his leaden arms from the bedspread.
That might tell him something about his condition, but the throbbing, biting, gnawing pain in his leg shuts out any further thought. Jack focuses on Robby’s face, which is now somewhat more clearly visible. A worried expression seems etched into the tired lines of his face, but that doesn’t mean much.Robby is one of those rare doctors whose faces seem to reflect whatever their patients are feeling; that’s not always a good thing, Jack thinks. Besides, that thought makes him a patient, which he isn’t. Or is he?
“Five-thirty.”
“Five-… Robby, my shift starts in less than—wait, what are you doing here?”
“Day shift was surprisingly quiet—” Robby begins, but Jack cuts him off with a sharp intake of breath.
“Oh God, Mike, don’t say that,” he pleads, only half-jokingly. Robby should know better than to say the q-word like some rookie.
“Honey, Jews aren’t superstitious.”
The term of endearment leaves a warm feeling in the pit of Jack’s stomach; but they are both too matter-of-fact, too down-to-earth, to usually shower each other with declarations of love. Robby, in particular, never says such things lightly, and therefore rarely without an ulterior motive.
“Anyway,” Robby continues, “I had a quiet moment, and you know what I do then.”
“Drinking hospital coffee is a disgusting habit, not a relaxation ritual,” Jack replies. “But yes, I know: coffee and the weather report.”
It’s a surprisingly tame and yet somewhat eccentric hobby, but it suits him. Jack suspects he picked it up while planning his motorcycle road trip. Presumably, no one—not even Jack—will ever fully know exactly what Robby had planned back then, but he did reveal this much: he’s developed a certain obsession with the weather.
“Okay, and what did the weather report tell you?” he asks, still too dazed to make a logical connection.
“It’s going to rain,” Robby replies simply. “I wanted you to bring me an umbrella.”
“You wanted me to bring you an umbrella? To the emergency room?”
The thought isn’t absurd because people leave things behind in the waiting room every day—and forget them—including, with remarkable regularity, at least one pocket umbrella. The janitor keeps track of such items, at least for a few days. There’s always an umbrella the hospital staff can borrow. Jack thinks that apart from Robby, few others do this, because Robby is one of those rare types who likes to walk a bit after his shift.
But that’s not why Jack is surprised. And maybe he’s overreacting. Everyone in the ER knows that he and Robby are close; it wouldn’t be all that surprising if Robby asked him to bring something during shift change. However, this matter seems somehow significant to Jack today. Today, everything feels heavy, especially thinking; the lightness inherent in his dream has long since vanished. The pain is unaffected by his breathing exercises; it comes in waves, and Jack can only try to ride each new wave of pain like a surfer in the surf.
Everyone in the ER knows they’re good friends, but that’s all they know, and it’s Robby who wanted it to stay that way for a while longer. Somehow, the thought that Jack should bring him something today suddenly feels so significant. As if Robby has finally decided it’s time to go public with it. For a brief moment, Jack escapes into a daydream: at shift change, he brings Robby an umbrella to the ER, and Dana will make a flippant remark, something like “Are you made of sugar, Robby? Your hood works just fine.” And Robby will say, “Of course, Jack thinks I’m sweet as sugar,” and they’ll brush off the surprised looks with a kiss.
But that’s just a dream, and it’s only distracting him from what really matters.
“You sent me messages,” he states; because that’s the most logical assumption.
Robby’s head jerks in the dark, probably a nod. “You’re usually already awake at this time,” he replies. Jack likes to be ready early; he has his own rituals, too. “But you didn’t even read the messages. So I called.”
His voice has taken on a serious undertone. Jack understands now. Robby was actually worried. It may seem exaggerated in hindsight (it isn’t—it’s Robby), but they are two people with a story, and that story is painful and sometimes very dark. Jack knows what he would have done if he’d tried in vain to reach Robby on a perfectly ordinary day with a perfectly ordinary shift. A shift he’s never late for and would never miss or skip on purpose. Yes, Jack would have tried calling him too, and then he would have found a way to get out of it; he would have driven home to Robby’s and opened the door with his spare key. Robby did all that, except he was using his master key—after all, it’s his apartment—but he knew Jack would be here. He hasn’t slept in his own bed in ages.
“All right, I overslept,” Jack says, and the defiant undertone in his own voice doesn’t escape him. “No need to get all worked up. Not that you aren’t a pleasant alarm clock, Mike, but—”
“You’re not going to work today, Jack,” Robby says again, more firmly this time. “I should have realized it yesterday. I’m sorry.”
That’s typical of Robby, blaming himself for something completely beyond his control. Jack ponders yesterday. It’s an undefined period of time for something that seems infinitely far away, at least in his pain-filled mind. They both had the day off. A rare gift, even if the desire to spend time together throws them both off their usual rhythm, every single time.
Yesterday was a little different, and Robby noticed it—of course he did. Even before Jack, who’s only now grasping the connection. For some people, an aura signals the onset of a migraine. With some chronic episodic pain, there are also warning signs; they can be so subtle that it takes years to recognize them as harbingers of a new wave of pain. Stiff muscles, sleep disturbances, unusual fatigue… even increased sensitivity to pain, long before the actual pain sets in, can occur.
Jack is so trained to overlook all of this, to play it down and push it into the background, that he himself is barely able to recognize a change in his own behavior in time.
But Robby can. Sometimes it seems to Jack as if Robby is almost like one of those empaths in a science fiction movie. He senses what others won’t—or haven’t yet—admit to themselves. And maybe it’s all just armchair psychology, but apparently he was right this time too. Jack’s stump hurts as if the amputation were still fresh, coupled with phantom pains that make him believe his nonexistent leg, with its nonexistent nerve pathways, is sending warnings to his brain.
It is agony, pure chronic torment, and it keeps coming back. It’s the kind of pain that won’t let him rest, that makes him want to crawl inside himself; to curl up into a small, white-hot ball, hoping that eventually he’ll stop burning.
Jack knows when it will stop, roughly. But he also knows it will come back, and he knows how he’ll spend the next few hours. He’ll stay lying here, in Robby’s dark bedroom, breathing and listening to the white noise from the machine Robby bought for him. He’ll breathe and dig his hands into the blanket and defiantly wipe his eyes when they start to tear up from the tension.
But he won’t be alone, and that’s what matters most.
“I should have noticed it myself,” he says now, his tone already much more forgiving. Forgiving, above all, toward himself.
“It’s all right,” Robby replies.
The sheet rustles softly as he moves, shifting position to reach out his hand. The gentle touch on Jack’s shoulder is almost as comforting as the painkiller he’ll take in a few minutes. Neither helps much, but both do in their own way.
Jack reaches for Robby’s hand and holds it tight.
“Thank you,” he mutters.
The dim light in the room is enough to illuminate the smile on Robby’s face.
“Anytime,” says Robby, and he means it.