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“I fucking hate these things,” Robby muttered. He slid his finger under the collar of his shirt and tugged it gently away from his skin. Jack slapped the underside of his elbow and Robby removed the offending digit with a frown.
“Stop that. Remind me how many of these things you’ve been to?” Jack smirked at him.
“Two,” Robby replied. He touched his collar once more to assure himself he hadn’t fucked up his bow tie too badly, then let his hands drop.
“Including this one, or—“ Jack needled.
The answer to the question was yes, and Jack knew that. “Shut the fuck up.”
Robby hated all kinds of things about hospital events. He hated wearing a tux. He hated sitting at a table with a random assortment of hospital staff. He hated talking to men and women who had made their living on the blood of middle class Americans and who donated money to feel better about themselves. He hated Adamson a little for insisting that Robby go in his place, and he couldn’t hate Janey at all for staying home with Jake who had strep. He couldn’t hate Jack either, but he could be a little jealous.
Jack was entirely at ease in his dress uniform, medals pinned to his chest, hands in his pockets. He only swayed absently on his feet to maintain his balance, not because he was uncomfortable.
“Where are we sitting?” Jack asked.
“Thirteen,” Robby answered.
Jack cast an assessing gaze over the hotel ballroom full of meandering people in fancy clothing and gestured toward the wall near the bar. “There.”
Robby followed and together they wove through the crowd of doctors and donors toward their table. He spotted the Shamsis, a few of the surgeons, and Gloria who he pretended not to notice when she glanced his direction. Fucking admin.
“Adamson told me to mingle,” Robby grumbled as they approached thirteen where an auburn haired woman was already seated and inspecting the centerpiece with interest.
“Well Adamson isn’t here,” Jack replied. “You know who that is?” He lowered his voice and tipped his head toward the woman.
Robby surveyed her briefly. Freckles. Pale. Curvy. Green dress. “No idea. Night shift?”
“No.”
Together they muttered, “Donor.” Then Jack raised his voice to greet her as he pulled out the chair to her left, marked with a placard that still said Janey Malloy, “Evening, Miss.” He smiled at her.
“Oh—“ She yanked her fingers back from the flower they were wrapped around. She smiled back. “Hi.” There was a beat. Her eyebrows lifted slightly. “General?”
“Thanks for the promotion.” Jack slid into the chair and offered his hand. “Jack Abbott. This is Michael Robinavitch.”
The woman took his hand and shook it. “I think you have the wrong seat, Jack Abbott.” Her tone was teasing.
Jack grinned. He picked up the placard with Janey’s name and tossed it over his shoulder. “Typing error.”
The woman laughed. Robby resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Adamson definitely should’ve given his seat up to Jack in the first place. The flirt had no problem striking up conversation and people really seemed to love a man in uniform.
“Doctors?”
“Emergency medicine,” Jack answered.
“Oh! What’s that like?”
“Hectic.” He gave her a conspiratorial grin.
Robby thought about the six car pile up he’d dealt with two days prior and wanted to lower his forehead to the pristine white tablecloth.
“You?” Jack prompted.
“I’m a teacher. I’m just here to look pretty.” The woman flicked her long hair over her shoulder.
“Well,” Jack started. Robby could predict the rest of the statement and really did roll his eyes. “You’re doing a great job.”
“Thank you,” the woman said. She smoothed a hand over the fabric of her dress against the top of her thigh. “I’ve never been to this kind of thing before. It took me weeks to figure out what actually constituted ‘black tie’.”
“I don’t have that problem.” Jack plucked at the lapel of his jacket. One of his medals gave a musical clink.
Robby cleared his throat. “Sorry, I didn’t catch your name?”
“Lily,” the woman replied. “Kozik-Kester.”
“Wrong.”
Her name wasn’t familiar, but the voice that asserted she was wrong was. Flat. Cold. Harsh. Robby frowned and glanced over Jack’s shoulder.
Brendon Park had a rocks glass in his left hand and a glass of wine in his right. He scowled darkly at Jack as he closed the last few feet to their table. He set the wine glass in front of Lily, then rested his empty hand on her shoulder.
Robby was familiar with Park the Shark. He descended to the ED occasionally for ortho consults. Every time he was in the Pitt, the ambient temperature seemed to drop a few degrees. He tended to scowl, snap, and generally scare the shit out of everybody. He chewed up interns and spat them out in a pile of bloody meat.
Robby didn’t think Jack was scared. He thought Jack was something else. He eyed the possessive hand on Lily’s shoulder.
“It’s not wrong,” Lily said. “It’s my name.” She reached up and stroked Park’s hand fondly.
Park took the opportunity to grasp her fingers. He lifted her hand and frowned at it. “What did I buy you this for, then?”
Robby followed the man’s eye to the large marquis diamond that adorned her ring finger.
Lily laughed. “I think we need to actually have a wedding before I change my last name!”
“Right,” Park drawled. He shot an icy glare at Jack. “Whenever you like, baby.” He reached to pull out his own chair next to his fiancé, situated it six inches closer to hers than it had been, and sat.
“Summer 2022?” she suggested.
Park made an irritated noise into his drink and pinned flat dark eyes on hers. It was the kind of look that made med students actively flee.
Lily giggled.
Fascinating, Robby thought. He would not have predicted that Park the Shark was in a committed relationship, largely because the man was mean, cold, and generally unpleasant. He might’ve expected that any relationship the man was in could be categorized as frosty at best. But Lily seemed to be impervious to his borderline hostile body language.
Then again, maybe Park’s body language was only hostile because Jack was within touching distance of the woman. It didn’t seem like the Shark cared for that at all. He draped his arm across his fiancé’s chair in a blatantly possessive posture, and glared at both Jack and Robby.
Nevermind that they were supposed to be making small talk.
“How long have you been together?” Jack asked.
Lily said, “Um,” like she had to think about it. Park said immediately, “Four years, seven months.”
Lily swiveled to look at him, “You don’t just know that!”
“I do,” Park replied. “It’s in my vows.” His voice was no less flat than usual, but it was softer somehow. A few decibels under the volume he usually barked orders with.
“You already wrote your vows?”
“I wrote them two years ago.” Park lifted his glass and said over the rim, “You keep insisting we wait.”
Everything Robby thought he knew about Park shifted. He could see the same thing happen in the droop of Jack’s shoulders. Apparently Park wasn’t as mean as they’d thought.
Or, he was, but he was also obviously in love with his fiancé. Pathetically in love. So in love Robby thought he could get away with asking, “Why’s that?”
Lily reached up to twine her fingers with Park’s. “Well there was always a possibility of Brendon wanting to take an attending position in a different state and promotions and moves can be taxing on a relationship. I just wanted to be realistic—“
“I would quit my job tonight if you’d let me take you to the courthouse tomorrow,” Park grumbled.
“Don’t say that,” Lily chided, “What if one of the hospital bosses thinks you’re serious?”
Park curled his lip into a sneer which indicated to Robby that he was serious, and he would be willing to snap the limbs off any administrators that thought to give him hell about it.
Jack huffed. He lifted his glass and had a long sip. When he lowered it he said, “I remember thinking I should wait. Wish I hadn’t.”
Robby felt the sadness that lingered in the words drift across the table. He set a hand on Jack’s shoulder. Lily seemed to understand the story instantly. Her features went soft.
Park, who may not have had emotions and who had definitely never let another person’s touch him, said, “One year.”
“Brendon!” the woman chastised.
“One year,” he repeated firmly.
“You want to get married in fall?” Lily asked.
“Eight months,” Brendon amended.
Lily frowned. She chewed her lip. Then she said, “Okay.”
He made a low sound that made Robby think of a predator that had backed its next meal into a corner.
Jack had clearly decided that this was an opportunity to get intel on a colleague who was even more notorious than himself for keeping his personal life out of the hospital. “So how’d you two meet?”
“I backed into him with my car,” Lily said, grinning.
Brendon rolled his eyes. He tugged his fiancé’s hand toward him and kissed her knuckles.
Sharing a table with Park felt less dangerous than Robby expected with Lily sitting between them. She exchanged stories easily with Jack and was totally unbothered when Park growled, or set a possessive hand on her thigh, or glared daggers into Jack’s face.
Park audibly snapped his teeth on empty air sometime after dinner when lilting orchestral music began and Jack asked Lily if she’d dance with him. Jack liked to flirt with danger, Robby knew. He seemed totally unbothered by the icy rage barely concealed behind Park’s black eyes. If he was mollified at all by the kiss Lily pressed to his cheek before she went, it was hard to tell. Robby barely heard his mutter of, “Lily.”
Her reply, “You hate dancing,” didn’t make any sense to Robby, but it must’ve to Park. He shifted back in his chair and watched where she and Jack joined a small crowd of people near the bandstand. He scowled openly, but he didn’t move, and he hadn’t told her not to go.
Robby sipped his drink. Nobody had approached their table to chat. Probably the result of the borderline murderous air Park seemed to exhale now that his wife was out of arm’s reach. “I didn’t know sharks mate for life,” he noted.
Park gave a derisive snort. “Are you going to tell your staff I’m human after all?”
“No,” Robby said. “I’m afraid that would give them the mistaken impression you won’t eat them alive.”
Park’s lip curled up into a sharp-toothed smile. He sipped his drink and watched his wife. When the song neared its end, he set his glass on the table with a dull clunk and stood.
Robby followed his eyeline and understood his intention. “I thought you hate dancing.”
“I do,” Park answered.
But he crossed the ballroom anyway. He cut in smoothly as the notes of one song gave way to another. He took his fiancé’s hand in his, wrapped his other arm around her waist, and pulled her against him. Robby watched him lower his head and speak. Lily must’ve replied with something because then Park was smiling. Not the cold, flat smile of a dangerous animal. The very real smile of a man in love.
“She’s a good dancer,” Jack noted when he reached the table. He didn’t sit. “Drink?”
Robby nodded and pushed up from his chair. “That man’s going to kill you the next time he’s in the ED.”
Jack grinned.
“Doctor Abbott!”
Jack and Robby both turned to look at the med student jogging across the linoleum from the elevator bank. Robby didn’t really know the kid, just that he had the same stressed, scrawny, stepped on look that all the surgical students tended to. If he made it through his rotation upstairs without getting tossed on his ear, maybe Robby would get to know him when he started in the ED.
The kid landed at the desk beside Robby and set a sturdy black tube of cardboard on the surface. He was mildly sweaty and breathing intentionally slowly, as though he was trying not to pant. “Doctor Park asked me to deliver this to you.” He stared at Jack with wide, intense eyes.
“Okay?” Jack said. He eyed the tube warily. “What is it?”
Robby raised his eyebrows. He stood up straight and crossed his arms. The cardboard marked the unmistakable packaging of an expensive liquor bottle. He hadn’t forgotten Jack’s harmless, unintentional flirting with Park’s wife two weeks before. It would be less harmless if Park had decided he was going to poison Jack.
”Um—“ The kid said. “I don’t— Oh!” He shoved a hand into the pocket of his scrub shirt and yanked out an envelope, which he shoved at Jack with desperate hands.
Jack took it and turned it over, eyeing the blank white paper with suspicion.
The kid stared. After a beat he said, “You’ll tell him I gave it to you right?” The nervousness in his voice was telling.
“Sure, kid,” Jack agreed, though when he’d do that Robby didn’t know.
The student nodded, sighed in audible relief, and turned to head back to the elevators.
”What the fuck?” Robby asked.
Jack shook his head and ripped the envelope open. Inside was a single piece of paper. He stared at it for a long time before flipping the sheet in deft fingers to face Robby. The paper just said ‘thanks’ in clean block printing. Robby frowned. Jack slapped the paper on the desk face-down, and popped the top off the cardboard tube to free its contents. He gave a low whistle at the extremely expensive bottle of whiskey.
Dana stepped up beside Robby and eyed it. “Nice gift. You save someone important?”
”It’s from Park,” Jack replied. He let the bottle slide back into its case.
At Dana’s frown, Robby added, “The shark.”
Dana raised her eyebrows. “You know when someone gets married you’re supposed to send them a gift, hey? Not the other way around?”
“Park’s not married,” Jack said.
“He is now,” Dana leant forward on her elbows as she gleefully delivered the gossip. “Cancelled a bunch of surgeries and took off to Hawaii for a week. Got hitched. Made quite the ruckus up in ortho but I guess nobody was willing to tell him he couldn’t.”
“Holy shit,” Robby remarked.
“Huh,” Jack set his expensive thank-you against the partition of the desk where it would be safe and started off toward the trauma bay to meet the paramedics where they were loosing vitals in a steady stream. “Gonna kill me, hey?”
Robby only shook his head in reply.