Work Text:
1
“Hey. It’s me.
Which you know, because apparently despite modern technology evolving into a terrifying surveillance state, your voicemail still says ‘please leave a message for Michael Robinavitch’ like I’m calling a landline in 2004.
Anyway, you forgot your blue hoodie.
I found it this morning because I was looking for coffee filters and somehow it was in the pantry cupboard, which honestly feels like evidence of a neurological event. I don’t even remember you putting it there. Maybe you were trying to hide snacks from me. Maybe you were spiralling. Maybe the hoodie was trying to migrate south for winter.
I put it on the chair in the bedroom. Then I moved it to the bed. Then I put it back on the chair because that felt less… weird.
The house’s quiet without you. Like properly quiet. Not peaceful. There’s a difference. Peaceful quiet feels soft. This one feels like the building’s holding its breath.
Work’s work. Dana asks if you are doing okay before she even says good morning to me, which is rude honestly. Mateo keeps trying to convince everyone you’ve gone on some spiritual journey where you shave your head and learn woodworking. Shen says if you come back with a moustache he’s reporting you to HR.
Whitaker almost called for you during a trauma today. Caught himself halfway through. You should’ve seen his face. Poor kid looked like he’d stepped off a curb that wasn’t there.
I’m okay. Before you start. Eating meals. Sleeping… enough. Taking my meds on time. I know, I know, put a little gold star on the behaviour chart.
I just…
Keep turning to tell you things.
That’s the annoying part.
A guy came into the ED tonight with a ferret in his hoodie because he thought it would ‘keep him calm during stitches’. Princess held the ferret while I sutured him and the ferret kept staring at me like it knew state secrets. And my first instinct was to text you because you would’ve laughed so hard you got hiccups.
I didn’t realise how many tiny pieces of my day belong to you now.
Anyway….
Call me when you can. Or don’t. Enjoy your ‘sabbatical’ and become one with nature or whatever it is you’re doing.
Miss you.”
—
2
“Hi. It’s two in the morning and I’m standing outside the ambulance bay eating stale peanut butter crackers like a feral raccoon.
We had a sixteen car pileup because apparently the citizens of Pittsburgh saw ‘black ice warning’ and interpreted that as a personal challenge.
Long shift. Bad one.
Collins dislocated his finger catching a monitor before it hit the floor, which is the most Collins injury imaginable. Santos got blood in her shoe and threatened to quit medicine forever. Mateo drank so much caffeine I could hear his heartbeat through the trauma room curtains.
And I just… kept expecting you to walk around the corner.
That’s happening a lot lately. Something will go wrong and there’s this split second where my brain goes, it’s okay, Robby’s here.
Then it catches up.
Not in a dramatic way. Don’t make that face. I’m not having some tragic cinematic collapse while sad violins play in the background. It’s just… absence has weight to it. Turns out yours is enormous.
Your plant died by the way.
I tried. I really did. I watered it. I put it near the window. I even spoke nicely to it once which felt deeply humiliating. But apparently it was your emotional support fern and rejected my care on principle.
I haven’t been sleeping great.
Not because I’m worried about you. I mean, I am worried about you because you’re alone and emotionally repressed and statistically capable of wandering into a humanitarian crisis by accident, but mostly it’s because the bed feels wrong.
You move around a lot, you know that? I got so used to it I can’t sleep without it anymore. Last night I woke up because there was no one stealing the blankets. Which is pathetic. Don’t repeat that to anyone or I’ll deny it in court.
I think…I think this place took more out of you than either of us wanted to admit.
The Pitt’s okay. Everyone’s okay. But it’s different without you holding the centre together. Dana’s compensating by becoming increasingly terrifying. The residents are behaving like overgrown kids in scrubs. There’s no order here.
You deserved to leave for a while. I hope you know that.
I know you felt guilty when you went. I know you thought you were abandoning us. But you weren’t. You were drowning standing upright and everyone could see it except you.
So stay gone a little longer if you need to. I’ll still be here. …That sounded way more emotional than intended. Jesus Christ.
Okay. I’m hanging up now before I embarrass myself more. Bye. Love you.”
—
3
“Hey.
You missed Whitaker accidentally pepper spraying himself.
He found one of those little emergency canisters in a patient’s bag and somehow managed to deploy it directly into his own face while trying to ‘safely secure it’. Santos laughed so hard she had to sit on the floor. Dana looked at him for a full ten seconds before saying, and I quote, ‘evolution is a long and difficult process.’
You would’ve loved it.
I think everybody misses you differently. They have relied on you for so long. You kept things running when it seemed impossible. I think they took you for granted. And now they are lost. Man, they talk about you like some father figure that went out for milk and never came back. They love you more than I think you know.
Me?
I miss stupid things. I miss your hand on the back of my neck when you pass behind me in trauma rooms. I miss you stealing fries off my plate after claiming you weren’t hungry. I miss hearing your footsteps at five in the morning while you are brushing your teeth before shift.
I even miss the lectures.
A patient punched me yesterday and my first thought was literally Robby’s gonna be so annoying about this.
You’ve colonised my internal monologue. Like mold.
House still smells like your soap, by the way. I think it’s because your side of the closet’s still full. Sometimes I stand there after shifts like a complete creep just because it smells like home.
That sounded alarming. Ignore that. I think maybe… maybe I didn’t realise how tired I was either.
Not physically. I can do physically tired. Physically tired is easy. You drink bad coffee and survive out of spite.
I mean the other kind.
The kind where you look up and realise years have passed in fluorescent lighting. The kind where your nervous system forgets what silence is for.
I’ve been thinking maybe when you come back we should actually take time off together. Real time off. Not ‘answering emails from a cabin’ time off. I’m talking disappear somewhere remote enough neither of us can get paged. Somewhere with terrible cell service and old men fishing nearby.
I wanna relearn who we are when no one’s bleeding.
Look at me. Growth.
Therapy language has infected the ecosystem.
So call me back when you get this. Or send a photo proving you’re alive. Preferably one without you looking tragically windswept on a cliff edge like the world’s saddest travel brochure.
Miss you.”
—
4
“Hi, honey.
Yeah, I said honey. Near death experience for you to process later.
Had a bad shift. Not catastrophic. Just one of those nights. Everything hurts a little and you can’t stop touching it. Lost a kid.
Not because we did anything wrong. Before your guilt complex starts stretching awake in another state like some ancient evil sensing disturbance in the force. It was bad before he got to us.
Still stayed late after the paperwork was done because the parents didn’t want to leave him alone yet.
You’d have stayed too.
I drove home afterwards and for a second I genuinely forgot you weren’t here. Walked into the living room ready to complain at you about admin and blood shortages and the fact that someone microwaved fish in the break room again.
And it just… God, Robby, it’s so quiet.
I didn’t realise how much noise you make. Not literal noise. Just… presence. You fill space. Even when you’re exhausted and half asleep and pretending not to listen while I ramble at you from the kitchen.
I think I’ve spent years building my life around the fact that you’re there. Not in a dependent way. Don’t get smug.
Maybe like those ugly steel beams inside buildings nobody sees unless something collapses.
You asked me once why I trust you so much. I never answered properly.
Truth is, I trust you because every version of me has survived being loved by you. Even the ugly ones. Even the angry ones. Even the frightened little creature I used to be before you dragged me blinking into something gentler.
That’s rare. You’re rare. And I know this trip matters. I know you needed space to breathe again. I’m proud of you for taking it. Honestly. I mean that.
But selfishly? Come home soon.
The coffee tastes wrong without you stealing half of it.”
—
5
“Hey.
Sorry. I know it’s late. Or early. Time’s kind of fake in the ED and I think prolonged exposure to fluorescent lighting has dissolved the part of my brain that understands clocks.
I almost didn’t call. I keep trying not to be… this.
You’re finally resting for once in your life and I don’t want every voicemail from me to sound like some depressed widow staring out at the sea waiting for her husband to return from sea.
But tonight sucked.
Not even because of work, actually. Work was fine. Weirdly fine. Too fine, maybe. Quiet shifts always feel cursed. Like the hospital’s breathing too softly.
I came home and the house was dark and I think that’s what did it.
Because usually there’s evidence of you everywhere.
Your shoes kicked off in stupid places. Half-drunk coffee abandoned on counters. That awful reading lamp you refuse to replace even though it flickers like a haunted lighthouse. You humming under your breath while pretending you’re not awake when I get home.
And now there’s just… nothing. It’s clean all the time now.
Did you know that? The apartment stays clean because there’s nobody here to wreck it with me.
I left a plate in the sink for three days last week just because I couldn’t stand walking in and seeing everything untouched all the time. That’s insane, right? That’s genuinely unwell behaviour.
Dana asked me today if I was sleeping and apparently I laughed for long enough that she got concerned.
I’m tired, Robby.
Not physically. I could handle physical.
I mean the kind of tired where you start feeling detached from yourself. Like you’re watching your own life through security glass.
Everybody keeps checking on me.
Mateo brought me coffee without making fun of me first which was honestly terrifying. Whitaker keeps hovering like a nervous golden retriever. Shen flat out told me I ‘look haunted’.
I think I forgot how to do this without you.
And before you go all guilt spiral on me, I’m not saying that to drag you home. I know why you left. I know you needed this. I would still pack your bags myself if it meant keeping you alive long term.
I’m just… being honest.
You know what the worst part is?
Nobody touches me anymore.
Not in a sad dramatic way, I just… Humans get used to things so quickly.
Your hand on my shoulder walking past. Your knee pressed against mine on the couch. Fingers in my hair when I’m half asleep. All those tiny unconscious things people do when they love someone for a long time.
And now days go by without anybody touching me at all. I didn’t realise how much I needed that.
God, this is bleak. Jesus Christ. Ignore me. I’m having a weird night.
I think maybe the problem is that you became home to me so slowly I never noticed it happening. Not all at once. Just molecule by molecule until suddenly every safe thing in my life had your fingerprints on it.
And now you’re gone for a while and I’m still here reaching for you automatically like an idiot.
I wore your hoodie to sleep yesterday because it still smells like you a little. Which sounds romantic until I admit I fully cried over a frozen pizza ten minutes beforehand because the grocery store only had the brand you hate.
You ruin people, you know that? Not maliciously. Just by loving them so well they forget how to be alone afterward.
…Sorry. That wasn’t fair.
I am glad you’re resting. I am. I just miss my husband. Come back to me when you’re ready, okay? I’m trying very hard to be brave about it but I think the edges are starting to fray a little.
I love you so much.”
—
+1
“Hey, honey.
I just listened to your voicemail. Actually, I listened to it three times because apparently I enjoy emotional devastation before breakfast now.
Jesus, Jack. You sound exhausted.
I’m sitting outside this little café near the harbour. It’s barely open yet. There’s some guy unloading fish nearby and a seagull just stole half a croissant off someone’s tablel.
You would’ve respected that. I keep wishing you were here.
Everywhere I go, I catch myself thinking about how you’d react to things. There’s this bookstore down the street that smells like dust and old paper. You’d disappear into it for three hours and come out holding something obscure about shipwrecks or Soviet surgery techniques or cannibalism.
I miss you too, Yankel.
More than I thought I would. And I need you to hear me when I say this, okay? Really hear me.
You do not have to act okay for me. I know you think you’re protecting me by making yourself smaller whenever you’re hurting. I know that instinct. Trust me, I know. But listening to you sound that lonely nearly killed me.
I hate thinking about you coming home to an empty house after shift. I hate thinking about you sleeping alone. And the thing you said about nobody touching you anymore…
Christ, honey.
I miss touching you too.
I miss your weight against me in bed. I miss your hand finding mine automatically. I miss you stealing half my pillow and then denying it like I can’t physically see you doing it.
I even miss you leaving tea mugs everywhere like some kind of caffeinated cryptid.
I think maybe we got too good at surviving separately before we met each other.
You know what this lady at a diner asked me yesterday? She asked me what I missed most about home.
And I started talking about you before I even realised that’s what I meant.
I’m coming home soon. Not because you asked me to. And not because you’re failing at this. You aren’t. You’re lonely because you love me. That’s not weakness, Jack. That’s just the price of letting someone matter that much.”
“I love you too, honey.
And for the record, the image of you crying over frozen pizza is going to haunt me forever.
Get some sleep after shift. Eat something green at some point this week. And wash the plate in the sink before it evolves opposable thumbs.
I love you too.”