Archive of Our Own

On July 4th, Robby put the infant back in the cradle, leaving behind with her his lingering despair and taking with him something of a resigned acceptance that things would go differently than he had planned. She was asleep at last. He was officially no longer needed by the shift. He was officially on sabbatical. 

Robby grabbed his riding jacket and his backpack. No one hailed him, and he spoke to no one. As he left, he saw a sliver of Jack’s ramrod back as he led a case. The corner of Robby’s mouth twitched up into one final smile, faint and grateful. 

Robby stopped beside the Bonneville, repaired and ready for him. 

Then, with a sigh, he unclipped his helmet and secured it onto his head. 

The engine was a loud, echoing rip in the acoustics of the ambulance bay. He sat for a moment, measuring the vibrations through his limbs. 

Robby pulled out of the driveway, looked both ways before he pulled into the intersection, and was T-boned by a speeding pickup truck full of screaming celebrants and their screaming music.

.

.

The annoying robot melody of a phone alarm blared at what felt like too obscenely early of an hour, but in reality was right on cue at 5:50am. 

Robby scrubbed the sleep from his eyes and sluggishly grabbed the phone off the bedside table to see the time.

5:50? 

His alarm was normally set at 5:30. 

He blinked in the faint dawn light at the screen. The background on his phone was of himself, but not. 

It took him a few moments to place the photo, but he realized it was a photo of himself as a young man. Early-twenties. He had his arm slung over the shoulders of another man. And that realization shook him harder than his own young face grinning at him. 

Jack. 

His hair was a youthful dark brown, his skin smooth, his eyes twinkling with a little less of the jaded sarcasm they held as a middle-aged man. 

Robby flung the bedcovers aside and a shocked breath puffed out of him as his bones moved eagerly, his muscles loose and warm. Where were the everpresent aches in his back, the arches of his feet, the crick in his neck?

He felt limber, loose, and he felt like if he stooped down to pick up the discarded sock near his foot his knees would spring right back up. 

Robby staggered out of his bedroom, into the hall, and through to the bathroom. He flipped the light on and stared at himself in the mirror. 

His eyes went big and he wondered if he was hallucinating. 

Robby touched trembling fingers to his cheek and jaw. His beard was a scruffy thing, not the full-fledged growth he maintained. He was missing the crow’s feet around his eyes, the lines etched into his forehead from years of grief. His hair was thicker and disheveled in every direction. He looked fresh. He looked young. 

“Can you not stagger around so early in the morning, Lurch?”

Robby jumped and turned, finding a Jack Abbot who radiated a similar youth behind him, leaning in the doorway. Two natural legs from beneath his basketball shorts. He scratched a lazy hand over the muscle tank covering his chest.

Jack continued, “My first shift is tonight. I gotta start getting used to this new fucked sleep schedule.”

Robby swallowed. “What day is it?”

Jack scrunched his nose. “Dude, showing up late on your first day is a sure way to get on your attending’s shit list.”

“Late…?” He breathed.

“Your badge is in your backpack. I watched you check it a thousand times. Get dressed and go, so I can go back to sleep.”

Robby stepped quickly by Jack to the living room, where he thudded to a stop. He’d been moving through the apartment like it was familiar, but Robby didn’t recognize it. 

With the same baffled automatic understanding, he knew the backpack on the couch was his. In the front pocket he pulled out a PTMC badge. But the face on his shiny new badge was of his same youthful face. 

The name read “Michael Robinavitch, Resident Physician”

Robby lifted the phone in his hand. 

July 4, 2026

“What the fuck…”

“Go, man!” Jack yelled from his bedroom. “I really don’t want to see you faceplant this.”

His body responded by following a routine his mind wasn’t grasping. He dressed with lightning speed into the black scrubs he knew, shoved his feet into sneakers that seemed to be his, given that they were in his bedroom, and stumbled out the front door, his backpack hiked onto his shoulder. His feet took him to the corner right as the bus pulled to the curb and he got on, swiping his bus pass on some instinct that continued to evade higher cognizance.

Sat with some time to gather his thoughts, he tried to puzzle out what was happening to him. 

He remembered the shift. Remembered the mounting anxiety as he dug himself a deeper and deeper hole. Remembered the abandoned baby, Dana cornering him all day long, Jack’s warnings and demands to come back, his doctors’ little dramas spiraling through the ED around him over the course of the day. 

He remembered holding the baby one last time. 

He remembered resolving himself to driving home and starting his road trip. 

He remembered… nothing after that.

But as he looked around and at his own self, he had somehow been flung back into his twenty-six year old body. Flung back into the life he’d had at that age. Rooming with Jack. Just graduated medical school. And now he was, what? 

Starting his intern year at PTMC, if Jack’s clues were anything to go by. 

Was he dreaming? He could be dreaming. Funny, since his dreams verged more often on nightmares, and despite it none had ever felt this real. He was in his body here and now. This was no dreamscape.

His middle-aged mind inhabited his mid-twenties body. The people around him changed too, not only him. Jack was younger again. 

Who else had changed?

When Robby stepped off the bus and walked toward PTMC, he got his answer. 

The ED looked just as he left it. Nothing physical about it had changed. But as he walked through the halls, toward the lockers and clocking in, he faced the board screen overhead and his gaze dropped down, expecting to see Dana ready with a quip about him standing around dumbfounded. 

In Dana’s place was a middle-aged woman with her coiling brown hair in a single braid and a ready sweetness in her brown eyes that Dana hadn’t managed in at least a decade. She smiled at him, the lines around her eyes crinkling in her honey brown skin, and Robby realized he’d been staring. 

She stepped up to him, holding out a hand to shake. 

“Good morning. I’m Emma, charge nurse. You’re the new intern then?”

Emma… Emma… 

Yesterday, Emma was a young, fresh-faced nursing graduate clocking in for her first shift. 

Today, she was Dana.

“You’re the first to show for morning stand-up,” she said, a hint of sarcastic wit through her light, friendly voice. “Making a good impression already. Your attending will appreciate that.”

“Excuse me?” A woman spoke behind Emma. Both of them watched the young, blonde, fox-eyed woman in nurse’s grey approach Emma. “I’m looking for the charge nurse.”

Emma beamed. “You’ve found her. You must be my new lamb.”

Dana—for it was certainly Dana judging by her smirk—said, “I like to think of myself more like a fox.”

Emma laughed. “That’s just fine, it takes all sorts down here.”

“Alright everyone!” A new voice rang out and it scratched Robby’s brain as something familiar. “Let’s round up, I’ve got some announce– whoa!”

Somebody bounced off Robby’s back. He turned and had to lower his chin to look down at the man blinking up at him. 

A slightly gap-toothed smile aimed at him. “You’re a tall one, aren’t you?” The man said. He patted Robby’s shoulder and continued around him to stand in front of the gathered shift. 

The longer Robby stared at him, the more he felt his jaw falling open. 

Blue eyes framed by gentle lines scanned the group, a pleasant smile lifting the corners of his lips. His hair was light brown and threaded with pale streaks, not quite silver yet. It waved, curling lightly at the collar of his oversized oatmeal-beige knit cardigan. Underneath was the usual black scrub top. His badge was clipped to the pocket. 

Robby knew that face. It was one of the last faces he saw in his memory. 

“Happy Fourth, everyone. We’ve got some new students and residents starting with us today, so I’ll introduce myself. I’m Doctor Whitaker, your Chief Attending.”

Distantly, the two med students introduced themselves next to Robby. It wasn’t until Whitaker, Dennis Whitaker, Robby’s own Whitaker, tilted his head and said, “Are you with us, doctor?”

Everyone was staring at him. He eked out of his dry throat, “Michael Robinavitch. R1. But… everyone calls me Robby.”

Whitaker smiled. “Robby it is. Thank you, everyone. Today will be business as usual before the holiday starts sending its victims. Stay alert, and reach out to me or a senior if needed.”

On cue, EMTs rolled in with a trauma.

Whitaker rubbed his hands together. “Let’s do this. Doctor Robby, with me.”

Robby moved more on bafflingly detached instinct than true understanding of what he was experiencing. 

But once he was in that trauma room his better instincts took over. Despite having three decades of experience, a part of his brain reminded him he was supposed to be an R1. Where he’d normally take a position at the side of the patient, Whitaker was instead. He calmly directed the nurses and Robby, asking him the same kinds of questions he’d asked the students Joy and Ogilvie only yesterday. He tested Robby’s knowledge as he instructed him where to go, what to do next. And every time Robby answered him–correctly, of course–Whitaker just smiled and nodded, moving on smoothly. 

“Huckleberry! What do you got for me?” A loud voice entered the room. 

Robby’s head snapped toward it, and he stared at Trinity Santos. Her hair was cut short, boy-short. It brushed against her cheeks in the front, and was cropped close in the back. Her piercing eyes were no less shrewd with middle-age and her mouth seemed settled into a permanent purse. 

She wedged her way in between Robby and a student. She gave him a cursory up-and-down look. “My god, Huck, you didn’t mention Skeletor was gracing our hospital.”

Whitaker’s rolled his eyes with a fond exasperation that was so habitual it almost made Robby laugh. “Santos, you are not allowed to nickname my residents.”

”Aww, come on,” she said flatly. “It’s fun.”

”Doctor Robby,” Whitaker said and Robby’s attention snapped back to him. He stood calmly, hands linked behind his back. “This is Doctor Santos, our senior trauma surgeon. Present the patient, please.”

The words rolled off his tongue automatically, earning a begrudgingly impressed eyebrow lift from Santos. 

“Kid knows what he’s talking about.”

”Of course he does,” Whitaker said, and flashed a wink at him. “He’s made it to us, hasn’t he?”

Santos barked a laugh and leaned into Robby. “Come find me later and I’ll tell you all about your attending’s first day in the ED as an MS4.”

The door opened and someone popped their head in. Robby needed to stop being so surprised every time the sight of someone he knew struck him like a bat to the head. 

Mel, Melissa King, her blonde hair combed back into a braid he would recognize anywhere, smiled to the room. “Whitaker, we need you in Trauma 2. Oh! The new students.” Her eyes landed on Robby. “And the new R1. Welcome!”

Santos, her focus on the patient’s gaping wound, said, “Do you need me too, honey?”

Honey?

”Not yet, dear,” Mel said, easily and kindly, “but maybe stick around.”

Whitaker nodded, “Okay, then. I’m going with Doctor King. You guys in here keep going.”

When he left, Santos aimed a narrowed eye at him. “That’s my wife, Skeletor. Know your place, or I will hear about it. Best believe.”

He swallowed. “Okay…”

Then she chuckled. “I’m just fuckin’ with you. Doctor King doesn’t need me to defend her.”

No, Robby had a feeling that this Mel King would inspire instant remorse and regret from anyone who attempted to disrespect her. 

Once the patient was stabilized and moved out to surgery, Robby filed out to the central desk behind the others, his gaze going to Trauma 2 and he watched Whitaker stand at the patient’s feet as other doctors and nurses worked. Just like Robby did. 

And then Whitaker turned, glancing through the glass behind him, and met Robby’s gaze. He smiled, and then shifted as if he’d suddenly decided something. 

Whitaker excused himself from the room and walked to him. He removed his gloves and swiped the sanitizer dispenser.

Robby watched him in what he could only describe in the moment as fascination. He didn’t think he’d ever seen Whitaker’s stride so confident and self-assured. Robby should feel some kind of recognition of it. In this strange universe, Whitaker was an attending–Chief Attending, for Christ’s sake, his own position–but Robby himself had not felt so self-assured in a long time. 

And wasn’t that a kick in the ass to realize it now, now that he was in a body whose prefrontal cortex was only barely finished forming. 

Whitaker’s hand rested on his shoulder, giving a gentle squeeze and wordlessly steering him along toward the ambulance bay doors. 

“Come with me a second,” he said and Robby couldn’t do much else but follow along like a puppy. 

Out in the bay, Whitaker whistled and shoved the cabled sleeves of his cardigan up his arms. “Jesus,” he said. “Humidity at this hour.”

Robby was watching his hands. Robby, even in this body, had large hands. In a profession where eyeballs were focused on what each pair of hands were doing, he’d heard it a lot over the years. But he surreptitiously examined Whitaker’s hands now. Evenly sized palms and fingers, and a little bony with age. His wrists, too, were on the thin side, one of them adorned with a simple leather-strap watch. The muscles of his forearms were lean. The way Robby remembered them.

No ring on his finger.

“So. Robby.”

Robby blinked. Whitaker’s hands were in his cardigan pockets now. He stood companionably with him. 

He smiled at him. “How are you feeling today?”

Robby cleared his throat. “Ah, just fine. I think.” Considering.

Whitaker cocked his head again. “You sure? It’s your first shift, but you’ve had this wide-eyed nervous look to you, like you’re observing an alien planet.”

Oh God.

”It’s okay to be nervous.”

“I’m not nervous,” he jumped to defend himself. “At least, not about the work.”

The corner of his lip lifted, briefly deepening the wizened lines of his face. Robby stared at them. The words distinguished and approachable came to mind. Was this how the youths had looked at him? Robby would never call himself distinguished, and since he was thinking about it he’d probably call himself a mess held together by shitty coffee and the grace of God.

God being Dana and Jack’s infuriating brands of love.

In whatever universe this was, Whitaker was now in his position. He’d lived a whole life to be here, in his fifties, leading the Pitt that was notorious for chewing up the weak and polishing the diamonds in the rough. With a sudden fondness loosening his chest, he saw the young Whitaker standing before him, a diamond in the rough in that hectic MS4 year. That diamond beginning to shine in the next R1 year. 

“Then what about?” Whitaker asked, and Robby shook himself internally, getting his bearings again. 

The question wasn’t demanding. Whitaker was giving him the space and attention to share what was on his mind. It was something Robby knew he hadn’t done well enough when he was Chief. 

Robby swallowed. “I just feel… an overwhelming sense of deja vu.”

Whitaker laughed and clapped a hand between his shoulder blades. “Well, that’s not that bad, all things considered. Could be that’s why you worked that patient like you’d done it a hundred times before.”

Try a thousand.

Whitaker’s hand at his back was small, but firm. It felt… good. Encouraging. 

“Robby, we may not get many chances throughout shifts for a sit-down, but I want you to know that if you need to talk about anything, I’m here.” Robby cocked a brow and Whitaker finished, “It’s my spiel to all new additions, but it’ll always be true. Just wanted to let you know.”

Whitaker’s gaze narrowed, and for that brief moment, the cheerful, breezy man shifted into a focused, observant mentor, imparting a tender severity that was no less arresting for its gentleness. “You did well. Keep going.”

And just like that he shifted back. “Alright. Mushy break time over. Go grab a case from the board. And no cherry-picking. Keep Emma happy. Her wrath is a rare thing. Don’t be the one to raise it.”

.

.

The hours churned by with the painful routine Robby was used to combined with an alarming unpredictability that came from everyone around him. For the first time in decades, he was expected to follow the senior residents, follow their orders, give answers to their questions that he knew forward and backward. He wasn’t a total idiot. He purposely answered incorrectly a few times when the residents were starting to give him odd looks for being right every single time. 

He figured he ought to keep his head down and get through this day. What the hell was going to happen when he went to bed tonight? Would he wake up in this young body again, to face another day? He had no answers for what happened to him, only an instinctual drive to do what he knew. And he knew medicine. 

He worked with Mel, who was practically indistinguishable from her younger self. He watched in mute fascination at the way Santos bantered with Whitaker whenever they were on a case together. He found himself seeking Dana out from a subconscious instinct to put their heads together between cases at central command. He may not have known her at this young age, but he saw the makings of the Dana he knew in this new nurse. 

And he nearly spit his break room coffee when he watched Victoria Javadi–Doctor Javadi–march toward the behavioral room, her Emergency Psychiatry badge swinging from her pocket. 

Do you think I can do it? She’d asked him after the Fourth of July shift from hell.

I think you can do whatever you put your mind to.

.

.

At midday, the highly organized chaos of the ED took its first hit. 

Emma popped her head into the treatment room he and Whitaker were in with a patient. 

She said, voice soft, “Whitaker, MVC. Motorcycle versus semi. Five minutes out.”

The words didn’t mean anything significant to Robby. They were ordinary to him. But Whitaker paused, as if a couple seconds behind understanding her words. 

“Okay,” he said, his voice quieter, a trace of uncertainty entering it. “Thank you.”

Emma bit her lip. “I’ll get Mel on it. You don’t have to.”

Whitaker shook his head, shoving a hand through his hair. “No. I’ll take it. Mel’s busy.”

Emma left them. Whitaker’s eyes were less focused. A little lost. 

“Doctor Whitaker?”

He glanced up at Robby and inhaled. “Yes?”

”Are you okay?”

Whitaker blinked at him, and then he smiled, crossing his arms over his chest. “Of course. Robby, join me on this one.”

They left the nurse to finish with the patient and he followed Whitaker out to where the EMTs rolled in the motorcycle rider. 

Into the trauma room and doctors and nurses descended on him to assess, stanch blood flow, begin calling vitals and orders. 

Robby winced at the sight of the skull damage as he worked. 

“T-boned by the semi truck,” someone said. “Witnesses said he wasn’t wearing a helmet.”

”Yeah, and now this guy has a TBI, likely won’t make it. A vegetable if he does.”

Blood had spilled over the man’s dark beard. Gashes covered his tall body. He looked to be in his fifties. 

“Doctor Whitaker?”

Robby finally looked up from the patient.

”Doctor Whitaker,” the person repeated, a bit louder. 

Whitaker was frozen at the end of the gurney. He stared at the patient with a furrow between his brows, his mouth set in a grim line. It was like he was seeing something else, like he was somewhere else in his mind. 

Another call of his name snapped him back to the present. “Page Santos,” he said, his voice somewhat strained. “And Neuro.”

When Santos entered the room, Robby watched her eyes go first to Whitaker. She put herself between him and the patient, cutting off his view. 

“Go outside,” she told him firmly. 

Whitaker shook his head.

”Go, Dennis.” Santos met Robby’s gaze, hers a warning. “Skeletor, go get Doctor King. Now.”

Robby scuttled out of the room. He hadn’t scuttled since his own intern year. He found Mel. “Ah, Doctor King? Santos is asking for you to take over Trauma One.”

Mel’s eyes visibly dimmed with understanding. “Oh. Sure thing. Is… is Whitaker alright?”

”I don’t… I don’t know.”

Mel tried a smile. “I’ll go now. Can you find him? Try to distract him.”

Almost as an afterthought, she patted his arm awkwardly before hurrying away. 

Whitaker wasn’t outside in the bay. He wasn’t in the restroom. Those two places being Robby’s go-to spots. As he searched the halls, he saw movement behind the slim glass window of the stairwell door. Two people moving up to the first landing. 

Robby cracked the door open and leaned against the jamb. Their voices echoed.

It was Emma, first. “Dennis, hon, I shouldn’t have mentioned the MVC to you. I should have gotten Mel first.”

Whitaker’s voice was shaky, trying desperately to hold it together. “Not your fault. I lapsed. I froze.”

”It’s understandable–”

”I can’t fucking freeze like that!” He burst through gritted teeth. “This patient isn’t special. We see that nearly every day!”

Emma’s voice was level. “But it happened just like his. He even looks like him. Don’t deny it.”

”It’s not an excuse,” his voice was even smaller now. “I’ve got students and interns to look after. I can’t fucking freeze.”

“What are they going to do? Belittle their attending because he experienced an emotion?”

”Santos bullied me out of the trauma room and now I’m a grown man crying in a stairwell, Emma. That’s a bit more than an emotion.”

”You’re right. It’s a mess of emotions brought on by a trigger. When was your last therapy session?”

A beat of silence. Whitaker mumbled, “A month ago.”

”Dennis…”

”I know. I know. I’ll call.”

”Today.”

He sighed. “Fine. Today. I already have Santos on my ass. You too?”

”Always, hon.”

He gave a watery chuckle. 

Robby’s self-preservation instincts dragged him away from the door before they both descended to find him eavesdropping. If R1 Whitaker had discovered him in this way, Robby knew he’d just go fling himself off the roof. 

But then, Whitaker had already done that, hadn’t he? Found him in an objectively worse condition than the current circumstances. And Robby had managed not to fling himself off the roof.

When he turned from the door, he nearly ran straight into Santos, who stood before him hip shot with her arms crossed. Glaring at him. 

“Robinavitch,” she said, humorless. “A word.”

He followed her to a quiet hallway. He felt the need to defend himself. After all, he knew intimately what these moods did to a person. “I don’t gossip, Doctor Santos.”

”Good. You’d be of a select few who don’t around here. I need you to listen to me, and take some advice.”

He had a feeling this wasn’t a suggestion, but a command.

”He likes you,” she said, locking his gaze to hers. “And if I can tell in half a day, it means you’re doing something good. Your attending doesn’t get ruffled up easily. He’s infuriatingly mellow like that. But watch out for the motorcycle cases. Especially the helmetless ones. I never want to hear a joke about them, and if you hear any jokes about them you have an obligation to shut them down.”

Unease churned in his gut, but Robby managed to ask, “What is it about those cases?”

”Nope. Not my story to tell. Earn his trust and maybe you’ll find out yourself. But don’t think for a second that this means he’s weak, you hear me?”

This Robby knew he could say with conviction. “I’d never think that.”

Santos shifted her jaw, then nodded. “Good. Get back to work.”

She left him in the hallway.

And Robby was becoming significantly less worried about his own fate in this alternate universe.

.

.

In the afternoon, Robby’s attention was snagged when a young man strolled into the ED wearing a visitor’s badge, his stride jaunty and loose-legged. He wore a t-shirt, faded jeans, and dirty work boots. His blond hair flopped over his forehead over bright blue eyes and a thousand-watt grin. 

He held up two big plastic bags stuffed with containers. 

“I come bearing gifts!” He greeted the nurse’s station. “The best kind, too.”

Emma laughed. “Food is always the best gift.” She hugged him. “What are you doing here, sweetie?”

The young man, mid-twenties, greeted passing nurses and doctors with waves and fist bumps. 

“Mom sent me with provisions. You know her, she thinks everyone here’s starving.”

Emma laughed. “She’s not wrong.”

Whitaker rounded the corner and Robby watched his face light up.

“Theo!”

The young man wrapped his arms around Whitaker, having to lean down slightly. Was Whitaker really that short? Robby didn’t know if he’d realized it before. 

“Uncle Dennis! Mom made lasagna for the troops.”

“Jesus, Amy. Well, we’re obviously grateful,” he said as a cluster of nurses bustled the bags of food toward the break room, plastic forks already digging into containers. 

Whitaker turned and smiled up at Robby. “Ah, Robby, this is my nephew, Theo Miller. Theo, this is Doctor Robby, the new intern.”

Theo reached out a hand, his grip was strong. “Nice to meet you. Don’t be shy about the food, my mom sends food every major holiday and most minor ones too.”

Robby blinked in astonishment as the puzzle pieces settled into place. 

Theo Miller. Amy. 

Robby had watched Whitaker slide into her truck, cooing to the baby Theo in the back seat as he drove away from Robby and the Pitt, fireworks bursting overhead. 

The same woman he’d warned him about having boundaries with. 

Whitaker looked on the boy with obvious paternal pride. But he’d said nephew. And he wore no ring. 

The words jumped to the tip of Robby’s tongue. To ask about his relationship with Amy. How it had progressed to beloved uncle status, to the point that her son regularly visited the ER. 

Just like Jake.

A new spear of pain lodged in his ribs. Jake. Did he even exist in this universe? How was Robby supposed to get back to him? 

Did anyone in his own universe even know he was gone? 

Did anyone care?

Robby was dizzy suddenly, a wave of nausea rolling over him. He swayed on his feet and passed a hand over his face. 

“Robby?” Whitaker’s voice called. “You alright?”

A sweat broke out over his body. “I’m.. I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine. Need some air?”

“Yeah, I…” he didn’t finish. He didn’t even know what he would say. Robby turned on his heel and stalked out the ambulance doors. He jolted to a stop in the exact place he used to park his Bonneville. He scoured the space, desperate to blink and find the bike sitting there, everything as it should be. Desperate to find Dana smoking a cigarette. Desperate to find someone, anyone, to look at him not as an R1 but as their chief again. 

He sat on the concrete ledge of a planter box, face buried in his hands as he leaned over his knees. 

Was he going to be stuck here, reliving his life all over again weighed down with five decades of grief? Forced to watch people he cared about carry that kind of weight? 

And what could Robby do? Say? 

I know what it’s like. I set myself on a crash and burn course only to wake up in my younger body at the mercy of some cosmic prankster.

He was going to fail these people all over again.

A body seated themself next to him on the ledge. 

Robby heard the muffled sound of a knife sliding through flesh. He jerked his face up and watched Whitaker sit, knee crossed over the other, while his lithe, fluid hands slid a knife around an avocado. He separated the halves with a damp suction, then hacked the pit out with the knife. As if reaching for a cigarette in his pocket, Whitaker stuck his hand in and came out with a metal spoon. He scooped avocado and held out the spoon to Robby.

“Avocado?”

Robby stared at the spoon. “What?”

Whitaker smiled, more soberly this time. “Do you get panic attacks often?”

He blinked at him, his chest tight. “I’m… this isn’t a panic attack.”

Whitaker nudged his side. “Okay.” He ate the bite of avocado. 

Robby sat up straighter. “What makes you think I’m having a panic attack?”

“Because for a moment, you reminded me of someone I knew, many years ago. The same reaction, the same defensiveness.” Robby shot him a look but Whitaker simply smiled. “He used to run when they happened. Hide himself.”

His stomach was turning into a cavern, scraped raw by truths he didn’t want to acknowledge.

Robby’s voice was not as steady as he wanted it to be. “Who was he?”

Whitaker gazed out to the street. “My mentor.”

“What… happened to him?”

His smile fell. He absently ate another bite of avocado and then stood. 

He met Robby’s gaze. “Come on, Robby. We need you in there.”

The words were out before he could think better. A scoff. “You don’t need me.”

“We need everyone. You have no idea what one sudden absence does to this entire crew.” He turned on his heel. “Two minutes, Robinavitch. We’re fucked without you.”

Robby stared at his retreating back, jaw hanging open. 

Robby wanted to hug him, for some reason he couldn’t explain. He wanted to grab him and shake him. Demand to know why Robby was so important, demand to know how Whitaker could take all this every day and turn out so even keeled. 

What had Robby done wrong?

He walked back into the ER and watched Whitaker give a goodbye hug to Theo. Then a senior resident barked at him to follow for the next case. 

.

.

The second hit came when, in the steady noise of the ED, voices suddenly raised and a nurse jogged to central to call out, “Code Hula Hoop!”

Robby’s skin prickled and a cold sweat burst from his pores. 

His first thought was, Dennis.

But as he watched Emma run toward the code, Dennis came jogging from a treatment room. 

Robby’s pulse thrummed and settled.

He followed the concerned crowd to a treatment room where a big, burly man had Dana pressed to the wall, his meaty hands fisted in the front of her scrubs. She glared at him with a dagger hidden in her eyes and a jaw-clenched calm. 

They all watched as her knee came up to ram into the man’s groin, wearing nothing but a hospital gown for protection. He sunk to his knees and she twisted his wrists around behind his back and tipped him forward with a foot pressed to his back. 

Security rushed in to take over restraining the man. Emma ushered Dana out of the room. She was no longer sweet Emma. She looked like a wolf whose pup had been threatened as she demanded information from witnesses.

Dana promised she hadn’t been injured. The disoriented patient had grabbed her. 

Emma spun around and her glare landed on Robby.

“Doctor Robby. Give Dana an examination. Start the chart.”

Robby’s heart hadn’t stopped pounding. This scenario was too familiar. Even if the roles were reversed it didn’t feel good to know it was still a problem. 

Dana said, “Not necessary, I’m fine.”

Emma shook her head. “Don’t go riling me up more than I already am. Sit, my little fox.”

Dennis’s gaze was pointed and assessing but his voice was neutral. “More like a tiger, this one.”

Dana huffed a laugh and let Robby test her wrists. Dennis’s hand patted his shoulder. 

“Make sure to note everything, for the report,” he said.

Dana inflated with rebuttal again but Dennis only had to tilt his head and level his gaze on her and she sunk back onto the stool. Finally, he walked away.

Dana sighed and Robby’s mouth quirked into a smile. That’s my Dana.

“Didn’t they give you the seminar on worker safety?” He said to her. 

Her flat stare bore into him. “Of course. But I’m not hurt.”

“That’s not the point.”

She huffed. “Okay, big guy.”

“Where’d you learn to do all that?”

She shifted her shoulders proudly. “I’ve taken self defense classes since freshman year of undergrad. I help teach them now, on weekends.”

He grinned. “Emma looked like she was going to tear into that man.”

She pursed her lips. Her tone softened. “I wondered all day how a charge nurse could be so constantly sweet. Don’t tell anyone, but I was a little afraid of her right then.”

“Me too,” he said, and it felt relieving to speak an honest truth for once all day. “I guess kindness doesn’t equal weakness.”

She stared at him. “Neither does sadness.”

He paused in his notetaking. “What?”

“I’ve seen you, today. You have these moments where it looks like you’re overcome by something, like you’re going to break. And then you leave the room, or change the subject, pushing it all back down.”

He wanted to shove his hands in his pockets, but it suddenly felt like a cowardly move. 

“You don’t know me,” he said instead.

She rolled her eyes. “I know people like you. My uncle did the same thing, and no one said a word about it. The Evans don’t really like to talk about their shit. He hung himself. Five years ago. And he had the same look in his eye as you do. 

“You want some unsolicited advice? Do something about it. Losing a doctor as tall and pretty as you would be a real waste.”

The laugh burst out of him. 

Dana gave his shoulder a hearty punch and she hopped off the stool to walk back to the central desk.

.

.

Half of Robby’s brain knew he’d be found out before the end of the shift in a heartbeat. The other half didn’t seem to care and couldn’t help himself. 

Not found out that he was his own body snatcher. Found out that he harbored what could only be described as an unethically keen interest in Whitaker. 

The longer he worked the more Whitaker’s little mannerisms and speech intrigued him. How he spoke of treatment plans and tested the students with an experienced eloquence that only, well, Robby could understand, having done it himself for years. How he’d lean over a patient to examine the affected area, his cardiganed arms crossed over his chest, his finger tapping against his arm as his thoughts whirred behind lined blue eyes. The easy way he held out a fist to tap with Robby’s, or anyone else’s, for a job well done. That same hand that found Robby’s shoulder time after time, case after case. Delicate bones, calloused fingertips, firm pressure. He knew his own Whitaker had done farm work regularly. Had this Whitaker continued that?

Robby had not once heard him raise his voice in irritation or aggression. People listened to him because he was competent and kind. There was no reason for another doctor to argue with him when Whitaker’s method erred on the side of mutual learning. His staff respected him. Looked to him. Flowered at his praise and showed genuine remorse when reprimanded. 

He wasn’t a big man, and he didn’t need to be. He wasn’t gruff or jaded. He trusted his people, and they sought not to lose that trust. 

And with each observation the comparisons came at him like a lineup of kicks to the gut. 

Robby didn’t think he had earned disrespect, but he recognized that he was much more of a fucking emotional mess than this Whitaker was. His Fourth of July shift from hell held all the evidence anyone would need. 

Robby was forced to watch Whitaker here, contrasting his steadiness with Robby’s tenuous tension. No wonder Langdon had called him out. No wonder he and Dana had fallen into shouting matches. No wonder McKay, and Jack, and even Dennis to a degree, tried to crack him open, just a little, and he stubbornly held the doors shut. 

He couldn’t help but compare the ED to a body. Whitaker’s ED breathed and circulated and filtered out the toxins before they stained the organs. 

Robby’s ED festered with a miasma and he was the diseased source. His staff did their best to neutralize it where they could, but no panacea could penetrate. He had to—Godammit. He had to stop being the disease. Cut it out like necrotic fascia. 

But he was here. He could be dead in his own universe. Well, that saved him the job. The cancer forcibly removed, his staff could maybe breathe for once. 

“Yo, Skeletor, there’s only room for one existential spiral per day, and that slot was taken hours ago.”

Santos grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around on his seat. He sighed, having a newfound sympathy for what it was like to constantly be pulled away from charts that were stacking up. 

He rubbed his face. “I’m not spiraling, Santos.”

“Really?” She cocked an eyebrow. “Because your eyes are on the screen but you’re not seeing a damn word you’re typing. You look like someone shot your dog.”

He rather felt like the dog under Santos’s shotgun. 

“Not to mention,” she said, leaning back against the desk and crossing her arms, tilting toward him in a poor attempt at privacy, “you’ve been staring at Whitaker all day.”

He flinched. “He’s my attending.”

She barked a laugh. “Oh, you sweet, sorry child. I am very familiar with what an ill-advised crush looks like.”

He was sure his face was partly bewildered and partly fearful. Even Santos’s younger self was awfully perceptive. What had another two or three decades honed? 

He hoped his face didn’t betray his nerves. “You’re mistaken.”

She lifted her hands. “It’s alright. I get it. Your boss is cute and pocket-sized and he has a penchant for physical contact. Some people have a competency kink. Combine all that with being in close quarters twelve hours a day, crushes are bound to happen.”

“Santos.” He had to nip this in the bud. “Do you always encourage wildly inappropriate workplace dalliances?”

“Christ, Skeletor, you sound like you’re my age.” 

Was this the older and wiser Santos the world of healthcare in his universe had to look forward to?

“Doctor Santos, I don’t believe anyone called for a consult,” Whitaker said suddenly at his shoulder.

Robby jumped. He hoped his face wasn’t as red as it felt. Santos cocked a knowing eyebrow at him, but she smiled innocently at Whitaker.

”What’s yours is mine and all that,” she quipped. “Just asked Reach here to grab something from a tall cabinet for me.”

Robby could have laughed at Whitaker’s flat expression. “And did he?”

”Yup,” she said simply and pushed herself off the desk. She waved lazily. “See ya around.”

Whitaker looked suspiciously after her but then he smiled. Never forced. Never layered with despair behind it. 

He said, “Sorry about her. You learn the verbal spar eventually. Now, come on. I’ve got a case for you–”

”Wait,” he burst, before he was aware of what he was doing. 

Whitaker blinked patiently at him. 

Robby wet his mouth and swallowed. “How do you do it?”

He turned fully to him. “Do what?”

”Float,” he said, hating himself. “I mean, not drown. You walk around here like you’re not fighting for your next breath. It’s so easy for you.”

Whitaker leaned against the desk that Santos was just at. He linked his fingers over his lap, smiled wistfully down at them. 

“It takes work to become easy,” he said gently. “Trust me, it hasn’t always been like this. Over the course of thirty years you battle never ending imposter syndrome, guilt, feeling like you’re not good enough. I came back here five years ago. Before this, I was an attending at a rural hospital emergency department. In some ways it was worse than a city hospital. Less money. Fewer resources. More death on your hands because patients are coming from far and wide to the closest trauma center available and they don’t make it in time.”

”How did you deal with that?”

Once again, his eyes saw past Robby to some other time. “You learn to live with it. Learn to accept it. Find balance.” He chuckled. “That, and regular therapy. Santos pushed me into that long ago and I’m grateful for it.”

He met Robby’s gaze more pointedly. “They asked me to be Chief, to come back. I’d studied here, met my people here. The Pitt I inherited… you don’t want to know how it was. I worked my damndest to bring cohesion and trust back to this place. To bring balance that it so desperately needed.” He took a deep breath, looking around. “So now, this place runs. I’ve given her everything she needs to work. Everything he taught me, I now teach you kids.”

Cold, hard truth lodged in his throat. His Whitaker was going to be a better doctor than Robby had ever been. 

And if he wanted to witness it, he needed to take a page from this Whitaker. 

A warm hand landed on his shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “Still got that case for you.”

.

.

The hit that broke Whitaker came at the end of the shift. 

Robby had survived the day. He’d worked on cases that challenged even his fifty-four year old mind. Keeping skills sharp, he thought wryly. It helped when his young hands were just that much more nimble. 

He was finishing his chart when two meaty hands grasped his shoulders and shook him. 

“Yo! Robby!” Jack exclaimed. “How’d it go? You didn’t leave me a mess, did you?”

Somehow, Whitaker was there. He flashed knowing eyes full of humor between them. “You know him?” He asked Robby. 

“Ah, yeah. He’s a friend. And my roommate.”

Jack exaggerated a military salute. “Doctor Jack Abbot reporting for night shift. Nice to meet you, Chief.”

Whitaker laughed and shook his hand. “Samira’s really in for it tonight.”

”Samira?”

A new voice joined them. “Good evening, Doctor Whitaker.”

They both turned to find Samira Mohan. Her dark hair twisted into an elegant chignon and her eyes just as big and kind. There were faint lines in her face, a few strands of silver threading in her hair. 

Robby did a double-take on Jack. Jack’s jaw was on the floor. Robby elbowed him in the ribs. 

Whitaker said, “Welcome, Doctor Mohan. I’ve already found one of your new residents.”

She sized Jack up, offering a hand. “I love a self-starter. Night shift has some new energy.”

Jack belatedly took her hand. “Uh, I’m Jack. Abbot. Doctor Abbot, I mean. But you can call me Jack, if you want.”

Robby stared at him like he was spouting gibberish. And he pretty much was. 

Samira chuckled. “Duly noted. Just be back here in ten for rounds.”

She walked away and Jack left him. Left him to go float across the floor after her. He shook the bewilderment off. He had a chart to finish. 

Then, Emma leaned across the station. “Whitaker. I’ve got Neuro for you.”

Whitaker’s eyes changed. Before they were bright and amused. Now, they dimmed.

Wordlessly, he took the phone. “Yeah,” he said to the other person on the line.

His face betrayed nothing as he listened. He murmured a question here and there, too low for Robby to hear. Though his tone stayed even, his jaw clenched. 

Finally, he turned back and said, “No, it’s alright. Thank you for calling down.”

He handed the phone back to Emma, who hung it up and immediately rubbed her hand in circles over his back. She asked, “It was him, wasn’t it?”

Robby stopped himself from leaning in to ask what happened. 

Whitaker rubbed his hand across his face, and because Robby was watching those hands all day, he saw it tremble. 

His voice stuck in his throat, but Whitaker said, “Page Santos, please? I can’t… take the bus alone.”

”Obviously, hon,” Emma said, her voice unwavering, her eyes assessing and steely. “She’ll be here in a moment.”

She moved away, and Whitaker looked around. When he found Robby still a few paces behind him, he blinked owlishly, like he hadn’t been expecting him there.

Robby hadn’t heard much but he still felt like a guilty eavesdropper. He opened his mouth–to say what?– but Whitaker just smiled and said, “Good work today, Robby. Go home. Rest.”

Then he turned and walked briskly away. 

Robby knew that smile. Knew that look in his eye. 

Don’t ask me what’s wrong. Don’t make me say anything. Not here.

His skin, his muscles, his bones itched to follow him and tell him everything. 

I know who you are! You know me! You’re supposed to be twenty-seven and hopeful and unburdened. You should never have to wear the same face I’ve worn for years.

But he couldn’t follow him. He was swept into the shift change, having to brief Jack on all the patients he’d be taking over. As soon as he was done, he raced to Emma.

”Is Doctor Whitaker still around?”

”No, hon. He left. Why?”

Robby’s heart beat against his ribs. “Nothing.” His mind sped forward a few steps. He jerkily grabbed his backpack from his locker, knowing fully well he looked like a lunatic as he stalked out of the hospital without so much as a “goodbye” to his colleagues. 

At the sidewalk he paused. His instinct had been to find his motorcycle, but he didn’t have that here. He thought to call an Uber, but he didn’t feel like having a near-breakdown in a stranger’s car. 

Near-breakdown on a city bus, it was. 

He tapped his foot on the floor of the bus the whole way, knowing the route by heart. He wasn’t headed to whatever apartment he shared with Jack. 

He was headed home.

He couldn’t say how he knew he’d be there with such certainty, but whatever cosmic power had done all this in the first place beat in his chest and told him, Fix this, fix this.

He needs you. And you need him.

The summer humidity sweltered him. When he staggered off the bus, he ran through it, like soup in his lungs. 

These streets looked the same, the faces of the homes looked the same.

Finally, he reached a townhome he’d come home to every day, alone and suffocating. He climbed the steps to the front door and rapped his fist on it.

And then Robby landed back in his body. 

He whirled and gripped his hair by the roots, pacing over the stoop. 

“Fuck!” He ground out. “What are you doing? Robinavitch, you fucking ass–”

The door opened behind him. 

Robby looked down at Whitaker, his breath arrested in his chest. Whitaker’s hair was damp and curling to frame his face. He wore sweatpants and a white t-shirt, his wiry arms held awkwardly at his sides, half raised in questioning greeting. 

Whitaker stared at him, the slightest unease entering his eye for the first time. Robby berated himself for it.

”Robby?” He said hesitantly. 

“Jesus, Whitaker, I’m so sorry. I was not following you. I mean, it’s not like that. I just know this place and–fuck! I sound like a stalker. I’m sorry. I’ll leave.”

”Robby.”

His voice had the power to stop Robby’s train wreck of a stream of conscious. Robby, having fled down the few steps, stared at him from the sidewalk. 

Whitaker gave a small smile and stepped out onto the stoop, his feet bare. He closed the door behind him to a crack. Then, he lowered himself onto the step with the caution and care of fifty-year-old man. 

“I know you weren’t stalking me,” he said. “I don’t know how you knew this was my house, but I believe you in that, at least.”

He could maybe blame Emma. Say that Emma gave him his address to check on him. 

Whitaker glanced up at him, his big eyes sad, the lines around them a little more etched. “The case from earlier. The motorcycle crash? Neuro called me at the end of the shift. I asked them to give me an update if he survived. He was gone. They couldn’t save him.”

Robby swallowed. “I’m sorry.”

The look in his eye grew distant. “You asked me earlier today, who my mentor was. I didn’t answer.”

”It’s alright.”

”No. I already told you that you reminded me of him. It’s only fair for you to know. When I was your age, an R1, like you, he was the Chief Attending of PTMC. My attending. In the grand scheme of things, we’d only worked together less than a year. But he was special to me. He was a good man. Troubled, surely, but good.

”It was July Fourth, same as today. We’d all had a rough shift, but him especially. I knew he was shoving it down, avoiding it, but I… I couldn’t figure out a way in. I left, with a friend. Said goodbye to him, drove away. A little while later, he got on his motorcycle to go home. This is all what they told me, after, that is.”

Robby’s feet were cemented to the ground. Dread, a new kind, chilled his hands in the stifling July heat. 

“Not a minute after he pulled out to the street, a truck full of drunks tore through an intersection and hit him at fifty miles-per-hour.” He watched his hands, which laced, unlaced, and laced again. “He hadn’t been wearing a helmet.”

He took a deep breath. “Now, as I drove away, I battled with myself on whether I should turn around, try to find him again, and do something about the questions I had, the concern I had for him. I did turn around, back to the hospital. Instead, I arrived at the scene. I was there, watching the paramedics, pushing through the police tape. 

“I stood over him. The life gone from his eyes. His… his skull broke open.”

”Dennis,” Robby’s voice was a rasp.

”I grieved for a long time. I dealt with the PTSD, attacks coming almost every day until over time they mellowed. Santos and I lived together at the time. She pushed me into therapy. She was the only thing holding me together.”

Whitaker dropped his face into his hands, leaning over his knees. His voice shook. “I drove away. I left.”

Robby was in front of him, kneeling and grasping his hands, pulling them away from his face and squeezing them. “What happened to him was not your fault.”

”Every day I regret not asking the questions crowding my mind. I regret not trying to see him. If I had stayed even a minute longer, maybe it would have caused a butterfly effect. Maybe he would have left a minute later, and missed the drunk driver entirely. He would have lived.”

The only words that managed to eke out of his throat were, “Dennis… stop.”

He moved his hand to his chest, fingering a thin gold chain around his neck that Robby hadn’t noticed until just then. 

He watched, in horror, as Dennis absently withdrew the necklace pendant from under his shirt, thumbing at the points of the Star of David that had lain against Robby’s chest for decades.

”I kept his necklace,” Dennis said, clamping his eyes shut as a tear streaked down his cheek to drip off the point of his chin. “I bought his house. But it won’t be enough.”

It was a dagger to his heart.

A door nearby opened, but Robby barely heard it. Everything was tunneling. He could only hear Dennis’s breathing, becoming uneven, could only see him, his aged face contorted with pain that could never be forgotten.

”Dennis, what–” a gasp. “Robby? Is that you? Why are you–”

Robby looked up, and standing on the stoop of the neighboring townhouse was Santos. Behind her, half-hidden by the door, was Mel King, watching them with wide-eyed concern.

Robby leaned back and fell onto his ass on the pavement. He scrambled up to his feet and flinched as fireworks flashed in the sky above their heads, the crack and boom rattling his chest. 

He ignored Santos crouching beside Dennis to console. 

Robby tilted his face to the showers of light and screamed, “Alright, I get it! Is this what you wanted? Are you happy now?”

Dennis’s voice cut through. “Robby?”

”Show me how much the people I care about are suffering without me? Well, fine!” He vaguely registered the mounting fury, the crazed strain in his voice, but he was past caring. “I’m ready to go back! Take me back!”

”Robby, be careful–”

”Take me back!”

“Robby!”

A brief moment of clarity speared him, and he watched Dennis lurch forward, hand outstretched. But he wasn’t quick enough to save Robby from staggering back into the road and being hit by the car that had no hope of stopping. 

.

.

Robby could have called it a waking nightmare. How else could he describe it? 

He came back into his body with a great gasp, his heart giving a terrifying heave in his chest, as if he’d been defibrillated. The lights of the ambulance bay blinded him. The helmet in his hands was a lead weight. 

The sight of it made his stomach roll, and he threw it down to the asphalt as he swallowed the urge to vomit. 

Robby walked away from his bike, not giving it a single glance back as he trudged to the street and moved to the bus stop on autopilot rather than awareness.

When he stepped off, fireworks burst overhead. People laughed and cheered and screamed in the city around him. Sirens blared a street over and he flinched, hurrying his way across the two blocks to his front door. 

He stood at the base of the steps, swayed slightly as he saw the ghost of Dennis’s form curled into itself, weeping. 

He swiped at his pockets for his keys, and belatedly remembered that he’d given them to Dennis that evening. His fingers scrabbled at the loose brick that hid his extra key. 

Inside his house, everything looked painstakingly normal. He stood in the middle of the room, in the silence.

His mind couldn’t seem to hold onto one thread of thought at a time. The memories were like clumps of wet sand breaking off in his hands. Waking up with Jack as his roommate. Seeing his young residents now in positions of leadership. Working cases he’d done thousands of times before as if they were new.

Dennis’s presence creeping under his skin leading to Robby unable to look away. The reality slapping him across the face of what his grisly absence had done to him. 

Robby’s hand found his necklace through his shirt. 

He didn’t know how long he stood rooted to the spot, replaying the day in his head. He raked over the memories for all the details. 

The front door creaked open behind him and Robby watched Dennis—his Dennis—peek around the door before entering, duffel bag in hand.

His big eyes found Robby, and his shoulders dropped on an exhale.

“Robby,” he said, as if tremendously relieved. He shut the door at his back and smiled.

Robby already had him in his arms. The duffel fell to the floor with a dull thud. He scooped him to the tips of his boots, arms wound around his middle, squeezing him so that he could mold himself to every rise and fall of his ribs. 

He buried his face in his hair. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, the sound ragged and thin. “Dennis, I’m sorry.”

Dennis hadn’t flinched away from the embrace, though he froze in shock before his arms slowly lowered around Robby. His hands patted his back cautiously, as if unwilling to spook a skittish animal. 

For all that Robby’s actions were frantic and incomprehensible to Dennis, he let him hold him. 

“What are you sorry for?” Dennis asked him, his voice soft so close to his ear, genuinely confused. 

Precious boy.

Robby staggered back, letting him go. He passed a hand down his face, trying to rub some sense and propriety back into himself. 

“You–you said you weren’t coming until tomorrow,” Robby managed.

A sheepish look came over him. “Ah, yeah. But we were driving away and… something just didn’t feel right. I turned around. I found your bike still in the bay, and the helmet on the ground. It… well, it scared me a little. So I thought to check here next.”

As he spoke, he was giving Robby an odd look, like he’d really gone off the deep end. 

“Robby. What’s the matter?”

A firework exploded outside. 

He breathed a humorless laugh. “You won’t believe me.”

“Try me.”

Robby had been avoiding his eyes, but he looked at him now and he was more serious than during his cases.

Dennis wanted to know what happened? Fine. He’d tell him. He could put him on a psych-hold, he didn’t care anymore.

“I had a moment,” he began, “an out-of-body experience, I suppose. It was a world where you were Chief Attending at PTMC.” 

Robby attempted to gauge Dennis’s shock, but he only saw serene, unchanging calm. 

“You were… incredible. You led with the kind of grace and compassion that I lost. You were steady. But there was a… a crack in the window. And that was my fault. I screwed up, and you carried that for decades.”

He paused to take a breath.

Dennis said, “So you’re blaming yourself for something you hadn’t even done in this world.”

He flared. “I could have! I almost did! You would have turned around and found me bleeding out in the street with a shattered skull.”

Dennis didn’t even flinch. “I don’t care about what happened there. Whatever it was made you change your mind here. I can only be grateful for that.”

Robby shook his head and paced. He didn’t get it. Robby was trying to tell him that he could have easily traumatized him for decades. 

“Are you still planning to go on this trip?”

Robby whirled. “What?”

“The sabbatical.”

Dennis’s face was unreadable, perhaps for the first time that Robby could remember. 

He replied, “No. I can’t.”

“Why?”

Robby opened his mouth to—what? Laugh? Question? With an exhausted droop of his shoulders he went for the truth. “Because I have to fix this. I won’t do that to you.”

Dennis nodded like he was approving a grocery list. “Fine. Count me in.”

Robby’s brain stalled. “Excuse me?”

“Do what you have to do for the next three months. But until you physically kick me out, I’ll be coming by.”

“Doing what?”

Dennis shrugged. “Helping with cooking, cleaning. I’m handy with tools. I assume you don’t have hay that needs baling so we can skip that. Shit, if you just want to stare at the ceiling, I can do that. I like to think I’m pretty adaptable.”

More than he could ever realize.

“Why?”

“I had a talk with Ogilvie today. His self-doubt made me think about my own last year. It made me think about what changed it. It was you. So if the me who inherited the Pitt still held onto you, then I think keeping you here in this world is worth it. Not just for me, but for all the future students.”

Robby swallowed around the mass in his throat. “It’s not your job to fix me.”

“Oh, I agree. But I also think going it alone won’t help. As long as I’m making shitty choices with my boundaries, you don’t get to complain about being one of them.”

Robby laughed. “I’m a shitty choice?”

Dennis stuttered over his words in his race to correct himself. “No! Of course not, I didn’t mean–” he huffed. “You’re one to cast stones, though. You realize what you did back there, right?”

He rubbed his face, caught. “Now I do, yeah. I would plead insanity but I’m not exactly willing to be put on a psych-hold now.”

Dennis smiled. “I won’t report you.”

“I don’t know how to make all this up to you.”

“You do it by following through on your promise. I’m not your judge, jury, and executioner. I’m your friend.”

Robby cocked a brow.

“Well, I mean for the duration of the sabbatical. After, you’re free to boss me around again.” He narrowed his eyes at him. “I do have a question, though. Was there anyone else we know in this other world?”

He thought immediately of Older Santos, possessing all the subtlety of a spiked bat. He also thought about her wife, who was certainly someone they knew. 

He wouldn’t tell him about Mel, but he did think some cosmic payback was warranted. “Do you want to know what future Santos is like?”

Dennis’s eyes sparkled. 

Robby laughed. Finally unwound and sagging with relief, he went to the fridge. “Beer?”

“Sure.”

He popped the caps and groaned. “I’ll have to do the walk of shame tomorrow to go get the bike.”

Dennis rummaged in his duffel and came up with a helmet. Robby’s helmet.

“I think you’ll need this.”

He put it on the counter beside him and Dennis took a bottle, clinking with Robby’s. 

“I certainly will,” Robby murmured. 

Dennis smiled and clapped an easy hand on his shoulder, and that felt familiar and right. 

And if Robby worked hard enough, there would be a day when Dennis smiled back at him with gentle lines around his blue eyes and a little grey in his curls.