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When the last of the well-wishers had finally gone home, Dennis locked the door behind them and lowered his aching carcass into the couch. It still smelled like Robby, but for how much longer? Dennis laid his head back and closed his eyes. In the kitchen, he heard the water turn off and the door of the fridge open and then close again. Then, a weight sank into the couch next to him, accompanied by a smothered groan.
“Looks like it’s just you and me again, Huck,” Trinity said.
Dennis lolled his head toward her. She was still a force of nature, and the years had been kind to her. Asian don’t raisin, she’d say with a toss of her silver mane every time he expressed his envy. His heart swelled up so big at the sight of her, it was like his mouth had no choice but to smile, even though his eyes burned. He reached over and set his hand on hers. She turned her wrist and grasped his fingers.
“Have I thanked you yet?” he asked.
She rolled her eyes at him.
“Only about a thousand times a minute, Fuckleberry, Jesus. As if I’d be anywhere else.”
“How are you holding up?” he asked.
“Bud, it’s definitely not your job to be propping me up through this.”
“I know, but.” He shrugged. “You loved him too.”
“I did,” she said. “And we both know it’s not the same.”
Last year, Trinity’s wife, Nasrin, died of respiratory failure due to ALS. Or, Trinity and Dennis had made her comfortable and let her go as peacefully as they could.
“I’m just saying, I would understand if it brought stuff up for you,” Dennis said.
“And, what, I’d rend my clothes in grief and leave you to it? Are you high?”
“It’s just, I know it wasn’t fair. That Robby got to be over a hundred and Nasrin—”
“I’m gonna stop you right there, Shitaker,” Trinity said, slapping a hand over his mouth. “She was eighty-four years old and suffering. I’d give anything for more time with her, but not at her expense. It isn’t a competition, okay?”
Dennis’s eyes were wet. His throat was so thick he couldn’t speak. He nodded instead.
“Besides,” Trinity said, “we had a damn good run. Had you two beat.”
Dennis barked out a wet laugh.
“By two fucking years!” he said.
“Yep.”
“So it is a competition.”
“Ah, Huck,” Trinity said, bonking her head against his. “Haven’t you learned yet? Everything is.”
She eventually shooed him out of his own living room so he could have a rest. He made her promise to get some herself, and not just tackle cleaning everything up, but she waved him off with a “yeah, yeah.”
He knew he should hang up his suit nice and proper, but he left it pooled on the floor next to the bed, too exhausted to do anything but crawl beneath the covers. He curled onto his side, hand stretched out to the empty space his husband used to take up. He stroked gnarled knuckles over the dip that had molded itself around Robby’s body over the years.
“Hey, baby,” he murmured. Tears slipped over the bridge of his nose and dampened his pillow. “I’m a selfish bastard, I know. Just give me tonight, okay? Let me have tonight, and then I can be happy your pain is over.”
As Dennis drifted off, he could have sworn he felt a hand ghost over the nape of his neck.
Robby came home ready to drop onto his couch and veg out, maybe with a beer in one hand and his phone opened to Grindr in the other. Not with intent or anything, just to see what might be on offer. Maybe something could tempt him from his inertia, though the heaviness in his limbs made a compelling argument of its own. Still, it was the kind of day he needed to shake off. Death by a thousand cuts, and so on. The worshipful blue eyes shining up at him at every turn while he pointedly ignored the way he wanted to sink into them didn’t help.
Only, when he got the door open, there was an old man in nothing but a t-shirt, boxers, and thick socks standing at his mantle with his hands behind his back, inspecting Robby’s photos. Robby froze. Cursed under his breath. He must have left the door open, though he could have sworn he’d unlocked it just now. He cleared his throat, but the man didn’t seem to hear him. He was short, even accounting for the stoop of old age, and he had fluffy white hair that had thinned enough to show his pate. Robby stepped forward in slow, careful steps.
“Sir?” he asked, pitching his volume up. “Sir, can I help you?”
The old man pivoted at the sound of his voice, eyes wider than the sky and mouth dropping open. There was something familiar about him, though Robby couldn’t place it. A neighbor, maybe? Wandered into the wrong unit? Robby thought he knew all his neighbors, but maybe he was a neighbor’s grandpa or something. Robby held up his hands as if approaching a spooked animal and stepped closer.
“Sir, do you know where you are right now?” he asked. “Is there someone I can call for you?”
“Michael,” the man said in a voice that sounded like he’d been gargling glass.
Robby’s heart flipped over. He should be on the phone to 911 right now. He should be assessing this man’s mental state. Instead, he blurted, “Do I know you?”
The man gaped at him, mouth working around words that wouldn’t come.
“I’m a doctor, okay?” Robby said. “Why don’t we sit down and talk?”
He swept a hand out toward his couch. The man ignored the invitation but knitted his brow as he blinked and blinked.
“What year is it?” he said.
Robby’s heart sank.
“2026,” he said. “Can you tell me your name? You’ve got me at a disadvantage.” He tried on a reassuring smile, though all he got in return were those big disbelieving eyes.
“I’m Dennis,” he said.
“Great, Dennis,” Robby said. “And we’ve met before?”
Something rippled through the man’s expression. The devastated incredulity gave way to something sly and amused. Robby’s own disquiet grew.
The old man lifted the hem of his t-shirt and exposed his hip and belly. Robby’s assertion that that wasn’t necessary dried up when he saw an old tattoo stretching across the iliac crest—a lamb pierced through with a sword, set against a red starburst halo, all in the style of a medieval linocut.
He’d seen that tattoo before. Not faded and distorted by the vagaries of time and the body, but stark and fresh, still pink along the edges. One on Santos, and one on Whitaker, shown off to Jesse and Donnie in the break room as Robby walked in and they scrambled to get their scrubs down in front of their boss. Robby had given them a faux-stern Look, capital L, but otherwise breezed past it, ignoring the way Whitaker blushed. For his own part, he busied himself at the sink long enough to calm the galloping of his heart and the way his neck and ears flamed at the sight of Whitaker’s bronze happy trail disappearing into his scrub pants.
“I don’t—” Robby shook his head. No amount of blinking made the tattoo change, or the familiar eyes, or the scar on that nose.
The old man—Whitaker—let his shirt fall back into place. He made an abortive step forward, hands outstretched, but he stopped short and balled them into fists at his side.
“Look at you, all young again,” he said. “I must be dreaming.”
Robby nearly choked.
“Young?” he said. “I haven’t been young in a long time, Whitaker.”
“You sure look young to me,” he said. With visible effort, he tore his eyes from Robby and looked around. “It’s been a long time since I was here.”
“You’ve been to my place?”
Whitaker tilted a smirk at him, gentle but bolder than anything the Whitaker he knew might try on him.
“I suppose it hasn’t happened yet,” he said, “but yes, many times. Do you mind if I get a glass of water?”
“Let me,” Robby said, but Whitaker waved a hand at him. Robby trailed him into the kitchen and watched, mesmerized, as he grabbed a glass from the right cabinet without having to guess, picked up ice from the inside of his freezer instead of going for the dispenser, and likewise pivoted to fill his glass from the filter on his faucet. Robby shook his head again, but whatever cobwebs were gunking up his brain wouldn’t budge. “What the hell is going on?”
“Hell if I know,” Whitaker said. “But I’m damn well going to enjoy it, if you don’t mind.”
“Ha! Be my guest,” Robby said.
Whitaker drained the glass, filled it again, and drained it again. He filled it one last time and straightened.
“I’m tired,” he said. “Come sit with me.”
He made his way back to the couch. Robby hesitated, but Whitaker patted the cushion next to him and Robby couldn’t refuse. Whitaker shifted in place enough that he could look at Robby, and he seemed to be drinking up as much of him as he could. He was slumped into the cushions, more casual than Robby had ever seen him. In the Pitt, he was always ramrod straight and at attention, even when he was playing at casual, leaning against the charge station or sitting across from him in the break room. The Whitaker Robby knew would never let Robby see him without all his layers of professionalism lashed around him like a shield, even if he was being sprayed by something unholy at the time.
This was not the Whitaker Robby knew.
“So what year is it for you?” Robby asked.
“2076,” Whitaker said. “Gotta say, I did not anticipate wandering fifty years into the past when I woke up this morning.”
“What were you doing?” Robby asked. “Maybe if you can retrace your steps…”
Whitaker’s mouth curved up, revealing big teeth and the little gap in between them that filled Robby’s chest with tenderness every time he saw it.
“And, what, that’ll reveal the secrets of time travel?” he said. “It’s just a dream, Robby. Let me enjoy it.” He rested his head on a cushion and resumed his fond staring.
“I think I’m a bit too real for that theory to hold water,” Robby said.
“Sounds like something a dream would say.”
Robby had to laugh. He shook his head.
“Okay, I’ll play ball,” he said. “So, 2076. That makes you, what, seventy-seven? Seventy-eight?”
“Seventy-seven,” Whitaker said. “My birthday is later in the year.”
Christ, the kid was suddenly twenty-five years older than him. Robby couldn’t imagine making it another twenty-five years. The grinding misery of it all. The crushing solitude. He couldn’t do another quarter century, no matter how much therapy he submitted to under pain of Jack sitting on him.
“Well you don’t look a day over seventy,” he said.
A laugh clapped out of Whitaker’s throat as if without his volition. He slapped at Robby’s knee and then snatched his hand back. His mirth dried up abruptly and his eyes filled with tears. Robby’s own smile dropped.
“Hey, are you okay? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said, voice hoarse. “Nothing, just…you sound like him. Of course you sound like him, but. He said that to me all the time.”
“Who?” Robby asked.
Whitaker didn’t bother wiping his tears away. There was no embarrassment in his face. He just let the tears stream down his cheeks without appearing to notice them at all.
“My husband,” he said. “It was his memorial today. More of a celebration of life than a funeral, you know? That’s what he wanted.”
Robby own heart trembled in sympathy.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” he said. “Shit, and there I was, asking you to relive your day. I’m an asshole.”
Another smile, even through the tears.
“How could you know?” he asked. “Someday we’ll get you to put that boulder down, Dr. Robinavitch.”
“Do you want to tell me about him?” Robby asked. “He must have been a pretty amazing guy.” To land you.
“He was,” Whitaker said, eyes never wavering from Robby’s face. “The best man I’ve ever known, even when he was being impossible. The kindest, the sweetest, with the biggest heart.” An impish smile split his face. “The handsomest man I’ve ever seen.”
Robby couldn’t help smiling back.
“Sounds like he was almost worthy of you, then,” he said.
“Careful, there,” Whitaker said. “I might start thinking you like me or something.”
“How long were you together?”
“Forty-six years. Married forty-five.”
“Wow,” Robby said. “I didn’t know they even made ’em like that anymore.”
“What, built to last?”
“It just seems like a throwback from a different time. When people got married younger and were less willing to get divorced, even if they hated each other.”
Whitaker leaned toward him with a sparkle in his eye.
“I’ll let you in on the secret,” he stage-whispered. “Marry someone you like.”
“Ha! Can’t argue with that.”
“You’d be surprised at how many people that trips up.”
“My longest relationship was five years, and the last two of them barely counted.”
“There’s still time,” Whitaker said.
Robby snorted.
“Nah, I’m too old,” he said. “Too set in my ways.”
“Oh, bullshit,” Whitaker said.
Robby’s eyebrows snapped into his hairline.
“What?”
Whitaker had a strange look on his face, as though he were warring between helpless fondness and marveling at Robby’s audacity. What audacity he could possibly be so offended by, Robby had no idea.
“You are a champion self-saboteur,” he said. “You’re on the hunt for rejection, and the very act of rooting around everywhere for it means you’ll create some to find. So, it’s easier to dip out before you can be the one left in the dust, right?”
“I—what the fuck, Whitaker. You go into psych sometime in the last fifty years?”
“You tell yourself all you want is something casual, something that won’t hurt when it ends, but at the end of the day what you really want is a connection, and nothing less will do. And then, when what you’re doing is what’s hurting you, you look around all hangdog like, ‘why am I so lonely?’ Jesus, Michael, it’d be infuriating if it weren’t so goddamn sad.”
“Who the fuck are you, man?” Robby snapped. “No, seriously—you’re, what, some resident I taught a million years ago, who hasn’t seen me in decades? You don’t even know me, but you think you can diagnose my terminal singlehood? Real easy to do from the safety of hindsight and your own cozy half-century of perfect domestic bliss.”
“I saw you last fucking week, Michael,” Whitaker said.
“Last—what? That’s ridiculous, I’d be like a hundred and two.”
“A hundred and one, actually,” he said. “You didn’t quite make it to your birthday.”
“No, that’s—” Robby’s brain suddenly clicked into place and his eyes snapped to Whitaker’s. “No.”
Whitaker shifted enough to sit up straight. He rolled his neck and let out a sigh.
“Is it me or is it the fact of your longevity?” he asked.
“I can’t. Another fifty years? I can’t. And I’d ruin you, I’d—”
Whitaker pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows.
“Do I look ruined, Michael?”
All Robby could do was shake his head.
“This doesn’t make sense,” he said. “This whole thing—time travel? What the fuck are we even talking about? This is ridiculous. I’m hallucinating.”
Whitaker stood. He didn’t even make a groany old man sound when he did it. He stuck out his hand.
“What?” Robby said.
“I buried you today,” Whitaker said. “Or, you know, commended your body to science and will get your ashes back when they’re done with you, but the point still stands. I said goodbye to you, and I didn’t want to, do you understand? You may have been ready, but I fucking wasn’t, Michael.”
Now it was Robby’s eyes burning. He nodded.
“So I’m not going to fight with you,” Whitaker said. “I’m going to get into bed, and you’re going to hold me one last time, and I’m going to tell you the same thing I’ve told you every day for the last four and a half decades.”
“What’s that?” Robby croaked.
“That I love you, and I want you, and I’ll never stop.”
Robby took his hand.
In the bedroom, Robby lay on his back and opened his arms. Whitaker fitted himself into his chest like he was born to slot into Robby’s jagged edges and smooth them out. Robby closed his arms around him and buried his nose in his hair. Whitaker’s hand came to rest over his beating heart.
“So,” Robby said. “Forty-six years, huh?”
“It's more than most people get.”
“2030, then.”
“Yes, you’re still manfully resisting me, and I’m still trying to get over my excruciating crush.”
“Or I’m waiting for you to finish residency.”
“Yes, yes, you’re very responsible, do you want a medal?”
“I want to do right by you,” Robby said. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
“You do,” Whitaker said. “You will.”
They lay there in silence. Robby didn’t know if the heartbeat in his ears was Whitaker’s or his own. Whitaker’s breath was deep and even, but he toyed with the collar of Robby’s shirt and never fell asleep.
“Were there more good years than bad, Dennis?” Robby asked eventually.
“The only thing I’d change is I’d ask for more,” Whitaker said.
Robby couldn’t give him more years. He couldn’t even be sure this entire interlude was real. But as he held in his arms a grieving old man—his student, his resident, the object of his futile longing—he felt certainty settle over him, warm and alive.
He was going to have a beautiful life.
End