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Robby rounded the corner, saw what was ahead of him, blinked, and started to laugh. "Are you fucking kidding me?"
From behind him, Dana said, "What, you thought I was making it up?"
"No!" Robby shook his head, adjusting his grip on the armful of binders he was carrying so that they wouldn't drop all over the floor. "No, of course not, but it's one thing to know it and another thing to see it."
"Careful, cap," Dana said, slinging the strap of her purse over her shoulder. "You're starting to sound like your time in leadership has given you wisdom."
Robby gave her a sidelong look. "Now what did I do to deserve that particular backhanded compliment?"
"Showed up to do paperwork at seven on a Sunday evening when you're not rostered to work until Wednesday morning," Dana shot back with not even a hint of hesitation.
"Oof," Robby said.
"What? I'm Catholic, I know a martyr when I see one—yeah, even a Jewish one. Now I'm going home to soak my feet and eat my own weight in pasta," Dana said, folding her arms. "And if you were actually wise, you'd be doing the same."
"I don't think you own enough pasta for me to do that," Robby said, giving her his best innocent look.
"Smartass," Dana said, and as she left, called over her shoulder, "See you on Wednesday."
"See you," Robby echoed, and then turned to look back down the length of hallway ahead of him. It looked like what it was: a workplace that had been abandoned mid-shift, with step ladders every few feet and ceiling tiles stacked up in heaps against the walls. Through the holes that now gaped overhead, thick loops of densely bundled, multi-coloured cabling protruded every so often, like vines in some futuristic jungle. All of the doorways had been propped open, so that from where Robby stood next to the nurses' station, he could see clear past the scrubs machine, the on-call room, and the storage closets to where the door to Monty's office stood at the far end of the hall.
Well, the door to his office. Technically. More than two years in the job, and still it was difficult to think of that room as anything other than Monty's office.
Robby sighed and headed for it, dodging the obstacles along the way. He didn't object to PTMC's maintenance workers striking for more pay, not on principle and not when their hourly wage was so insultingly low, but one this abrupt was a headache for everyone who was left to work around it. He didn't know what senior management was thinking, conducting negotiations this poorly, and he hoped it was a sign that Trent Norris would be on his way out by the end of the calendar year.
Robby's grip on the stack of binders turned precarious as he pulled his swipe card out of his jeans pocket, let himself into the office, and flicked on the overhead light. He set the binders down on the desk and booted up his PC. When this had been Monty's office, the top of the desk had always been barely visible beneath an ocean of stuff—not because Montgomery Adamson been an untidy person, but because he was always at the centre of so much, and because he'd never fully made the leap from paper to digital. Copies of medical journals old and new; printed-out articles marked up with gallons of yellow highlighter fluid; staff rosters; newspaper clippings; letters and cards from grateful patients. Geological layers of paper, topped with Post-It notes of various colours, and hedged around by easily a dozen framed photos of Monty and his family.
It had taken a month for Robby to be able to box up everything—the desk contents, the framed paintings on the walls, the crocheted throw from the loveseat—and arrange to have it all shipped to Loretta. The hospital wouldn't pay for it, so Robby had. He'd been sure to include a note with the boxes, written on PTMC-headed notepaper, that he'd carefully phrased to make it seem like the hospital that Monty had given his life to—for—had organised it. To make it seem like the hospital had truly respected him at the last.
Now, the only other thing on the desk, apart from the computer and the binders, was a pen and a pad of paper.
Robby sat and opened the first of the financial oversight binders that Gloria had saddled him with last week. He could have stayed home and worked on these there, had a beer and put the game on in the background, but he felt that he'd been spending way too many evenings like that lately. Even with the TV on, even so long after Janey had gently called it quits, the condo just felt too quiet and still around him. At least here he could prop his office door open and have the intermittent bustle of the Pitt echoing down the hallway to keep him company while he tried to get his head around these figures by the reporting deadline.
He'd made his way through the first binder and jotted down a full page of notes and queries and things to follow up on before he started yawning. Caffeine. He needed caffeine. Getting old, he told himself as he headed for the vending machine near the south exit, which at this time of night was his best option for something that wouldn't make him actively regret having a tongue. That didn't mean it was good, it just meant that Robby had developed some standards since his feverish years as a med student.
Robby was gone less than five minutes, but he returned to find that his office was no longer empty. Jack was now sprawled across the loveseat. In one hand, he held a travel mug of coffee that smelled infinitely better than what Robby was carrying, and in the other—
"Is that a Rubik's cube?"
"Lost and found contains multitudes," Jack said without looking up from his contemplation of the cube. "There was a Slinky in there last month, Shen got it to travel a whole flight of stairs. Did you have one of these when you were a kid?"
"A Rubik's cube?" Robby shook his head as he sat back down at his desk. "Nah. A friend of mine got one for his birthday when we were eleven or twelve. We tried to figure it out for a couple of weeks and then we got bored. Turned into a paperweight on his desk. You?"
"Nope," Jack said absently, turning the thing around in his hand. "My dad didn't approve of 'em." Jack didn't mention his family often, but when he did it was generally as part of some casual yet unnerving aside that secretly made Robby glad that Jack was in therapy. Robby had seen it over and over in this job, how much someone's family could leave traces on them that lingered for years.
"But I saw this," Jack went on, "and thought maybe it could be my new hobby. Ned keeps trying to get me to go golfing with him—"
Robby snorted.
"—and I figured I was better off starting here."
Robby took a gulp of his coffee and said, "You're looking for a hobby? This your way of saying that the Pitt isn't providing you with enough professional enrichment? Because I've got a lot of paperwork to go around if you want to—"
Jack barked out a laugh. "You know that Uncle Sam gave me enough promotions to last me a lifetime, thanks. I'm good where I am."
"Not even one report on the budget line item review report?" Robby held up one of the binders and waggled it temptingly in Jack's direction.
"They've got you reading reports about reports? You poor bastard."
"Well as long as you're in here and not out there, being a valued asset in the workplace..." Robby mock-wheedled.
"C'mon, you know it's going to stay dead out there until the bars close." Jack set his coffee down on the coffee table, and started fiddling with the cube with both hands. "Nothing Ortega can't manage, and anyway it'll do him good to have a little more experience working independently. Can't hope to be an EM attending and be shy about it."
That, Robby agreed on. "Who's out there with him?"
"Ellis and Collins, plus Lena."
In other words, two R2s who were competent and willing to learn, a Charge Nurse who knew her shit, and none of them with any qualms about pushing if they thought Ortega was being indecisive about patient care. Robby bobbed his head in approval. "Nicely done, Dr Abbot."
"It's almost like I know my stuff," Jack said, letting out a low grunt of satisfaction as he got one row of the cube lined up correctly.
Robby shot him a look, and realised then that Jack hadn't made eye contact with him since he'd walked into the room. He made a point of opening up the next binder and tapping at his computer keyboard, as if that was where his real interests lay and his conversation with Jack was just a polite sideshow. "Everything okay?"
There had been a time when Robby wouldn't have asked that question of Jack, or at least wouldn't have meant it in any other than the most solely professional way at the morning hand-off. Jack had started at PTMC as the centre of a flutter of admiring gossip about the new handsome veteran doctor; shame someone already put a ring on it. And sure, he was good looking, but Robby had seen in Jack only the lone person who'd been brought in to replace two senior colleagues. On top of that, he was one of the first EM attendings to be hired on the terms of the godawful 2015 contract renewal, and was not only blissfully unaware of how management was using him as the thin end of the wedge, but full of suggestions about logistics and efficiency during mass casualty simulations. Fifteen different kinds of infuriating. It hadn't helped that there wasn't really anything to find fault with in terms of Jack's clinical skills.
Robby could see now that he'd misjudged Jack then, but there had been a time when rivals had probably a better word for them than friends. At least in Robby's mind; Jack had only ever behaved like, well, Jack, towards him.
"All good," Jack said, but then made a frustrated noise and undid his last twist of the cube. His jaw worked and he said, "Sometimes you get a patient, man, and it's just tough."
Robby nodded. There were a lot of ways for the world to be unfair to the people they treated.
"Little old lady," Jack went on, and huh, he must really have been rattled by whatever it was, because normally Robby would have had to pry additional details out of Jack about a bad patient encounter. Jack loved to deflect into a discussion about the Pens, which to be fair was generally a cheap but successful formula for distracting Robby. "Wrist sprain, but I think she also just wanted someone to talk to. So she talked."
"Ah," Robby said, sensing where this might be going.
"Spotted the ring, started talking about how lucky my wife must be, to be married to a nice doctor, and how she'd almost gotten engaged to an orthodontist in 1963." Jack set the Rubik's cube down on the coffee table with enough careful precision that Robby could tell it had taken effort on his part not to throw it. Next month would be Cynthia's two-year anniversary. Jack may no longer have been in the same deep hole he'd been for the first several months after her death, but Robby knew that the bruise of it still lay just beneath the skin, a tender and persistent shadow.
"And then," Jack went on, "she caught a glimpse of the prosthetic ankle. Said I was going to be her prayer intention for the week."
Robby pulled a face.
"Said," Jack went on, in tones of grim mortification, "that she was going to ask her patron saint to intercede and make my leg regrow."
"What," Robby blurted out, bewildered, before he could stop himself, "like a salamander?"
Jack froze, and then very, very slowly turned to stare at Robby. "A salamander."
"Uh," Robby said.
Jack's nose twitched. "What, like a miracle salamander?"
"I... guess?" Robby said slowly. He didn't know all that much about Catholicism, in the grand scheme of things, but he knew that there was a lot of emphasis on miracles. Miracles and incense. He didn't think that Jack had been a believer in a long, long time, in fact he didn't even think that Jack had been that kind of Christian in the first place, but he hoped he hadn't said the wrong—
Jack's laughter burst out of him, a snorting sputter of mirth that seemed to only grow in infectious intensity. By the time he said, again, high-pitched, a miracle salamander?, Robby was laughing too. They laughed together for long enough that Robby's abdominal muscles ached from it, and he couldn't remember the last time that had happened—maybe not since before the pandemic.
"Shit, man," Jack said eventually with a last hiccup of laughter, scrubbing at his face with one hand. "Phew. Okay, thanks for helping me reframe that one."
"You're welcome," Robby said.
"Miracle salamander," Jack murmured to himself, then more loudly said, "Hey, so I was wondering—"
Whatever Jack had been on the verge of asking was cut off by Lena hurrying down the hallway as fast as she could, dodging the obstacles while calling his name.
"What is it?" Jack was up and moving in the blink of an eye, and there was no way that Robby was going to just sit there. He followed them back to the hub while Lena filled them in, rapid-fire: "Two-car MVA. Driver from the first car is unconscious, severe lacerations and likely major head trauma, Ellis is working on her. Unrestrained passenger with major crush injuries to pelvis and legs, Ortega and Collins have him. Driver from the second car was brought in with minor cuts and abrasions and is currently in the ceiling."
Not how a patient run-down usually concluded.
"In the ceiling?" Robby said, carefully, leaving room for the possibility that his hearing had decided that today was the day to go downhill.
"Is that some kind of euphemism?" Jack asked. "Because—"
"In the ceiling," Lena said, in a tone that said maybe she regretted going back on nights now that she was an empty nester. "Guy's clearly drunk as a skunk but somehow persuaded a rookie cop that he really needed to pee and the rookie let him use one of the south restrooms unattended. And since some of the ceiling tiles had been pulled down and with those ladders around..."
"You are fucking kidding me," Jack said, but they rounded the corner to find no fewer than four of Pittsburgh's finest, bickering among themselves as they tried to decide whether to force in the restroom door, and if it was better to kick it or to use their shoulders.
"Maybe Dewey should shoot the lock," one of them said. "Bet you twenty he could make it."
From overhead there came a series of ominous thumps. Robby didn't know what was more important for him to keep an eye on. "Officers, we have a key to that door, there's no need to—"
One of the cops turned around and clearly dismissed Robby on the basis of a single glance that took in only his glasses, sweatshirt, jeans and Converse: no scrubs, no badge, no gun, no reason to listen to him. "Sir, if you could just return to—"
"My name is Dr Michael Robinavitch," Robby said, hands on his hips, raising his voice to be heard over the creaking of the ceiling and the bickering of the cops, "and I'm PTMC's Chief of Emergency Medicine, I understand that this is an unusual situation, but it's importa—"
At this point, two things happened in quick succession.
First, the back door of Trauma One opened, and a frowning Parker Ellis poked her head out and said, "Dr Abbot, little help?"
Second, the ceiling tiles right over Robby's head let out another alarming groaning noise before everything collapsed and the absconding patient landed on top of him.
Things got a little hazy in the immediate aftermath, what with the yelling and how Robby's head ached and all the dust in the air and how much it hurt to breathe anyway with how winded he was.
"Wha'," he said, trying to pick himself up off the ground, but there was a hand pressing him back gently against the cool vinyl. "Wha' happen?"
"We're taking it easy right now, brother," Jack said, before in a louder voice, "Lena, two backboards, two collars, get us some help here. Ellis, you stay here with Robby, give him the once-over while I check on your patient. Give me the bullet."
There was more rapid-fire conversation after that, but Robby didn't quite track it. People said words; hands rolled him onto a backboard and into a neck brace and lifted him onto a gurney; the gurney was pushed into one of the nearby cubicles and the lights here were very bright. Had any patients ever pointed that out before? The light were very bright. Someone should look into that.
"Embarrassing," Robby mumbled at the ceiling, which here at least seemed intact and like it didn't have any patients crawling around in it.
"Eh, you're not so bad, you should see the other guy," and Jack was leaning over him again and that was reassuring at least, even if he was doing obnoxious things like shining even more lights directly into Robby's eyes. Rude. Well, not rude. It was nice to have Jack so close. Good. Robby trusted Jack to take care of him.
Jack ran through the usual set of checks for head, neck, and spinal injuries, Robby's head gradually clearing as he worked, his hands deft, and eventually he said, "Okay, I think we can lose the collar."
"Hooray," Robby said.
Jack braced his hands on the side of the gurney, cocked his head, looked at Robby and said, "Can you tell me what we were doing right before Lena called us up here?"
"Uh," Robby said.
"Okay, that and the goose egg buys you a trip to the Doughnut of Truth. Tim, can you take him down while I deal with the other kind of headache?"
There wasn't much of a wait for CT, between the night being slow and Robby benefiting from the Chief of EM fast pass, but it was long enough for his head to fully clear and for the goose egg to really start throbbing. When he was wheeled back into South 19, Robby turned to Tim and said, "Could you get me a Tylenol from the medicine cabinet in the break room?"
It was as if he'd summoned Jack to materialise at his side out of nowhere. "Wow, one whole Tylenol? Look at the last of the hedonists over here. You're giving me Studio 54 flashbacks."
"It's not that bad," Robby said.
"Uh huh," Jack said, sounding deeply unimpressed. "Tim, 1000 milligrams of acetaminophen, and if he starts feeling any nausea, four of ondansetron."
"You got it," Tim said and headed off.
"I'm not gonna get nauseated," Robby grumbled. "I'm fine."
"Sure you are," Jack said, brushing Robby's hair back off his forehead, and it was a terrible thing, to feel so irritated and so calmed all at once by such a simple touch.
Tim came back with the pills, Robby swallowed them with a mouthful of water. That made him realise that he was thirsty, and he took a few big gulps from the bottle in between ineffectual swipes at the dust that still clung to his shoulders and chest. Jack pulled up the computer terminal, logged into it, and started to chart.
"How's the guy who fell on me?"
"Ask me in about three to four hours," Jack said. In response to Robby's questioning look, he said, "That's how long Conley estimated it would take for the surgery. We should know by then whether he's just going to be facing DUI charges or whether it'll be vehicular manslaughter as well."
"Shit," Robby said.
"Which is my long-winded way of saying," Jack said, fingers flying over the keyboard, "I don't give the slightest fuck about the guy who fell on you."
Robby huffed out a laugh. "Standard of care, Dr Abbot."
"Yadda, yadda," Jack said, sounding like a man who'd never heard about the concept of Press Ganey scores in his life and wouldn't care about them if he had. "CT results are in, all fine. The upsides of having a thick skull, I guess. You need more water?"
"Nah, I'm good." Robby let down the side of the gurney, swung his legs over it.
"Hold up," and damn, Jack could move fast when he wanted to. He crowded in against Robby so that he couldn't stand, got an arm under his legs and swivelled him back onto the bed with an ease that should have been offensive. "Where the hell do you think you're going?"
"You said I'm fine, I've got paperwork to do, it's—"
"Fuck me sideways," Jack said, brow furrowing, "no, you're not."
"Jack."
"Mike."
Robby subsided against the gurney. "This is ridiculous."
"This is exactly how you'd treat any other person who got hit by a hundred and fifty pounds of jag-off. Rest, painkillers, observation." Jack paused and then said, with almost frightening emphasis, "Rest."
"I'm not—"
"And," Jack said, pointing a finger at Robby for good measure, "no back-seat attending-ing. You're officially not on shift, if I catch you even thinking about getting up and treating a patient, or letting a student run something by you, or doing goddamned paperwork, so help me."
"You can't know what I'm thinking," Robby muttered.
"Try me," Jack said, grim.
It was well past midnight by that point, and despite the bright lights and the ED's perpetual low-grade hum and the noise caused by someone from Housekeeping clearing away the ceiling debris, Robby decided that maybe resting his eyes was a good idea. He dozed, surfaced briefly to find that someone had covered him with a blanket, told himself that he'd get up soon, and drifted off again to find himself being gently shaken awake shortly after six.
"Nngh," Robby said.
"Morning, Sleeping Beauty," Jack said. "Feel like you've got any persistent neurological deficits?"
"Fuck off," Robby groused.
"Super," Jack said. "Now follow my finger with your eyes. Awesome. Here."
A small bundle landed in Robby's lap: a scrubs top, a travel toothbrush and toothpaste, a packet of wet wipes, a bottle of Tylenol.
"Non-traditional dispo orders," Robby said.
"Sass me and I will find an excuse to keep you here," Jack said.
"Yeah, yeah," Robby said, but subsided.
Lena flagged Robby down as he was shuffling past the nurses' desk. She wanted to see how he was, and to let him know that Gloria had been informed about the whole "patient falling on senior medical staff" incident. "If I were you, I'd try to be out of here before she appears."
"Gotcha," Robby said. He had enough to deal with in life without having to accept sympathy from Gloria Underwood, the subtext of which would undoubtedly be are you going to sue PTMC for this unfortunate workplace incident for which we make no admission of liability? He brushed his teeth, wiped himself down and pulled on the fresh top in the restroom nearest his office, studiously avoiding all sight of himself in the mirror, and then went to pack up his stuff. He paused with one hand hovering over the binders and let himself wonder for a brief second if he could use the bump on his head as an excuse to not read the reports.
"Leave 'em."
Robby looked up to see Jack standing in the doorway, his backpack slung over his shoulder.
"I have to—"
"I said leave 'em," Jack said. "Doctor's orders."
Robby snorted.
"What? I don't use that one anywhere near as much as I could. C'mon, they'll be fine for another day at least." Jack jerked his head in the direction of the side entrance. "I did the handover to Ned already, and he's currently keeping Gloria occupied with a very detailed complaint about his assigned parking spot. We've got at least three minutes to make it out of here."
Jack ushered him out of the building, across to the parking garage, and then refused to let Robby get into his car. "You're being chauffeured," he said, and the Jack Abbot Chauffeur Experience apparently included not just being hustled into his truck, but out of it and through the door of a diner some twenty minutes away where Jack was apparently enough of a fixture to be greeted with, "Hey doc, yinz can take whatever booth's free."
The coffee arrived quick, black and strong and hot enough to scald Robby's tongue, although Jack seemed unbothered by it. Robby ordered an omelette, and Jack asked for "the usual", which turned out to be a heaped plate of pancakes, bacon, and eggs.
"Jesus," Robby said, eyeing it once the server had walked away. "What are you, carb loading for a marathon?"
"Maybe," Jack said as he poured syrup over his pancakes, then in response to Robby's sceptical look continued, "What? My therapist thinks I'd benefit from having a hobby, so I'm trying out hobbies. I've got one of those carbon fibre running blades, which looks badass, and right now I'm, you know, building up stamina."
Robby raised both his eyebrows, very slowly.
"Don't," Jack said.
They ate, they drank their coffee, and they held out their mugs for refills, all in a pleasurable silence. Robby knew that he'd be going to bed early that evening, between the lingering effects of the lump on his head and the bruising he could feel purpling on his abdomen and the lack of a proper night's sleep, but for now he was okay. It was nice just to sit with someone for a moment, watching the people and cars and trucks passing by outside, and not feel like anyone wanted anything from him.
"I don't think we've ever had breakfast together before," Robby said with a blink, when the thought suddenly occurred to him. "Have we?"
"Huh." Jack took a considering slurp of his coffee. "Does the breakfast buffet at that ACEP conference in Philly count?"
"Nothing that hotel served was food," Robby said firmly. He was no one's idea of a foodie, but he did have basic standards.
"I guess not, then," Jack said with a tilt of his head.
It was Robby's turn to say, "Huh." He supposed theirs was a friendship that had been forged over break room coffees and snatched five-minute breathers out in the ambulance bay and editing one another's journal articles before submission and side-by-side groaning over beers in McConnell's when the Pirates lost yet again. No breakfasts. But he guessed it was possible for friends to do new things together.
"Oh, shit, nearly forgot," Jack said. He turned and rummaged in his backpack and after a few seconds produced a pen and a sheet of paper that he slapped down in front of Robby. "John Hancock it."
"What..." Robby scanned the page. His jaw dropped. At the top, a line of bold text proclaimed PTMC Employee Emergency Contact Form, and most of the spaces had already been filled in in Jack's meticulous print. Primary Emergency Contact Name: Jack Abbot.
"You think I didn't notice when I was charting that your emergency contact is currently you? Yourself?" Jack's jaw twitched. "Kind of defeats the purpose of the emergency contact in the first place, dipshit."
The server, who had been walking over to offer them a refill on their coffee, clearly changed her mind and hung a sharp right. Robby made a mental note to leave her a healthy tip.
"I haven't needed one," Robby said. "It's fine."
"No one needs an emergency contact until someone drops out of a ceiling and lands on them. Funny, that," Jack said. "Will you fill out the damned form?"
Robby shot him a look. "And when was the last time you updated yours?"
"We're not talking about me right now, Michael." Jack folded his arms and glared back.
Robby looked down at the form again. Nature of Relationship: Friend. "Who's listed on yours?"
"Not about me," Jack said, mulish, and the realisation dawned slowly on Robby. Shit.
"Is... do you have Cynthia's name on yours? Still?"
Jack shrugged, jaw tight, and it was like watching a teenager realise that they'd been caught but remain too stubborn to admit to it. He looked away. "Maybe."
"Christ on a bike," Robby said.
"That's different," Jack protested, and he even looked like he believed it.
Robby looked back down at the page. Nature of Relationship: Friend. He sighed. "Is it possible we're both idiots?"
Jack froze for a moment before slowly, gradually, his shoulders came down from around his ears. "Could be."
"How about this," Robby said, because it wasn't as if he had enough people in his life to turn down an offer of friendship, freely given. "I'll sign this if you list me as yours."
Jack's mouth quirked up. "Mutually assured destruction?"
"Something like that," Robby said.
They bickered gently over who'd pay for breakfast. Robby won, but then Jack refused to let Robby pick up his car from the hospital and instead drove him straight to his condo. Right as Jack pulled up outside, Robby's phone chimed with a message.
Dana: Strike's over, so I guess St Jude's still keeping an eye out for us, but now disagreement over which department is responsible for paying for repairs to the ceiling.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" Robby said to his phone.
"Trouble?" Jack asked.
Robby shook his head but sighed and said, "You ever ask yourself why we do this job?"
"All the damn time," Jack said, and shot him a sidelong look and added, "But some days I guess I have answers."