Chapter Text
2014
They’d given Robby an office when they’d moved him into a teaching position, a dingy room a few corridors back from the ER where he could settle in and do paperwork during his weekly catch-up shift. It was the only day he ever had off the floor and away from his student doctors and he loathed it, the red tape that came with the oversight of teaching a bunch of medical students and handling his residents so onerous that he sometimes thought it had been perfectly tailored to bring him misery.
It was already past seven, the last of his twelve hours having ticked away half an hour ago but his inability to leave work undone keeping him late as usual. He was signing off on a report regarding one of his interns when the door to his office opened and a dark-haired man entered, a camouflage backpack slung over one shoulder and a hoodie pulled over his scrubs.
They stared at each other for a moment, Robby not recognizing the stranger in the slightest; normally the only visitors he got back here were his students or occasionally a nurse asking him to mediate some kind of personal grievance. “Uh,” Robby finally said. “Can I help you?”
“Gloria said this office wasn’t in use at this time of night,” the guy said, setting his backpack down on the ground next to the door and starting to shrug off his hoodie. “Are you gonna be done soon?”
“This is my office,” Robby said, furrowing his brow. “There’s a picture of my girlfriend on the desk.”
“Yeah, and I’ve been looking at it every day for the past month,” the guy said. “She’s pretty.”
“I’m sorry, but who are you?” Robby asked, piling his paperwork up so he could take it to the administrators on his way out. “You’ve been using my office for a month?”
“Give or take.” He hung his hoodie up on a peg next to the door and stuck his hand out in Robby’s direction. “I’m Jack Abbot. I’ve been an attending up in Labor and Delivery for about a year but only on nights. They’re moving me down to the ER next week, so I’ve been getting all my educational ducks in a row during the transition. Needed a quiet spot, so… here I am.”
It figured they'd give him an office only to have him sharing it with a stranger from upstairs. Robby took Jack’s hand begrudgingly and shook it, taking the opportunity to study the newcomer. Handsome, in a kind of smug way, and a couple inches shorter than him; clearly ex-military, from his bag to his hoodie to his overall bearing, and Robby immediately disliked him. He’d worked with military guys in the past and they were hotshots, assholes, the kind of cocky that served no one but themselves and certainly didn’t serve their patients.
“You’re taking over for Page as the night attending?” Robby asked, but he didn’t care what the answer was, hefting his paperwork under his arm and beginning to turn to leave. “Do you have emergency experience?”
“Before I came to Pittsburgh I was in Chicago at an ER there,” Jack said. “And before that I was in Afghanistan. Any other vetting you want to do, Dr. Robinavitch, or can I get started on my paperwork now?”
“You know my name,” Robby said, grabbing his backpack from one of the chairs in the small office and unzipping it so he could put his paperwork inside. “How did that come about?”
“You’re pretty well liked in the hospital for some reason,” Jack said. “A lot of the women who come up from the ER talk about the handsome doctor who helped them out when they got here, so I asked around and it was resoundingly agreed that it was you. Dr. Anderson’s protege from New Orleans.”
“You sound like you’ve got a chip on your shoulder,” Robby said, hoisting his bag onto his back. “Is it because you never had a mentor or because you aren’t handsome?”
Instead of looking offended, Jack’s lip turned up in an obvious smirk. “I thought you’d be nicer for some reason,” he said, clapping Robby on the bicep. “Seems like you’re not a fan of me muscling in on your territory, but the way I see it you and me are colleagues now. You’ll be seeing a lot of me when we trade off shifts, so maybe work on sharing your space better, yeah?”
Weirdly, Robby didn’t get angry, a spark of some fierce competition firing up in his chest. He’d had so-called rivals before, guys in med school who got too big for their britches and doctors who struggled with Robby’s single-minded focus on patient care. Finding himself face to face with a man who could give it as good as he could take it, who clearly wasn’t going to take Robby’s sour grapes lying down… it was kind of nice. “I’ll think about it,” he said, shaking Jack’s hand off before heading to administration.
He was just leaving the hospital, jacket pulled on against the impending winter cold and a hot shower calling his name, when he became abruptly aware that he had company in his walk. “Jeez, Dana, you can’t sneak up on me like that. I’m getting old.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, pulling her cigarettes out of the pocket of her cardigan before looking up at him again, a knowing glint in her eye; Robby didn’t have to ask to know what she wanted. “What did you think?”
“You knew he was being moved to the Pitt?”
“I might’ve heard something, sure,” Dana said, using his height and broad chest to block the wind so it didn’t blow out her lighter. “I mean, you must have figured out that Page needed replacing, right? She’s retiring pretty soon here.”
“I guess so? Once night shift and I hand off to each other I don’t really think about them too much,” She raised her eyebrows at him and he raised his back in return. “What? Do you know Bridget’s whole life story?”
“Course I do,” she said. “Maybe no one told you about Abbot because they figured you’d get jealous. Another hotshot doctor coming on the scene? Might ruffle your feathers.”
“Oh, yes, I’m known for my jealous streak,” Robby deadpanned as they reached Dana’s car. It had become a routine, a way for him to make sure she got there safely after a patient had followed her out one night, and he liked the small moments he could get with Dana outside of the chaos. In all his career, he couldn’t think of another charge nurse he trusted the way he did her. “Say hi to the family for me, will you?”
“Do the same to Janey and Jake,” she said. “I’d hug you but a guy spit on me earlier and who knows what he got on my scrubs. Don’t want you carrying home the new plague.”
“So thoughtful,” Robby said, laughing as he waited for her to get in the car and turn it on before heading on his way.
He didn’t see Jack for another month, although he heard rumors of the new night attending. Robby wasn’t sure if Jack had complained to Gloria about their introduction – unlikely, but possible – or if he was just caught up in taking over for Page, but they had never had to swap off, Adamson either handling Jack or Robby running into Page instead, and it wasn’t until halfway through December that they came face to face again.
They’d had the first snow of the year and Robby had dressed accordingly, gloves and a beanie and a scarf that Janey had forced on him before he left the house, and he pulled a mask on as he made his way in through the waiting room to avoid picking up something from the droves of people who’d come in for little more than a cold. Annoyance prickled at the nape of his neck as he pulled his earbuds out, pocketing them and getting inundated with noise, the place as busy as ever. Robby wished sometimes that he could just tell people to leave, to go to an urgent care instead of coming here for something inconsequential and undoubtedly catching the flu in the process.
He greeted the triage nurses and pushed deeper into the department, finding Dana already at the desk chatting with Lena from nights. They both seemed kind of excited and when he approached they looked at him, Dana amused in a way he hadn’t anticipated. “What’s going on?”
“Sounds like there was a bit of excitement last night,” Dana said, and Robby could tell from her tone that it was clearly the kind of excitement he wouldn’t be impressed with. “One of the contractors working on the new wing fell and sliced his thigh open from knee to hip.”
“Jesus,” Robby said, frowning. “Is he okay?”
“Dr. Abbot saved his life,” Lena said. “He keeps a bag in his locker filled with all these field techniques he had to use in the military and I guess it came in handy last night.”
Robby felt his pulse quicken, certain he knew what was coming next. “Is Dr. Abbot around right now?”
“I think he’s back by the lockers,” Dana said, grinning. “Go easy on him, Robby. He saved the guy’s life, after all.”
Robby gave her a look and made his way through the ER, finding Jack where promised. At the sight of him irritation flared somewhere in Robby’s chest, a reminder of how badly hotshot medicine grated on him. He had seen people die because his colleagues had been too eager to show off some new trick or resorted to a risky procedure in favor of an established system. As soon as Lena had said that Jack had used non-hospital equipment, Robby knew exactly what she meant,
Jack was in the midst of changing his shoes and he glanced up when Robby approached, studying him briefly before seeming to realize that Robby wasn’t just heading to his locker. “What’s up?”
“Can I talk to you?” Robby asked, gesturing over his shoulder. “Staff bathroom is probably the most private spot.”
“I’m not sure how I feel being asked to follow a colleague to the bathroom,” Jack said, but Robby didn’t smile at the joke and Jack seemed to realize he wasn’t going to get away with deflection, following Robby into the men’s room and looking around. “I kind of thought you were avoiding me after I stole your office.”
“I wasn’t avoiding you,” Robby said. “When that guy fell last night, what did you do?”
Jack’s expression immediately darkened and he looked Robby dead in the eyes, rocking back on one foot in a stance that Robby immediately recognized as defensive. “Are you joking?”
“No,” Robby said. “Tell me. Walk me through it.”
Jack stared at him before scoffing, shaking his head in apparent disbelief. “One of his coworkers came down to the ER, said he’d fallen and was bleeding. They had covered the cut with a rag but the blood wouldn’t stop. I grabbed my bag and I headed up there. I applied a tourniquet and we got him back here to assess the situation better and figure out if he had a femoral bleed. Based on what I saw, I made the right decision.”
“You were a hundred feet from a well-equipped ER,” Robby said. “Not out in the middle of the desert. There was no need to take the risk you took by applying a tourniquet to the guy, especially not in an area that could cause so many complications. The upper thigh is such a delicate area! We need to make decisions that are the best for the patient, not decisions that just let you break out your glory days, right?”
“Oh my god,” Jack said flatly, running a hand back through his dark hair. “I cannot believe I’m being lectured in a bathroom by a guy who isn’t even my boss. We’re both attendings, right?”
“That isn’t the point,” Robby said. “We’re not here to show off or to take unnecessary steps. It would have taken so little to get him back to the department and do things properly.” He glanced briefly at his watch, time ticking by to the point where he would need to get clocked in, and looked back at Jack. “If he’d died, do you know how quickly malpractice could be claimed?”
“He didn’t die,” Jack said, crossing his arms; Robby had to admit that there weren’t many people who could handle one of his lectures while holding his gaze so defiantly. “I really need you to take a step back and think about this. You and I are the same age, I think, although I will say the gray in your beard is making me think you might be getting up there. We’re the exact same seniority in this hospital, both doctors, just… I haven’t been here as long as you so you think you know more? What if I came to you like this?”
“I hope you would,” Robby said. “If I start doing stupid shit then you definitely should come and call me out. Do you not know how much of a risk you could have put him at? We could have had an amputation on our hands.”
Jack had been irritated during their conversation but for the first time he seemed genuinely angry, his dark eyes flashing with a barely suppressed rage. “God forbid we have to perform an amputation, right? It must have been so cruel of me to save his life when we might have had to cut his leg off as a result!” He grabbed his stethoscope off his neck and Robby got the sense he did it solely to keep his hands to himself and off of Robby. “You’re a real prick, you know that? It kind of seems like you’re the one with a chip on your shoulder. From now on, keep your fucking opinions to yourself, got it?”
He stormed out of the bathroom, the door slamming shut behind him, and Robby stood there for a moment, not necessarily stunned but confused as to what had pushed Jack over the edge into anger. He took a moment and then left the bathroom, checking the lockers and finding no sign of Jack before making his way back out to the nurse’s station. Dana was drinking out of her coffee mug and she looked at Robby as he approached. “What happened?”
“I told him that applying a tourniquet wasn’t worth the risk and that he can’t be making decisions like that,” Robby said. “I told him that with the department so close he shouldn’t be risking amputation like that, and– what?” Dana had grimaced and Robby, who’d been convinced he was in the right until that exact second, stepped closer. “Why are you making that face?”
“I mean, that was a pretty poor example unless you were actually trying to hurt him,” Dana said. “Harsh even by your standards, Robby.”
“What are you talking about?” Robby glanced towards the intake board, scanning it briefly and recognizing that he needed to get to work but consumed by curiosity now. “I was trying to make a point, not hurt the guy’s feelings. Why are you saying I made some pointed remark?”
Dana stared at him, brow furrowed, and Robby could see that she was trying to figure out if he really didn’t know or if he was playing dumb. She seemed to satisfy herself with whatever answer she came up with and sighed. “Put two and two together, Robinavitch. Why would a veteran be upset that you threw a possible amputation in his face?”
Robby’s heart stunk straight down into his stomach, a wild sort of guilt blossoming inside him until it seemed to fill every gap between his organs. “Oh my god.”
“His right leg,” she said by way of confirmation. “You really put your foot in it this time.”
Robby groaned, tilting his head back and taking a moment to breathe in through his nose. “I’m sure Gloria will bring it up soon enough,” he finally said. “Nothing I can do about it until tonight regardless. Fuck, though… I can be such an ass.”
“Aw, you’re good,” Dana said, knocking her elbow against his. “So territorial, though. Maybe work on that?”
“You got a minute?”
Robby looked up from the Snickers he was inhaling, wondering if he looked as tired as he’d felt. It had been a busy morning, but he knew he was distracted despite his best attempts to concentrate on the tasks at hand; it hadn’t affected his work yet, but as the guilt from that morning’s argument didn’t let up it was difficult to think about much else in between patients.
He wasn’t surprised to see Adamson, the pair of them conditioned to take their breaks around the same time, and he also wasn’t particularly surprised that his mentor wanted to speak with him. There was no gossip machine like a hospital, and while Robby knew Dana wouldn’t leak the actual details of their conversation he also knew that enough people had seen him and Jack together to figure out they’d had an argument of some kind. The word had obviously gotten back to Adamson.
“Sure, where?”
Adamson nodded towards an empty patient bay, the two of them stepping inside and Adamson pulling the curtain closed behind them. He looked up at Robby, an eyebrow arched in curiosity. “I wonder if you can tell me what happened this morning.”
Robby sighed, rubbing at his forehead vigorously before he started to speak. “I fucked up with Dr. Abbot,” he said, launching into a recounting of what had happened, albeit in more detail than he had with Dana; with Adamson, he could afford to tell the entire story. When he finished, he looked at his mentor, his guilt apparent. “I just wanted him to understand that he shouldn’t be taking those risks, not insult him like that. I can’t help but feel like I’ve really put my foot in it this time.”
“You have, kind of,” Adamson said, almost thoughtful as he said it. “But I don’t think you have to worry about any permanent damage yet. You definitely started off badly with Dr. Abbot, but I wonder… do you think that you have some capacity at the end of your shift to have a conversation with him? Just a conversation.”
“About what?” Robby asked, although he thought he could see what Adamson wanted. “I don’t want to end up insulting him again.”
Adamson shrugged his shoulders. “About anything you want. You can apologize, you can get to know him, anything. I just think that you tend to look at men your age in this field as fundamentally in medicine for the wrong reasons, and it affects the way you approach them.” He grinned, patting Robby on the arm. “I’ve tried my best to get rid of most of your biases, but this is one you really have to work on yourself.”
“Got it,” Robby said, considering Adamson’s words carefully. He knew well that Adamson saw Robby for who he was in his entirety, that he’d taken who he was when he got to Pittsburgh and crafted him into the confident doctor he was now instead of the misery that could have engulfed him when he’d left New Orleans, and he knew that as a result Adamson was right. “Maybe I can claw it back.”
“I think you can,” Adamson said. “You can be charming when you aren’t trying to tell people off.”
“Shut up,” Robby grumbled affectionately. “I just hold other people to the same standards I want to be held to. If I did something dangerous because I was in fight or flight mode instead of thinking things through, I’d want to know. I’d want him to tell me.”
“Talk to him, then,” Adamson said. “It’s okay to have a rival, Robby, but that rival shouldn’t hate you. Now come on. The day’s not even half done."
Waylaying Jack turned out to be simple, the man coming into the department as Robby was debriefing with Adamson at the nurse’s station. To Robby’s surprise, Jack didn’t ignore him, meeting Robby’s eyes with a neutrality Robby didn’t expect, and without hesitating he cut around the edge of the station and stood in front of Jack. “Do you have a minute?”
“You gonna yell at me in the bathroom again?”
“No, I’m gonna yell at you on the roof,” Robby said, Jack letting out a huffing laugh. “Come on, I just want a chance to, uh, clear the air.”
“Sounds good,” Jack said, hefting his bag over his shoulder and following Robby to the elevator. They stayed silent on the way up, but Robby was surprised to find that it wasn’t an uncomfortable silence, more like both of them had calmed down since that morning’s blowout and had come to the same conclusion during the course of the day.
The roof was freezing cold but it was welcome after the heat of the hospital and Robby was pleased to see a light dusting of snow, the first of the year. He crunched over to the railing and leaned against it, looking out over the city, a muffled quiet over everything thanks to the fat flakes of snow drifting down from the sky. “I’m really sorry,” he finally said, staring down at the sidewalk far below. “Not for bringing my concerns to you but for the way I spoke and the lack of trust I had in you. It was shitty and unprofessional and it won’t happen again, I can at least tell you that much.”
“That chip on your shoulder is visible from outer space,” Jack said, coming to rest alongside Robby and looking out at the city as well. “How did you know this is where I come to unwind after shifts?”
“I didn’t,” Robby said. “But it’s where I come when I need a breather.” He frowned, lacing his fingers together and avoiding looking at Jack. “I know I have a bias when it comes to other guys my age. I know I tend to look at any doctor who came up at the same time as me as fundamentally lacking in the empathy I expect but I jumped on you without giving you the benefit of the doubt.”
“This morning, I was just so stunned that you came after me that way,” Jack said. “But I went home, I talked to my wife, and she said that one, she didn’t think you knew about my leg, and two, it was clear you had some misgivings about reckless doctors. I figured there was no harm in hearing you out. But I wanna know why, man. Why did you immediately assume that I was showboating and not doing my best to help?”
Robby leaned over, resting his forehead against his clasped hands and letting out a breath. “I started my residency right before 9/11. I know that's such a cop-out answer, but it’s true. I was in New Orleans for all four years, and right at the end of my time, Katrina happened. It was a fucking nightmare. I got sent to the Superdome to try and help out and was there when the evacuations started. The amount of guys our age I saw running from the hardships there, trying to abandon the people they’d sworn to help… It fucked me up. When the hurricane actually hit and we realized how skeletal our hospitals were, it upset me. I had worked with these guys for years and a good chunk of them were treating the hurricane like an inconvenience or something that we shouldn’t have to help with.”
He glanced at Jack, who was looking out at the city and listening intently, and felt a weird surge of relief. “I always hated the guys in med school who were only becoming doctors for the prestige. I grew up poor, grew up scrabbling for every hold I could get, and to come into a situation where I was on the same level as those rich kids only for them to look at those people in New Orleans and decide that they didn’t deserve a fair level of treatment during Katrina made me so bitter. It’s been a few years since I came back to Pittsburgh and that bitterness is still working out of my system, I guess.”
“I don’t want you to dislike me,” Jack said. “I came from the same kind of situation as you, I think. Middle class, joined up after 9/11, did all my medical training on the fly. I’ve only been in proper hospitals for a couple years now after my leg, and I didn’t ever think of what I did today as any particular risk since it’s something I did all the time in the field. The medicine I’ve practiced is emergency medicine in the most primal form, but I get where you’re coming from.”
He turned to look at Robby, reaching out and gripping his wrist. “I’m glad you told me and I’m glad I listened to my wife.” He grinned and put on what Robby immediately recognized as a terrible Humphrey Bogart impression. “Robby, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
“Oh my god,” Robby said, shaking free of Jack’s grasp and laughing despite himself. “I’m glad all it took was dumping my tragic backstory on you for you to forgive me.”
“Hey, we’ve all got tragic backstories,” Jack said. He straightened up, peering up at the sky, and Robby looked at him in profile, surprised at the first thought that struck him: the guy was handsome. Silhouetted against the lights of the roof and in the glow of the snow, any smug self-assuredness had been washed away, replaced by a strange affection. Robby was a man whose friends were few and far between, his life absorbed by Janey, Jake, and work, and he considered for a moment that perhaps Jack was right in his earnest quoting of Casablanca.
Maybe they were meant to be friends after all.