Chapter Text
After nearly thirty years in emergency medicine, Robby had seen his fair share of tired, anguished expressions. More often than not, they came from the colleagues at his side over their patients. Even more frequently than that, Robby was the one looking most forlorn and exhausted–at least when he had a moment of privacy to drop his confident, unshakeable veneer.
Point is, he was no stranger to grief and exhaustion. None of them in the Pitt were.
But the look on Whitaker’s face was worse than any he’d seen before. It made a stone settle heavy in Robby’s gut.
It had been a bad shift. They all were, but this one particularly so. Nearly every patient that came flying in through their doors was already an inch from being on their death beds. It felt like no matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t stop losing patients. They couldn’t keep death at bay today. It was frustrating. Of course it was. Even the seasoned vets like himself and Dr. Collins and Dana were feeling the effects. Each patient they fought like hell to save–and failed–was a nick against a wound that never really got a chance to heal.
But still. It wasn’t as if it was Pittfest-levels terrible; at least not in Robby’s opinion. Whitaker, however, was taking the day as if it was. As if it were worse.
The splinter in Whitaker had been growing all day, with each new and lost case, widening into a cavernous pit Robby was all too familiar with himself. He saw the exact moment the young man fractured. It was when they got the call – an ambulance was on the way, carrying a nineteen-year old male with a GSW to the head.
Suggested suicide attempt.
Robby noticed the way Whitaker jerked upon hearing the news. But then the EMTs were here, the doors to the ambulance bay slamming open, and there was no more time to dissect what that stiffness to his shoulders meant. There were only a few critical moments to try and save a patient–to try and save this child.
“Whitaker. Langdon. King. With me, now,” Robby barked as they all jumped into action.
It had been over a year since Whitaker and King arrived–several months since Whitaker came back to them as an intern with longer hair and steadier hands. They’d long ago interwoven themselves seamlessly into the orchestra of the team. They never hesitated in their actions, and they didn’t this time around, either. The closest thing to even a fraction of a pause any of them took was when they actually saw the patient’s face. Robby examined him critically. White. Fragile, youthful features. Short, mousy brown curls. Through the blood, through what still remained, he had the quickest, most fleeting of thoughts.
He looks a little like Whitaker.
Robby’s eyes flitted up to the student doctor himself, only to see a twisted, horrified look of realization on his expression already. Maybe it was from the gunshot wound. Or maybe he had the same thought.
Even with that startling thought, no one froze. No one made a mistake.
And yet.
“I’m calling it,” Robby heard himself say after an agonizing hour, stepping back from what felt closer to a crime scene than a place where healing was supposed to happen. “We’ve lost him. He’s gone.”
Langdon stepped back with a sigh, shoulders falling with the weight of this patient and all the others they had lost today. And the day before. And.
King was the one who called time of death. Even when she did, Whitaker wouldn’t remove his hands from where he had been holding the splintering pieces of the patient–fuck, he wasn’t even really that much younger than Whitaker–the kid’s fractured, bleeding head. Whitaker’s face was ashen. His eyes wide and glassy. Blood soaked through his scrubs.
“Whitaker,” Robby said again, louder. That snapped him out of it. The man turned his gaze to Robby, then back to the boy, then he carefully set what was left of his skull back down on the bed. So gently, like he was afraid to aggravate the injury and make it worse. Like that was possible.
Whitaker took a step back and looked down at his hands, stained with blood. “Fuck,” he whispered to himself, his voice so, very small.
When Robby turned around, Nurse Kim was hovering near the entrance of the room. “Where’s the patient’s parents? Have they arrived yet?”
She shook her head, lips pursed. “No. EMT informed us the patient was alone on the site.”
“Maybe the kid has an ID on him.”
Whitaker, closest to the body, gingerly patted the kid’s front jacket pocket. He must’ve felt something, because he undid the button and pulled something out. Not a wallet: a bloodied, folded note.
“What’s that?” Langdon asked. He stepped behind Whitaker as the younger man unfolded the letter and began reading. After their eyes scanned the page, Langdon grimaced.
Whitaker, however, looked like the floor was going to swallow him whole.
He pushed the note into Langdon’s hands. “I’m–I’m going to change out of these scrubs.”
He hurried out of the room, brushing past Robby and Nurse Kim without sparing a glance at either of them. In fact, he didn’t look like he was seeing much of anything, not past that empty, glassy look in his blue eyes.
Robby stepped around the bed to pluck the note from Langdon’s hands. He read it himself. They saw more than a few suicide attempts. They were hard every time–especially when they were young, like this one was. The letter was difficult to decipher past the blood and the shaky, unsteady lettering, but it laid things out more than clearly. Abusive home. Disowned by his family after coming out. Lastly, an apology to the siblings he left behind.
With his stomach in knots, Robby put the letter down and left the room for Nurse Kim and the others to prepare for the hospital morgue.
He knew he really didn’t have time to take a break–the ER waiting room was packed to the brim with patients–but there wasn’t currently anybody actively dying, or anyone who’d be dying in the next five minutes, so Robby cleaned up, then leaned heavily against Dana’s desk. He could take a moment or two to check in on his burdened student.
“Is Whitaker still changing in the back?” he asked Dana.
She looked up from her charts, confused. “He beelined straight for the ambulance bay.”
Robby was already pushing off the desk with the intention to do the same thing.
“Hey,” Dana called. “He seemed pretty shaken. Maybe give him a minute.”
“It’s my job to make sure he’s not too shaken,” Robby refuted. Dana didn’t argue, although the look on her face made it seem like she had something more to say, so Robby grabbed his zip-up jacket from off the hook and headed down the hallway.
The air was bitingly cold when he opened the double doors. It was always a welcome sight to see the ambulance bay empty, even for just a moment. He stepped out into the cold, shrugging further into his jacket, looking around for the younger man.
He was there, slumped on the ground against the brick wall, a lit cigarette dangling from his shaking fingertips.
Robby tried to school his surprise. He didn’t know Whitaker smoked. He was barely confident Whitaker was old enough to buy a pack of Marlboros. Besides–he’d hardly seen him take a lunch break the last three months he had been here; let alone step outside for a smoke.
“Whitaker,” he called.
Whitaker didn’t even startle, and that’s what made Robby nervous. The kid looked straight ahead, unblinking, as he dragged the cigarette up to his mouth and inhaled until the end smoldered a cherry red. Robby approached him slowly, stopping next to where he was slumped against the wall.
“Those things will kill you, kid.”
That made Whitaker jump, jostling right into Robby’s leg as he twisted up to look at his attending resident. Whitaker blinked slowly, the gears in his head whirring much slower than they usually did.
He looked tired. And broken. And too young to have that kind of blunt weariness in the dull whites of his eyes.
The corner of Whitaker’s mouth lifted in a half-smile, but he was mostly unsuccessful. He turned back and exhaled a puff of smoke.
“Maybe I’ll get lucky and they will,” he mumbled.
As soon as he said it, he tensed. “I’m sorry, Dr. Robby. That–that was callous. I didn’t mean it. I’m just–”
“Tired. I know.” Robby resigned his weary knees and sat down on the cold blacktop next to Whitaker with a grunt. He pulled his legs up and rested his arms atop them, staring straight ahead. “You look it.”
Whitaker turned his attention back to his cigarette, taking another long, weary pull. “We’re all tired, sir.”
“You’re too young to be saying shit like that,” Robby said. “And definitely too young to pick up a smoking habit.”
“I’m not that young, sir,” he mumbled, tapping ash like it was muscle memory. “And unfortunately, it’s not a new habit. Been smoking since I snuck a pack of Newports from my brother’s stash when I was thirteen.”
“How old are you now?”
Whitaker turned to look him in the eye. “Twenty six,” he said like a question.
Robby’s gaze was fixated on the point where Whitaker’s lips wrapped around the filter of the cigarette. He was right. Twenty six wasn’t that young.
He forced himself to a different train of thought immediately. “You’ve been smoking that whole time?”
“Mostly. I–I tried to quit when I got into med school. Did pretty good, especially in my third and fourth year. Wasn’t smoking at all when I was on rotation here. But…”
“But the stress is worse as an intern?” Robby filled in.
Whitaker huffed and shook his head. “No. Just these days.”
Robby rubbed the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses, focusing on the way the air nipped at his skin. Whitaker was shivering, too, and yet whatever was on his mind was worth braving the cold.
“Wanna tell me why you’re out here?”
“Just wanted a smoke, sir.”
“Whitaker. We can’t have you distracted in there,” Robby said in his attending voice. “I can’t have you distracted in there. So spill.”
Whitaker’s brows creased as he sucked long and hard on the stub of the cigarette. He stifled a sigh and put the burnt end out onto the asphalt between them. Robby noticed he didn’t leave the cigarette butt there, but held onto it. Avoiding litter.
“That teenager,” Whitaker started in his sad, quiet way.
“There was nothing more we could do for him.”
“I know. I know, but it doesn’t make it any better.”
“We see a lot of cases like his. A lot of suicides. A lot of kids. What was it about this one?”
He fiddled with the cigarette butt in his hands. “It just hit a little too close to home today, is all.” Whitaker said that last part quietly, as if hoping Robby wouldn’t hear.
But Robby did. And he stared, puzzled, at the young man next to him. He wanted to ask which part felt personal, but that’s when Whitaker lifted his head to give him an almost-steady smile.
“But I’m fine, sir. I won’t let it affect how I treat the rest of my patients today. I promise.”
“I know you wouldn’t,” Robby said gently. He meant it. He wanted to tell the boy something comforting, something that would wipe that anguished twist off his mouth and replace it with something genuine. He wanted to say You know you can talk to me, right? Because it’s what a good mentor would offer. And that’s what he was–Whitaker’s mentor, his senior–but that wasn’t the only reason he wanted to ease whatever was on the boy’s mind.
But Robby wasn’t any good with words, and he didn’t like that his motivations were more complicated than they should’ve been.
So instead, he lifted his arm and silently cupped the back of Whitaker’s neck, squeezing. Letting him know he was here. Whitaker relaxed into the touch, eyes fluttering shut for a moment.
An irritating beeping filled the air between them. Robby jumped, reaching for the pager at his side.
Whitaker huffed that little laugh he always did. “Looks like break time’s over.” He pushed himself to a stand.
Robby stood too and put a hand on Whitaker’s shoulder. “For me. You should stay out here. Catch your breath.”
He wasn’t sure what compelled him to say that–he did not have the best reputation for taking breaks himself, let alone encouraging them among his staff. Whitaker’s brow raised, confused, and he shook his head.
“I’m fine. I promise, sir. I’ve been out here too long, anyway.”
He crouched down and picked something up off the ground. Robby saw three burnt cigarette ends in his palm.
“Christ, kid.”
Whitaker had the decency to flush red to his ears. “Sorry. Bad habits.”
Robby shook his head with a sigh, roping Whitaker into his side with a casual arm around his shoulders. He guided them back toward the hospital. “Better start breaking those now, because once you get to my age, it’s much harder to quit something you know isn’t good for you.”
“Like what?” Whitaker asked up at him.
Robby made the mistake of meeting his innocent, curious gaze, and quickly turned away. His neck prickled.
“Nothing you want to find out. Come on.”
As they passed a trash can on their way through the corridor, Whitaker tossed his cigarette ends away without leaning too far out of Robby’s hold, and Robby pretended like he didn’t notice.