Chapter Text
Dennis flicked away a notification about his student loan repayment. Rent on his studio apartment, credit card minimum due. He sighed.
Dennis wasn't sure he'd ever been this tired before. He’d been thrilled to score a rotation in the Emergency Department of a Level I Trauma Center but with every shift, the exhaustion grew deeper.
He looked forlornly at his bed. Not yet. He should shower and get the wash started. His scrubs were laundered industrially at the hospital, but the clothes he wore home felt disgusting. It made his skin crawl to think about them sitting in the hamper.
But first. He clicked on the app.
Dennis rolled his eyes. He has no idea what stress is. He said he was a biology professor. Dennis pictured a middle-aged man with elbow patches striding across an ivy-covered campus: worrying about his experiments, or worrying about his funding. The professor did seem weighed down. Something about the burden of making sure his students were prepared to be the next generation of… scientists? Some medical students who burned out would go over to research. That wasn't going to be Dennis.
Dennis could handle stress. He was going to be a doctor, and a damn good one. By his third clinical rotation, he felt like he could say it with confidence: he could handle the blood, vomit, and tears. He could handle the clinical responsibility and the pressure to know the answer, immediately, in a crisis. He could integrate himself into a team, and he could move on quickly the moment the gloves and gowns came off, regardless of the outcome.
This was his best rotation yet, undoubtedly because of Dr. Robby. Dennis had never had an attending as wordlessly attuned to what each trainee needed to become increasingly comfortable with independence. Dr. Robby would melt into the back of the room when things were going well, and reconstituted himself as each trainee needed him. If you felt Dr. Robby looming over you, it meant you were struggling, but it also meant he'd make sure you were ok.
Dennis found he didn't mind a hand heavy on his shoulder, firm and commanding. Dr. Robby was gentle until he wasn't. He'd only seen that side of him a few times -- stalking through the chaos and imposing order with a stern glare. It filled Dennis with ease: he’ll lead us through this shift. No matter what comes, no matter how bad it gets. We’ll have him at the helm.
Sometimes, the stress too much. It wasn't just the work. It was his pathetic bank account, his insomnia, his aching rotator cuff, the crack on his phone screen. It was the fragile feeling that things would only ok as long as nothing got worse. He couldn't ask his parents for money. Not with the threat of foreclosure always hanging over the farm.
And it was lonely here. A month ago, he would've said he didn't have any friends in Pittsburgh but maybe Trinity would become a real friend.
So it was nice to text with a man, even if it was anonymous. Anonymity had been the stipulation from the start. (As well as: "Actual words. No Gen Z speak.") Dennis went by DJ. Childhood nickname, no one here knew that. The professor went by M. Dennis liked to call him professor. It was flattering to think he got the attention of someone successful and important.
And rich.
Looking back, Dennis cringed at his naivete. He shouldn't have been so surprised when the professor had asked him to set up an anonymous Venmo account, and he had started to send over cash. This is something people do on this app, the professor had said soothingly. We don't have to do it if you don't want to. I'd like to, if you would.
He wasn't really sure what he was supposed to do. He bought a snake plant, dishwashing detergent and splurged on a new carbon monoxide detector. Initially, the professor seemed baffled. Later, Dennis realized he was expected to make it sexy. Pretty quickly, though, the professor seemed to start to like it. Dennis would say, thank you, I was so worried about that and it was like he could feel the professor flush with pride. DJ, how much is your rent? DJ, do you need new winter boots? DJ, do you need to get your car inspected?
So Dennis pushed through the exhaustion to walk to the fridge and pulled the groceries out. He lined them up on the table. A half gallon of organic whole milk in the back. Two eggplant, four zucchini, three tomatoes and a clove of garlic for making ratatouille tomorrow. His day-off project. Honeycrisp apples in a line. He'd gotten a few boxes of store brand mac and cheese, comfort food, but didn't put those in the picture. His professor liked to see him eating healthy. Nourished. He placed the arugula and radishes down in front, with a lemon. Dennis snapped a picture.
Dennis opened the pint of vanilla ice cream. He pressed his thumb down to break the surface. Click, send. He brought it to his mouth. Selfie mode, click, crop out his eyes, send.
Dennis smiled and let his thumb trace over his hipbone. He really did feel grateful. He stowed everything safely back in the fridge, and padded back to his bedroom. He switched on the table lamps by the mirror, and stripped down to his underwear. Click, crop, send. Then, delete. Bad idea. I really should shower first.
It was a gratitude practice, he mused as he washed his hair. He was grateful for groceries. He was grateful that he could go grocery shopping and didn't have to hold his breath at the checkout when he had to face discrepancies between his mental arithmetic and the cash register. He was grateful rent was covered. He was grateful that someone cared if he had a bad day at work.
All he had to do was text and send a few pictures?
He could do that.
But Dennis still felt shame ripple through him when he thought about what people would think if they found out. If his parents found out. If his pastor found out. If people he respected found out, like Dr. Robby.
But he did it anyway.
Why? Because the lonelier he got, the easier it was to compartmentalize. He was scrawny, dorky, and always had been. He got pushed up against the lockers in high school. He got called a queer before he realized he was gay. So he put his head down, he kept to himself, and he studied. When his mind wandered to the nasty things people said about him, he would recite the Krebs Cycle to drown them out.
He didn't think he was anyone's type. That had been made clear to him growing up. Some people just aren't attractive. Fine. Whatever. He'll be good at other things. Moving on.
But he'd made a profile, and this man had tapped him. His first message to Dennis was, "Fuck, kid, you're so hot." They started messaging, and two weeks later, Dennis was trying to figure out how to take a nude. It took a few tries to get anything decent.
The professor said: Oh, wow.
The professor said: Baby, would you be open to doing something for me?
The professor said: I want to see you touch yourself.
He wanted other stuff, too. He wanted to buy Dennis expensive hiking socks and see him wearing just them, on all fours. He wanted to see Dennis make himself kale salad and poached salmon. He wanted Dennis to buy organic cherries and let the juice stain his fingers. He wanted Dennis to tell him he was caught up on his bills, and that he was sleeping well. He wanted to see Dennis slowly pull down his pajama pants, over the dusting of blond hair descending from his belly, until his soft cock came into view, and he wanted to tell Dennis how he wanted to get him hard in his mouth.
Dennis had to work up the courage to ask the professor to send him something back. He felt shy about asking for more than what he was already getting. The professor was so generous.
There were a few pictures on his profile: one of the torso of a tall sturdy man in a fleece, the another of the whorl of hair thick across his chest. Dennis wanted more. The professor sent him a photo once in a while. A heavy soft cock on his thick thighs. Fading tattoo on his hairy calf. Stubble, two days old. He seemed almost... shy. Dennis coveted them. He saved them in a password-protected folder and opened them after rough days on the floor. He'd let himself get under the covers and dissociate into fantasy.
In passing once, and only once, the professor had mentioned a student. Dennis wondered if he'd slipped up; he hadn't meant to say that. Maybe he was embarrassed. But Dennis hadn't forgotten, and he suspected he was probably a proxy for the student, sitting in class, taking notes, looking up at his professor looking down on him. I wonder what he looks like, Dennis though absently. I wonder if he's gawky like me. I wonder if the professor towers over him during lectures… Dennis shivered when he thought about it but he didn't bring it up. The professor didn't say it was a hard no, but Dennis had an intuition. So there were messages he didn't send.
He wanted to say: tell me more about your day, professor. Was your student there? What did you want to do to him?
But he didn't. Most days, it was ok. Most days, it was enough.
Dennis sank down to his knees, the bathroom tile cold and damp. God, he needed this. All he did was text with his professor, and he was fucking sick of it. He needed a cock in his mouth, bad. He didn't usually do this; it made him nervous. Two cocktails for courage and he worked up the nerve to approach the guy at the bar who was just right — early 40's, big guy, hairy, undoing his belt buckle fast, sliding his jeans down.
Dennis grabbed his hips, pushed his face into the man's pubic hair and inhaled deeply. He closed his eyes and sighed contentedly. All day, day after day, he held it together, and any minute now, he was going to fly apart unless he could just get something.
He thought about Dr. Robby's hand heavy on the scruff of his neck, the seven cervical vertebrae. C1 to C7. He thought about Robby congratulating him on a job well done, and took down as much of the cock as he could. The actual man in front of him tangled his hands in his mullet and pulled him closer.
Then there was a loud thump from the next stall, and an Air Force One flopped against his leg. He came off the cock abruptly. "What the fuck—" He stared down at the foot, flaccid, and his brain came back online. He gingerly touched it. "Are you ok?" Silence.
"What the hell, man?" But Dennis wasn't paying attention to the guy he'd been blowing a minute ago. He was scrambling up, going around, and was shaking the stall door. It was locked, and he wasn't the kind of guy who was kicking it down– he was the guy who got down on the ground and squeezed himself under the door. He barely had room to pull himself in. One look at the blue, ashen face and he knew immediately he would be damned lucky to find any hint of breath.
"Hey, can you hear me? Can you hear me?" He got no response from the man on the floor, his head lolling, but there was strained, faint breaths. He pulled back his eyelids and saw pinpoint pupils. On principle, and as he was trained, he started to describe what he was doing to the unconscious man. "I'm going to move you to the floor, and I'm going to do rescue breathing. I'm going to breathe into your body. We're going to get help."
"What's going on?" His hookup asked from outside the stall.
"You," Dennis unlatched the stall door and found his voice, the firm one, from home on the farm: the voice for colts and calves. "Call 911. Tell them a man likely overdosed. Go to the bar and ask if they have naloxone. Bring it back to me. Do it NOW."
The man looked dazed and backed out. Dennis fished out a pocket mask off his keychain, and leaned over him to administer rescue breathing. In a blur, he had naloxone in hand. He inserted the tip of the nasal spray and pressed hard on the plunger. He couldn't escape it — suffering, everywhere — he tried for one night out to escape his life and he couldn't do it. The misery never ended. It felt like an eternity before the EMTs crashed in, pushed him out of the way, and took over.
"You did good, kid," a gruff one said, patting his shoulder, as they wrapped up. "Your friend is lucky you were here. Do you want to come with us?"
"I— I don't know—"
"Come on." He found himself in the back of the ambulance. A little drunk. A lot fucked up.
He was small and people didn't always notice him, so when they got to the hospital, no one told him where to go and he couldn't seem to process it himself. He stood at the nurse's station in a daze.
"Dennis? You came in with that OD?" said a familiar voice, icy cold as a firm hand grabbed him and he stumbled. Dr. Robby probably had fifty pounds on him, he though fleetingly; he could just throw him back against the wall if he got mad enough. He looked mad enough. "Are you high?"
Dennis grabbed the counter, his head spinning. "No, Dr. Robby, you don't understand--"
Dennis got cut off by one the EMTs, jogging back to him. "Hey, buddy, I'm sorry we lost track of you. Your friend is stable. Do you want to go see him?"
"No, he's not—"
"What's going on?"
"This guy was the first responder on an OD." The EMT narrowed his eyes and looked at Dennis curiously. "Do I know you? You kind of look familiar."
"Dennis Whitaker, fourth year med student." He replied faintly. "I work here."
"I'll be damned. Wasn't that kid lucky. Nice to meet you. You did good." He leaned in conspiratorially to Dr. Robby. "This one's a keeper. Even kind of messed up, he got the job done."
The EMT slapped Dennis on the back on his way out. "Sounds like I'll see you around. Once you sober up."
Dennis nodded stiffly, as Robby took a deep breath and enunciated his question with a steely calmness. "Dennis, I have to ask, were you using with him tonight?"
"Dr. Robby, I don't know him. I just found him at the club. I know you worry about that..." After Langdon went unsaid. "But I wasn't. Just a few drinks."
Dennis watched the worry on Robby's face dissipate. There were things that did that to Robby, made him look broken for a beat before he'd pull himself back together. Except that one time, after Leah's death, but they'd never talked about that. It was a one-way street with Robby. He took care of them, and he gave them what the needed, but he didn't ask for, let alone accept, anything in return. Maybe that's what it means to be a leader, Dennis thought idly, it looks really hard.
"Thank you for telling me. What do you need right now?"
"Nothing. I'm fine," Dennis leaned back and exhaled. "I'm glad he's OK. I don't know him. I don't need to see him. I just want to go home."
"Of course. I'll call you a car. They'll pick you up outside. Go home and get some sleep.”
Dennis opened his app in the car.
Dennis slumped back into the car. He felt so tired and like he could hardly do the calculations of what he should and shouldn't reveal.
Dennis got out of the car and bid his driver goodnight. He heard a Venmo notification as he walked up to his door, and got it out with his keys. What did he need? He needed… not this. A dark studio apartment. No one who cared if he got home at 4:15am.
$100 Please take yourself out tomorrow
He used to feel a zing of excitement when he'd get those notifications. He sighed and thumbed thank you, sir quickly, politeness trained up in him well.
He could ask: do you want to come over. Do you want to hold me. Do you want to be real.
Dennis turned off his ringer, then turned off his phone entirely for good measure. He was off tomorrow. No one needed him. No one would care if he was in a coma until his next shift.
A loud knock on the door woke him at noon the next day. "Dennis, Dennis! Are you in there?"
He padded out in a t-shirt and boxers, and opened the door to Trinity with takeout.
"Hey, babe. I wanted to come check on you. I heard you had a crazy night," she grinned, pulling off her sunglasses as she sashayed in. "I have birrea from that place near me. It'll fix you."
"Yeah, um, come in?" He called after her as she made her way into his kitchen. She smiled and started plating the Mexican on the two plates he owned. He was famished, he realized, looking down at the spread.
"So everyone knows?"
"Not a lot of secrets in the ER."
"Fuck."
She looked at him oddly and squeezed lime over the plates. "Don't be embarrassed; it was your night off. You're allowed to go out and be a slut. What I heard was you did an amazing job, even though you were smashed. But, what I really want to know is where, what, why, how you are partying without me. I didn't know you liked to go out. Fuck, we could've been going out together all this time?"
He smiled weakly. "I might not need to go out for a while."
"Yeah, I get that. A night like that takes the bloom off the rose." She reached over for more pico. "Javadi just got a big screen TV. I know, what is that? We're going to start doing movie nights. You should come. Don't be a stranger."