Chapter Text
“Are you a man or a woman?”
Dr. Robby smiled as big as she could and pulled a pair of gloves on. “Well, I’m a doctor,” she said gingerly, “but if you read my name tag here it says ‘Michelle.”
The elderly woman’s gaze slowly fell to the badge clipped onto the quarter zip pocket. “Michelle,” she said.
“Mmm-hmm,” Robby said, taking advantage of the calm to finish the rest of the exam. She turned off her pocket flashlight, disposed of the gloves, and swiveled in her stool to address Santos.
“Get a neuro consult on the phone and order a head and neck CT, but there's no lacerations or visible bruising except right here,” she said, gesturing to the woman’s left shoulder where her shirt was now taped back to allow for a bandage. “Obviously we need to monitor for more signs of a concussion and check for internal bleeding when that CT comes back. Does she have a history of confusion, Alzheimer's?”
Santos shook her head.
“Alright, well, see if we can contact any family or staff at her nursing home that can attest to her normal orientation because she seems a little fuzzy to me.”
Standing up, Robby briefly turned toward the patient again. “Thank you for your cooperation, Mrs. Weathers.”
The woman smiled and nodded, but her eyes looked glazed and distant.
Goddamn, no history of dementia? I hope Santos missed something because otherwise we’re going to have one hell of a neuro consult in here later.
Robby scanned the department once the door closed behind her. Dana was on the phone, and she passed the nurses’ station, giving an expectant look.
“It’s not a trauma,” she clarified, tucking the phone deeper into the space between her ear and shoulder. “Fuckin’ ortho says they can't send anyone down for a complex open fracture.”
“What can you do,” Robby muttered.
“Jack shit,” Dana said.
“Um, excuse me, Dr. Robby,” a meek voice said.
Robby spun around to find Denise Whitaker, one of her residents, with her mousy and slightly curly hair tucked behind her ears and posture straighter than a ruler.
“Ready to present?”
“Yes, ma’am, we have a, uh, 45 year old woman presenting with a chief complaint of lower extremity pain from the knee down, no rash present, no fever, pulse 86, BP slightly elevated, she claims no injury and there are no lacerations or bruising observed, however patient describes any pressure to the area as painful,” Denise rattled off. She rocked back and forth on her toes once at the end of her sentence.
“South 13 right? Walk with me,” Robby said. “History? Any meds?”
“She takes a birth control pill, Advil and Tylenol as needed for headaches and menstrual pain.”
Blood clot, Robby’s brain suggested.
“What do you think it is?” she asked.
Denise’s face screwed up for a moment.
“Has she traveled recently? Plane ride? What does she do for work?”
“Yes, she came back from a vacation three days ago and she's a receptionist,” Denise said quietly. “With her birth control prescription and age I think she could have a blood clot.”
“Yep, sounds like a developing DVT to me. Get a D-dimer, ultrasound, and tell me if you find anything, ASAP. Keep an eye on the leg. Order a CBC too.”
“Got it, thank you Doctor,” Denise replied, ducking into the exam room.
The newest batch of residents and med students wasn't half bad, at least in Robby’s opinion. Denise in particular was a pretty sharp kid for her age, but sometimes she was too meek. A series of cartoonish mishaps on her first day damaged her confidence for a while, and it seemed like Denise just needed encouragement to come back.
She was also cute, almost obnoxiously cute, with her small, sharp features and curly hair.
Robby was a grown enough woman to have decorum about it. These things are delicate, she knew well enough as the attending that she wielded too much power and influence over everyone in the department to openly show favor. Yet she’d dated Collins and hooked up with a handful of other residents and nurses both in the ED and the rest of the hospital. Medical ethics textbooks were a joke compared to the free-for-all among coworkers, she thought. The web of hookups, divorces, marriages, relationships, and extramarital affairs between various employees of PTMC would look like a tangled ball of yarn.
At the thought, naturally her gaze drifted to another exam room where Langdon and Mel were unnecessarily tag-teaming two twin sisters with food poisoning. If the hospital had enough money to actually investigate HR issues, those two alone would be a disaster. Robby tried to recall the last time she saw Langdon’s wedding ring and failed.
Her attending senses wanted to break them apart and send Mel to handle another case, but they were not completely underwater at the moment and God forbid it, Robby liked a little drama.
Whoever writes those fuckass textbooks must know they're getting ignored, she thought gleefully. Especially by ED doctors.
Robby knew the department was made of stellar professionals where she felt it counted. Her gripe with Langdon aside—his addiction, his rehab, her resentment, all of it—he was a damn good doctor.
Mohan, with her counter intuitive snail’s pace and eye for detail, though Robby tried to push her toward geriatrics, was an invaluable asset.
Mel was unquestionably stellar with good instincts even when she got stuck in her head. A confident Mel was unstoppable.
Javadi was a literal prodigy who used her youth to great advantage.
While Santos was prickly and occasionally callous with coworkers, she was a constant advocate for her patients and did well with kids.
Robby’s thoughts on Denise were more complex and she didn't let herself dwell on them during work hours if she could help it.
It was frankly annoying to try to have a normal day when her attention kept snagging on Dr. Whitaker. When Denise and Santos had first met, Trinity had made some comment about how Denise’s name belonged to a woman twice her age, and Whitaker had immediately blushed pink and said her parents never bothered with a gender scan, having always had boys, and ended up with a surprise.
“They were going to name me Dennis,” she said sheepishly. “So they just . . . girl-ified it.”
Santos chuckled. “It’s an old person name either way. I bet Dr. Robby knows a Denise or two.”
“I heard that,” Dr. Robby had said that day.
Old person. The words echoed in her head. Am I really an old person?
She knew the answer was relative, and relative to people Whitaker and Santos' age, she was old. Her hair was more grey than brown now around the temples, her crows’ feet extended nearly to her hairline, and none of it was probably helped by years of stress in an ED and the motorcycle riding, notably both without a helmet (a secret she kept locked tight from her coworkers) and without sunscreen (not that she spoke to dermatology much, but she kept that secret too).
By comparison Denise’s whole appearance screamed youth—pale, freckled forearms, wide eyes, delicate frame.
“Robby, you’re dwelling,” she muttered under her breath.
Maybe she had gone completely over the hill and become some sort of lesbian perv. The motorcycle was clearly the first sign. Being butch, she constantly had to clarify that she wasn't a man or trying to be like one, but perhaps she'd become like every cishet dude her age, pawing at 20-somethings and riding a big scary thing with an engine to feel alive.
Robby tried desperately to direct her mind entirely toward charting, rather than reflecting on exactly what year Denise was born and what she was doing back then.
-
It was late. Day shift was having their semi-regular ritual of cracking open a few beers to balance out the memory of a bad shift. There hadn't been a mass casualty, no technical difficulties, but a woman came in after being set on fire by her husband. Even worse, he came in with her, and denied that he was responsible. She couldn't talk from the pain and smoke damage to her esophagus, but everyone could see the fear in her eyes—at least in the eye that was still functional and not damaged beyond repair, surrounded by warped flesh.
They had reported it, but Robby knew it would hit Santos like a brick. She was gripping her beer as if it was that man’s throat, and if it had been in aluminum instead of glass it would have collapsed completely like a crushed airway. Denise was standing close to her, gentle sloped shoulders slumping forward.
“Santos, you know we did everything we could. Social work will take it from here. The truth will come out,” Robby said, softly.
“Yeah, Trin,” Denise echoed. “Come on. We have ice cream at home. Ube.”
Santos’ mood lifted, if only a hair.
“In fact, you kids should clear out,” Robby said authoritatively.
Abbot, who had come in to help manage other cases while Robby was in the weeds with the burn patient, nodded wisely. “Leave the old folks to chat a bit,” he said.
Denise peeled Trinity off the bench and jingled her car keys. “Goodnight!” she called to Javadi and Mel.
“Goodnight Dr. Abbot, I’ll see you tomorrow Dr. Robby,” she said, giving Robby a small, tight smile.
“Bright and early,” Robby replied.
Once everyone had disappeared back in the direction of the hospital parking garage, Abbot visibly relaxed his posture and looked at Robby intensely.
“Listen, Mitch,” he began.
“I haven't heard you call me that in a long time.”
“Robby, Mitch, Dr. Robinavitch, whatever you’ll answer to—you know I can tell how bad you wanna fuck Whitaker, right?”
Robby froze with the beer bottle pressed to her lips.
“Don't act surprised with me.”
“It's just a little . . . I don't know, workplace entertainment.”
“You look like a little kid who dropped their ice cream every time she walks away from you.”
“That's just how my face looks.”
“Stop bullshitting, Robby.”
“I’ve done this routine before,” she started to say, “I did it with Collins, and that blew up in my face, and you know we managed to be friendly after but goddamn, it was rough for a bit. Denise, Whitaker, she's barely a resident. She's an intern.”
Abbot’s face was unmoved. “You care about hospital policy now?”
“You know damn well I don't.”
“The actual problem here is that you don't know if she's gay,” Abbot said pointedly.
“I could argue that it's not helping.”
“And even if she was gay, you don't know if she’s fucking Santos.”
“Do you have a rolodex of the gay people in this department?”
“Robby, I have working eyes. Santos and Garcia have been banging it out for at least four months.”
I knew that.
“Who says they're exclusive?”
“Santos looks at Garcia like she hung the fucking moon every time she leaves. They're casual but exclusive. Very lesbian of them.”
“Happy for those two, that's very nice and all, but that doesn't fix any of the problems here.”
Abbot sighed deeply. “You have to figure it out, because a mopey horny Robby is a fucking menace. I can feel it coming off you and it’s giving me hives.”
“Take a Benadryl,” Robby deadpanned back.
“You should know that our profession has moved on from that generation of antihistamines.”
“Fine. I will . . . I don't know, investigate Whittaker's gayness and . . . do . . . something.”
“Keep me updated,” Abbot said, standing up.
“Not that updated though,” he added. “If you do end up fucking her I’ll know just from your energy. The last thing I want is details.”
In spite of herself Robby grinned, and she could feel her cheeks get a little warm against the cool evening air.
-
For the next few weeks, Robby became the nosiest person in the department. If anyone was making conversation, she had to at least walk by, if not chime in. Much to her disappointment the subject matter was almost never whether or not Denise Whitaker liked girls.
Except one time.
Santos was leaning back in her chair while charting, rolling her eyes about a patient of hers who apparently couldn't get through even a minute of medical history without mentioning her boyfriend.
“I had one boyfriend ever and he was the most boring man alive. I knew immediately that I was a lesbian,” she said with disgust.
“Some girls actually like men though,” Denise said.
“What is there to like? Disrespect? Bad sex?” Santos asked incredulously.
“I never said I liked them! Just, you know, some girls are straight and don't have a choice.”
“Maybe.”
Robby’s whole face felt like it was on fire. She fought the muscles in her cheeks to keep her mouth in a neutral and professional straight line, rather than a garish smile.
I never said I liked them!
It's the best sentence I’ve ever heard, she thought.