Work Text:
Robby's phone was vibrating in the breast pocket of his scrubs, buzzing against the pen light and blister pack of nicotine gum he kept there. He ignored it, more focused on getting the patient before him back into a normal sinus rhythm. He guided Landgon, Mel, and Javadi through three tense cycles of CPR, pushing medications, and using the defibrillator. His phone would quiet for a few minutes, then start vibrating again. By the time the patient's heart was successfully out of V-fib, he had seven missed calls and one voicemail from an unknown number.
Robby hoped for maybe thirty empty seconds to figure out who was calling him, but no such luck. As he approached central, he saw an ambulance crew pushing a stretcher into the other trauma bay. Dana was there, her weary blue eyes fixed on him.
“What’s in Trauma 2?” he asked, rubbing sanitizer into his hands.
Dana had a look on her face that Robby couldn’t quite interpret. Worry, maybe, and a reluctance to tell him the answer.
“It’s Jack,” she said after a pause. “MVA. Just came in.”
The words didn’t compute, even as Robby rushed in the direction of the trauma bay. The EMTs were helping Samira, Dennis, Trinity, and Ogilvie transfer their patient from the orange backboard to the gurney.
“What the hell happened?” Robby asked, yanking gloves from the dispenser on the wall.
“Vehicle versus tree at approximately 50 mph,” one of the paramedics said. “Facial trauma, complaining of head and neck pain. GCS of 14. We gave him 2 of morphine.”
Robby felt a blooming blur of anxiety in his torso even as he moved to take control of the situation.
Dennis was using trauma shears to cut Jack’s thick ripstop pants from ankle to hip on both sides, Ogilvie watching closely. His dead shark eyes glittered with interest when he saw Jack’s prosthetic leg. Dennis then parted Jack's scrub top and undershirt with the shears. Trinity was close behind—an ultrasound wand in one hand and a bottle of clear gel in the other—ready to do her eFAST exam.
Robby wove through the tangle of bodies to the head of the gurney. His chest got tight when he saw Jack immobilized in a cervical collar, his face covered in blood.
Robby had nightmares exactly like this, where he shined a pen light in Jack’s hazel eyes to find his pupils blown and non-reactive. Sometimes he watched his agonal respirations or viewed the silvery pink vaults of his open, brainless skull. But to Robby’s relief, Jack was conscious and blinking, his mouth pressed into a thin, hard line.
“I thought we had a deal,” Robby said in his loud, cheerful doctor voice. He had to joke around or he was going to lose it.
“Believe me, I didn’t want to come here.” Jack was lucid, albeit a little groggy. “This is overkill. I’m fine.”
“You are most definitely not. Where are you hurting?” Robby asked.
“Head and neck.”
“You’ve got at least one cut that needs stitches,” Robby said. He searched Jack’s scalp for other injuries and picked a piece of glass out of his hair. “Did you hit your head?”
“Fuck if I know.” Jack cringed at Trinity prodding and probing his soft parts with the ultrasound wand.
“eFAST is negative,” she called.
“Good lung sliding on both sides,” Samira added.
“Gold star for meee,” Jack murmured.
“We will put it on your sticker chart,” Robby said. He pulled out his pen light and used it to check Jack's pupils which, to his relief, were normally and equally responsive to light. "Next steps, Dr. Mohan?"
"We need to do a CT to rule out anything serious with your head and neck,” Samira said, deliberately choosing to address Jack instead of Robby. She took Jack's hands in her own and asked him to squeeze. “Strong and symmetrical. How did you wreck your car?”
“I don’t know—I think I fell asleep.”
“You weren’t driving the Porsche, were you?” Robby asked.
“No, just my fully paid off Jeep that only has liability insurance,” Jack said bitterly.
Robby was relieved that Jack was aware enough to be his usual yapper self. The state of alert and oriented was such an important neurological sign.
“Cars are replaceable, you aren’t," he said.
Jack rolled his eyes. It was quickly becoming obvious that, despite being in a serious car accident, he was in pretty good shape according to ER standards. That meant he could be moved to an exam room while he waited for the CT.
Still, Robby's hands were shaking as he peeled off his exam gloves. Which was stupid, he told himself. They weren't dating. Heck, Robby would be surprised if Jack even considered him a close friend. But he could not disregard the fluttery feelings he got when Jack snorted at one of his jokes, or the sense of safety that came over him when Jack was beside him during a desperate trauma case.
There was something there, though Robby didn't know what it could be beyond another unrequited queer crush. Robby had broken his own heart this way several times before. Jack had been married to a woman, for fuck's sake.
He must have left the trauma bay looking particularly out of sorts, because Dana discreetly handed him her pack of cigarettes with the lighter tucked inside and told him to go take a break.
"See if there's anyone in line for the CT that we can bump, please," he said. "I'd like to get Jack out of here as quick as possible."
"Perlah and Princess already cooked the books." Dana spoke like she was proud of them. "Go, before some more bullshit happens."
Robby went to the roof because he did not want relapse Number #258 to enter the Pitt rumor mill. It irritated him to admit that an actual smoke scratched the itch better than the gum or patches ever could.
He took a few minutes to consider the absurdity of his job, where he started the morning doing shift exchange with Jack and then treated him as a patient just forty minutes later. Then he remembered his phone. The missed calls and voicemail were from a deputy with the Allegheny County Sheriff's Office, letting him know Jack had been in a car accident and was being taken to PTMC. And that made zero sense until Robby remembered they were each other's emergency contacts.
This day was already fucked and it wasn't even 9:00 a.m., Robby thought wearily.
But his nerves didn't feel quite as frayed when he returned to the ER.
He went to check on Jack, and was annoyed to see that he was still laying in his shredded clothes and covered in blood. Someone had parked him in the exam room and promptly forgot about him. Robby estimated he had only been gone twenty minutes, but still. Not a good look for the day shift.
"How are you feeling, cowboy?" he asked.
Without CT results, Robby could not move Jack to change him into a gown. But he could at least throw a blanket over him.
A transient little smirk creased a streak of drying blood on Jack's cheek. "Head hurts. Can you turn off the overhead light?"
Robby flipped the switch on the wall, leaving the room illuminated only by the light coming through the narrow window in the door. "Photophobia?"
"I guess. I do have a headache."
“I'm sure you’ve got a concussion. You're developing a pretty good contusion around your left eye, too."
"Great," Jack murmured.
Robby started to prepare a sterile tray with a suture kit. The cut near Jack's hairline was relatively small, but the way it gaped told Robby that it needed attention.
"And you don't remember anything?"
Jack tried to shake his head, but couldn't because of the collar. He winced. "One minute I was driving, then suddenly I was being rudely awoken by the Pittsburgh Fire Department peeling back the roof of my car like a sardine can."
"Yeah, those pneumatic tools are loud," Robby agreed. "So you need a couple stitches in your forehead but I can't do them in the dark. Can I use a lamp?"
"Yeah, I'll just close my eyes."
Robby set up a high-powered floor lamp they used to illuminate delicate work, but didn't turn it on. He prepped a sterile tray with a suture kit and sat down on a rolling stool, sliding over so he was near Jack's head.
"Do you need me to talk you through what I'm doing?" he asked, putting on his glasses.
Jack cracked one eye open and looked directly at him. "Spare me," he said. "Also, doesn't the Chief of Emergency Medicine have something better to be doing?"
"Oh, you don't want stitches from me?" Robby asked, pretending to be offended. "Just a moment while I find the greenest med student I have so they can practice on your pretty face."
"This is a teaching hospital," Jack said.
"Close your eyes and shut up."
Jack laughed and did as he was told, but made a small noise of discomfort when Robby flipped the light on. He responded by laying a small surgical towel over Jack's eyes.
"This is feeling more like veterinary medicine now," Jack said.
Robby made a face as he began to clean out the wound. "What?"
"You know. When they tranquillize a wild animal, sometimes they cover their eyes to calm them."
"You are so weird," Robby muttered. "I think the morphine really brings it out."
After a few shots of lidocaine, Robby was able to start suturing. The edges of the small wound came together perfectly with Robby's equally small stitches. He was happy to do a little extra work so Jack wouldn't have a noticeable scar.
He cleaned up Jack's face with a few alcohol wipes and a warm, wet cloth. His other cuts and scrapes were superficial; Robby applied butterfly closures to one on his cheekbone and another on his chin.
Jack had been quiet for a record amount of time when he said, "I kinda like you fussing over me."
Robby felt hot all over, and was so grateful Jack could not see him blush. "I bet you do," was all he could manage to say.
The CT did not show quite what Robby expected. Jack had no injuries to his neck beyond a nasty case of whiplash. However, he had an orbital floor fracture. That would explain his slowly developing black eye. But the ophthalmologist on-call did a bunch of tests, and she determined the eye itself was fine and the socket that held it would heal on its own. She guessed the culprit was the front airbag, which generally kept a person from dying in a car accident but did not leave them unscathed.
Robby learned all this piecemeal. Emergencies didn't stop happening because his coworker crush was in need of care, and people with more serious problems commanded his attention. By the time Jack was discharged around noon, Robby had tended to a catastrophic chainsaw injury, a STEMI, a near drowning, and a small child who had eaten a hearing aid battery.
He was running to the bathroom in between crises when he saw that Jack was upright, dressed, and standing at central with Dana. She gave him a big hug. Robby ignored his complaining bladder in favor of saying his own form of goodbye.
"I don't want to see you again this shift," he said as Jack and Dana parted.
"You won't," Jack said with one of his smirks.
"How are you getting home?" Robby asked.
Jack gestured to the police officer who was standing maybe ten feet away. "I know Brad from the SWAT team. He is very graciously giving me a ride."
Robby was caught off guard by the weird pang of jealousy he felt. This Brad was maybe half their age and very cute. He realized he was manufacturing rivalries that didn't exist, but couldn't help himself. Dana seemed to notice the shift in his demeanor.
"Bye, Jack. Glad you're still with us," she said, giving him one final pat. "Robby, I need you to look at the board with me. We are drowning."
Robby was already halfway down the hall, sprinting toward the bathroom. "Hold that thought!" he called.
Robby left PTMC with a little white paper bag that was stapled shut. The hospital pharmacy had filled a couple prescriptions for Jack to take home, which he must have forgotten. Robby decided it wasn't a hardship to walk home, get his car, and text Jack that he was going to stop by.
He'd only been to Jack's house a few times, the first being when his wife died. Dana and her husband had picked him up, and he spent the drive with an extremely hot 9×13" glass casserole dish on his lap because Dana was worried about it spilling.
He was thinking about that as he drove, until he came upon the spot Jack must have wrecked. Four black tire marks left the road abruptly, and there was a hole in the treeline where the Jeep had smashed into it. There was no shoulder or guardrail, and the ditch was a dropoff into the woods. Small pieces of the car were still scattered across the road, catching the fading sunlight.
"Jesus, Jack," Robby murmured to himself.
Jack's house was secluded, tucked back on the property and sitting at the top of a steep driveway that Robby hated to navigate. The only thing visible from the road was a mailbox.
Robby had not received a response from Jack, and hoped that meant he was resting. But as Robby's car lurched into the driveway and stopped abruptly, he saw Jack was standing in front of the house with a garden hose. Robby sighed as he threw his car in park and set the emergency brake. Jack waved, looking confused but obviously happy to see him.
He was watering a tiny tree that was held perfectly straight by three strings tied to stakes in the ground, the trunk protected by a black plastic collar.
"Pretty sure your care instructions did not say go home and do yardwork," Robby said, unimpressed with the scene before him.
Jack brushed him off. "This magnolia was really expensive and I'm not going to let it croak in this heat."
"Again, I don't think you should be doing yardwork."
"And I don't think you should be standing in my driveway telling me what to do," Jack said, flicking the spray of the hose in Robby's direction. "Very weird and uncool of you, by the way."
Robby had to jump to the side to avoid getting wet. "Asshole! I'm here because you forgot these," he said, shaking the bag that contained Jack's prescriptions.
"Oh," Jack said. "Well, in my defense, Princess asked me what pharmacy I use, so I thought everything was getting sent to CVS. Thanks."
Robby wanted to throw the bag at Jack's head but resisted the intrusive thought. "Are you feeling okay, at least?"
"Yeah," Jack said. He finished watering and started to gather up the hose. "I'm sure tomorrow will be different. That's my experience with car accidents, anyway."
Robby rubbed his forehead. He didn't know why he was annoyed. Jack's injuries and the way he handled them were none of his business. He was just supposed to be dropping off the forgotten prescriptions and then fucking off.
"Speaking of, you wanna go see my car tomorrow?" Jack asked. "I kinda need to clean it out before they smash it into a tiny cube or whatever."
Robby didn't. But he wanted to spend every possible second with Jack that he could, so he said yes.
The next evening, Robby went to pick up Jack after work. His prediction about the wreck catching up to him was correct; he looked stiff as he walked to the car. His black eye was vivid shades of red and purple, but thankfully not swollen or squinted shut. Maybe worst of all, he could not turn his head to either side.
Robby tried his best to not be weird about it, but he could not help giving Jack concerned glances as he drove. "You look sore. Did you get any sleep?"
"Some," Jack said. "Took Tylenol PM and that helped."
"And you rested today, right?"
"Yes, Robby."
Jack's voice had a hint of irritation to it, just enough that Robby backed off with the questions.
The Jeep had been towed to a nearby salvage yard and was sitting in a lot full of other cars that had met the same fate. The gravel sparkled with crushed broken glass.
The wreck had been worse than even Robby's sick imagination could muster. The front end was completely smashed, with a curve to it that suggested the car tried to wrap itself around a tree. All the windows were broken and the fire department ruined the doors trying to open them with tools. They had given up and decided to extricate Jack a different way. The A-pillars were cut and the roof of the car was indeed peeled back like a can of sardines.
Robby walked a slow circle around the vehicle, swatting the occasional mosquito. Clouds were moving in but they did nothing to mitigate the heat.
“She was a good car." Jack patted the quarter panel like the flank of a tired, sweating horse.
Robby didn't argue when Jack asked him to hold a cardboard box while he filled it with the contents of his totaled car: a pen, a charging cable, unopened mail, a window breaking tool, a road atlas, sunglasses, hand sanitizer, ice scraper, jumper cables, towing chain, registration, and the wad of fast food napkins in the glove box.
Jack blindly searched for his lost handicap placard under the seats, forearm coming away with a small cut from broken glass. Robby stopped him when he pulled out a screwdriver to take the license plates off.
"I can do that," he said, holding out his hand.
"Thank you," Jack said. It was obvious he was tired and in pain.
So Robby thought he was being charitable when he tossed the license plates and screwdriver into the cardboard box and said: “You need to take some time off.”
“No thanks, I’m good.”
“You’re not good and I’m not asking.” Robby crossed his arms and looked at the ground. He didn’t want to see Jack’s expression. “You need at least a week to heal, then I’m taking you off the schedule for fourteen days.”
“Robby, c’mon. You can’t do that to me.”
Robby glanced up. “I can. You have a concussion and you're showing signs of exhaustion."
Jack laughed. He honest-to-God laughed. And that was somehow scarier than him yelling. “Aren’t we all showing signs of exhaustion?” he asked.
The tension grew when Robby didn’t respond right away.
“Everyone in this profession has experienced sleep deprivation and fatigue, especially people who work nights. All I’m asking is that you take some time off and rest,” he finally said.
“But I don’t want to. I like working,” Jack said. There was an uncomfortable hint of desperation in his voice. “I’ll go crazy. I’ll legitimately go insane if I don’t have anything to do, Robby.”
“Work isn’t going to fix the problem. Work is the problem. You know studies have found that driving tired is just as dangerous as driving drunk? Jack, you fell asleep—"
“I didn’t fall asleep!” Jack snapped. He immediately squeezed his eyes shut like he regretted raising his voice, but the frustration remained. “I didn’t fall asleep while driving. I saw a black trash bag on the side of the road and for a split second I thought it was a fucking IED!”
Whatever Robby expected to come out of Jack’s mouth, it wasn’t that. He stared. The silence hung heavy in the humid air.
“So you swerved,” Robby said quietly.
Jack nodded, blinking hard in that way he sometimes did. He didn’t look at Robby for several long moments. It was obvious he was distressed by whatever horror highlight reel that was replaying in the back of his skull. His eyes were wet when his gaze flicked back to Robby.
“You know, I was riding shotgun when our humvee tripped it. The explosion—the pieces of the vehicle—took my leg off. My bowel was perforated by shrapnel. I almost bled to death.”
He slowly shifted his weight from one hip to the other, back and forth, in a pained kind of swaying. Robby considered the constant, low-grade trauma of his every step being a reminder. He felt helpless, especially when Jack took a breath that was more like the hitch of a sob.
“The driver was—I knew him. We worked together." Jack swallowed audibly. "He was in pieces, everywhere, on me—”
Robby interrupted him with a hug. Jack froze and Robby thought he would push him away. Robby just squeezed him tighter. After a moment, he felt Jack’s arms wrap around his back. He tucked his head against Robby’s shoulder.
Robby didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing. Jack was trembling. Despite the muggy weather, they stayed that way for a long time. Thunder grumbled from miles away. When they parted, Jack's scraped, shaking hands stayed on Robby’s forearms. Grounding himself, maybe.
They’d never touched like this before—nothing that lingered beyond a friendly punch in the shoulder, a fist bump in bloody gloves, or the time Jack’s fingertips brushed Robby’s palm while giving him a handful of Skittles. Robby had contented himself with the brief, awkward bro hugs they sometimes shared. Even now, he was thinking that he wanted more.
“I could have killed somebody yesterday,” Jack said.
“But you didn’t. It was an accident.”
Jack laughed bitterly. “You would think twenty-some years and all that therapy later…” He was calmer now and that allowed his exhaustion to show through. “This has never happened to me before.”
Robby couldn’t help himself. He reached up and cupped the other man’s scruffy cheek. Jack’s eyebrows knit together in a millisecond of confusion, but then he surprised Robby by closing his eyes and leaning into it ever so slightly.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Jack's eyes were still closed. “I don’t know. I didn't know how to explain it in the ER, so I lied. I'm sorry."
Robby cared so little about that angle that he hadn't even realized Jack had lied about the cause of the accident. He understood why.
“I’m not mad about any of this,” Robby said. "And I don't care how you wrecked your car. The only thing that matters to me is that you're in one piece."
Their eyes met and the air felt like it was full of static. They were either going to be struck by lightning or they were going to kiss. Robby thought the lightning strike was more likely. But then Jack's mouth was on his, equal parts gentle and scruffy. It started to sprinkle.
Jack pulled back just far enough to speak. "Is this okay?" he asked quietly.
"Are you kidding?" Robby was completely dazed. "Yeah, this is more than—"
Jack cut him off with more kisses.