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The immediate look on Robby’s face is one of surprise.
Like a burnt-in LCD screen, it lingers in Frank’s memory when he glances down to see Robby’s hand pressed to his own abdomen and the scalpel still embedded there, the blood just starting to seep through the fabric of his scrub top. There’s nothing graceful about the way Frank breaks the other man's fall, getting one hand under an armpit and not so much catching as twisting him so he won’t land in a way that drives the knife in deeper.
The room jumps into movement – Mateo pinning the patient's arm down until they can get his wrist into soft restraints, Princess shouting for security, Santos pushing a sedative. Frank hears a voice calling for Abbot and recognizes that it's his own though he can't remember the conscious decision to put thought to action and form words. Robby’s weight is heavy against him as they hit the floor, Frank shifting position to avoid digging his knee into Robby’s back, his arm wrapping around Robby’s chest to lay him out at as neutral an angle as possible.
Abbot’s first among a wave of new entrants into the room, assessing both the patient on the bed and the scene on the floor in the span of a moment before he drops to one knee beside Robby. Frank gets a grip on Robby’s wrist and pulls it away from the wound so Abbot can get a closer look.
“How bad?” Langdon asks, unable to see from his current viewing angle.
Abbot’s eyes flick from the wound to Robby’s face and then back again. “Not great.” While his tone is neutral, the line of his mouth is about the thinnest Langdon’s ever seen it.
“Robby, how you doing? Any pain, any trouble breathing?” Abbot asks.
“Yeah,” Robby says, sounding out of it.
“Which question were you answering?”
Robby doesn't respond, eyes glassy, and Abbot moves to hold direct pressure on the wound with both hands, leaving a careful gap around the scalpel to avoid jostling it. Robby’s fingers curl tightly around the loose fabric of Langdon’s yellow trauma gown, a cry of pain cut short as he grinds his teeth together instead. Abbot soothes him with a brief, “I know, I’m sorry, I know,” but doesn't let up. The pain is a good sign, Langdon tells himself. The alternative would be worse.
Donnie pulls up alongside them with a gurney; on Abbot’s count, the three of them manage to lift an unresisting Robby up and onto the bed, Dana’s shouts in the distance clearing a pathway for the short roll straight into Trauma One.
Langdon’s still got a grip on Robby’s wrist that he adjusts as people move around the three of them in a careful but well-rehearsed orchestra, clipping on vitals monitors and starting an IV, cutting off both scrubs and undershirt to expose the wound.
Heart rate and blood pressure come back too high and too low respectively, a one-two punch for signs of shock, and Robby’s eyes drift closed while they’re pushing fluids to try and correct it. “Robby?” Abbot asks again, sharp and direct.
The eyes open again. “Think it hit something.”
“Yeah, no shit,” Abbot says.
“Dr. Langdon–.” Robby says.
“Dr. Langdon is a little busy right now,” Abbot interrupts, the flat palm of one gloved hand placed firmly on Robby's hip to hold him still, the other guiding an ultrasound probe carefully around the injury site. Aside from Langdon, not a single resident has been admitted entrance to the trauma bay; Dana’s work, he suspects. Even from here, Frank can see the cluster of worried faces gathered just outside the door.
“--what’s our biggest concern,” Robby finishes, a slowness to his words that has them all moving a little faster in turn.
“Spleen?” Frank says, eyes on the ultrasound monitor.
“And?”
“Perfed intestines - sepsis.”
Abbot leans in at Robby's ear, voice gentle as Frank's ever heard it but still with the ex-military no-nonsense tone that suggests he’s giving an order he expects to be obeyed. “Robby?”
“Yeah?”
“Would you kindly stop teaching for a second so we can focus on saving your life?”
Robby does, which scares Langdon more than anything – he has never known Robby to accept instructions, only to give them.
“You taking any prescriptions?”
“Fluoxetine,” Robby says. Langdon feels his eyebrows hit the ceiling even as Abbot is nodding and calling for both a clotting agent and another unit of blood to be drawn up and waiting alongside the other medication orders already given.
“Copy that. Anything else I need to know, brother?”
“Sorry I broke the pact.”
“I'll forgive you if you stick around.”
“Doing my best,” Robby says.
Abbot finishes up with the probe and hands it off to the nearest nurse. “You’re going to need surgery to repair the damage here. Preferences?”
“Who owes me a favour?” Robby says.
There is zero trace of amusement in Abbot’s voice. “Everyone.”
When Robby says nothing, Abbot nods over at Jesse waiting standby with the IV line, prepped and awaiting confirmation. “Okay, knock him out.”
Robby’s eyes close as Jesse pushes the sedative. Frank follows suit for a brief minute, all the while thinking ‘well, fuck.’ Only when Abbot responds with a muttered “Amen” does Langdon realize he must have said it out loud as well.
-
The cup of coffee Dana slides across the table at Langdon is hot, black, and from the expensive cafe down the street with the really good danishes. “Who went out?” he asks, wrapping his hands around it gratefully.
“Gift from Surgery along with their love. There's bagels, too.”
“I'm not hungry.”
Dana nods, not pushing the point. “A few of us are holed up in the family room if you want company. Got a deck of cards.”
“We hear anything?”
“No news is good news.”
Frank can't keep the bitterness out of his response. “It's stupid when we say it too.”
“Don't I know it,” Dana says, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and squeezing.
“Why are you being nice to me?”
Dana doesn't look surprised by the question, though her eyes grow softer as she pulls away. “Because Robby would want me to.”
The laugh that elicits from him is involuntary but 100% genuine. Like just about every resident that's passed through this program, Langdon puts an awful lot of decision making stock in the answer to the question What Would Robby Do. It matters a great deal to him what that man thinks.
“How long have you known him?” He asks her.
“Since his first day. Brand new attending only a couple years out of residency. Took him a little while to realize he was supposed to be asking the questions rather than answering them.”
“I can't picture him like that,” Frank says, trying and failing to do so. A younger, less confident Robby who didn't have it all sorted. It's as baffling as it is hopeful. Like maybe Langdon could figure it out, too. “It must really have been something.”
“Adamson took him aside and had a few words. It was the start of their relationship, really.”
A knock on the door precedes Abbot’s entrance into the room, both of them looking up sharply at the noise.
“Just heard from Garcia, he’s in recovery now,” Abbot says. “They had to do a partial splenectomy but no injuries to any other organs. Kept him under longer to chase down a bleeder they missed in the first pass, but they're confident they got everything now. It's taking him a bit of time to wake up. Stubborn bastard.”
He is of course their stubborn bastard, but that goes without saying. Abbot exchanges a look with Dana that Frank can't read and doesn't try to, entirely more focused on the implications of Abbot’s words. Recovery. Robby made it. He's going to be okay.
“I should go call Jake and Janey,” Dana says, leaving them alone in the room.
Abbot sits down across the table from him with a cup of coffee of his own, looking about twenty years older than he did at start of shift. “You did a good job today, Langdon.”
“Thanks.”
“It got a little chaotic in there, so I wanted to take this opportunity to remind you that anything you learned while treating him falls under doctor / patient confidentiality,” Abbot says. “The fluoxetine –,” an antidepressant, Langdon thinks, “--that doesn't leave this room. I've already had a word with the only people who need to know.”
“Did you know?” Langdon asks, selfishly curious if Robby was able to lean on the people around him any more effectively than Langdon had.
“If he wanted anyone to, he'd have said something.” It's not a no, which makes it the closest thing to a yes Langdon expects to get out of him.
“Agreed.”
“If you tell anyone–.”
“I wouldn't.”
“Great. But if you do, you're done.”
“Like I don't have enough threats looming over my head regarding my place in the residency program.”
Abbot doesn't blink. “Yeah, that too, I guess.”
Langdon has never forgotten that even as Robby was shipping him off to rehab, he told only the bare minimum number of people about the situation. Silence here is but a down payment on that debt. Langdon nods in quiet acceptance of the sentiment, watching as Jack relaxes back into his normal baseline, duty done.
“He thinks pretty highly of you too, you know,” Abbot says after a minute.
“Did, you mean.”
“No, does. That's why he took it so hard. He thinks he should've seen it earlier and stepped in.”
“I was actively hiding it.”
“I've told him that.”
“He won't even look at me now, you know?” Of all the things Langdon had been prepared for in coming back to work, detached professionalism had not been on the list.
“Give him time. He needs to reconcile how he'd approach it as a physician with how he would as a friend. It's not easy to do, particularly when it's someone you're responsible for.” There's something about Abbot’s tone that suggests personal history that Langdon doesn't ask about and Abbot doesn't offer additional details on.
Langdon tries to keep the note of desperation out of his voice. “But how much time, do you think?”
Abbot looks down at his watch. “Give or take twenty minutes?”
-
Langdon delays taking the elevator up to post-op as long as he can, celebrating the good news with the rest of the emergency department while Jake, Dana, and Abbot play fast and loose with visiting hours and take turns visiting Robby. Garcia's charting at the central workstation when he finally turns up; she takes one look at his face and shoves a bagel across the desk at him with only a half-hearted insult he's pretty sure is meant to be an expression of concern.
Abbot’s still in the room when Langdon arrives, talking quietly with Robby, the head of the bed angled up to 30 degrees to facilitate that. They don't notice him at first, and Langdon takes advantage of the moment to let the sound of Robby's voice wash over him – it's weak and hoarse but alert in a way that he hadn't been in the trauma bay. Muscles he hadn't even realized were tense start to relax. It's then that Robby notices him, the conversation he’d been having with Abbot cutting off abruptly.
“Hi,” Langdon says.
Robby doesn't say anything, and Abbot looks from one to the other of them before responding, “Dr. Langdon.” He sounds faintly amused.
“I don't mean to be insensitive–.” Langdon starts.
“Okay…” Robby says.
“But on a scale from one to ten – like how out of it are you right now, exactly?”
“With it enough to have a conversation. Out of it enough to lose track of that sometimes,” Abbot says. “I'll leave you two to talk. Robby, I'll be back later.”
On his way out the door, he claps a hand on Langdon's shoulder and whispers, “Go easy. Remember what I said.” The ‘or else’ is implied.
Langdon hovers beside the bed until Robby waves him into a chair. He looks like every patient post major surgery – unusually tired, uncharacteristically pale, and almost unrecognizable when buried by lines and equipment. But alive, and so none of the rest of it matters.
“I don't know how much you remember about what happened.”
“Most of it? It gets a little fuzzy near the end.”
“The patient who stabbed you was aiming for me,” Langdon croaks. “You stepped in front.”
“Yes,” Robby says slowly.
“Why'd you–?” He can't even finish the question. Robby just stares at him until Frank makes an urgent, frustrated noise in the back of his throat. “Show me where Secret Service agent is in your job description.”
Robby’s face is openly expressive in the way of those on really, really good drugs. “Are you the President in this analogy?”
“I didn't think you cared anymore. Not after–.” He cuts himself off, unable to finish the sentence. It's not like the ‘after what’ is ambiguous.
Robby’s eyebrows furrow as he processes the statement. “It doesn't work like that,” he says after a minute. “It's not that simple. You know this.”
“Do I? Then how the hell does it work, Robby. Because the only thing worse than you hating me is you dying on me. For me. Fuck.” He regrets the intensity before the words are finished coming out of his mouth. He hadn't meant to be quite this honest or come on this strong, but the seal has broken on the compartmentalized emotions of the day and they're all spilling out now, one after the other.
“I don't hate you,” Robby says; even now, through the lingering effects of past sedation and the ongoing ones of strong painkillers, choosing his words with care. “I was disappointed in you.”
Langdon manages to keep the tremble out of his voice, but only just. “Was?”
Robby looks confused, like he doesn't really understand the question. And it feels like cheating to have this conversation now while the other man’s so heavily medicated, but it's been so long coming that Frank’s not sure he can hold off now that they've started. All his willpower is going into the other thing. Robby's here and Frank's here and for very different reasons but a welcome change of pace, neither one of them is capable of running away from this conversation.
“Are you still?” Frank grits out. He doesn't particularly want to ask, but he can no longer bear not knowing.
“Yes. No. I don't know.”
“What does that mean ?” Langdon says. It's the closest he's come to a direct answer and yet still so frustratingly opaque.
“You stole from patients. You tampered with medication in closed vials.”
Langdon swallows but says nothing. On this side of rehab, denial is no longer an option. It scares him sometimes, how far he had gone. Been willing to go. As out of control as it seems now, he can remember how much it had made sense at the time, and that scares him most of all. Cassie talks a lot about having Rules. Clear demarcation lines between ‘I should not’ and ‘I will not’ that do not care about nuance or context or need, because that's where the slippery slope lies. He didn't get it before. He does now.
“But I see how hard you're trying now, and I don't know what more I could ask for. I don't believe that one mistake defines a person.”
One of Frank's new Rules is full disclosure, at least with the people who matter. “It was more than one.”
“It always is,” Robby says. “That's not my point.”
Frank nods, letting his focus drift to one of the grounding exercises he learned in rehab, touching his thumb to each finger of his hand in a there-and-back cycle. Robby’s hand comes out to grasp his, stilling the movement. “Frank. You can't think you deserved–.”
“And what did you deserve?” Langdon says thickly. “Did you–?” He cuts himself off, because he's not supposed to know about that.
“Yeah,” Robby says, looking away. “Jack mentioned I might've shared some things.”
“I didn't know.” Langdon had known that Robby was struggling – they all had, it’s been kind of hard to miss – but hadn’t realized this is where things had progressed to. Idly, Frank wonders if this is how Robby felt about the benzos.
“It's not actually about you,” Robby says.
“If I may quote you to you – I cause meltdowns in other people.”
“Yeah,” Robby says, rubbing a hand over his beard. “That was unfair. I was having kind of a bad night. I’m sorry about that.”
Frank rubs a hand along the back of his neck. “No, I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For all of it. For everything.”
Robby sighs heavily, shaking his head. “I don’t want that. You want to end up like me?” His tone is self-deprecating in a way that Frank can’t wrap his head around.
“...yes,” Frank replies, like it's obvious. At least he thought it was.
Robby’s face does a complicated thing, eyes going wide in surprise even as the corners of his mouth pull downwards in a hint of sadness. Frank’s still stuck in that place of confusion, unable to comprehend how such an emotionally intelligent man could be so blindingly obtuse.
There’s not a lot to say, after that.
Robby clears his throat, a hoarse sound to the cough that reminds Langdon of why he came in here in the first place. “How are you feeling?” he asks.
“Still numb. Not sure for how much longer.”
“That’s what happens when you step in front of a scalpel meant for someone else.”
“Jack read me the riot act on that one already.”
“Oh really?”
“Apparently there are disarming lessons in my near future.”
“He does know you’re going to be laid up for a couple of weeks, right?”
“I’m told that’s not a dealbreaker. He’s pretty pissed.”
In the hours Robby had been in surgery, a first draft of the incident report had been written and shared to senior staff. Frank had heard Abbot’s response to some of the details from twenty feet away. Pretty pissed is somewhat of an understatement.
“You know there's a game on, if you feel like watching something.”
“Penguins?”
“Pirates.”
“Baseball puts me to sleep,” Robby says.
“I know. That's kind of the point. You need the rest.”
Robby laughs – the first Langdon can remember since Before – and it's not perfect, but it's a start.