Chapter Text
Jack was on the wrong side of the railing. He leaned forward and stared down at the street below him. One step. One small step forward and he’d be freely falling down to smack into the pavement. It would probably be fatal.
In fact, he wouldn’t even have move his legs at all. He could just lean forward a bit more, shift his center of gravity a bit and then the gravitational force would pull him to his death. He leaned forward slightly, his head swimming from the vertigo. It would be so easy.
He’d smack into the sidewalk. How would it look? How gory would it be? Would they have to scrape him off the ground? Gather him into a garbage bag, ship him off to the morgue in pieces? Would they pronounce him dead on scene? Or would they throw him on a stretcher, rush him into the Pitt? Who would pronounce him dead, then? Robby, probably.
Besides, if you jump on my shift, that’s just rude, man.
Jack inhaled sharply and took a step back.
“Fuck,” he mumbled and ran a hand through his hair.
He shouldn’t be up here. Not when he was… Like this.
Jack had no idea what had changed. Why he suddenly just felt awful. He was doing everything right. He was taking his stupid medication, he did his dumb mental health exercises, he went to the apparently useless therapy appointments and let his therapist dissect him like a frog in high school biology. He was doing everything right!
A groan forced its way out of him as he looked up at himself in the mirror. God, he was hideous. Grey, scarred, broken, old. Fucking waste of space. Why did PTMC even hire him? Probably because he knew Robby. A favour to him, probably.
His phone dinged, the reminder to take his medication before heading to work.
“Oh fuck you,” he snarled at the device.
But he did it anyway. He went through the motion of getting ready for work. Meds, food, clothes. Then he spent some time considering jumping into traffic on his way to work. Or maybe he should drive his car off a bridge. That would probably work.
At work, he could pretend. He could pretend that everything was fine. Because he was fucking good at his job. Emergency medicine was in his blood, in his DNA. He could do it while living on military rations, in the dark and sunburned to all hell. He sure as shit could do it when he was closer to just offing himself than he’d been since he came back without a leg.
Robby, fucking Robby, noticed something was up. Because of course he did. He was going to therapy now, parroting the same bullshit Jack usually did. And Jack seriously considered punching Robby in the face for it.
It clearly didn’t work. It didn’t work! What was the fucking point of going there, flaying himself open for some sicko to gawk at his damage if it didn’t fucking help.
The medication didn’t help either, obviously. What was the point of them? While he had them, he kept taking them. It went on autopilot, like putting on underwear. Then his prescription ran out. He should go to refill it. There was a pharmacy in the fucking building he worked. It would take barely five minutes out of his day.
But he didn’t care. He couldn’t bring himself to care. So he walked past the pharmacy every day, ignoring the prescription waiting to be picked up. Would his psychiatrist notice that he hadn’t refilled his meds? Would he get a call? No, of course he wouldn’t. No one really cared about him. His psych only cared because she got paid. If Jack just stopped being her patient, another would take his place.
His therapist, then? Probably the same story there. It didn’t matter if Jack went.
So he stopped going. He cancelled all his appointments. It resulted in a voice mail full of fake concern and an email trying to guilt him into going back. His therapist was probably just sour about not receiving his checks anymore.
When he was discharged from the military, Jack vowed to never own a gun. It would be too tempting. Now, he wanted nothing more. It would be so quick. It would be messy, sure, but nothing compared to jumping off the hospital’s roof.
He went online, clicking around until he found somewhere he could buy a gun for cheap. There was no point in walking into a gun shop to buy a fancy piece of iron if he was just going to use it to blow his brains out.
The handgun showed up as promised. Holding it in his hand felt familiar, like holding the hand of an old friend. He stood in his kitchen, turning it over and over. He could do it right there and then, just put it in his mouth and pull the trigger. It would be fast, over in less than a moment. Would it hurt? It would be loud.
He thought about his neighbours. The family in the unit across from him and the DINK next to him with their loveable street mutt. No, he wouldn’t shoot himself in his apartment. So he got in his car. And he drove around until he found a somewhat deserted parking lot.
He parked and turned off his car. He sat in the dark, accompanied only by his own heavy breathing and pounding heart. The gun, along with a notepad and a pen lay on the passenger seat. People wrote notes, right? Before they killed themselves?
But his mind was blank. What should he write? There was nothing he could think of saying. Would they even notice he was gone? Probably only when he didn’t show up for his shift. Then they’d find someone to cover for him. It was a none issue. They would probably fire him when he kept missing shifts. Security would force his locker open and whatever shit he had in there would be thrown out.
Maybe Robby would take them.
Robby.
Would he be sad? Or would he just be relieved that he no longer had to lug around the broken husk that was Jack Abbot? Would he feel free, when he no longer had to pretend to care?
Jack grabbed the gun and shoved the magazine into it. He made sure the safety was off. Then he put it in his mouth.
And he pulled the trigger.
He wasn’t sure what he expected. He didn’t believe in god, he didn’t believe he would ascend to the heavens or descend into hell. He didn’t expect to see the infamous light. But he had expected something.
Something more than the faint click of the gun misfiring.
The gun clattered to the floor as Jack lost all the strength in his arms. He had bought a defective gun. He couldn’t even manage to kill himself properly. He laughed. He laughed and laughed until his stomach hurt and until he felt like he was about to throw up.
His phone rang.
Robby.
Jack glanced at the clock. He was late for work.
It became a tradition. Every night before work, Jack would put the gun in his mouth and pull the trigger. Maybe it would work at some point. Maybe one night, whatever was wrong with the gun would have magically fixed itself and his brains would paint the walls of his apartment.
But the gun kept misfiring. And Jack kept going to work.
They were getting sick of him, he could tell. Shen was taking his place, pushing him away from the interesting cases, they put Jack in triage. They were benching him. And observing him. Probably looking for a reason to fire him. Making him seem incompetent.
Was Robby in on it? Because Robby was acting weird. Jack didn’t want to talk to him. Didn’t want Robby’s big, brown eyes looking at him. Didn’t want to see if Robby felt like the others did. Maybe it was Robby’s idea to oust him.
Maybe Robby had always hated him.
Jack wanted to die.