Chapter Text
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Welcome to your island! Today’s date is October 23, 2025. The time is 2:20 pm.
Dennis sat at the breakroom table, its top slightly sticky from whatever the night shift had eaten before the morning handover had arrived. They’d likely just forgotten to wipe it down amid the Pitt’s eternal chaos; everyone had something better to do than remember to clear the thin sheen of grease from the breakroom table when there were lives to be saved, people to be helped. His elbows rested on the tacky surface, while in front of him, his fingers threaded themselves in a loose tangle of overlapping distal phalanges wrapped with muscle, tendon, and dermis. Remembering trivial things like that, quizzing himself (What are the bones of the finger called? What is the regeneration period of the skin on the palm? How would you treat a compound fracture in the wrist?) helped him focus.
Often, Dennis was nervous, and it was good to have things that grounded him in the moment.
But Dennis wasn’t nervous right now, thankfully. That would come later.
Weathered vinyl crinkled beneath him. The chairs of the breakroom probably hadn’t been replaced since he’d started high school—better things to do, right? He didn’t mind. He liked old things. They had more character than things shinier and younger; they had been through more, so they had more to tell. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. That’s what his mama had always told him when Dennis asked why the kids at school all got new sneakers every year, but he didn’t. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And even if it is broke, don’t fix it until you absolutely have to. She was a frugal woman—to a fault.
Or maybe his family had always been poor.
In any case, Dennis liked that the chairs of the breakroom were rough around the edges. It made him feel less out of place in the ever-shifting environment of cutting-edge tech and rapidly advancing standards of care.
He was neither cutting-edge nor rapidly advancing. But hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
A rare moment of quiet had settled over the ED. Pinging monitors, with their metronome beeping a constant nagging; over-worked nurses, snapping at the doctors’ unfortunately common incompetence; and injured patients—some easy, some hard, and some not even worth mentioning—had all lulled to the ignorable thrum of background noise. For once, nobody was dying. At least not loudly or urgently. For once, Dennis could just sit for a couple of minutes, a snack in hand (a sandwich stolen from the food cart), and breathe. In the ED—in this ED—those moments were few and far between.
Below the table, a sneakered foot tapped a restless beat against the tiled floor.
In the seat next to him, cracked vinyl sagging and sighing under the weight, Robby was hunched over the table. Like Dennis, his elbows were propped on its surface, though the long sleeves of his jacket kept the stickiness from reaching his skin directly. By this time of the year, Pittsburgh had sling-shotted past the brief embrace of fall and had begun the unsteady descent into the merciless reign of winter. Robby was always cold, anyway. There was hardly ever a time that Dennis saw the man without his beerfest jacket, the garment a permanent fixture for his character. Some people had birthmarks or scars, but Robby had a jacket sporting a logo for a beer festival Dennis had never been to and frankly, had no interest in ever attending. He’d never tell Robby this: he didn’t like beer.
But unlike Dennis, Robby’s hands carefully held a blinking electronic device, cradled within his massive palms like an injured bird in danger of shattering under his touch.
Extremely gentle. Hesitant. Cautious, even.
“No, press A,” Dennis said. He untangled his fingers from their twist, gesturing to the correct button. “You’re pressing B. See the letters on the buttons? You-you’re not pressing the right one.”
“I know how to read, Whitaker!” Robby snapped. He protested under his breath, petulant, “This damn thing just doesn’t know how to listen. Made for smaller fingers.”
“Are you sure, sir? You really could’ve fooled me. Do they even let you become a doctor if you can’t read?”
“Watch it, kid.”
Dennis smothered a laugh behind his hand. Robby cut his eyes over to him, a glare meant to intimidate the younger man into a non-judgmental silence, as opposed to the very judgmental snickers escaping past the barrier of his hand. Dennis found the glare to be just shy of charming; something he wagered would grate on Robby’s nerves if he knew. He’d never admit it, but he liked that everyone (or so he thought) was somewhat afraid of him—especially the interns and med students. Taught them respect for authority, or something equally crass and outdated that they made fun of him for when he’d turned his back.
But Dennis wasn’t buying the tough-guy act. Not anymore. Not after this.
And in any case, everyone knew Robby was a big softy. The guy had the eyes of a puppy and a bleeding heart big enough to keep them stocked on blood supply for months; let the transfusion orders come, they’d be ready. Not everyone saw him that way, though. Admittedly, Robby was more than just a bit prickly. But with Dennis, it wasn’t difficult to see beneath the hardened exterior that Robby had constructed after years of running the ED; skin like a scaled callus and an attitude to match. With Dennis, Robby saved a shred of that underlying kindness in the form of small smiles, a steadying hand, and a supportive word. All things Dennis wasn’t necessarily used to. It was… nice. Robby was nice.
Most of the time.
“I don’t know why I even let you talk me into this. Stupid piece of junk doesn’t even work right,” Robby grumbled, more to himself than to Dennis.
Robby was frustrated. The gruffness of his tone told Dennis at least that much, each word sharp-edged and tight, like a rubber band pulled back and back and further back still, seconds away from snapping. Clearly, he expected Dennis to recoil, stung.
Worse still, Robby was embarrassed.
Evident in the dark lines of thick eyebrows knit over soft brown eyes, the crow’s feet at their corners deepened along with Robby’s sulky frown. Between eyebrows trying their best to shake hands with consternation, an angry crease had formed. Even when Robby’s expression smoothed, that crease would probably still be there, a remnant of his current frustration made permanent in the tanned lines of his face. Glasses slid down the length of his nose, perched at its hooked tip like Dana’s readers. It gave the chief the appearance of a disgruntled father, attempting to make heads or tails of the illegible letters on his son’s report card without showing frustration with his age for stealing his good vision. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But if it was broke and there was nothing you could do about it, pretend it wasn’t and snap at anyone who commented on it.
Dennis had always wondered if the older man had chosen the round frames to seem younger than he was. They looked nice on him.
His jaw pushed outward in a slight pout. Defiant. Like he thought he was better than this “stupid piece of junk”, and really it ought to start behaving itself soon. A slight flush of red—just barely noticeable—dusted the tips of Robby’s ears, the apples of his cheeks.
Oh, yeah. Robby was definitely embarrassed.
“You know, it actually does work if you press the right buttons,” Dennis offered helpfully. Matter-of-fact. The grin he threw at Robby, however—shit-eating, as it had been dubbed before by Trinity after he’d beaten her for the third consecutive time at Smash, or by Dana on the infrequent occasion that she managed to sneak up on him with his guard down—was less helpful.
“Oh, sorry, I don’t understand your kid toys, Whitaker. Was I supposed to make that a priority? Sorry, but I have more important things to worry about. You know, like saving lives?” Robby teased, eyes prompting Dennis over the rim of his round-framed glasses. “Get back to me when you know how to place an IO without sending the patient screaming. They are supposed to be sedated. You did know that, right? Or were you not paying attention during that lecture, too busy with this do-dad to focus?” He held up the Nintendo Switch accusingly, dwarfed in the man’s too-large hands, as if it were somehow the culprit for every one of Dennis’s shortcomings.
“That was one time!” Dennis cried in defense. God, was he ever going to live that down? “And you’re the one who asked me to teach you to play this game. Nobody’s making you!”
“Right,” Robby drawled, completely ignoring Dennis’s allegation. He gave a stiff nod, lips pursed with narrowly contained amusement. A smile threatened to ruin Robby’s mocking air; tiny quirks at the corners of his lips pulling them upward. At Dennis’s similar embarrassment, the bite to his words had softened. But only by a hair. Another thing Robby would never admit to: he had a mean streak a mile wide, and he couldn’t resist the urge to bait Dennis whenever he got the chance—or anyone, for that matter. “You drilled a hole into a patient’s bone marrow while he was still awake, just the one time. Easy mistake. We’ve all been there. Haven’t we, Collins?”
From her place at the sink, rinsing an empty coffee mug, Dr. Collins rolled her eyes. She didn’t even turn around. “Leave me out of this, Robby.”
“Do I need to start including that as a warning to all new interns? The Whitaker Warning? Bold letters: Do not use drills on awake patients; they will scream.” Robby used one hand to swipe through the air as if he were reading from a sign. The attending was fully laughing now, teeth bared in a grin peaking out from beneath the scruff of his greying beard. Dennis couldn’t help the bark of laughter that burst out of him. When Robby laughed, it was hard not to find something to laugh about with him.
And they needed a laugh.
Though the ED was quiet for now—its tentative calm a fragile eggshell in the hands of a toddler—it hadn’t been just a handful of hours earlier that morning.
An attempted suicide. Middle-aged man with a family: a wife, two kids, one on the way, and a new dog. He’d jumped from a bridge and into the Ohio River. The impact broke his ribs, but the rocks broke everything else. They’d spent the first hour of the morning coding him, and the next hour babysitting the machines that were keeping him alive. It would’ve been a miracle for him to have made it through the night. He didn’t make it past 9 am. Dennis could still see his face, crumpled inward from explosive fractures of the zygomatic, maxilla, and nasal—he’d hit his face on the way down. He could still hear the wet, ragged tenor of his breathing, lungs filled with dirty river water and fluid from his abdominal cavity, punctured and leaking. He could still smell the pungent odor of polluted water clinging to his skin long after his soaked clothes had been cut away; mud had caked into every one of the many lacerations decorating his pallid skin.
It was a tough case. He and Robby had worked it together. Dennis would probably be thinking about that man (Christ, what had his name been?) for a long time coming.
His face, if not his name, had been tattooed on the back of Dennis’s eyelids.
Afterward, Robby had gone to the roof for a while, staring out over Pittsburgh’s metropolitan area, with its bustling cityscape full of millions of people, all of whom were ignorant of the horrors the emergency department was forced to bear witness to every day. All that mattered to them was how long they sat in that waiting room. All that mattered to them was how expensive their bill was. All that mattered to them was what was going to happen to their sons, their mothers, their friends, themselves. But back here, on the other side, it was the staff that had to grapple with the real grief: having the ability to help, and failing anyway.
When Dennis had tried to go after him, Dana had stopped him with a manicured hand on his arm and a tight-lipped smile.
“Let him be alone for a bit, kid. He’s tough. He’ll be okay,” she’d warned, shaking her head.
“But what if he needs someo-”
He didn’t know what he’d even planned to do, anyway. Be a shoulder for Robby to cry on? He felt silly about it now. Robby was over twice his age; what kind of support could he really get from Dennis? He was just a kid. But maybe all that mattered was the fact that Dennis cared. That had been enough for Robby once; couldn’t it be enough for him again?
He never got the chance to find out.
“Huckleberry, I need your help over here!” Trinity had called, breaking them apart.
And that was that. Dana rushed to wherever she was needed most, and Dennis rushed to Trinity’s side, always coming when called. For the moment, Robby had been banished from his mind.
Later, when Robby returned, his expression was haunted. Demeanor subdued. Voice quiet. The smell of cigarette smoke clung to his clothes in a noxious cloud.
But Dennis wasn’t thinking about that right now.
He was thinking about the way Robby’s laughter stoked something warm and golden in his chest, the soft yellow light of a new day, filled to the brim with possibilities, hope. He was thinking about the way Robby’s teeth sat in his mouth a bit crooked, without the manufactured straightness that Dennis’s had after years of braces in high school. He was thinking about the smattering of grey in Robby’s beard, how the color suited him. He was thinking that maybe he liked Robby an awful lot, and hoped nobody ever found out. A dirty little secret, tucked close against his breast along with all of the others, brothers to the small golden cross, tarnished with age, sitting over the ossified plate of his sternum.
He didn’t go to church much anymore, not since he’d left that small, decaying white building behind in Broken Bow, along with his parents, his brothers, and his pride. Faith was complicated. Dennis did his best most days not to think about it at all.
And for the most part, he succeeded.
It was well into their shift by now, and the ache of this morning’s tragedy had dulled to a low pressure behind his eyes. Or maybe that was just a migraine from too many sleepless nights. Or low blood sugar. Or dehydration. Or…
It’d been a long day.
The game had informed them that it was nearly half past two—the shifts got faster and faster the longer he spent in the ED.
Dr. McKay’s parents were dropping Harrison off today after school so he could spend the weekend with his mother; she might be looking forward to it more than the kid was, based on the way she kept bringing it up whenever she got the chance. He’d probably be here soon. Cassie had been worried about keeping her son entertained while the minutes crawled along, her shift not ending until the night staff arrived in a handful of hours yet still to go. And who knew how long the handover would take. Kids his age tended to get bored pretty quickly. Dennis offered to bring his Switch in—a relic from his undergrad days, but he had a few games on it that an 11-year-old might be interested in—to give the boy something to do. With assured promises that he didn’t care how sticky the thing got, and that there definitely wasn’t any porn on it (really, how would he even manage that?), Cassie had accepted Dennis’s offer with a tired gratitude, a small smile tugging at the corners of her lips.
It was sweet, the way she cared for him so passionately. The notion rang hollow in his ears, but he could still appreciate her dedication, even if the motherly love he’d experienced as a child was of a decidedly different variety.
Cassie was a good mom.
Calling any of the residents by their first names still felt weird, wrong somehow, but Cassie insisted. “You’ll be in my shoes soon enough!” she’d laughed with a hearty smack to Dennis’s shoulder. She was stronger than she looked, and Dennis had fought not to wince under the blow. “I don’t want you to be afraid of us. You’re part of the crew, aren’t you? We’re here to help.”
Dr. Garcia chimed in as she was passing by after a surgery consult they’d requested, eyes not leaving the tablet clutched in her hand, “I’m personally fine with the interns being afraid of me. Welcome it even.”
She’d only answered with an overly sarcastic scoff, a finger twirling around her head in the universal gesture for “surgeons, right?”
At the time, Dennis hadn’t been sure whether he was supposed to laugh or otherwise commiserate; it was still only his first month in the Pitt, and really, he hadn’t worked that much with Dr. Garcia in that time. Trinity liked her, but that was about the extent of what he knew. So Dennis had just flashed her a crooked smile, huffed a quiet laugh, and hoped it was the correct response. But before Cassie could respond, they were both whisked away by Dana’s call to action for an inbound trauma. He’d been thankful for the diffusion of the awkward interaction, even if the car-crash victim that came rolling in two minutes later was one of the worst cases Dennis had ever seen until that point (bones poking into places they shouldn’t, organs shredded beyond repair, BP and O-sat crashing quicker than the car that had caused the accident).
Until this morning. Until the man whose name he couldn’t even fucking remember.
If Dennis strained his ears hard enough, he thought that he could still hear the widow’s cries from the family room. But he knew that it was just his mind playing tricks on him—the morgue had taken his body hours ago.
Now, the memory was a fond one—the camaraderie with Cassie, not the crash victim—even if his ineptitude for basic small talk still made him cringe in retrospect. He was getting better.
Slowly, but surely, he was warming up to the Pitt crew, and they to him.
But for whatever comfort he took in the Pitt, with all its good people that really, genuinely, honest-to-God cared so much for the work they were doing, he worried that it might be taking something back with it. There was a black hole in his stomach, and every person he saved was only a drop into that bottomless dark; the ones he lost only increased it by a mile. When he lay awake at night, contemplating what the fuck he was doing, whether any of the bullshit he put up with on the daily was worth it, Dennis worried that maybe that black hole would eat him.
Somebody wise had told him that you learn to live with it, learn to accept it, and find balance if you can.
He hoped that was true.
Dennis had thrown his arm around the back of Robby’s chair; the proximal side of his forearm, extensor carpi ulnaris, brushed against the broad expanse of Robby’s back. Not enough to be weird—he didn’t have his arm around Robby, he just had his arm around the chair that Robby happened to be sitting in. And if Dennis’s fingers skimmed the swelling curve of taut bicep, separated by three layers of fabric, then it was just a coincidence. The position was nonchalant. It wasn’t weird or anything. Right, no, it wasn’t weird. Like, what would even be weird about it? Dennis was just close enough to smell him—the heady musk of sweat after a long day filled with running from room to room, the metallic tang of blood long washed away but still lingering like copper had kissed his skin and her perfume had stained, the astringent scent of hand sanitizer sticking under the nails and leaving a sharp aftertaste on the tongue.
It should be gross. For all intents and purposes, it was gross. Robby smelled like a doctor; Robby smelled bad. Who thought the smell of blood and Germex was hot? It wasn’t. It was gross. This wasn’t weird.
Except, to his great dismay, Dennis thought it was hot.
Mouth abruptly bone-dry, he swallowed around the sawdust mounting behind his teeth and clogging in his throat. He willed the flush rising to his cheeks to dissipate. Prayed that Dr. Collins (she still preferred Dr. Collins over Heather, which was fine with Dennis) was still rinsing that mug intently enough, with her back turned to them, not to notice the way Dennis was flustering. The breakroom was largely empty—just Dennis, Robby, and Dr. Collins. Kind of like a chaperone, Dennis thought with a snort. He covered the snort of laughter with a hurried cough, rubbing his throat and throwing a surreptitious glance over his shoulder.
Good. She wasn’t looking. This was good. This wasn’t weird.
Okay, maybe it was a little weird. Robby’s proximity—close enough to smell, to touch, to feel the warmth radiating from him—was quickly filling Dennis’s head with cotton in a mad rush of blood flooding his cranial cavity like an overflowing pool.
But that happened to everyone, didn’t it? It was just a minor crush.
“Okay, kid,” Robby said, interrupting Dennis’s flurry of distracted thoughts. It was Robby—not Dr. Robby, not chief, and only ‘sir’ when Dennis was nervous. Did any of the other interns call him that, or was it just Dennis? The thought was accompanied by a discomfiting realization that he’d be upset if any of them got to call him that. He shook his head to clear it and banish those feelings. Robby was holding the gaming device out to him, motioning for Dennis to take it. He didn’t meet the younger man’s eyes as he groused, “Why don’t you show me the controls again? Just one more time. You gotta be patient with my old man brain. Not as hip with the kids as I used to be, y’know. It takes a second for an old dog to learn new tricks.”
He picked up the Switch from Robby’s outstretched hands. Despite his rattled nerves, his own hands were thankfully devoid of a tremble that would give him away as he took it.
“You? Old, Robby?” Dennis chuckled. Leaning back into his seat, scapula pressing into the hard back of the chair, Dennis savored the taste of Robby’s name on his tongue. Sweet, but sharp, burning on the aftertaste, and warm in the belly. Like Kentucky bourbon—neat. “You oughta give yourself some more credit—I didn’t take you for a day over 30. I mean, isn’t that why Myrna’s all over you? I thought she only liked ‘em young.”
“Easy now, Whitaker. You’ll give him a bigger head than he already has,” Dr. Collins warned over her shoulder. Her tone tilted upward with a teasing edge; if he turned, he’d likely find her lips curled into an easy smile that seemed to be kept for Robby alone—when she wasn’t too busy scowling at him from across the room.
It made Dennis wonder about what, if anything, had been between them once upon a time. Had it been recently? If so, how recently? Is that why she seemed to tail them sometimes, preventing a moment taken alone without her careful supervision? Like now, how long did it really take to wash one mug? Dennis shifted uncomfortably. This was a ridiculous train of thought. Worse, it was a jealous one. He, at least, had enough self-awareness to shut it down before the green-eyed monster snatched his thoughts away from him fully. Seriously, this was Dr. Heather Collins he was talking about. She wasn’t… She wasn’t a saboteur! There literally wasn’t even anything to sabotage between them—Robby was his boss, nothing more.
Maybe his mentor, if Dennis felt inclined to kindness. Mostly, he didn’t.
Jesus, get it together, Dennis.
At the same time that Dr. Collins was cautioning Dennis’s familiarity with his attending, Robby was collapsing backward in his seat. Hand clutching at his chest, head thrown back in a howl of genuine laughter. It echoed against the breakroom’s walls, within its relaxed atmosphere, and reverberated in Dennis’s ears like a favorite record set to replay on loop. Heat settled in the bottom of his stomach. Like looking at the sun for too long, Dennis could only glance at Robby out of the corner of his eye, for fear that he’d burn to a crisp if he dared look at him directly. Or maybe if he looked, if hubris pushed him to bask in the warmth of Robby’s rare joy, it’d disappear. A rug pulled out from under him. Sand spilling through his fingers.
He couldn’t risk it—but glances were okay.
Even a scrap of Robby’s happiness was enough to keep his power bill low in the winter.
A wide grin had split Robby’s face. Teeth just short of completely straight—his Persian flaw—blinked like off-white stars reflected in a dark sea, obscured by unkempt scruff but no less blinding in the sincerity of their appearance. Comfortable and carefree in a way that was so terribly uncommon to see written in the chief’s weathered features. Barking laughter petered out to unrestrained chuckles bubbling in the chamber of his broad chest, unexpectedly squeaky in a way that left Dennis’s ears an unflattering shade of pink.
“The kid’s got jokes! You hear that, Collins? The med student made a joke! It must be my lucky day,” Robby chuckled. “Flattery will get you a long way, Whitaker. Flattery will get you a long way.”
Robby said it like he meant it worked because it was Dennis, and not somebody else.
A large hand clapped down on Dennis’s narrow shoulder. He stiffened at the abrupt contact. Unprepared and unsuspecting. Its force nearly sent the Switch held loosely in his grip tumbling, shattering on the tiled floor before Harrison even got the chance to lay a finger on it. Dennis clenched his fingers around it like a lifeline. The hand—Robby’s hand—nearly covered the entire width of his shoulder. From the heel of his palm to the tip of his fingers, spine and scapula were smothered in palm’s heat. Robby shook him lightly as the last dregs of his laughter faded to embers, stuttering in the back of his throat and rumbling like the low drum of thunder over a summer’s hazy horizon.
Fingertips, warm and rough, ghosted over a sliver of skin peeking out over the top of Dennis’s undershirt and scrub top. If Robby felt the way that goosebumps erupted over his flushed skin, felt the halting of breath in Dennis’s lungs, he was kind enough not to mention it. The hand remained as Robby leaned into Dennis’s space, its heat burning a hole through the dark fabric of his scrubs and down further into his bones. To anyone else in the room, it might even look as though Robby had his arm around his student—a friendly gesture difficult to misconstrue.
That was, of course, if Robby were a normal attending and Dennis were a normal student.
If you were to peel back three layers of dermis, thick ropes of muscular tissue, and peered into the cavity it created, would the imprint of Robby’s hand be left arcing possessively over curves of clavicle, scapula, and humerus? If you scrubbed at the black mark there, a dark scorch in the shape of a large human hand, would the soot come free, or would it soak into calcium phosphate matrices like a stain, unable to be removed?
Robby was written in the molecules of him. Dennis was in over his head.
Their cheeks were scant inches apart. Smooth, baby-faced skin against bristles turned wiry with age. But Robby’s eyes were trained on the cartoon character waving excitedly from the brightly lit screen held between them, fishing pole in hand. His breath was even. He didn’t even notice Dennis’s conspicuous uneasiness.
Maybe he was just getting worked up over nothing. They were coworkers. Nothing weird.
He was teaching the chief attending how to play Animal Crossing while they were close enough to share body heat, and Robby’s arm was slung across his student’s shoulders. Casual. Nonchalant. It wasn’t weird.
And besides, Dr. Collins was in here, too.
“So, what am I supposed to be looking for? I don’t think I get the point of this.”
“It’s a, uh, it’s a fishing minigame,” Dennis replied without turning to face his attending. Inhale. Sweat, blood, hand sanitizer. Exhale. Hot breath tickling his neck, his cheek, his lashes. His vision was starting to go fuzzy around the periphery, while a rash of red crawled up the pale column of his throat. “This isn’t what the whole game is, though. Like I said, it’s just a minigame. You’re building a town on a deserted island and finding villagers to populate it, but you have to make money first, so you can buy items to make your island look good and pay off the loans you had to take out to build your house. The best way to make money without cheating is by fishing—there are a bunch of different kinds of fish you can catch, and they’re all worth a different amount. That’s what I’m trying to teach you how to do.”
Robby was incredulous as he asked, “Why are there loans in the game? Don’t you have enough of that in the real world—med school not giving you enough to pay back as it is?”
Dennis shrugged. What was he supposed to say to that?
The hand perched on his shoulder was a burning weight, pinning him in his seat. Robby obviously expected him to respond, probably make another joke back to continue the banter, but the joke he’d made earlier had sapped all of Dennis’s confidence to pull off. Even then, he’d thought that his heart was going to beat out of his chest and escape down the hallway. And Robby hadn’t been that close to him then, either. Focusing on his words—hell, focusing on his breathing—was getting more and more difficult with each passing second, Robby’s presence commanding the very oxygen in their sphere to abandon Dennis’s lungs and leave him gasping.
Robby, sharing the same air, breathing in Dennis’s space. Robby, body heat seeping out of him and sinking into Dennis’s bones like a space heater. Robby, eyes trailing over Dennis’s face as he eagerly awaited a response from the younger man. Robby, fingers so close to spanning the breadth of his throat with a tight grip, choki—stop.
Dennis, focus.
He coughed, trying to rid the waver from his voice, “I don’t know. It’s supposed to, um, be kind of silly, I think. Like, the main business guy is a raccoon, and you have to take out loans to expand your house and stuff. And like, all the villagers are animals, but you’re a person and kind of the mayor? And there’s, uh, a fox that sells art, but sometimes they’re fakes, and you have to try to figure out the difference so you don’t waste your money. It’s silly. Just a fun way to kill some free time.” Dennis amended sardonically, “Not that I have much of that anymore.”
“Whatever you say, kid,” Robby huffed. Casual amusement was written in the now-softened lines around his eyes, in the unhurried, easy cadence of his voice.
The nickname stuck in Dennis’s overheated skin like a thorn; he’d need a scalpel and steady hands to cut into where it’d burrowed within the meat of him and remove it. It was the fact that he couldn’t figure out how he felt about it that left him so disgruntled. He wasn’t sure if he was offended by it (he was, admittedly, half the older man’s age, but just as capable as any of the other interns) or if it turned him on (but that would be weird, so his mind slapped a proverbial bandaid over the hiccup and was content to deal with that possibility another day).
Robby wasn’t usually one for nicknames.
None of the other med students or interns had earned a similar moniker, as far as he was aware. Javadi was a whole six years younger than him—a fact that soured in his gut if he thought about it for too long, his insides churning with something eerily similar to jealousy—and not even she got the barked “Nice job, kid!” that Dennis was often greeted with after a patient was successfully discharged without incident. None of the residents, who had been with Robby significantly longer than he had, were awarded this display of familiarity, either.
Maybe it was okay that Robby had a nickname for him—just him—and no one else. That wasn’t weird, necessarily. It was just… nice of him. Robby was nice to Dennis, kind even.
Something small unfurled in the center of his chest, bright and warm and cautious.
But let the record show that Dennis Whitaker did not have daddy issues. At least, he didn’t think he did. It’d never come up before now, so that probably meant he didn’t, right?
He had a great relationship with his father! Mostly.
As long as Dennis didn’t talk too often or too loudly or about things the man deemed inappropriate. As long as Dennis didn’t breathe wrong, or take up too much space, or step a single toe outside of the rigid box that his father used to define the rights and wrongs of the world, the things that were acceptable and the things that weren’t. The list of things labeled “unacceptable” was a long one; the list of “acceptable” things was woefully short. Dennis never had to wonder which list his name would be found scribbled into. But at the end of the day, it was still his dad. Dennis couldn’t hate him. You didn’t hate your family, no matter what—that’s what his mama had reminded him of every time he’d run into her arms crying, chubby child fingers clinging to her dirt-covered smock and nose a runny mess.
He’d been an emotional child.
Every word his father had hurled, voice rising to a fever pitch, resulted in one thing: Dennis running and crying to his mama.
She’d stroke his hair, much brighter back then—the color of dust or corn silk. “Your father can’t help it, Denny. You’re not an easy kid, are ya, sugar? Best just to keep quiet. He’ll forget what he was mad about, and then you can go ahead and help him bring the cows in for the night, okay?”
He’d nod into the warm fabric of her front, wiping the grit and snot from his face against that ancient apron she always wore. The tears came quieter, then. Best just to keep quiet.
Dennis had a great relationship with his father.
Even saw him, like, twice a year. Holidays counted, didn’t they? Of course they did. And Dennis never missed Thanksgiving or Christmas, even if he had to live on Top Ramen for a couple of months to afford the ticket back out to Broken Bow. Eventually, your tongue went numb to the sodium, and vitamin supplements kept scurvy from knocking on your door.
Dennis loved his dad.
Even when the man was screaming in his face, screaming in a way he never screamed at Dennis’s three brothers. Just him. In the sea of boys they’d raised, Dennis had always been the one they didn’t give quite a shit about, the odd one out. Four sons. One loved less than the others for things that were outside of his control. The youngest. He’d always been different from them, and his old man made sure Dennis never fucking forgot it. An ungrateful brat for choosing a career path in medicine (What, you think you’re actually gonna do something with your life? Help people? You?) instead of staying to help out on the farm forever (Your mother’s gonna work herself to death for you, boy. Is that what you want? You’re tearing your family apart.)
Yeah, Dennis knew that. And he’d left anyway.
Family was a lot like faith—he spent most days trying not to think about it. Guilt was a living creature in his chest, gnawing at nerve endings and arteries, hollowing him out like the carcass of a calf born too far into the cold season to survive until the morning’s fragile cradle of light. The coyotes usually got to it before his dad could; if not, it was the vultures, the insects, the elements.
For the most part, Dennis was pretty successful—the not thinking part. Though the cross that sat right over his heart, taunting, burned against his skin sometimes.
No, he didn’t have daddy issues.
“Kid?” Dennis’s reverie was broken by Robby shaking him again. “You gonna finish teaching me how to beat this stupid thing or what?”
That fucking nickname again.
Shivers rattled down his spine like a defibrillator had been sewn into his ribs, shooting hot sparks under his skin. All at once too hot and too cold in his thin scrubs, Dennis struggled against the urge to squirm under Robby’s grip, his gaze, his undivided attention. Yet, Dennis couldn’t conceive of a worse reality than one in which he did anything to make Robby remove his hand—touch me, touch me, touch me.
If he had to embarrass himself in front of Dr. Collins, who was leaning with her hip against the counter to their left, surveying the interaction unfolding in front of her like a car crash, he’d do it. Embarrass himself in front of Robby? He’d done that enough times already for it to mostly lose its punch.
Embarrass himself in front of Trinity? Well, that was another story.
While he’d been lost in the throes of thought, the intern had wandered into the breakroom, unable to resist the sounds of laughter occurring without her witness. If Trinity wasn’t the instigator of a joke, she’d better be in on it.
To warrant her presence, she stole a protein bar from the bowl in the center of the table that somebody had left out for the med students and interns. They were the ones who forgot the eat the most, and nobody wanted another student taking a header in the trauma bay. Now, she was hovering near the door. Not exactly looking at Dennis, but not exactly not looking at him either. Her eyes skated over him in a way that told him she definitely thought she was being clandestine. Really, it was the terrible crinkling of her protein bar’s wrapper that gave her away; she was trying to open it as quietly as possible, which just made it even louder for longer.
It made him smile, just a little.
Robby jostled him for a third time, now with more urgency as Dennis let the silence stretch into awkwardness between them. “Hellooo? Whitaker, you with me?”
Not ‘kid’?
Okay, maybe Dennis did have daddy issues.
At least if he spontaneously went into cardiac arrest from the shame of it, he was in an emergency room. They wouldn’t let him die, right?
“Right, yeah!” Dennis stuttered, jumping at Robby’s attempt to pull him back to reality. Christ, when was he going to get it together? “Yeah, so, uh, you just have to watch that little ball on the end of your line-”
“The bobber.”
“Huh?”
“That ‘little ball’ is called a bobber, Whitaker. Your old man never teach you how to fish? Figured you would’ve known a thing or two, being from the sticks, and all.”
From her sentry station at the door, definitely not watching Dennis, Trinity snorted. Dennis glared with as much vehemence as he could muster—arguably, not very much at all. But still, she got the point: he was mad. She hacked around the bite of the protein bar she’d taken, struggling to breathe through the laugh that stuck in her throat, along with a lump of mint-chocolate-flavored brownie-shaped brick that passed as food around here. Any chance she had to watch her roommate fumble with their attending, Trinity jumped at; as it turns out, he was not very subtle.
But Robby’s eyes didn’t even glance in her direction. They stayed trained intently on Dennis’s face, waiting for him to respond.
“Uh,” Dennis faltered. “I-I guess not? My dad and I don’t really get along. The most that I learned from him is that I didn’t want to be in Nebraska anymore—cows and corn are only so interesting after a while. Got a little, um, suffocating.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that, kid.”
Now it was ‘kid’ again?
Robby’s grip on his shoulder tightened a fraction, offering Dennis a supportive squeeze meant to ease the strain of a difficult topic. But it wasn’t a difficult topic—not really, not for him. Conflict with his father was old news. Sure, it’d hurt when he was a kid, but now the pain that came from thinking about his father was more the phantom ache of an amputated limb than it was the fresh agony of a broken bone. As if sensing Dennis’s train of thought, that angry crease reformed between the harsh line of Robby’s eyebrows, knitting together for another stiff handshake shared by old men.
Dennis wanted to reach over and smooth the wrinkle out with his thumb, but thought better of it.
Another thing Robby would never admit to: he was caring to a fault, even if that kindness manifested in more of a “tough love” approach. Dennis reckoned it was all he knew how to do, all he could show without carving out his bleeding heart and offering that up on a platter. Far too empathetic for his own good. This job was draining for people like Robby—like Mel. But they were the ones that this profession needed the most, the soft-souled and firm-handed, if they could survive that long. Though Robby was a touch more than just empathetic. Sometimes he was outright… funny about it. More than once, Dennis had caught him going a bit misty-eyed over one of those “unlikely friends” animal videos—the ones where the golden retriever and a cheetah were cuddling, or a penguin and a pig—that a coworker had been showing him from their phone. Hell, it might’ve even been AI. It wasn’t like Robby would be able to tell the difference, especially not without his glasses.
Sensitive, Dana would call him.
Irresponsible, Collins would say.
Weak, the voice of his father cut into Dennis’s thoughts, voice as sharp as a knife and just as painful. But that was Dennis, not Robby.
“Uh, no, it’s really okay, sir-” Dennis offered meekly.
Unconsciously, he began to shrink away from the weight of the scrutiny he was under, Robby’s keen eyes tracking his movements, his reactions, carefully. He felt like a specimen under the microscope, and he doubted Robby would like what he found if he were to cut him open.
“Just Robby is fine, Whitaker.”
“Right, uh, sorry… Robby,” he stumbled. His tongue had gone leaden in his mouth, an inanimate chunk of meat and nerves gone dark and useless. His skin itched as though so many ants were crawling just under the surface of his skin, writhing and biting and wriggling. With a grunt to clear his dry throat, Dennis gave a noncommittal shrug and averted his gaze from where Robby’s too-concerned eyes were boring into him, staring him down. “It’s not really, like, a big deal or anything. Just how my old man is. Not like it keeps me up at night or anything. But, uh, anyways. The bobber.” Robby nodded in approval at the term’s correct usage, though the crease between his brows hadn’t yet faded. Still, he let Dennis change the subject without objecting. “You wait until it goes beneath the water and then you press A really quickly to reel the fish in, but you have to time it right or you’ll lose the fish and have to start over.”
Dennis gestured to the correct button again, making sure Robby was looking where he pointed. He demonstrated the action a couple of times—even catching a shark once. He’d never gotten one of those before. “Got it? I can show you again if you want.”
“No, I think I can do it this time.”
He held the Switch out to the other man, but didn’t meet his eyes; downcast while he waited for Robby to take it. There was one last squeeze of his shoulder, solid and reassuring, before he accepted the proffered console with both hands. Dennis already missed the warmth of Robby’s touch, as oddly comforting as it was unnerving. Without it, Dennis ached. Its enduring heat bled out of his limbs like a severed artery, seconds from total organ failure and minutes from imminent death. Without it—the welcome pressure of the chief’s touch, heat radiating from him like a furnace cranked up to its max—Dennis was chilled. The sudden shift was a stark juxtaposition to his earlier overheating within the somewhat stuffy air of the breakroom.
He felt Robby’s absence like a missing organ.
Dennis rubbed his fingers into his abdomen, as if to subconsciously confirm that everything was where it should be—liver, stomach, spleen; all seven true ribs; no rigidness in the abdomen. Overreacting much? He mentally scolded himself for the melodramatics.
Next to him, the bubbly, cartoonish sounds of a video game character casting a rod and reel into an impossibly blue ocean, with hopes of catching whatever fish-shaped shadow lurked just beneath the surf, emanated quietly from the Switch’s speakers. It was turned down low, lest someone peek into the breakroom and find their attending and his student playing games on the clock. Dana would probably have a conniption before she snapped a couple of photos to use against Robby whenever he pissed her off in the future; she wasn’t above blackmail. It was never a good thing to get on the charge nurse’s bad side, something Dennis had learned immediately, and Robby never did. Their relationship was one tested by time and fire; Dennis was just glad Robby had someone.
Often, he seemed… lonely. Not that Robby would ever use that word.
While Robby was watching the bright screen—with its simplistic depiction of a Dennis five years younger than the one that sat here currently—for the signs he’d been taught him to look out for, Dennis was watching Robby. If he wasn’t paying attention, then it wouldn’t hurt for Dennis to forego stolen, greedy glances for unabashed observation. Who would stop him? Some days—really, most days—Dennis wasn’t sure whether he believed in God, or if it was a knee-jerk response from years of having God beaten into him, but these insignificant gluttonies… The moments of reprieve, basking in the sun, the light, the warmth… They were what kept him going, kept him from a dangerous ledge that Dennis didn’t know if he could crawl back from should he find himself there in earnest.
Let him go to Hell for it, if he must. He was headed there, anyway. The road was paved with good intentions, and Dennis had always wanted to be a helper.
In the seat next to him, closer than was strictly normal but easily explained by their activity, Robby was restless—a coil of restrained kinetic energy, like a spring held under the thumb waiting for its chance to explode forth. Every movement was done of absent mind, a subconscious process of brainstem and spinal cord. Dennis felt like he was a patron at the zoo, enraptured by the behavior of a beloved beast; the beauty in existing without worry of observation, paradoxical. Did Robby let anyone else watch him like this? Did he even realize Dennis was watching him at all, or had he become so accustomed to the younger man’s presence that the feeling of his gaze was stuffed backward along with those stimuli better processed without cognizant appreciation? Breathing, digestion, environmental awareness. Was Dennis just a… fixture to him, no more threatening than a haphazardly placed chair or crumbs littered across a desk?
Or was this the hard-earned demeanor of someone just… comfortable?
His bottom lip was worried raw between mostly straight, mostly white teeth as Robby surveyed the technicolor screen for signaling action. Eyes intent, focused. Long, dark lashes fanned out from those slightly small, round eyes, with their deep brown the color of coffee and just as warm. At his brow, a deep furrow with that one persistent crease remained fixed into his severe features—not in concern like before, or even from frustration, but rather from concentration. Robby held the game like it’d explode if he looked at it wrong. Painfully gentle, the hands of a man accustomed to things breaking in his grip, trying desperately to handle something with care.
Hesitance was written there in the steadiness of his fingertips, the hunched tension of broad shoulders, the stiff angle of his neck.
Not quite wary, but mindful. Attentive.
If it wasn’t so endearing, Dennis thought it might’ve made him laugh. Instead, Dennis held the sound in his mouth, let it rest on his tongue and melt there, rather than let Robby catch sight of the mischief coloring his cheeks pink.
Despite his hesitance, a determined expression had overtaken Robby’s features. It was cute, in a way, Dennis thought. Though even the momentary association of the chief attending with the word ‘cute’ felt a little discordant. He mentally shrugged and waved his hands in a wild gesture of self-defense, justifying himself to the immortal chorus of judgment presiding as jury over his every decision.
It wasn’t weird to think your slightly-more-than-just-a-boss was cute, was it? He asked.
It really, really is, they shot back.
Dennis readjusted in his seat. Forget it. This wasn’t weird. Just focus on the game. He’d been looking at Robby too long, too closely, anyway—Dr. Collins might’ve started to notice his straggling gaze.
Just let it go, Dennis.
The question stalling in his mind, with thoughts of their closeness, the undeniable intimacy of their position relegated to the very recesses of his mind (to be mercilessly picked apart as soon as his head hit the pillow tonight), was this: Why the hell was Robby so determined to “beat this stupid thing” in the first place? That’s what Dennis couldn’t figure out. Maybe he just wanted to prove that he wasn’t as out of touch as everyone thought he was. It was a source of never-ending teasing, Robby’s technological failings—ever the caricature of an old man with his readers low on his nose, phone held too far from his face, while he scrolled with a single accusatory index finger. But who was he proving that to, Dennis? Dennis wasn’t the authority on what was “hip with the kids”; he barely knew how to update his laptop after growing up in the middle of nowhere. They didn’t even have internet on the farm.
Besides, it was just Dennis and Dr. Collins in here, and Dr. Collins’ opinion of Robby probably couldn’t be swayed by the Lord himself coming down and anointing the man a saint. In other words: lost cause.
So it couldn’t be that.
Maybe… Maybe Robby just wanted to prove to Dennis that he could, that he was listening, that Dennis’s interests mattered to him, even if he didn’t get them.
He wasn’t familiar with the feeling.
Embarrassment heated his face. That was a line of thought as equally illogical as it was improbable, and exploring it any further would only be an exercise in utmost delusion. Dennis wasn’t stupid. He knew Robby… He knew Robby didn’t think about him—didn’t care about him—like that. It wasn’t a big deal. The most likely answer was just that Robby was bored, and the ED was quiet for a moment, so this might as well be what he was doing. Reading too far into it was just… It was dumb. Dennis was being dumb.
For a split second, Dennis chanced a look upward.
From across the room, he caught Trinity staring with her eyebrows raised all the way to her hairline, their thin lines mere centimeters from disappearing into the dark fringe that escaped her stubby ponytail. Now that Dennis was thinking about it, she’d been eerily silent this entire time. He hadn’t even noticed. Just a moment ago, he’d literally forgotten she was in the room at all. The fact that he hadn’t noticed Trinity Santos ought to have been not just a red flag, but a giant blaring siren that something was up—she was never quiet for long unless something devious was turning the wheels in her mind into overdrive.
An involuntary cringe crumpled his face inward.
Leaning against the wall by the door, the protein bar forgotten and unfinished in her hand, Trinity was making a series of complicated facial expressions that meant she was trying to communicate something to him with her mind. Dennis had never really excelled at the unspoken communication thing—he’d never won a game of charades in his life. Trinity didn’t seem to get that memo. Eyebrows wiggling, lips moving soundlessly in a stream of words that Dennis couldn’t decipher fast enough to interpret, eyes rolling. Nope, nothing. He looked away from his roommate, who looked to him like she was having some kind of psychotic episode or muscular seizure of the face. If he just ignored her, maybe she’d go away?
That was his hope, at least.
Weren’t there patients she should be attending to? Why did she have to be in this room, right now, with him, with Robby?
Trinity cleared her throat, jerking Dennis’s attention back up toward her.
As inconspicuously as he could manage without drawing Robby’s notice away from the brightly lit screen held a little too close to his face, Dennis tried to wave her off. Mouthed the words ‘go away,’ as she shooed her out with his darting eyes and flapping hands. She didn’t budge. Clearly, she was enjoying his humiliation far more than any boring, run-of-the-mill wet cough or vomiting patient awaiting her on the other side of the breakroom’s door, outside of their coveted bubble of tentative quiet. There was a joke to be had, and Trinity wanted in.
And if a joke was at Dennis’s expense? That was all the more reason to plant herself at the edge of the scene, like his misfortune was just her theatre.
But he didn’t want her here.
Take the hint, Dennis mentally groaned. What wasn’t she getting?
She was going to give Robby the wrong idea if he ever looked up from the game. He was going to think that… that Dennis was trying to do something untoward. Which he wasn’t.
It would be horrifically unprofessional to try something with the chief attending, who was old enough to be his dad. Who was, again, really couldn’t overstate this one, the chief attending of the ED. Plus, Robby probably wasn’t even into guys! Sure, he’d refused to explain why Myrna only referred to him as ‘fruitcake’ when she was in a good mood, and ‘cocksucker’ when she wasn’t, but that wasn’t in and of itself incriminating. The woman just seemed to have a vendetta against Robby, and her repertoire of slurs was meant to be as derogatory as she could manage with the sole focus of getting under his skin. There was probably a story there that he just wasn’t privy to. It didn’t mean he was gay. So what that she’d never hurled similar pejoratives at Dennis, even though he was much more obviously a homosexual? Nope—just ‘sweet cheeks’ for him.
And even if Robby was gay (really, was it any of his business what the sexuality of his attending was?), it’s not like he’d go for Dennis, of all people. See: Robby was old enough to be his dad, and furthermore, Dennis’s attending. If anything, he was probably into Dr. Abbot or something. Dennis had seen the way they looked at each other, the way their hands paused on each other’s shoulders—it wasn’t difficult to put two and two together, there.
All the touching he reserved for Dennis alone was just… coincidence, really. It didn’t have to mean anything.
The way Robby’s hands instinctively found their way to Dennis’s shoulders, his arms, resting so casually over his skin, and yet somehow restrained. If Robby himself didn’t linger—called away by some floundering intern, a needy resident—his heat, his smell, his energy did. Like an echo of him tarried in Dennis’s space, not yet ready to leave, though the man it belonged to had already departed. The way Robby’s eyes could pick Dennis out of a crowd, across the room, amidst a sea of thrashing and wailing bodies, as if they were magnetized to each other, pulled together by some invisible force. Locked in an inescapable orbit like a planet and its moon, inextricable and cosmic. The way Robby’s harsh bite was softened for Dennis’s ears, all austerity reduced to blunted points; they’d poke, but wouldn’t pierce.
Maybe Dennis had just been listening to a little too much of The Cranberries, recently.
But it was the way that Robby was decidedly different with him than he was with his other students, even the ones everyone knew he preferred over others. Was he really just reading too much into that, or was something actually there, just waiting for Dennis to notice?
He was only going to hurt himself going down that road.
Again, Trinity made an unpleasant sound in the back of her throat. With his best attempt at a glower plastered onto his face, he looked in her direction. He hoped that the incredulous position of his eyebrow got his message across: leave us alone.
A vulgar gesture of thumb and forefinger in a closed circuit, with the index of her other hand threading the circle, made Dennis choke on his own spit. The maneuver’s impact was somewhat diminished by the protein bar still dangling from her fingers, though not enough to prevent the full-body flush exploding over Dennis’s body like a red-hot rash. God, was he breaking out in hives? Trinity was going to get them both fired. Waggling her brows, she pointed at Robby, who had, in some divine intervention in Dennis’s favor, been stalwartly ignoring the interns’ scuffle. She gave Dennis an enthusiastic thumbs up and a too-wide grin, mouthing back, ‘You got this!’
“Do you need something, Dr. Santos?” Dr. Collins asked, more than a bit tersely.
“N-No, Dr. Collins.” Trinity’s face plummeted. Hand caught in the cookie jar, she coughed awkwardly into her fist. Held up the half-eaten protein bar, shaking it like it made up for her inappropriate behavior, and answered all the questions left sitting between the senior resident and intern. “Just grabbing a snack between cases. Which I need to get back to. Right now. Someone’s probably, uh, dying without me… or something. Oh, my god, is that Dr. Garcia? She’s calling me over. I, um,” Trinity pointed out into the hall with a nervous chuckle, “better get going.”
Attempting a weak smile, guilt all over her face, she waved a jerky goodbye before turning on her heel and making her escape from Dr. Collins’ steely gaze.
Fuck, Dennis had totally forgotten she was even in here.
He was fucking losing it today.
Had she been watching them this entire time? Did she realize how flustered he was? Did she notice how Dennis leaned a little closer to Robby whenever he could, trying to steal just a fraction of his heat, his calm, his confidence? Did she know? Could she tell he had a crush on Robby? Was she going to tell HR? Oh, shit, shit, shit. He was totally going to get fired. Dr. Collins was going to tell everyone that Dennis had a crush on the chief attending and they were going to fire him and kick him out of medical school and he’d never get his license and he’d never be a doctor and he’d have to run back to Broken Bow, Nebraska with his tail tucked between his legs like a stupid failure whose stupid father was right about stupid everything.
Oh, Jesus Christ, he was such a fucking idiot.
“Look at that, Whitaker—I caught a fish!” Robby exclaimed. “Bet you didn’t think I could do it, huh?” He held up the Switch to Dennis’s face, where the little cartoon version of himself was holding up Robby’s catch. Below the character on the screen, the text box read, ‘I caught a sea bass! No, wait—it’s at least a C+!’ The dumb joke taunted him. Unaffected, Robby preened, a proud smile playing across his lips, “Maybe you can teach an old dog new tricks, after all. You think Harrison will be impressed?”
“That’s- that’s great, Dr. Robby!” Dennis said, voice squeaking.
He tried to clap Robby on the shoulder the way the chief would do to him—like bros do—but all he managed was a half-assed pat that lingered a second longer than would be considered casual. Practically in slow motion, Robby tilted his head to the side to appraise the quivering hand still trembling like a leaf at his shoulder. His face scrunched up with bewilderment. Then, he turned his gaze back to Dennis, a question building in the crinkles at the corners of his eyes, the knitting of his brows, the pursing of his lips as if the words were right on the tip of his tongue and all he had to do was ask it:
What the fuck are you doing?
Dennis snatched his hand back, as if burned. He held it to his chest protectively. God, if you’re real, please open up a pit and suck me into it right now, Dennis prayed silently. When no yawning hole in the floor came to swallow him up and transport him to the land of torment eternal—probably because reality was hellish punishment enough—a sheepish smile split his lips. A mortified flush sent blood rushing to his face, his head, and nearly sent Dennis toppling out of his seat. His face burned, his neck burned, his ears burned, his throat burned, his chest burned—he was on fire. He was burning from the inside out. He couldn’t breathe.
He was having a panic attack.
What the fuck was wrong with him? Oh, my god. Oh…. my god. Like bros do? What does that even mean? Was he having a fucking stroke?
Quickly snapping his eyes away from Robby’s scalding expression, wishing to look literally anywhere fucking else, Dennis’s attention snagged on something—a mug drying in the dish rack.
Dr. Collins’ mug drying in the dish rack.
But no Dr. Collins.
Somehow, during one of, if not the most humiliating moments of his entire god-forsaken life, the resident had fled the room without his notice. It was just Robby and him in the breakroom.
Alone.
The table jostled with the force of Dennis springing to his feet. His chair shrieked against the tile floor with an ear-splitting screech. Dennis’s ears were ringing. Or maybe that was just the blood pounding in his ears like a bass drum. His heart was rabbiting a frenetic beat against the underside of his sternum, beating like the wings of a hummingbird in a cage of bone. Blood pressure skyrocketing, pulse rapidly approaching tachycardia. Robby, his face now contorted in a bald advertisement of his mounting confusion over Dennis’s behavior, moved to stand. Dennis waved him off before he could fully rise from his seat with a stiff flap of his wrist, a dismissal that immediately felt like the worst possible thing he could’ve done in this situation.
“I, uh,” he pointed toward the open door, where the chaos of the mid-day ED was in full swing. “I need to use the restroom!”
Trying not to trip over his own feet—unsuccessfully—Dennis bolted without a backward glance. The sound of another chair screeching against tile shepherded him out into central like a hellhound was hot on his trail, like if he paused for even a second, God himself would smite him into a pillar of salt, scattering across the floor in a wave of white. In his frenzy to escape, Dennis practically ran into Dana trying to enter.
“Whoa, where’s the fire, kid?” She exclaimed. Her teeth taunted him with a teasing grin, while her eyebrows shot upward, and she reeled back from him. The sound of her smacking gum grated against his nerves. Good God, Robby would kill him if he’d knocked Dana over—if Dana didn’t finish the job herself, if Dennis didn’t beat her to the punch and save them all the trouble.
Okay, just breathe, Dennis. What are you supposed to be doing right now?
He needed to find Dr. Collins now. And- and explain that nothing was going on between him and Robby, and there never would be anything going on between him and Robby because Robby was twice his age, and furthermore, his boss and Robby probably wasn’t even gay, and if he was, he wouldn’t be into Dennis! He’d get on his knees if he had to. Explain that he loved this job and wouldn’t—couldn’t—give it up. Dennis would never try to jeopardize his career by- by trying to have sex with his attending, or even thinking about it! That’d be crazy! Dennis wasn’t crazy. It was just a little crush, nothing serious. No! He didn’t have a crush. He just… He just… had a deep admiration for Robby because of how… of how successful he is at his work! We all stand to learn a lot from elders, his mama always said. Not that Robby was that old. Although Dennis didn’t mind if he was.
Fuck.
“Do you know where Dr. Collins went?” Straight to the point.
Dana pointed toward a work station on the other side of the wide room, “I think she had some charting to catch up on, but-”
“Great. Thanks, Dana!” He cut the older woman off, fleeing the scene of the crime before Robby caught up to him.
Dennis was so fucked.