Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

It wasn’t supposed to have been a ‘thing’, a ‘concern, or an ‘issue’ at all.

The case had been so, so standard; almost refreshingly so, on this day from hell. A standard hand-off from EMS. 40 year old male, no signs of head trauma, initially aggressive, sedated with a couple units of Versed. The simplest G&T tox you’d ever seen.

Robby had taken barely five seconds to look the man over, and proceeded to order the standard for a case like this: let him sleep it off, basically.

They'd brought the man into the room, sedated and stinking of booze, the remains of something powdery in his stupid-looking mustache, and locked him away until he metabolized his way out of it. No one bothered to check on him for a while; just letting him sober up off the drugs he’d been given and whatever he'd drank.

It was so standard, in fact, that he found himself forgetting about the man for a significant period of time; this was a trauma center, after all, and some passed-out drunk was of very little concern in the space where cardiac arrest and severe blood loss was just another Tuesday. He didn’t remember until he’d finally found a moment to hang around the fishbowl for just a second.

Just a second, he’d taken, and in that time, he’d participated in a simple interaction that unbeknownst to anyone, would change so, so, so much, and turn things towards the absolute worst. At the time, it was not even enough for him to listen closely to, so much so that he hadn’t even thought about what he'd said when he said it, but it proceeded as follows.

Dr. Mohan waltzed up to the fishbowl, leaning against the desk with her head in her hands, looking exasperated. Typical of her today, he thought; she looked completely out of it. Was completely out of it.

“Rough time again?” he offered, not even looking up from the screen of his computer.

Mohan stiffened; the remark had offended her, clearly. Hey, call him insensitive, but you couldn’t call him wrong; she’d had a panic attack while people died in the lobby. She needed to pull herself together. It couldn’t be like that, if he really was leaving today. She needed to be better.

“You could certainly say that,” she responded dryly. “Just too many patients right now, and stupidly, I agreed to watch that drunk guy in South 14 so McCay could take 10. She tried to give him to Emma, and I stepped in. She's got enough to do, that guy's already been violent today, and I think Dana would've flipped her shit if something happened to her.”

Robby gave a small nod of approval.

"Lord knows Dana doesn't need another reason to flip her shit today," he sighed out. "But, Dr. Mohan, if you're feeling overwhelmed, hand a patient over. I’m sure someone’s more open than you are.”

It was then that Whitaker strolled up, almost lazily, the shaggy mess of his hair sticking to his forehead slightly. His scrubs were bunched up around his waist a little, and his new badge was slightly off-kilter; a little messy, sure, but who wasn't today? His eyes, although usually sad-looking and distant, looked almost especially so, a hint of absentness playing on his face.

At that moment, it wasn’t enough to draw any concern. Certainly not from him. Certainly not today, on his last day.

Lord, if he could’ve, Robby would’ve killed the version of him in that moment, for not noticing, for not seeing how obvious of a clue that glassiness in Whitaker’s eyes was, for how stupid he was for letting him do this, for not fucking noticing all of it sooner, but in that moment, Robby said nothing. He just gave him a halfhearted little wave and a small smile, which Whitaker returned with a small smile in turn and a a small nod of his head.

Heart-melting. Especially with hindsight.

“Heyyy, everyone, what’s up?” Whitaker asked outwardly, casually, to everyone in the vicinity. Nobody turned to look at him, too engrossed in what they were doing; this was a hospital, after all, and they all in fact had shit to do (regardless of what one particular man in a red plaid shirt might think).

“Nothing much, just got too many patients right now and I feel like I’m gonna lose my mind,” Mohan interjected, scanning the T-sheet sitting on the clipboard in her hands. “Can you do me a massive solid and take one?”

“Yeah, yeah I got you,” he agreed, voice peaking a little on the second 'yeah', leaning against the counter. “What…what about that tox case, the one McCay had? Want me to handle him for you? I can.”

This fucking moment. This fucking decision.

Mohan ‘hmmm’ed, considering while running her fingers through her hair, before nodding, grabbing the clipboard from the rack, and handing it to Whitaker.

“Uhm, yeah. Yeah, he’s a fairly easy one, just needs a neuro and vitals check when he wakes up enough for it. Should be, like, maybe twenty minutes ‘til that Versed wears off. Much better it’s you than Emma, like McCay suggested. 'Cause, no offense to her, she's gonna be a great nurse, but I don’t think anyone wants a known 'drunk & disorderly' around a new grad. Thanks for this, Huckleberry.”

He rolled his eyes, chuckling a little.

“Jesus, you too now? Guess Trin can’t keep her mouth shut for anything.”

Mohan gave him a lazy, knowing smirk, and began to walk off.

“Hey, what can I say, it’s a good nickname! She really nailed you.”

Whitaker took the clipboard with a very awkward (very cute) chuckle. He walked away, didn’t look back, and went to deal with a different case with a shrug and quick steps, his hands fidgeting with his stethoscope.

Adorable, Robby stopped himself from thinking as he watched him depart, and then mentally chastised himself for even watching him walk away in the first place. More sins to atone for, he figured.

Tonight, maybe.

If all went to plan.

Because it would. Duke was wrong. He’d be out of here right on time. He’d leave exactly when he had planned to, shut those doors, and find peace. On the road like he’d said, maybe. In his house, perhaps. The path was his to determine. All he knew is that this place was not the place it was meant to happen in. There was too much here; too many people, too many asks, too many places in which he would be needed.

Patch the holes, and send the ship away. That’s what was best.

But still, the thought of Whitaker, and his face, and those shoulders he loved to haphazardly put his hands on, and the mess of his hair, and the way his deft hands toyed with his stethoscope, permeated the developed parts of his brain, letting his brain conjure images of sleepy mornings, stolen moments, fingers weaving through those messy golden-brown curls, making him second-guess the decision to leave altogether. But still. He would leave.

He had to. It had to happen.

Unbeknownst to Robby, however, he would not be leaving, and it was entirely due to that conversation. Because of that conversation, he was going to lose one of his doctors today.

He did not know this yet.

Nobody knew this yet.

They wouldn’t know, not until twenty minutes later, when Whitaker went to do that neuro check on the man in South 14.

They didn’t know it would happen when Whitaker walked into the room, shutting the door, and roused the man, giving him that small, absent smile he’s known to give.

They didn’t know it would happen when the man’s face contorted with confusion, anger, fear, bruised ego, bravado, and reckless intoxication, turning a flushed, violent, red, and his hands began to move erratically in search of something to hurt.

They didn’t know it would happen when violent, hateful words were shouted, an exchange was had, and those reaching hands found their target after all.

No, they did not know.

And they wouldn’t know, not until they heard the sickening crack of Whitaker’s skull hitting the floor.

Chapter Text

One could consider it a miracle.

One could think of the way his senses narrowed down into nothing but analysis, perception, action, reaction, in the span of milliseconds as some divine gift from decades of codes, of experience, of healing, but Robby did not consider any of this a gift.

No. This was hell. In no other place would this happen, in this way, on this specific day.

Vaguely, Robby became aware of someone shouting the word ‘hula hoop’, and the rushing of people to move, but his mind hadn’t started to cascade into crisis mode until he heard ‘South 14’ followed by ‘LOC’ and ‘crash cart’.

Still, then, he didn't respond with the peak of his panic yet. 'Hula Hoop' was bad. 'Hula Hoop' meant someone was hit, but someone was 'someone'.

"Is Dr. Mohan conscious yet?" he asked to the nurse who'd called it out, moving with a quickness to grab his things from the Pedes area and begin to move across the ER floor. "God, I knew she should've went home earlier, this is why you don't let things affect you like that."

"Mohan?" the nurse said, with an air of shock that made Robby's eyes dart to face him. "No, no, it's not Mohan. She handed the case off, it's not her, it's-"

"Whitaker," Robby interjected as he remembered the conversation from earlier, voice suddenly low.

He moved faster than he’d moved since high school track, probably, and his knees would probably kill him for it later, but right now that was of no concern. His body was simply tunneled in on move move move move faster faster faster you’re not going fast enough, and when he stopped at the door to South 14, he yanked it open, paying the man on the bed precisely zero mind and rushing straight to the person whose name he’d probably never forget, never wanted to let go of, the person he vowed himself not to fail, not again, not like Frank, not like Adamson and he balked.

Whitaker was on the floor.

Whitaker was not moving.

Whitaker’s eyes were shut.

He kneeled down in a flash, silently praying please, God, if you’re there, let him be alive, please, if it’s the only thing I ever ask of you, please, pressing his fingers into Whitaker’s carotid, trying to pull a pulse from his fingers,

and felt it. A steady thump thump thump.

A breath left his lungs, reentered, and left again, but this was not over. He fell; that could mean so, so, much, and the sight of a bright red leaking from Whitaker’s face was enough for his own heart to drop.

“I need a gurney in here!” Robby yelled, voice peaking in pure panic, “And someone clear Trauma 2, we got a hot case, blunt head trauma, LOC!”

The man on the bed suddenly began to mutter, worriedly, hands shaking. He looks like he saw a ghost (or just created one, more like). Looks like he’d finally sobered up.

“I-I-I didn’t…I didn’t hit him that hard, I didn’t…I j-just tapped him, I mean, I mean, he just-he just, like fell, I didn’t-”

“Enough from you,” Robby spat back. “You might’ve just killed one of my doctors. Whatever you’re about to say, I don’t wanna hear it.”

“No, no, no, you gotta believe me, I barely even tapped him! I just…just a little, on his face, yeah, but he sank like a fuckin’ dead man, and I swear, I didn’t hit him like that-”

“Hey, that’s enough!”

Dana busted into the room with a syringe of Versed in her hand and a vendetta. She looked angrier than he’d ever seen her.

“You hit one of us again, I swear to God, I’ll get you a life sentence, you hear me?” she continued. “Now, are you gonna behave, or do I need to use this?”

After sufficiently scaring the man, she pushed past Robby, to the other side of the still-unconscious Whitaker, and began a sternal rub. Step one of what might become many.

“Kid, please, c’mon,” she called out, digging her knuckles in. “Get up, Whitaker, c’mon, I know you hear me.”

A soft moan exited Whitaker’s lips at the rub.

M4.

“M4,” Dana called. “Can you hear me? Whitaker, can you hear me? Open your eyes, kid!”

Nothing. He was unresponsive. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“Whitaker?” Robby called, almost desperately. “Whitaker!”

He felt the urge to shake him, to rattle him further, but the physician in him knew the fresh hell of spinal injuries that might induce. His eyes scanned his body, for something, something, fucking anything he could do in this moment, and saw Whitaker’s hand.

The ones he’d loved to watch so much. The ones that toyed with his stethoscope. The ones that made this job look interesting, the ones that pushed so cleanly up-down, up-down, up-down while doing CPR, the ones he'd felt the rough edges of just hours earlier in a fist-bump.

The ones that might never grip anything again, if he didn't act fast enough.

Without using the logical parts of his brain, which were currently not functioning properly, Robby took it, squeezing.

“Dennis, please, c’mon,” he tried again. Tears were biting at his eyes. They should not have been doing that. “Wake up, kid.”

“N…no…” Whitaker finally managed, weakly, almost imperceptibly, “I…I didn’t…m-mean…to…”

V4.

“That's a verbal response,” he called over to Dana. “He responded, Dana, that’s V4.”

“Hey, it’s just me,” he tried again, a little more confidently than before but quieter, kinder, “can you open your eyes for me? Just a little?”

Whitaker moaned a little, eyes scrunching shut in what might’ve been pain, but he obliged.

Just for a moment. A flicker. That unmistakable baby blue.

E3.

“Okay, we’re at E3V4M4, that’s an 11,” he called to the (now very full) room, and stepped away enough to let the techs load Whitaker onto the gurney like a sack of potatoes. “Page the RT, he’s protecting for now, but we need to prep for RSI if he drops even a little. Somebody page CT, tell them we have a GCS 11 with blunt head trauma! If there's someone there, bump them!"

Lord, he knew Whitaker was younger than him by a margin, and he wasn’t the largest person ever, but now, and here, he looked so fucking small; his body was limp, his eyes were shut, and his face looked so, so, sad, more so than usual, and good God, if this was it, he wouldn’t be able to live with himself.

Maybe this was his punishment, he wondered. Maybe there was a God, one who’d seen his sins, heard his thoughts, and judged his actions, one that knew the plan he’d had for later tonight.

Maybe God knew what to take from him. Maybe God knew what would hurt the most, what would matter to him more than his own life, the one thing he’d promised he’d never let slip through the cracks. He couldn’t let this happen a second time.

It wasn’t supposed to be him, he thought, as they’d raced to Trauma 2, It was never supposed to be him. It was McCay’s patient, who she’d tried to give to Emma, who Mohan had taken. It wasn’t supposed to be him. He shouldn't've been in there. It should’ve been someone else.

Robby bit back a thought, the one he didn’t voice, the one he’d left unspoken this entire day.

It was supposed to be me today. It was never supposed to be Whitaker.

So, he’d let this be his atonement, he decided.

Let him start now, let him pick up the pieces, let him patch the holes and send the ship away. He would fix him. And he would leave then, knowing that with his life and with his hands, he’d done at least one last thing right.

But first, to fix him.

Dana, patron saint of everything good in this world, had beaten him to the punch. She was rushing, but not really, because slow is steady and steady is fast, her hands halfway through the motion of starting an IV, when she paused suddenly.

Dana’s eyes focused on something, zeroed in, and she set the IV down in a flash, hand stuck to Whitaker’s wrist. She turned his forearm over, eyeing the small black bracelet that somehow, nobody had ever bothered to question, on his wrist. There was an emblem on one of the charms: a symbol they all knew by heart.

“Wait, hold on, that's a Star of Life, this…this a med ID,” she stated blankly, like the words were heavy. “How had no one seen this before? He’s here all the time, nobody noticed this?”

Robby felt his stomach drop.

Whitaker had a med ID.

Why had he never noticed it? How? He was going to die, and he hadn’t noticed it? What kind of a fucking doctor could he call himself?

Dana flipped the bracelet around, eyes scanning over the text on the newly-revealed silver plaque. She looked as if she’d now seen a ghost; her eyebrows knit together, eyes widening.

Dana, uncharacteristically, was silent for a moment.

“Fuck, Robby,” she spoke, voice low and unsteady. “This is…”

“What? What does it say?”

“I think you’ve gotta see for yourself.”

Robby took Whitaker’s wrist from Dana in a panicked flash. His eyes grazed the piece of metal like a lifeline, searching for the answer, the key to unlocking his way out of this,

and his stomach sank further into the floor with each new word that hit his eyes.

Of course he’d fallen so easily. Of course it barely took a ‘tap’ to knock him out. And the dizziness, and the absence, and glassy look in his eyes, and the migraines, and the awkwardness, and way he jumped like a scared cat at physical contact, of fucking COURSE he was like this, this bracelet made everything make sense,

and Robby had never noticed.

Nobody had ever noticed.

Nobody had bothered to ask.

This was hell, he decided.

It had to be.

Chapter Text

The core of Dennis’ problem hadn’t started with the punch to the face, but damn, was it a good catalyst for the perfect shit storm he currently found himself within.

He knew that he’d have to fill out a ton of paperwork later and give a statement at some point, but he doubted he’d make a good witness; his recollections of this incident were slightly fragmented, and the sheer thought of paperwork right now made him feel like meeting the sidewalk from the roof.

And truthfully, the ‘slightly’ in ‘slightly fragmented’ was generous.

It made a certain amount of sense, he thought. Being hit in the face can cause concussion, subdural hematoma, herniation, diffuse axonal injury, edema of all shapes and sizes, you take your pick, really, with all of them having adverse effects on the brain’s ability to retain information. Lord, wouldn’t he know.

He was a doctor, after all, no matter how much it felt like most of the time he was seen as anything but. Hell, he could probably diagnose himself, given the chance to, and get out of here. All he needed was the event, time, and symptoms, and what better source was there than him?

The event itself could really be defined via three collisions that had happened in such rapid succession that he had been rather powerless to stop them. They occurred as follows, to the best of his (spotty) recollection:

1. The man's fist and his face, the force of the impact causing him to stumble backwards in ataxia,

2. The side of his head and the wall, causing the formation of small stars in his vision that seemed to draw all of the blood from his head and the balance in his limbs,

3. The back of his head and the floor, and from there, he had felt the uncomfortable throes of unconsciousness crash at the core of his psyche like a wave from an angry ocean.

While he’d felt the overwhelming urge to sleep forcefully drag him under, the last thing he could remember wondering was ’I wonder how they’re going to describe this in the IR’, and then he could remember nothing at all, until just now, when he slowly and painfully dragged his eyes open.

Well, nothing at all, minus one tiny sensation: the soft, consistent pressure of someone’s hand in his, squeezing like he’d fall into pieces the second they let go of him. Warm, too. It was warm, he could recall. Warm and steady and larger than his own. Almost like…no.

The rest of what he filled in, the ‘blanks’, were less memories and more ‘things that you’re supposed to do in the case of a potential TBI patient’. It was like his brain had taken the established protocol he’d internalized, and tried to write its own version of what had occurred, even if he lacked the ability to remember it as it actually happened.

-He thinks words were said to him and around him, including the phrase ‘hula hoop’.

-He thinks they ran a Glasgow, Romberg, and pupil check on him.

-He thinks someone lifted him out of the room, onto a gurney, and into the CT scanner.

-He thinks they ran a non-contrast, found something of concern, maybe, and admitted him (ironically enough, considering he’s literally a fucking employee of this godforsaken place).

From there, it was environmental cues that filled him in to the rest of what had happened before his memory returned to him; simple cause and effect helped him more than anything.

-He knows he’s been confined to brain rest, because the room was completely dark and the monitor on his vitals had been muted.

-He knows he’s hooked up to fluids (and also probably a migraine cocktail), by the fact that the slight sting and weight of an IV rested in his left arm, and that he’d been asleep for a certain amount of time incongruent with how hard he’d been hit.

-He knows he didn’t get a hematoma, at least not yet, because he hadn’t been immediately taken to surgery. Or, maybe he had been? He couldn’t tell without looking at himself, or seeing a surgery record, or getting up and finding a mirror.

-He knows someone had stripped him of his clothes, because he felt the characteristic scratchiness of a light blue hospital gown against his skin (shit, they’d seen him naked now, too, he guessed).

Most concerningly was what had occurred to him as he’d quickly grabbed at his wrist in a panic:

-He knows that he was in some deep shit, because they’d taken off his bracelet.

Which means they’d seen the bracelet.

Which means they’d seen what was on the bracelet.

Which means, of course, that they now know.

That stupid fucking bracelet, with the black elastic band and the red Star of Life tag. The one he was required to keep on, but never kept visible at work. The one that explained everything, but also prompted so many questions and infinitely too much concern to ever let slip of publicly. The one that he’d honestly been considering not even wearing anymore, in spite of the order of every doctor he’d ever seen (minus himself, but he kinda figured that doesn’t count).

The medical bracelet he’d been forced to wear since age 18 and that night in college, reading:

'DENNIS WHITAKER, DOB 06-27-99

RTBI x20, CHR PCS, HI RISK ICH

HI RISK LOB/AMN/LOC WHEN HIT

ANY HEAD INJ = ER, STAT CT’

In two words, two much simpler, much briefer words: brain damage.

And lots of it.

He’d long since memorized it, of course. Long classes in med school had bored him to an extent he hadn’t previously believed possible, so he’d fidgeted with it, running his fingers across the laser engraving in the silver metal like it was Braille. Maybe, he’d thought, if he internalized the words enough, he didn’t have to wear it anymore, but that’s not how that works, ever.

Get hit as many times as he had, and you gotta wear the bracelet.

It wasn’t a complicated concept.

He felt the slight need to vomit, which made his stomach drop ever further; vomiting after head trauma meant herniation, and hematoma, and dysfunction with the brain stem, but he felt a little solace in the fact that he just felt like vomiting. If he was herniating, he’d already be puking by now, in an uncontrollable fashion akin to mania.

A thought pushed through the solidified mashed potatoes that currently made up his brain: he didn’t know where he was, or what time it was, or what day it was.

He was in the hospital, fucking duh, and moreso, the one he already spent infinitely too much time in, but he didn’t even know if he was still in the ER or not, or if everyone had already gone home, or if he needed to call Santos. Maybe they’d moved him to Neuro Obs, or Neuro Stepdown, or hell, even the Neuro ICU, considering he’d passed out.

Did it matter? To him, yes. He liked to know where he was, what was happening, and what to expect. It was a comfort he hadn’t always gotten to enjoy.

‘Hadn’t always’ seemed to include now, as well, because he couldn’t figure out what floor he was on for the life of him. With how dark this room was, he really couldn’t see anything properly, although a part of him wondered if it was just because his brain was still lagging behind. He tried to squint out the door to look at the layout of the floor, but realized that the curtains had been drawn shut, blocking him from seeing anything.

The suggestion of a migraine lapped and licked at the corners of his perception, but distantly and noncommittally; his suspicions about the migraine cocktail in his IV were probably correct, then. Still, it was enough to bring a scowl to his face and make him crave an Excedrin and some cold water like an addict. All that was left was to go grab some. He knew where it was, of course; working in an ER did have some benefits.

Instinctually, without really thinking, he moved to stand, rustling around in his bed, and moving to slot his legs beneath him, but the second his feet hit the linoleum,

he realized the gravity of the mistake he’d just made.

The SCREECH SCREECH SCREECH SCREECH of the bed alarm was enough to make that fuzzy migraine shoot into ‘very sharp and very many needles in his brain’ territory quicker than he’d ever experienced, and the crashing waves had returned to his ears, making all of his balance immediately wash away and return him to toddler levels of motor control, and his eyes wrenched shut, from the pain and the overstimulation and the stress and the sheer fucking embarrassment, and before a proper plan could be reached, he was on the wall, clutching at it, failing, his legs wobbling beneath him, giving up, and his arms, by some miracle, caught himself a second before hit head hit the floor for the second time today, and he tried to breathe, breathe, breathe through this ache, but it wasn’t going to let him go, so he just let go, let go, let go.

There was a stampede of feet outside his door in approximately fifteen seconds, and he simply stayed on the floor in some approximation of a cow pose; he’d tried enough walking for one day to know it wouldn’t get him anywhere (physically and metaphorically). He didn’t look up at whoever’s feet had thundered in, the noise causing even more needles to stab in various parts of his brain.

“Kid, what the hell are you doing?”

A very familiar, very commanding, very epitome-of-Pittsburgh voice yelled over the bed alarm, only adding to the cacophony of noise currently assaulting his senses.

So I’m still in the ED, I guess, he thought distantly, because that’s definitely Dana, who sounds like she might hit me in the head again right now and finish the job.

“You know what the yellow means! Lord Jesus Almighty, you’re a doctor, for Christ’s sake! Do they not teach you kids colors in med school anymore, or something?”

Yellow, he wondered? What yellow?

He looked at his other, non IV-ed wrist in the new light of the opened door, then through his legs at his feet, and was not very surprised to find the telltale yellow wristband and socks that denoted his current status:

‘Fall risk’.

And, by the additional symbol drawn on the yellow wristband, he could further surmise that he was considered an ‘extreme’ fall risk. No getting up at all, even with assistance. What flattery.

“This means two IRs just from you alone today,” Dana continued, voice a little softer than before, as she kneeled down to check his head for any additional damage. “Y’know, we’re gonna be staying here longer than you are at this point, cause your little stint just gave us something else to chart. Ask Santos, I’m sure she’s thrilled.”

“I know,” Dennis mumbled back, his voice coming out more pathetic and slurred-sounding than he’d intended it to, “I know, I know, ‘m sorry, just-”

“Ah-ah-ah. Don’t apologize, kid, I’m not mad. But Christ Alive, don’t do that again. Damn near gave me a heart attack.”

Two techs grabbed him and lifted him up by the armpits like he was a disobedient stray cat, but he didn’t really care which ones they were; he didn’t have the heart to look any of them in the eye. If he could somehow curl himself into such a tight little ball that he spontaneously popped himself like a grape, he would right now.

“I…I didn’t..I didn’t know where I was…and-and I wanted to know, and…”

Suddenly, he became acutely aware that thinking of any sort was an absolutely massive undertaking, sentence formation included. The urge to vomit and/or cry overtook the rational part of his brain, and his sentence petered out pathetically. He tried again to speak, but it was like his tongue kept sticking to the roof of his mouth. He curled tighter into a ball, pulling his hands in front of his face like a shield and his knees to his chest. He felt frustration begin to well in his chest, hot and steaming and shameful.

He felt so, so, stupid.

“You’re still in the ED, kid," Dana finished, flipping of the insufferable SCREECH of the alarm. "You’ve been out for about an hour now. We kept you, got you a private room, put you on total brain rest, and we’re watching you for if the pressure in your brain worsens any further. Neuro obs didn’t have any beds, and hell, I say it’s better! Better here than up there. Besides, we wanted you here, to keep an eye on you.”

Dana paused for a minute, measuring her words with a glint in her eye.

“Well…he wanted you here, more like. He was adamant, and hey, I wasn’t gonna argue with him. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him that mad. Livid. Livid he’d let it happen, especially to you.”

‘He’? Who was ‘he’? What ‘he’ would’ve kept him-

Oh.

Oh.

A low, exasperated ‘fuuuuuuuck’ left Dennis’ lips, half-spoken and half-groaned, and Dana laughed darkly, like she’d been expecting that response to come from him.

“He’s…h-he’s gonna be s-so mad at me, isn’t he?” he continued, shame peeking out from the tips of the slightly slurred words. “I mean, ssshit, I-I kinda…I kinda…fucked up.”

Dana pursed her lips, letting out a ‘hmmm’ at that. She fussed with his IV for a minute, making sure he hadn’t bent it when he fell, and when she was seemingly satisfied, she started hanging another bag of IV fluid.

“At the drunken menace with the mustache? Yeah. That son of a bitch is already outta here. Hah, I don't I've seen anyone be so disliked by the entire staff that fast before, including the cops. You, kid? He’ll probably be more concerned than anything, but…”

She paused for a moment. Considered him. Gave him a look that he really, really hated; the one that was more akin to someone who was looking at a runt of the little puppy that needed to be put down for its own good. Another expression played on her face for a second–recollection, maybe–but then that same pitying expression returned.

“Whitaker, listen, if you knew you had a health history like that, you really should’ve told u-”

“No.”

“Kid, I-”

“NO.”

Silence. A beat.

His eyes scrunched shut. His hands had balled into fists, digging into his palms, for that familiar pain, the one he knew was right there, right there, right there, and he took in a sharp, almost agonal-sounding breath, and then another, and then another, until the anger ebbed away.

The word had come out with a force he hadn’t intended. Immediately, he moved to the defensive, to see if there was any way to patch the hole he’d just ripped in the atmosphere around them. Dennis felt the control slip from his fingers like sand…or like waves, maybe.

Cold, angry, unrelenting waves.

“Dana, n-no, no no, I’m s-ssorry, I just don’t…i-it’s hard, it’s hard t-to talk about, and I don’t-I don't like to, and-”

“Yeah. Yeah, I mean, clearly not. You know what? I get that. I respect it. I respect you, too, Whitaker. We all have things we don’t like to discuss. We’ve all gone through some stuff. Just don’t pass out like that again, deal?”

“Didn’t…didn’t exactly d-do thisss on, on purpose, really,” he mumbled back noncommittally, half-joking, “s’not..not like I started the day b-by painting ‘hit here’ on my forehead.”

Dana was kind enough to give him a little pity laugh when he mimed himself writing across his face with an invisible marker.

“Next time wear a helmet, how’s that? I’ll buy you one myself.”

“Can I…Can I, uhm, pick the color, a-at least?”

“Knock yourself out. I think dark green might suit you, though. Might bring out those baby blues of yours real nice.”

Dennis rolled said baby blues, a sarcastic smile toying at the side of his lips despite the pain.

“I’m just…jussst gonna assume this is…this is my, uhm...my neuro check? Like, it countsss-”

"Oh, you better believe it!” Dana replied, a tad quicker than what would be considered polite. “I got better things to do than sit here and ask for your name and who the president is. Now, I’m gonna start you on another round of migraine cocktail, and you’re gonna sit there, sleep, and for all that is holy, do not get up again, hear me? We don’t need a third IR from you today.”

“Y-yes, ma’am,” he replied, giving her a half-assed, uncoordinated salute through half-lidded eyes.

A thought bored its way in between his eyebrows, rough and unpleasant.

“Dana,” he began again, eyes scrunching from both concentration and the effort of forming a thought, “why…why didn’t he come… now? H-He wasss, he was here. Fuckin’...asked for me to- me to be…be here. So why not?”

Dana paused, like she hadn’t expected the question. An emotion played on her face, one he couldn’t place, but she quickly swallowed it down.

“Like I said, who knows with him, really, and I mean, he leaves at the end of this shift, so maybe he won’t. Maybe he’ll just take off for his midlife-crisis roadtrip. He’s…he’s kinda a mess today. He keeps snapping at people, and Lord, especially Mohan, for some reason. Poor girl.”

Something deep, dark, and sour bit at the back of his throat. Dennis didn’t respond. He let the words sit, stew and fester, in the recesses of his mind. He began to think of Robby, of earlier, of the sheer gravity of this mistake, and of just how much he'd messed up.

Perhaps a little too much; there was an uptick in his heart rate, apparently, and Dana caught it before he’d even realized.

He knew this because she gave him a look, an upturned, judging eyebrow, like he was a five year old who’d been caught sneaking fruit snacks from the kitchen at three in the morning

“Okay, well if just the thought of him’s gonna make your heart rate spike like that, then maybe it’s better he doesn’t come here. Like or not, you’re still on edema watch, Mr. TBI Machine. Sleep until your next neuro check. Don’t fight that migraine cocktail. That’s an order.”

Dennis was silent at that, hoping she didn’t notice the way his face changed at the words 'heart rate spike'. He did not feel like telling Dana why the thought of Robby made his heart rate rise; it felt like telling his mother he had a crush on someone.

Of course, that someone just happened to be his fucking attending, of all people.

Dana did not need to know that. Dana certainly did not need to know that the creases of Robby's eyes when he smiled made his stomach flutter, and that the low timber of his voice when he spoke ran straight to core of his brain, and that every 'nice work' and 'good job' and 'nice save' Robby gave him felt like an electric current straight through his body, and that Robby's height being much higher than his own made Dennis' brain feel fuzzy in ways entirely unrelated to his brain damage, and that the feeling of those hands, his warm, big, hands on his shoulder made his face run red, and that he'd imagined some vile, despicable, delicious things about what else those hands might be capable of, what they would feel like-

Or maybe he could ask Dana to neuter him like a dog. Maybe that would fix this problem.

Dennis did not argue as she hooked the bag up to the IV, and he did not fight against the cold, lapping waves of unconsciousness that threatened to pull him back under.

He certainly did not think about why Robby might be avoiding him. He certainly did not consider the thought of the bracelet being taken, the sensation of the hand in his, and the overwhelming sense of guilt that was gnawing at the insides of his stomach like an ulcer, but also like an old friend. He certainly didn’t ask himself why he was here, because seriously, why would Robby have personally requested that he stay down here, and then not come to check on him at all?

Most certainly of all, he did not let the image burn into his head of Robby driving away on that godforsaken motorcycle for his entirely ill-advised sabbatical without even bothering to check on him, and turning away, and not coming back, because it didn’t feel like he was coming back, and none of this really felt like it was going to be okay, and now he probably had more brain damage on top of all of this, and the words ‘if I don’t come back’ from their conversation earlier did not replay in his mind, again and again, like the meaning might change the longer he pondered them, and Robby wasn’t going to come the fuck back, was he?

None of this happened even a little bit, because the migraine cocktail did its job, and Dennis listened to Dana, and Dennis went to sleep.

No. Not even a little bit.

Chapter Text

Michael Robinavitch was a man of many talents, but if there was one thing he had to say he truly excelled at, above all else, it was finding an excuse not to do something. He’d successfully avoided visiting North 10, Whitaker, all shift, using this very skill of his.

Today was perfect for it, truly; because everything was permanently on fire, he could just find another fire to put out. He’d helped Javadi learn how to perform brain surgery, straightened out King’s deposition fears, and watched as Perlah and Princess helped Emma acclimate to the sheer hell that was being an ER nurse sometimes, as well as juggled trauma after trauma. All of this, he’d done, not because he’d felt particularly compelled to do so, but because he could not bring himself to enter that room.

Robby was quickly coming to the conclusion that he couldn’t see him. He couldn’t do it. The look on his face, the smallness he’e exhibited, that stillness, the lack of words, all of it, replayed in his mind again and again and again, like a ghost of someone who hadn’t even died.

He knew the promise he’d made, in the heat of catastrophe, in the blink of an eye, so easily it had felt like breathing, and despite himself, he felt a twinge of regret at the thought of it. He’d really gone and put his departure off, the thing he’d promised himself he wouldn’t do. He’d found a reason to stay, as much as he’d wanted not to.

The cowardly part of him did not want to go see Whitaker. It was the part of him that wanted to take off and leave, despite despite despite, to rev his bike and hit the road, to leave him and this monument of his own inadequacy behind.

Patch the holes, and send the ship away.

There were still many, many holes left, though, he'd like to think. So many, in fact, that as he was pondering where to begin after a particularly difficult trauma (ironically enough, a man with head trauma from a fall, in need of immediate neurosurgery), he paused for a moment, scanning the vicinity for something he could fix.

His shift was over. He could leave. And moreso, he was running out of excuses, it felt like. It was either leave, or go see him, and he knew which he was capable of.

It was then that he saw Dr. Santos walking up to the fishbowl with the air of frustration she'd had all day, trying desperately to catch up on her charting with one free moment she’d been given, and Robby’s mind began to churn with the thought of what she represented.

Santos was the physician currently assigned to Whitaker, technically. ‘Until night shift came’ was the deal she’d made.

Robby hadn’t wanted the job. He’d immediately declined, made up some bullshit about ‘wanting to be partial’, but Santos had taken it the millisecond the words ‘Whitaker’ and ‘blunt head trauma’ had been uttered, with a speed that made one think she had to have known something they didn’t. She probably knew more than he did, at least, both in the fact that she was treating him, and that they were roommates.

Maybe she knew about that bracelet before, too, Robby wondered as his eyes zoned in on the back of Santos’ head, and maybe she knew and said nothing out of some desire to protect his pride. Maybe she knows a bit more about his history. Maybe enough to treat him herself.

A lump formed in Robby’s throat at the thought, but he swallowed it down, letting it settle into his stomach. Some part of him didn’t want that to be true, but it wasn’t the part that was winning.

Maybe I could leave, after all, and maybe I don’t need to keep that promise.

Robby went back to the fishbowl with a renewed sense of purpose. He grabbed the mug full of stale coffee he hadn’t had a chance to drink, his bag, and his tan tartan jacket, shirking it on. His hands itched for his keys, searching, and he quickly realized that they weren’t in his usual coat pocket.

This was not part of the plan. This was really not part of the plan.

He rooted through his bag, frantically searching for his missing keys, for his ticket out of this place, to the road and certainty and the fate that befell him, and got increasingly panicked as he still didn’t find them, before he heard a soft, telltale jingle in his periphery.

“Huh,” he heard someone speak from beside him, in the sarcastic tone that could only belong to Santos. “Yeah, I thought you might be needing these eventually, but I thought it’d be later. Figured you’d still be finding some excuse to stay.”

She spun them around her finger like a toy, an unreadable expression on her face, as she still continued pretending to still be charting.

What the hell.

“Give me my keys, Santos,” Robby half-sighed, half-scolded. “That’s theft, y’know. I could report you for that.”

“Funny. You didn’t seem to want to do that last time someone was caught stealing things from the ER.”

“Oh, I know you don’t mean-”

“Oh, I do. But hey, I’ll drop it, and give ‘em back…” she mused, spinning her chair around slowly to face Robby and palming the keys with a loud ching, “...if you promise me something first.”

“What? I’m about to leave, so-”

“And that’s the problem. You’re leaving. And God knows when you’re coming back. And I need you to put that off, just for a second. Someone needs you.”

“It seems like everyone needs me today, so get in line.”

“It’s not me. He needs you.”

Robby paused. Santos didn’t specify, but she didn’t need to. Who else would she mean? And good lord, why did it feel like every sign was pulling him back there, despite all the attempts he’d made to leave, despite despite despite?

“Listen, I don’t need to stay. I’m not even the one who’s treating him. That’s you. And besides, you live with him! Who better to stay with him than you? You know him better, you can monitor him more closely, he’ll listen to you, and you can take him home after he’s cleared for discharge.”

Santos stiffened slightly, looking off into space, before turning around with a look he’d never seen her wear before. Not with a patient, not with a coworker, not when talking with Garcia, hell, not even when she’d been gushing over Baby Jane Doe earlier.

It was genuine, fearful concern.

“...Robby, okay, look. I know you’re dead-set on leaving for your bullshit midlife crisis roadtrip, but you should really go see him before you do. It’s been, like, three hours, and the shift’s done with, and you’re not gonna be back for three fuckin’ months, if that. I went in there for one of his neuro checks, and he’s doing fine! He’s been A&O x3 for the last 3 checks, fine to talk to, just a little spacey and a touch grumpy. Trails off a little. Doesn’t think he needs to be here.”

Santos looked off to the side a little again before continuing, gathering her words.

“And…well, don’t tell him I told you this, but he’s convinced you’re mad at him. Got really depressed-looking. Like, even more than he usually is. Please go see him, because if I have to live with him when he looks like that, I might be the one to die from second-hand despair or something.”

Robby shot her a smile, even faker than the last one. The words ‘if I have to live with him when he looks like that’ played in his mind like a record, looping-looping-looping around. Something about that phrasing stuck with him.

“I…”

Why the hell had he made this promise, anyways? What was he trying to prove? Was it some sort of guilt? Desire? Possessiveness? Something more? He could’ve been out of here by now. Could’ve been gone. Very, very, far away. Could’ve left this place behind. Not looked back.

God, I’m still not sure you’re there, but I hope you see this, at least. See that I’m trying, still.

“...will go to talk to him. See if I can’t get him to see things better.”

“Good,” Santos conceded, nodding, before turning back to the computer. “That’s…good. Thanks for that. Catch.”

She threw him the keys, which he fumbled with for a moment, before catching them solidly and tucking the ring back into the pocket of his jacket.

“By the way, Robby,” Santos called over her shoulder as Robby began his walk to the room, “I didn’t know. About the bracelet, I mean, and the shit he’s been through. He never told me. I don’t think he told anyone. Ever. Don’t take this as some personal fuck-up, or you missing something. He’s just a very, very good liar, who also happens to be a massive idiot.”

Robby stopped walking for a moment, thinking of something to say in response, but came up with nothing. All he could offer her was a thumbs-up, silent, to show he’d heard her. He didn’t even turn around.

You have no idea how much of this is my fault, do you, Dr. Santos? No, you don't, because you can't. Nobody else would understand.

The walk to North 10, to Whitaker, felt like the hallway was about four times as long as normal. The noises around him muffled away into incomprehensibility, and his vision narrowed, his feet step-step-stepping forward on the tile in soft thump thump thumps.

His mind did not slow; rather, it tunneled down, each corner of his brain filled with the images of earlier.

Whitaker had looked small, sounded smaller, and hadn’t woken up until he’d squeezed his hand in desperation (and maybe something more Robby wasn’t ready to confront yet). It’d been a stark contrast, a live wire to his brain, and a vision he hadn’t ever wanted to see.

What’s more, that little black bracelet on his left arm had felt like a punch right into his gut he could still feel now, resonating in his chest. Robby reached a hand into the right pocket of his scrubs, and palmed something, pulling it out to look at.

The bracelet. He’d kept it. A simple black band, with a red Star of Life tag and a silver steel plaque etched with black lettering, holding the massive secret that Whitaker hadn’t bothered to mention to anyone. Hadn’t wanted to mention, maybe?

It was irrelevant now, anyways. They knew now. Robby knew now. Didn’t think he could forget, either. His eyes traced the black lettering, gaze glued to the second line.

‘RTBI x20, CHR PCS.’

How long had Whitaker been like that? How had he even gotten 20 TBIs at age 26? How long had he been hiding it? How long had he been suffering, living through a mental meat grinder while working in the busiest trauma center in Pittsburgh?

And how had nobody ever noticed?

How had nobody noticed that the absence in his eyes wasn’t normal? How had everyone missed the fact that always seemed to steady himself on doorframes, or jumped when people came from behind him? How had they missed the twitch of his hands around his stethoscope, the way he gripped it when he looked overwhelmed?

How had Robby seriously never noticed how broken he was, with all the time he spent looking at him, gripping his shoulders, watching the ways his hands moved? He hadn't seen it?

He reached the door to North 10, placing his hand on the handle, and paused. The synapses of his brain were sending the signal to move, to grip the handle, to open the door, and nothing happened. He couldn’t do it. Another signal of his never-ending incapability.

Another sin to atone for.

Whitaker was better now. Santos had said as much. He was conscious when roused, A&O x3, and willing to talk. Clearly, he needed somebody to talk to him, as a matter of fact, because if Whitaker was somehow under the impression that him being admitted was unnecessary, then someone needed to drill home just how serious 20 fucking brain injuries was. Santos had no reason to lie to him about that.

She didn’t, did she? She wouldn’t lie about that. She had just stolen his keys, sure, but only momentarily, and promptly gave them back.

Well, it didn’t matter anyways, because before he could even turn the knob, the door opened, and Robby was treated to the sight of someone who had even less motivation to lie to him.

Dana stepped out of the room, shutting the door behind her, and gave Robby a look that, despite no words being spoken, seemed to say ‘calm your tits’.

“Took you long enough, Robinavitch,” she spoke, in that dry, sarcastic tone she always used when she was hiding how she really felt about something. “Thought the kid was gonna look like you before you came and checked on him.”

“Hey, I got a little sidetracked, what can I say?’ he replied, eyes dodging hers and hands finding the pockets of his scrubs. “I’m only an attending physician in a Level One Trauma Center in the downtown area of a major city on the Fourth of July. Not like that could keep someone busy or anything.”

“Good one,” Dana replied, unsmiling, and mirthless. “Y’know, if this whole doctor thing fails for you, I’m sure you’d kill some standup. Give it a try on that sabbatical.”

“I was just about to leave for it, actually, but Santos told me to come. She said he was doing better. Told me that he’s passing his neuro checks and talking to people now, which, gotta say, is better than before.”

“He is better than before, that much is true,” Dana concurred, eyes casting downwards to scan the clipboard in her hands with a soft sigh, “but he’s not quite back yet. Prep yourself.”

“For what? She said he was fine-”

“And he is! The kid’s stable, he’s not gonna die, he’s just…well, you read his bracelet. It’s vasogenic edema triggering a metabolic PCS crash. He’s foggy, hazy, a little dysarthric, and very, very ataxic. We’re keeping him at fall risk and NPO, just in case that edema progresses into something much worse.”

Dana paused for a moment, turning to look Robby in the face again. Her eyes were flickering with something akin to motherly concern.

“He’s…he’s gapping,” she continued, voice softer. “Doesn’t really sound like himself right now. He starts sentences he doesn’t finish, takes a second to understand things, stuff like that. A bit more emotional, too. Got frustrated earlier. Had a fall because he didn’t notice that he was a fall risk, and said he just wanted to know where he was. Very particular about knowing where he was. Then…he was sad. Sad, and a little distant.”

Robby was silent, face turning towards the floor. He couldn’t bear to look at Dana anymore.

His hand, still tucked in the pocket of his scrubs, gripped the bracelet loosely, thumbing the plaque like he could rub the words away.

“How the fuck did I let this happen, Dana?”

“Because you’re human. Because we all are. Because Whitaker’s an adult, who willingly chose to take a dangerous job, knowing the damage he had. And, well, because we can’t protect everyone all the time!”

“I’m not asking for everyone, though,” he began, the words so quiet and low he was almost mumbling, “just in here. And by the looks of things, I’ve failed already, and now, I’m leaving, and failing again. I just thought that maybe I could leave it better than I found it, and I didn’t. Al-Hashimi’s not fit to run this place, Mohan’s a mess, Langdon and Santos look and sound like they want to kill each other, King's still not adjusting right, Jesse got taken by ICE, and Whitaker almost fucking died, So, yeah, Dana, I failed. A lot.”

“You failed? This place is one giant failure! Everyone in here fails! Shit, if you failed, I failed, too! I mean, what happened to the kid is more my fault than yours. I should’ve checked on that drunk man in South 14, not Whitaker. I know how to handle 'drunk & disorderly's much better than he does. I'm used to assholes! Ask Doug Driscoll! Don’t feel special, Robinavitch. We fail. We do. But we get back up.”

She brought a hand to rest on his shoulder.

“And don’t worry about us,” she continued. "We’ll all manage until you come back. We always do. Now, go in there and see Whitaker already, before he keels over from the sadness."

As he walked towards the door, Dana chuckled a little, stepping aside.

“He asked for you, I hope you know,” she mused. “You, specifically. By name.”

“He did?”

A weak, weary smile was beginning to play on the corner of Dana’s lips.

“Yeah. He did. Got really sad when you didn’t come earlier. Kept asking for you. Said he needed to tell you something before you left.”

His heart skipped a beat at those words. Maybe he needed to be admitted too, for purely psychological reasons (outside of, y'know, the plans he had for later today), for ‘having the most ill-advised middle school-ass crush on your resident’ disorder. Or, maybe he could throw it back to the 70’s, where homosexual tendencies were classed in the DSM-5 still.

His hands fidgeted with the handle of the door, feeling the weight of the keys in his coat pocket like a ball and chain. They were, in a sense, a physical reminder of every mistake he’d ever made, the way he planned to fix them, and his inability to do anything except make more of them, apparently.

Patch the holes.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Robinavitch, open the damn door already!”

Dana’s hand grabbed the handle just above where his own grip was, and did the task for him. As usual, Dana was the patron saint of everything good.

The door swung open, and Dana gave Robby a quick look and pulled a finger to her lips, pointing to the sign taped on the curtains.

PT ON TOTAL BRAIN REST: NO VISITATION

FOR NEURO CHECKS, PLEASE SPEAK QUIETLY

REFRAIN FROM SPIKING PT’S HEART RATE

MACHINES MUTED, CHECK VISUALS ONLY

“Hey, kid,” Dana called softly into the silent space, with the tone she only used with patients she especially liked, “I’m back. Got a visitor for you. Extra-special.”

“Hm,” a voice, someone, responded weakly from the inside. "...m'kay."

Okay, okay, no, he couldn’t do this, he really couldn't do this, because the second that voice hit his ears, that strained, shaky little noise, he knew, deep down, that this wasn’t a hole he could fix. His brain didn't think the name 'Whitaker' at first, because it was an incongruency; Dr. Dennis Whitaker was supposed to be treating people in ER beds, not be in one himself.

Whitaker was headstrong, stubborn, and a little awkward, but also the most naturally talented doctor Robby had ever met. He was kind, and empathetic, and charming, and his voice was equally expressive and solid and dependable. He was a light. He was an anchor in the worst of shifts. He was something to look forward to, to look for, to seek.

He wasn't supposed to sound like that, slurry and weak. He’d fucked up too far, and now Whitaker was broken.This was too much for him to fix.

It was his fault, too, despite anything that Santos or Dana said or could ever say. He’d heard the conversation, and he’d let him take that patient. Shit, he was the one who told Mohan to hand him off in the first place! No, all of this was his fault. To be in here, to look Whitaker in the face, was to face everything he’d done wrong, which was something he couldn’t do. His hands itched for his keys again.

Robby heard rustling from the bed, and as Dana’s hands carefully pulled back the blackout curtains that coated the room in darkness, he looked to the door. Dana beat him to the punch, though; a hand, small but strong and calloused, found his shoulder, pushing him forwards. Something was shoved into his hands: a clipboard.

He stumbled for a minute, and mouthed a quick ‘what the hell’ to Dana, who had now found a spot to stand outside the blackout curtains. His feet were anchored to the floor as he was forced to look at the figure in the bed, who turned to look at him in turn.

Robby’s stomach turned.

Because, truly, this really had to be hell.

God, if you’re there, he thought, please see that I’m trying still.

Chapter Text

Robby’s eyes worked expeditiously, piecing together the picture in front of him.

The person in the bed in front of him was, indeed, Whitaker.

Dana (as she usually was) was right, and Santos (as she sometimes was) was also right. Whitaker wasn’t dead. The drunken, coked-out asshole hadn’t killed him. The eyes that bore into him, those kind, deep pools of blue, were the same ones they’d always been. Seeing him, seeing his face, feeling that presence, had been enough to dissuade him.

His lungs took in another deep, settling breath, because he’d been such an idiot about this.

God, those eyes, that face, that look of earnestness…he could melt, truly, because as much as he looked just a touch more small and pathetic than usual, Whitaker was still himself. Whitaker was still there, and his eyes were now open, and his face was still moving and changing and reacting, and the strong, inquisitive gaze of those eyes fell into his for a moment, and he swore he did melt.

He was alive. He was conscious again. He was breathing, steadily, completely. He didn’t have an intracranial bleed. He wasn’t comatose. He was alive, alive, alive.

He wasn’t like Adamson had been.

It took a quiet, charged moment for Robby to even attempt to speak as the relief and shame piled into him, all at once. The words stuck to his tongue for what felt like a century; a quiet, still, stuffy century.

“Hey,” he finally spoke, tone soft and quiet enough to heed Dana’s warning. “Just wanted to come check on you. See how you were doing in here.”

Whitaker did not respond, and his expression held something resembling concern. Robby instead felt the crushing weight of Whitaker’s concentration being focused solely on him. He was considering him, evidently; scanning, watching, staring, like he was a puzzle to be put together, or a patient to be diagnosed. He felt those wide, careful blue eyes rake his form up and down.

Lord, he did still look small, in a way beyond just his physical appearance. Whitaker, especially in recent months, was not skinny or waifish; instead, he had this almost unspoken strength about him, in the swell of his arms and the curves of his shoulders. Robby had him beat on height, sure, but that's not the be-all end-all measure of a person. Whitaker wasn't weak.

But right now? With his mannerisms, those widened, careful eyes, the endearing messiness to his curls, his focused but slightly absent expression, the lack of his usual scrubs, and the scale of the bed to his body, he looked…well.

To be quite frank, Robby thought he looked adorable, if not a little pitiable. Strangely, the words puppy-like came to mind; the eyes, he decided. It had to be those eyes.

“Y-you’re…you’re leaving,” Whitaker finally spoke, his voice shaky and slightly slurred; he sounded drunk, almost, with a pronounced level of dysarthria. “T-the coat, that-that’s your coat, and your bag, and…and you’re gonna…you’re gonna leave.”

Wow, Robby thought, he got me immediately. Too smart for his own good.

“Hey, not yet, look, I’m-”

“N-no, no-no, y-you liar, sssshit, I’m-I…I didn’t…t-too…too late..I asssked, I asked, a-and you didn’t listen, you-you didn’t lissssten…”

Robby moved to set his bag down, and stole a look at Dana, who was waiting outside the curtain. She gave him a death glare, and mouthed ‘fix this, you idiot’, before ushering him to step closer to Whitaker’s bedside with a wave of her hands, and stepping out of the room. The door locked behind her with a soft click.

“Calm down. I didn’t leave yet, did I? I’m still here.” He moved to step closer.

It was hard to say he wasn’t leaving, or hadn’t been planning to, when he was dressed in clothes for riding, packed up, and still holding his keys in the pocket of his jacket. Said keys jingled in his pocket traitorously as he attempted a step, a ching-ching-ching of betrayal. He was caught in the lie before he could even begin to tell it.

Whitaker’s eyes furrowed with further concentration as the noise hit his ears, looking like a cat who just heard a vacuum cleaner. Clearly, the implication wasn’t gone from his mind.

“No, no-no-no, Robby, y-you, you’re not-not listening, you c-can’t, ‘s, ‘s…no, you ssshouldn’t go, ‘s bad, ‘s not…’s not…I didn’t…you’re-you’re tired, s’not...good, you c-could, could crash, and…my…I-I can’t…ugh, FUCK-”

He watched as Whitaker’s hands balled into fists, the tips of his fingers digging into his palms, and his heart rate began to spike. His face scrunched in apparent frustration, or effort, or pain, maybe. It wasn’t apparent which. His breathing was getting shallower, too, from the panic.

Shit, it’s a sympathetic storm. He keeps going like that, and that vasogenic edema’s gonna get so much worse. He could still die. He could still die, and he’s panicking about me leaving.

He’s gonna die from worrying about me.

Robby quickly grabbed the wheeled stool in the room and pulled it close to the bed, watching the numbers on the monitor climb with a new lump forming in his throat.

“M’ not stupid,” Whitaker continued, eyes dodging his now and scrunching shut, his tone higher and more desperate, “‘m not stupid, everyone…ev-everyone thinksss that f-for sssome reason, r-righ’ now, b-but…’m fine, ‘m fine, ‘m a f-fuckin’ doctor, ss’just my, my fffuckin’ mouth, it…it doesn’t- it won’t w-work, s’, s’sssticky, and ‘m too late, and you’re, y-you’re not comin’ b-back, y-”

“Whitaker-”

“No, s-shut up, sshhut up, Robby, y-you need to-”

“-Whitaker, hey-”

“NO, no-no-no, l-listen, listen to m-”

“Dennis.”

Without thinking and very much against what clinical protocol would suggest, Robby grabbed both of Whitaker’s wrists, holding them in his own hands, and stilled them, pulling them so that Whitaker was forced to turn towards him, with a level of force and speed he hadn’t intended.

Those big, beautiful blue eyes widened once more, finding his, slightly wet from nascent tears. His mouth hung open for a moment, quivering slightly, but no more words came out. His eyes darted around for a moment, looking for something to focus on, but he eventually gave up and resigned his gaze to the floor.

Adorable, Robby thought, but also, at this moment, concerning.

“Hey, look at me,” he began, his voice soft, low and stable (in direct contrast to how he currently felt), providing that sense of grounding he knew Whitaker needed. “Look in my eyes. I didn't leave yet. You're not too late. I’m not gonna leave, and I’m going to listen to you. That is a promise. But you need to do something for me first."

Whitaker nodded, hands still clenched tight and eyebrows still tensed. He was clearly still in some form of pain from the swelling in his head, which he had just worsened from crying. There was an expression he’d never seen before in those eyes: sadness, as usual, but a deep, almost instinctual fear.

The words ‘puppy-like’ came back to his brain. That was something to unpack later, though, in a much different, much more private moment.

“Give me a nice, big breath. Fill your lungs all the way up, hold, then release. Like you’re filling a balloon.”

Again, he nodded, and attempted a shaky breath; it died a touch before completion, but it was an attempt. He was listening, with whatever part of his brain was letting him do so.

“There you go,” he said, the words leaving his mouth with a level of sweetness he hadn’t anticipated or consciously intended, “That’s it. Just like that. Fill your lungs all the way.”

Another thought entered Robby’s mind vaguely. How long had he been like this? How long had he been waiting for me, stewing, panicking, hindering his own recovery? How much had I fucked him over without even meaning to?

“M’....’m s-ssorry,” he choked out as his lungs emptied, pleading, “but...I n-needed to t-tell yo-”

“And I will listen, I promise you. I’m right here, and I’m not gonna let go. But before we can talk, I need you to give me another deep breath. That one was so perfect. I wanna see another.”

Whitaker tried again, letting it get a little further. His chest fluttered slightly, breath hitching at the top. A strained noise escaped his lips and the breath hitched again; throat irritation from the panic and crying, Robby guessed.

“Perfect, Whitaker. Keep going. One more.”

Through the touch of his thumb on Whitaker's wrists he could feel his heartbeat again through the cephalic vein, that thump thump thump signaling he was still alive, and with each breath the shaking frame in front of him took in, he could feel that thump thump thump slow back down ever-so-slightly. It was something he’d always taken for granted, this feeling; this ability to find a pulse.

A wave of the basal urge to protect swelled in his heart, his chest, and his mind. Somehow, all of this being his fault wasn’t important enough to dwell on right now. All that was important was getting Whitaker to be safe again, to be sane again, to be better again. The guilt was subplanted, at least momentarily, by some combination of clinician’s concern and the horrific, shameful feelings he’d tried and failed so desperately to suppress.

Robby knew this peace was temporary, though. He knew he had to actually calm him down, not just take the brunt of the panic away, and he also knew that Whitaker was too smart and too fucking stubborn to fall for any of the basic de-escalation techniques.

Whitaker was an observant person. It made him an incredible doctor, yes, but right now, it was a problem. He knew the protocol too well to listen to it, and he’d just shake it off and continue to spiral about Robby leaving (Jesus Christ, Robby really was the cause of every problem ever, wasn’t he).

He knew he had to distract him, somehow, just to get him not to quite literally worry himself to death.

“‘S…s’stupid,” Whitaker mumbled, still sounding desperate, “‘m not, not stupid, y-you think, you think ‘m stupid, an-and pathetic, I-I know...I know, I look l-like s-shit, an-and sound like…a-a fuckin’ t-toddler, but, ‘m not, ‘m not, ‘m a doctor, ‘m not dumb, I just-”

“I don’t think you’re stupid,” Robby began, gears turning in his mind. “Actually, I think you’re very smart, and very right. More than you know.”

Robby thought back to something from earlier today: a trauma, with both him and Dr. Al-Hashimi in the bay, along with the students and residents fluttering around like little butterflies. Her face had been stone in the face of someone who was dying, and she’d turned to the students, asking them questions as the trauma had escalated. They’d been shocked, yes, but she was adamant.

‘This is a teaching hospital,’ she’d said. ‘Every moment is teachable.’

“Y-you…” Whitaker finally fumbled back, “but, b-but, you n-need to liste-”

“And I will. But before that, tell me three reasons why I asked you to do that.”

“...wh-what, I don’t…why-”

“Because you’re right. You’re not stupid. You’re an R1 now, Dr. Whitaker, and you’re my R1, as a matter of fact. And this is a teaching hospital, isn’t it? Isn’t every moment teachable?”

Whitaker simply stared at him, searching his face for a hint of sarcasm like he was trying to find a secret in the corners of his face.

“Say it’s not you I’m asking about. Say…say a patient comes into the ER, and presents with brain swelling after a blunt force trauma. They begin to fall into a sympathetic storm, becoming tachycardic, tachypneic, and dysarthric. You, the physician, tell them to breathe deeply through their nose and mouth, and coach them through it. Why? Give me three reasons.”

He paused, eyebrows narrowing and eyes focusing. He was quiet, taking in more and more solid breaths, and Robby felt a wave of slight relief hit him; Whitaker was calming down. All it took was taking advice from Al-Hashimi (which, to be fair, wasn’t something he thought he’d do).

“S’...umm, ANS,” he managed, tongue and mind finding purchase eventually, “to…to regulate. Regulation of…of ANS, t-to…sssstop the s-swell, to, uhm, limit…limit ICP.”

“And?”

“And, uhm…air. s’air, the airways, it sssshows, shows that…that it’s w-working. Working ssstill. No, n-no FBAO, or…or, uhm, RSI needed.”

“Good. Very good. One more.”

“Uhm…uh, V-Vagus s-stim? Vagus, yeah, t-to sstop-”

“Ah-ah,” he corrected, keeping his tone comforting and looking directly into Whitaker’s face. “Vagus stim is part of the ANS regulation. You got that already. Try again.”

Whitaker’s face suddenly contorted in pain, frustration, or some mix of the two. He let out a small sound, a whine, as his hands bunched further into balls, the tips of his fingers digging further into his palms. His heart rate threatened to climb again.

“Dr. Whitaker, keep going, you’re almost there.”

“I-I don’, I don’ know, R-Robby, I can’t, I-I can’t, s’not-”

“Yes you can.”

“No, n-no, s’not, s’not working, s’not working, m-my head, my head, I can’t…”

He’s gonna draw blood at this rate, Robby thought. But maybe I could kill two birds with one stone here.

He let one of his hands drift from the grip on Whitaker’s wrist, moving upwards, to find purchase on the familiar ground of his shoulders. God, it really was the perfect fit, he thought, with the way his hand felt at home there, like it’d been carved out of marble with him in mind.

“Hey. Whitaker. Come back to me.”

He gave it a soft, encouraging little shake, and then a grounding squeeze. The effect was almost immediate; Whitaker stopped shaking for a moment.

“Do me a favor real quick. We’re gonna try something. All I need you to do is listen, nothing else.”

He nodded once more; always eager to please, even now. His face took on an expression closer to pouting again; still confused, sad, and angry, but stable enough to listen. It was a good step. As good a time as any to guide him a little, especially mentally.

“...m’kay,” Whitaker choked out.

“You are an absolutely brilliant doctor, but I need you to turn your ‘doctor’ brain off for a second. Don't think about a diagnosis, and just think about listening. If you’re listening to me right now, show me. On your next breath in, unclench your fists. Let go a little. Just a little bit’s all I need from you, to show me you understand what I asked. Show me you’re listening. Show me you hear me.”

He looked puzzled, but did so, and slowly, softly, the tips of his fingers dug themselves out of his palms, leaving small indents. Robby felt that wave swell even further; was it clinical relief? the pride of mentorship? Was it paternal, maybe?

More than paternal, if he was honest with himself?

Robby chose his next words very carefully, speaking them softly, but emphatically.

“Beautiful. Thank you, Whitaker, you’re a really good listener. You listened. You showed me that you were listening. You listened, you showed me, you responded. Thank you.”

For a moment, Whitaker looked away (embarrassed, or confused, maybe) and his eyes darted to the far, still-darkened corner of the room. However, after a moment, a light seemed to go off in the recesses of his brain, fighting against the pressure of the edema.

Those blue eyes lit up with a passion, and an almost child-like excitement.

GCS, Whitaker mouthed, GCS.

“GCS...I, uhm, i-it’s GCS,” he stated, a touch more solidly than everything else he’d said thus far. “I-It’s a test. For GCS, to, u-uhm, to sk-skip a neuro. V-verbal command…command response, f-for physical action, to verbal, the, the listening, cause, cause y-you said ‘listen’, s’-”

“And that’s number three!” he stated, giving Whitaker a large, proud smile and another squeeze on the shoulder. “See? I knew you could do it. You were perfect, like I knew you would be. You just had to trust yourself, and take a breath.”

For the first time since this disaster began, since Whitaker had left the fishbowl with the clipboard from hell, Robby got a gift. One he treasured. One he looked forward to each day he entered this place. One he was so, so afraid he’d never get to witness again:

Whitaker’s smile.

It was small, weak, and a little guilty-looking, but there was a smile on his face.

“T-thanks,” he mumbled, "I'm… I'm sssorry, sorry, I didn’t- didn’t get it ssoon-”

“Ah-ah, no,” Robby interjected, rubbing his finger softly on the traces of exposed skin on his shoulder from the gown like Whitaker was a worry stone. “New rule. No apologies from you. You have nothing to be sorry for, and all it’s gonna do is make you worry, and recover even slower.”

“But I-I’m sorry, though, c-cause I, I s-scared Dana, an’- and you, and I…I didn’t…I f-fell, t-the yellow, couldn’t…couldn’t sssee, and I, t-the-”

“Dr. Dennis Whitaker, as both the attending physician of the ED that’s treating you and as your direct superior, I forbid you. No more apologies. That’s an order.”

“S’...that’sss not fffair, ‘m fine, ‘m fine, you, you can’t-”

“I can’t? Well, that’s news to me, because last I checked, this is my emergency department. I run this place, and as long as you’re in this room and under this roof, you listen to me, whether you’re working or not. Understand?”

“W-well, well, I’ll leave, I’ll leave, then, I’ll c-call an Uber, an’, and I’ll go. AMA.”

“Yeah, uh-huh, sure you will. Go ahead and call that Uber. You could call a hundred Ubers, see if it helps. Even if Dana left, and I left, and everyone in this building left, and you somehow managed to turn off your own fall alarm, you still wouldn’t be leaving, because you couldn’t walk to go get into those Ubers. We can talk about a discharge when you can stand up without immediately falling over, how’s that?”

Robby received, in turn, an eye-roll, the type you’d expect from a teenager who was just told they couldn’t go to a party. Whitaker gave a huff, and his mouth formed something like a pouty scowl.

Pouting. Whitaker was actually, honest-to-God, pouting.

Clinically and objectively, this was a bad sign, because to an untrained observer, it might indicate a degree of anosognosia or even trauma-induced regress. But this was Whitaker he was talking to. Him being stubborn was a relief, in some ways. It showed he was still himself. Stubborn, headstrong, self-sacrificial Whitaker, who knew full well what he’d done and was just being stubborn about it.

Or, did he? Did he not know, actually?

“Whitaker,” Robby prompted, in a voice much softer than before, “did Dana or Santos ever tell you what your diagnosis actually was?”

“No,” he stated blankly, still pouting, “They w-wouldn’t tell me. They…they didn’t think I n-needed it. Ssssaid I’d just…I just needed t-to, uhm, to ssleep.”

“Do you want to know?”

Those eyes, those fucking eyes, turned back to face him, pleading and big and beautiful and desperate, and latched onto his again. It never seemed to have less of an effect, no matter how many times he’d felt that familiar pressure of being watched by them.

“...please,” Whitaker asked, in a high, cloying, almost whiny, tone.

Lord, kill me now, Robby thought at the sight, because I think I won’t be able to hold myself back any longer if he looks like that and begs.

Robby thumbed through the clipboard, pulling his glasses onto his eyes, but he didn’t really need to look. He was the one who’d diagnosed him. He knew what was wrong.

As much as it pained him.

“Well, Mr. Whitaker,” he mused, taking the tone he would when talking to a patient. “Here’s the deal.”

“You sustained blunt force head trauma via aggravated assault, resulting in epistaxis, followed by a strike to the frontal lobe, followed by a fall from standing that caused a third hit to the occiput, resulting in a coup-contrecoup mechanism of trauma to the brain. This triggered mild vasogenic edema localized in the frontal lobe, a complex acute-on-chronic TBI, and a PCS flare. As such, you’ve been admitted for monitoring, confined to total brain rest, labelled an extreme fall risk due to witnessed ataxia, and placed on a 24-to-48-hour hold, with discharge being dependent on the return of gross motor function."

“I…uhm, it-it’s m-mild edema?” he said, with a speed that made Robby think he’d stopped listening after the words ‘mild’ and ‘edema’.

“Yeah, that’s-”

“That’s…’s it? Ssso, so no bleeding? Just, just ssswelling? So, I…I can go, then.”

Robby balked for a second as those words hit him. ‘No bleeding’, to Whitaker, seemed to mean he was fine. How? He was a doctor. He knew what edema meant, or at least, should know.

‘Just swelling’? Was he actually fucking serious?

“Whitaker, no. That’s not how this works at all. You, of all people, should know that.”

“B-but, okay, okay, like, s’fine, s’fine. N-no bleeds. C-can't believe I-I fuckin' passed out fffrom just that. J-just another one, then, an-and I can sssleep some, and t-take a fffew Excedrin, and I’ll be, I’ll be g-good, I c-could, I could work on, like Ssssunday-”

“Jesus fucking Christ, kid, you could’ve died!”

The words were a little louder than he’d intended, and Whitaker flinched, physically recoiled, his face construing in pain again. Robby’s hands were left suspended mid-air from where they’d been touching him, awkwardly held up.

“I didn’t, I d-didn’t, I’m here, here, ssstill, you can’t, I’m ff-fine-”

“If you keep saying you’re fine, I’ll add anosognogia to that diagnosis list of yours, and put you on a mandatory 3-day psych hold for ‘inability to comprehend potential danger to self’. Do you know what you looked like three hours ago? Do you understand that you could still die from this? You're not working on Sunday. Fuck, you're not gonna be working for a while, the way you're talking to me right now! Because no, you’re not fine. Say it as much as you want, but you can't 'I'm fine' your way out of vasogenic edema. You're a massive ICH risk, still…”

If there was ever a time to be an asshole, it was now, while Whitaker was already mad at him, he supposed. Time to make this even worse.

“...especially with a history like yours.”

North 10 dropped into a still, stinging silence.

Whitaker’s face went through a flash of emotions as the words hit his brain, changing and morphing and twisting, from shock to sadness to anger to betrayal to fear, to something Robby couldn’t place, before landing on pissed.

“...Y-you saw,” Whitaker spoke, the words quiet and loaded.

“I did,” Robby replied blankly.

“An-and ssso you know.”

“I do.”

“...I don’t w-wanna talk ab-”

“Ohhhhh no, Dr. Whitaker, we’re not playing this game anymore.”

He reached into his pocket, and pulled out the bracelet, holding it up so that Whitaker could see it. Immediately, Whitaker’s heart rate climbed again on the monitor; fuck, this was a problem.

“You’re explaining this,” Robby barked, almost yelling out of pure instinct and perhaps something more, “because if you had this when you started working here, and had it on the whole time, and didn’t tell anyone, including your roommate, that you had 20 previous brain injuries, you endangered yourself. Needlessly. You risked your life, and you betrayed everyone’s trust, including mine. So what was it? What’s the reason? What secret was more important than your own life, Whitaker?”

Whitaker was silent.

Whitaker was shaking.

Whitaker was tensing his hands like he wanted to punch someone.

“I…I was, I was a ssstupid kid,” he finally said, quietly, like a lie. “S-stupid, stupid kid. That’ss it.”

Bullshit.

“Uh huh. That’s it?”

“Yeah. Th-there. Happy?”

Robby bit the inside of his lip. Clearly, there was more here, something he could feel, and sense, but couldn’t get to without Whitaker’s help. Currently, he wasn’t in a state to be giving it. Currently, if Robby pushed any further, he might just kill him himself, which kind of defeated the purpose of all of this.

This promise he’d made.

This sick, twisted, evil, pain-in-his-ass promise.

His gut said ‘press him’. His heart said ‘press him’. His hands, torso, legs, lungs, bones, veins, everything, all said ‘press him’, except for one thing.

His brain, which said ‘let the kid go for now.’ It won.

Robby ran his thumb across that accursed plaque again, feeling the tiny bumps of the engraving. This bracelet, this plaque, those 4 lines of text, had done so, so, so much hurt, to both of them.

And maybe it doesn’t have to do that anymore, he thought.

“Okay then,” he stated, settling his hands on his thighs, voice back to normal. “How about we make a deal?”

Whitaker shot him a cocked eyebrow, but didn’t protest. His hands still clenched together, but it was looser, less refined.

“You said you don’t want me to leave, as much as I might want to. I told you that you can’t leave, because you are physically incapable of doing so, but you obviously don’t feel like listening to reason. That's fine. Well, it's not fine, actually, but it can be. Clearly, though, this isn’t gonna work, with us both yelling at each other, because Dana's gonna come back in here and kill me herself for spiking your heart rate. So let’s try something else. Let’s make a deal.”

“F-ffine,” he spat back like the words tasted bad, “‘kay.”

“Do something for me. Close your eyes and hold out your hand.”

Whitaker looked at him funny for a second, then obeyed, unclenching his right hand and holding it out. Robby rustled with something, trying to be as quiet as possible in doing what he was about to do. There was a silence to the moment, an energy that couldn’t quite be described, but eventually, Robby’s hands closed over Whitaker’s, warm and complete and solid.

“You can open,” he finished.

He opened his palms, drawing his hands away, letting Whitaker see what he’d given him: his Star of David necklace, the one he’d worn like it was part of his body, every day for the past twenty years. It sat in his palm, gold glinting slightly in the low light of the room.

“Robby, w-what are you-”

“Put it on, and I’ll explain.”

Whitaker tried to put it on himself for a moment. His hands shook from the exertion of raising his arms, and his face shifted with effort and frustration. Robby chuckled, and leaned over him.

“Here, let me help you, butterfingers.”

There was a moment of intimacy between them; a soft, peaceful moment, where Robby could feel the soft puffs of Whitaker’s breath on his face.

“This,” he began, almost whispering into his ear as he worked, “is a promise. From me. It’s my way of showing you that I’m not gonna leave you behind. I do need to go home at some point, kid. I gotta change, and put my stuff away, and get something to eat. But as long as that’s on your neck, you’ll know that I’ll be coming back, so I can come get it back from you. This is also me listening to you, like I said I would, and promising that I’m not leaving for my sabbatical tonight. I heard you. I listened.”

He tried his best to keep his thoughts focused on the movements of latching the necklace, but holy fuck was it difficult to ignore those lips, that face, the tiny freckles on Whitaker’s cheeks that you could only see if you looked super, super, close, but he finished, the clasp catching.

Robby stepped back, and looked at Whitaker. He really looked at him. Considered him.

It just looked right, he decided, the gold against the soft pallor of Whitaker’s neck, and suddenly, he doesn’t think he’d ever need to wear it again, because he’d much rather see it on him. He smiled for a moment; it was really, really hard for Robby to stay mad at him, despite everything that had happened in the past 24 hours.

Robby watched those blue eyes, the ones he swore he’d seen in his dreams before, lapping at the corners of his senses like the ocean, before looking down and tracing the gold edges of his necklace.

He had a new reason to come back: getting to see Whitaker wearing something of his.

His, his, his.

“Okay, my turn.”

He palmed Whitaker’s bracelet, before stretching the silicone, and affixing it to his left wrist with a little snap against his skin. He held his wrist up and out, moving his arm over the bed so that Whitaker could see the little Star of Life on the bracelet.

“This, on the other hand, is a request. For you. You can't leave this room without wearing this bracelet, so this is me asking you not to. It’s me asking that as long as I wear this, you’ve gotta stay in here, and listen to your doctors, and don’t try anything stupid, and actually let yourself heal instead of trying to shrug this off.”

“Fine, f-fine, oka-”

“I’m not finished. It’s also a promise that someday, you’re gonna tell me the real reason you wear it, and how you got to this point in the first place. No ‘dumb kid’ bullshit. You and I both know you’re too smart and too much of a liar for that to be the case.”

Whitaker hesitated, looking away for a moment, before doing something that made Robby’s heart race in turn.

His fingers, the ones Robby had seen do the most complicated and difficult procedures with the skills of someone much older than the person they belonged to, reached out to trace his arm, the pads of his fingertips ghosting over his skin like he was made of glass.

Whitaker loosely gripped his wrist, thumb rubbing the silver plaque, and his heart swelled again, in something he could no longer pretend was simply paternal pride.

“Promise,” Whitaker said, solidly, like he meant it, the slurring abating for a moment.

God, Robby idly mused, still not sure of you, but thanks. For this. You saw. You listened.

You showed me you listened.

Chapter Text

None of this was making sense, and Jack Abbot hated it.

From the moment he’d walked into the prison he called a workplace for the second time in 24 hours, the air had felt different; the scent of chaos and panic permeating the space even more than usual.

Strangely, he didn’t see Robby. He assumed he just missed him, that he’d already left on that bike of his. A shame.

You couldn’t say he hadn’t tried. He’d call him later when he had the chance, just…just to make sure. That darkness in Robby’s eyes he’d seen hours earlier wasn’t one he liked. At all.

Shaking the thought, Jack walked up to the first person he saw (and trusted) at the fishbowl, Dana, and a question slipped off his tongue like water laced with salt.

“What in the fuck happened here?" he asked, shrugging like he couldn't believe it (he very much could). "I leave for like, what, 4 hours, and I come back to D-Day?”

Her eyes didn’t meet his; she was focused on the clipboard in her hands. Whatever was on it was clearly of importance.

“He awakens,” she greeted dryly, giving him a small, sarcastic smile. “Nice to see you back, Sleeping Beauty. Computers are back, but we’re catching up still. Coulda used you here.”

“You already did. Extensively. Remember my field trip to West Penn?”

“Yeah, and I bet you had the time of your life over there. It’s been hell on earth here.”

Jack chuckled.

“So nothing’s new, then.”

“Oh, don’t say that yet, we’re full of surprises today. Speaking of…”

She paused, turning to face Jack, and his eyes traced her face. There was something there, he noted; some kind of stress, a contingency, an expression she didn’t usually have.

“...I got a case. For you, or Shen, or a senior resident. No one below that. 26 year old male, blunt force head trauma with LOC, coup-contrecoup mechanism. CT showed vasogenic edema, and gliosis consistent with extensive trauma to the brain. Presents ataxic, dysarthric, photophobic, phonophobic, slight AMS. Wore a med ID stating he had 20 previous TBIs and chronic PCS, and was instructed to seek ER care for any further trauma. Admitted for Neuro-Obs, expected stay 24-48 hours, boarded in ED due to lack of beds in Neuro. North 10.”

He cocked an eyebrow, curious. This was too simple, too easy, and too little to prompt the look currently resting on Dana’s face.

“And?”

“And…strict brain rest, no visitors outside of Q1 neuro checks, extreme fall risk, NPO in case the edema worsens to surgical need. Need me to draw a picture or something?”

“You said this is for me, or Shen, or a senior. Why? I mean, boarding and neuro rest? Sounds like a case I could give to a med student.”

She rolled her eyes for a second, scoffing.

“Yeah, try that, see what happens. I’d say take it yourself, actually, unless you want Robby to personally find and kill you.”

“Point taken,” he replied, nodding, his interest now piqued. "Where is he, anyways?"

"Left already," Dana replied, deadpan, "but he'll be back. Trust me on that. Idiot went and made a promise to someone, thank God."

Jack paused, thinking it over. She was omitting something from this case, purposefully, trying to make him guess. And a 'promise'? Robby didn't make promises. Hell, he'd asked him to 'call if it gets too dark' earlier, and he's simply stayed silent. What 'promise'? To who? He didn’t feel like playing the game yet; his shift had just started, he’ll have you know.

“Okay Dana, I’ll bite. What’s the catch? What’s his deal? Is he a school shooter, or something? Convict? Does he have some insane backstory I gotta know that changes everything?”

She didn’t say anything. She just handed him the clipboard.

Jack quickly scanned it, eyes darting across the lines. Immediately, something jumped out at him. Sure, it’d been a second since he’d had to read a T-sheet for handoffs, but he thought he knew well enough to know where the names of patients went.

“Hey, this is written up wrong,” he began, “you’ve got both Santos and Whitaker down as assigned doctors, and Whitaker’s name is in the wrong spot. You’re missing the patient's name.”

Dana didn’t react. Her face was uncharacteristically serious and unmoving.

“The T-sheet’s not wrong, Jack.”

He looked at the sheet again with new eyes, his eyebrows knitting together.

It was a 26 year old male, blunt head force trauma, and a fall from standing. LOC from a strike to the face from an intoxicated patient, followed by a hit to the frontal lobe, followed by a fall from standing.

'From a patient', he re-read, and the pieces fell together.

“Dana,” he stilled, voice suddenly sobering, “are you fucking serious?”

“Afraid so. Told you we’re hell right now.”

“God, yeah, you’re right, Robby would’ve killed me. His little golden boy junior resident got his shit rocked, and I wanted to hand him to a…”

Another detail caught his eye; one he’d noticed before, but hit a little harder now.

“...Wait, no, hold on a sec. You said the med ID listed 20 previous TBIs and chronic Post Concussion Syndrome. And…and Whitaker had this thing on? What, you expect me to believe that little do-no-wrong Huckleberry from middle-of-nowhere Nebraska has long-term chronic brain damage?”

“Well, believe it. He does. Had it the whole time, apparently.”

“Shit, okay, that’s…news to me, I guess. Do we know what from? Is he, like, hitting himself with hammers on his days off or something?”

“He won’t say. Won’t tell me. Won’t tell anyone. Robby tried to grill him earlier, spiked his heart rate so high I thought the kid was gonna keel over, and he still wouldn’t say. Hell, tell Santos about it, cause apparently, he didn’t even tell her, and they’re living together!”

Dana sighed.

“Clearly, it’s something. Something that’s messy, too, but, I mean, who really gives a shit right now? Damage is done. Just focus on treating him. He’s stable, mostly, but emotionally vulnerable. Don’t let him spiral, keep him calm, and he shouldn’t give you problems. Let that migraine cocktail work. And…don’t let him get worse. Keep an eye on him when you can.”

Jack bit the inside of his lip. This was starting to not make sense, and he liked this less and less.

“Gotcha, Dana,” he assured, giving her a quick tap on the shoulder. “I’ll take care of it.”

—-------------------—-------------------—-------------------—-------------------—-------------------—--------------

Things began to fall into place at 1:30.

Jack had kept to his word; he’d assigned Dr. Ellis to check in on the kid when she could, in between traumas and discharges and the usual banter that characterized the night shift. And, like she tended to be, Dana was right; he was entirely unproblematic, apparently, because he hadn’t heard anything from Ellis about him. Evidently, he just slept in between his checks, because Ellis barely seemed to be in that room. The migraine cocktail did its job wonderfully.

That reality and effectiveness was the reason why Jack really loved medicine: it made sense.

Jack Abbot was someone who liked sense. It’s why he chose medicine; medicine had paths, and descriptions, and answers, and responses to those answers. It was something he could see, something he could touch, and something he could solve. It was formulaic, in some ways.

So, when he finally, finally, got a minute to sit down at the fishbowl around 1 a.m., he thought he might begin to look for an answer for the patient in North 10.

“Hey, peepaw, taking five?” called a voice from the seat next to the one he was about to take, not even bothering to turn and face him.

Ellis was already sitting in front of one of the computers, with her legs facing the wrong way and her head resting against the back of it. Jack doesn’t think he could come up with a gayer way to sit in a chair if he tried.

Clearly, she’d found her moment, too, though. Good on her, Jack thought, because these moments are hard to come by. Especially when they were tits-deep in cleaning up day shift’s mess.

“Christ," he replied, "I’m not eighty-five, cool it.”

She gave him a noncommittal shrug, and a smirk.

“I only speak the truth, I dunno what to tell you.”

“Yeah, well, maybe don’t speak it, then,” he shot back, giving her the smallest, almost imperceptible raise of his lips that indicated he didn’t mind it, “but I do need something from you.”

“All ears, unc.”

“How’s our little basket case in North 10?”

“Whitaker? He’s fine. Passing his neuros. A little checked-out still, and slurring his words like he’s down 10 beers, but like, we got bigger shit to worry about than a spacey Huckleberry.”

She paused for a minute, chuckling slightly, finally turning to face Jack. When she spoke again, her voice sounded like that of a middle-aged woman spreading gossip over mimosas.

“He’s got Robby’s chain on his neck, by the way. Which could mean nothing.”

Jack paused, processing the information for about two seconds, before chuckling a little himself. A 'promise', Dana had said.

“Fuckin’ course he does. Wouldn’t put it past him.”

“Which one, Huckleberry, or Robby?”

“Both,” he scoffed, and Ellis chuckled again in turn.

“He's been acting a little werid, though,” Ellis continued, face suddenly drawing tighter. “Just a little. Like, when I woke him up for his last neuro check, he…apologized? Super quick, super scared-sounding, too, and it wasn’t to me. It was for somebody else, I think. Like he’d thought someone specific was walking in.”

There it is, Jack thought. The mess.

“Who was he talking to, then?”

“I dunno, could just be a Benadryl fever dream thing from the cocktail. He said ‘father’. Like, full-on ‘father’. Daddy issues, you think? Bad home? I mean, with his childhood being spent in butt-fuck nowhere Nebraska, it would track.”

Jack let out a low, long ‘hmmm’ at that, pensive. It took a second of thinking for him to speak again, weighing his words. The doctor in him, the analyst, wasn’t buying that.

“No. That’s too easy. ‘Daddy issues’ wouldn’t prompt that defensiveness.”

Ellis looked back to the computer she was typing on with another shrug, and Jack thanked himself internally for the choice of time to do this; she’d already been working on getting Whitaker’s new files into the computer system, apparently.

She scanned the patient file, and something seemed to jump out at her, because she cocked an eyebrow.

“Abbot, c’mere, look at this,” she began, waving him over to look at the screen. “I found something. ER visit… from 2018, looks like, at some place in Nebraska.”

“2018. So, he was 19, then?”

“18, actually. Says here.”

It was then that Jack took a second to scan the visit form, eyes moving a mile a minute.

‘ENCOUNTER SUMMARY–KRMC EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT

DATE: 02/12/2018

PATIENT: WHITAKER, DENNIS

DOB: 06/27/1999 (Age: 18)

PROVIDER: Dr. Richard Luther, MD

CHIEF COMPLAINT

LOC following a fall from height (approx. 4-5ft).

HISTORY OF PRESENT ILLNESS

Patient is a 18-y/o male brought at 2:37 A.M via EMS after being found unresponsive by roommate. Roommate reports patient fell from an elevated loft bed, striking head on hard surface. According to roommate, patient is a freshman at University of Nebraska at Kearney, and estranged from parents. Estimated LOC: 3–5 minutes. Upon arrival, patient was GCS 13 (E4, V4, M5), presenting with slurred speech, photophobia, and ataxia.’

“Hit his head,” Jack said idly, still scanning. “That tracks, I guess.”

“Yeah…” Ellis trailed, not really acknowledging what he’d said. Clearly, her brain was preoccupied.

It wasn’t until the imaging details that the both of them started to question this visit further, though.

'IMAGING RESULTS (CT HEAD - NON-CONTRAST):

Findings: No acute hemorrhage. Midline stable.

Impression: Noticeable chronic sequelae acknowledged. Evidence of repetitive encephalomalacia and gliosis in the cerebellar and occipital regions. Findings are consistent with repetitive-HIT (High Impact Trauma). Multiple old fractures in various stages of remodeling.

Clinical Correlation: Findings highly suggestive of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) precursor or severe Post Concussion Syndrome.’

There it is again, he thought again, biting the inside of his lip, there’s that repeated trauma.

“So, shit, he already had the TBIs at 18, then,” Ellis said. “How many, though? All 20, you think? At 18 years old?”

“Who knows for sure,” Jack replied, still quickly looking the form over. "Doesn't say on here."

There was something else. There had to be something else. 20 hits to the head doesn’t come from nowhere. His eyes jumped to the bottom of the page, to the ‘diagnoses’ section.

‘DIAGNOSES:

1. S06.0X1A: Concussion with loss of consciousness of 30 minutes or less, initial encounter.

2. G93.89: Other specified disorders of brain (Chronic Scarring/Gliosis).

3. R26.0: Ataxic gait.’

Still, even then, it wasn’t until he read the bottom one that he did a double-take.

‘4: Z62.810.’

He didn’t even need to read the second part, because he knew what that code was for:

‘Personal history of physical abuse in childhood.’

Holy shit, there it was. The mess. The problem.

“Ellis, hey, look at this,” he called, voice sobering, “The bottom one.”

There was a second of silence amongst them; uncomfortable, strained, silence. Even in the ever-noisy hell that was the ER, it felt like a blanket of ‘what the hell’ settled between them.

“Child abuse,” she spoke finally, sitting up and flipping the chair around to sit normally. “Fuck. Okay. So, yeah, not just ‘daddy issues’ then. That’s…shit, I feel bad now.”

“Don’t,” Jack quickly interjected. “Doesn’t help him if you do. Only thing we can do is-”

Something cut him off as he spoke.

A nursing note, buried halfway through the summary page. Innocuous enough that on his first pass, he’d missed it, but now with the benefit of a second scan, it caught his eye. Under the piles of meaningless checks, there was one, dated to 4 A.M., that meant something.

04:20: MANDATORY REPORT FILED. APS/Police notified (Note: Perpetrator currently incarcerated for repeated physical abuse of minors; due to the patient’s history/background, likely linked to this case.)

A link.

A fucking link.

If there was ever an answer to be found for the puzzle that was Dennis Whitaker, it was there.

“Hey-hey-hey, wait,” he almost spat out at Ellis, tone bordering on demanding. “See that nursing note at 4:20? There’s a link there. Click that.”

She obeyed, and the air in the room got a little colder as they both read the resulting page: an article from the Custer County Chief of Police, dated to August 4th, 2017.

The title and introduction alone was enough for them to realize how deep of a mess this was.

‘Authorities Shutter Local Church; Pastor Faces Multiple Charges of Child Abuse’

BROKEN BOW — This week, the Custer County Sheriff’s Office executed a search warrant at Sandhills Covenant Fellowship, resulting in the immediate boarding-up of the church and the arrest of the pastor, Marcus Sinclair, aged 53. The search confirmed the suspicion of both the police department and the greater community: Sinclair’s private tutoring sessions, offered to males aged 14-18, were fronts for physical, verbal, and emotional abuse.’

“Jesus Christ,” Ellis spoke, voice shaking, “So it wasn’t even his family, it was-”

“A pastor,” Jack finished. “‘Father’. You said he was afraid of a 'father'. He wasn’t afraid of his dad, it was this ‘Sinclair’ guy.”

“Do we…do we keep reading this? This is fucked. Like, really fucked.”

“What part of our jobs isn’t fucked, though?”

“No, Jack, I mean it. This is too much. We’re stepping too far. He’s a coworker-"

“And right now he’s a patient, Parker. There might be something in here that we can use to help him. If we know when and how he got those hits, we can figure out how best to treat him, and if slips into AMS again, it's good know where he thinks he is, and who he thinks he's talking to.”

The answer, he thought darkly. It’s here, it’s here, it’s here.

They continued.

‘The investigation was centered on a highly secretive program Sinclair called ‘13/24’: a reference to Proverbs 13:24. The program was offered by private request only to adolescent boys, conducted during the night within the main chapel.

Although Sinclair publicly characterized the sessions as "one-on-one scripture study for those in need of a direct, guiding hand", the nature of these sessions was far from ‘godly’. The sessions reportedly lasted up to three hours, held once a month over a two-year cycle, and included repeated blows with blunt objects paired with recitation of scripture.’

Jack traced the words with his tongue, in disbelief: ‘blows with blunt objects, once a month for two years.’

“No, Jack, fuck, seriously, this is…” Ellis began, voice trailing off.

“The answer,” he finished for her once more. “This is the answer. This is the thing he wouldn’t say.”

“Well, no shit! Who’s gonna be candid about this sort of thing? He was fucking abused, violently, for years, and your Hannibal Lecter ass wants to keep reading this? I don’t…this is invasive. I hate this. I actually hate this. I can't. I can't read that.”

Ellis turned away, flipper her chair around and leaning over, her face in her hands. Jack didn’t listen to Ellis as he leaned over and grabbed the mouse from her hand. Jack did not turn away, and Jack didn't stop looking. He kept reading, searching for the answer, and in a moment, he felt his stomach drop as his eyes traced the next paragraph.

Because for the first time, this all made sense, and for once, he wasn’t thankful for it.

’The investigation was spurred by growing concern from community members regarding a local youth who had been enrolled in the program for twenty months. Patrons of Sandhills Covenant Fellowship noted a profound shift in the young man’s personality, describing him as increasingly distant and absent when spoken to, and that he seemed to sway when standing.

When questioned, the young man’s parents ascertained that he ‘was just like that sometimes’, and that ‘the pastor was a good man doing a good thing’. The young man’s older brothers stated that he had ‘always been a little odd’ and is ‘prone to being dramatic’.

Despite these observations and the mounting evidence, the victim has reportedly declined to provide testimony or participate in the state’s case against Sinclair.’

“Listen, c’mere, you need to look at-”

“No the fuck I don’t-”

“You do, you do, because I think he’s in this. Anonymously, anyways. Listen to this. ‘A young man enrolled in the program for twenty months’. ‘Increasingly mentally absent’. 'Sways when standing'. Remember that thing Whitaker does where he stares off into space? How day shift teases him for it? How he's always slightly off-balance or clumsy? Always spilling shit?”

“...Twenty months,” Ellis muttered while turning around to reading the screen, voice sounding like she wasn’t believing what she was saying or seeing. “And his med ID said twenty hits, didn’t it?”

“Yeah. It did.”

“Oh my God, it’s Whitaker. That’s him, he's the 'youth' in this. He’s the reason that whole thing happened. In a tiny little town, that shit travels, and they all protect their own. Do you think, maybe…when was this written, again?”

“2017. August, so he would’ve been…18, almost on the dot. Minus twenty months, that’s 16 years old. Peak age for this ‘13/24’ bullshit.”

“And if he’s 26 now and an R1, he would’ve left for college at 18, right? 4 years undergrad, 4 years med school, which he just finished.”

“They kicked him out once the word got out,” Jack said with an air of finality, sighing. “Had to have. That ER visit form said he was a freshman at UNK at 18, right after this investigation. It lines up.”

A silence settled between them again. This time, though, it was clear that it held a different purpose. This silence was a hold, a pause, a space for the thing that needed to be said, that neither of them wanted to say.

It was Ellis who finally said it.

“We gotta call somebody,” she breathed, voice low and quiet, shaking her head. “Social work, the police, somebody. We’re mandated reporters.”

“What’s there to report, though?” Jack replied with a small shrug of his shoulders. “Guy’s in jail. Already caught. Technically, this is over, and has been, for years.”

“But it’s not, though, is it?” She spat back, voice rising in something resembling anger. “He’s still here. He’s still flinching at loud noises, and apologizing to ghosts. He's still hurt.”

“He also went for years without telling anyone, remember. That was a choice. Saying something ruins that choice for him, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, sure, but-”

Before they could finish this argument, though, someone came up to the fishbowl, jogging; it was Mateo, who looked a little out of breath.

“Ellis, they need you in North 10,” he stated, his voice steady and his face sober with what looked like dread.

“What? Why?”

“Whitaker’s awake. And not good. Agitated, AMS. Might need to be sedated, and they need his doctor's sign-off on that.”

Ellis looked at Jack, and he looked back at her, both of them searching the other’s face for an answer. There was, for about the third time, a tense moment of silence between them. The argument they'd been having seemed to narrow down into glances and tiny movements of their eyes.

“I’ll call someone," Jack spoke, in a tone he hadn't had to use in a while: deathly serious. "Go.”

Ellis nodded, grabbed her badge, and rushed over to North 10. To Whitaker.

"Hey, somebody call this number I'm about to read off," he called out to the rest of the fishbowl, reading the top of Whitaker's current T-Sheet file. "It's an Emergency number for a patient in a declining state. North 10. Uhm, '412-555-1029'."

Mateo was the one who typed it in to his own phone, already being in the vicinity, and paused for a minute, the hints of a smile on his face.

"Of course," he spoke, pausing. "Jack, that's Santos' number. Saved in my contacts already."

"Figures," he replied, not turning to face him, fumbling to find his own phone in his pockets. "His parents kicked him out and he's thousands of miles from home, so he's got no safety net. I mean, of course his emergency contact is her. Call her, still. She might hate you a little for dragging her back here, but call her. Say it's about Whitaker."

"Was already planning on it. Roommate or not, he put her there for a reason. He trusts her. If he needs sedated, she should know."

Jack didn't hesitate when he grabbed his own phone, though. He already knew who he'd call.

He flipped it open, pausing for just a moment, before dialing a number he hoped would pick up in general, but especially now. He stared at the screen of his phone, hoping, praying, almost. He wouldn't tell him everything. He couldn't. But still, he thinks, he'd want to be here. He'd want to know.

CALLING:

BROTHER

Chapter Text

He was here again. Like he had been told to be.

Dennis could not remember how he’d gotten here. He could not remember where he’d been before, what he was going to do after, what day it was, or when he had arrived back here. To be fair, remembering things was not his strong suit anymore.

Or, had he ever actually left? It was not an easy thing to tell. Nor did it matter.

No, it did not matter, because all that mattered was that he was here.

On the first Saturday of every month, at precisely midnight, he was to be here. He was to drive the road with his headlights on low, park in the spot closest to the door, use the locked box on the wall to open the door (passcode 1-3-2-4), walk through the chapel as silently as possible, and be here, exactly here, and be ready.

He knew that his car (the family truck) waited outside in the nearly empty parking lot for his return, somehow, despite not having the memory of driving here.

The lot was always empty at this time, save for two inhabitants: his car and one other. He did not see it pull up, ever, but he did not need to. It would arrive after his and leave before.

But he was not outside with his car. He was here, inside, in his place under the pulpit, the one he had been slotted into by something he wanted to pretend was choice. It wasn’t choice, really, but it could be, which he thought might help this all feel a bit more controllable.

It didn’t.

Everything smelled of pine, old books, and every sin he’d ever committed, overwhelming every one of his other senses to an extent that shouldn’t have been physically possible.

Maybe it was because he was so close to the wooden surface of the floor, knelt before the pulpit in the position that had been drilled into him. Maybe it was because his eyes were closed, as they were supposed to be. Maybe it was because the sheer silence across the empty chapel suffocated any noise from entering his ears apart from the beating of his own heart.

Whatever it was, all that he knew was that his nose burned with the scent, and he was finding it difficult to take a full breath, only making his heart rate rise further. He winced.

The unfinished wood boards, with splinters and deformities and wear from the decades of patronage to the church, dug into the surface of his knees like a punishment.

It was a punishment, really.

‘This is what your sin feels like,’ Pastor Sinclair had said, the first time he’d entered this room in the darkness of the night, ‘this is how you know the depths of the issue within you.’

This was how the Lord collected his dues, he’d been told all those years ago. This is how transgressions took physical form, stinging, burning, aching, and pulsing. This was love. God’s love. This was God’s love given a physical vessel, in hands, in words, in stinging, in the loving caress of wood to skin.

This was how Dennis would become someone worthy of that love.

The door behind him, on the far side of the chapel, suddenly opened, cutting the silence like a knife. He almost jumped, but knew better than to move. To move was to forfeit.

Steps echoed across the room, empty and hollow and all-too-slow and controlled, for what was going to transpire. He knew them well. He knew them by cadence and pace and distance alone, just like he knew the tone of the whistling that filled his ears, that high and steady tone, that was currently carrying the melody to A Mighty Fortress is Our God.

The steps reached closer and closer and closer still, and the whistling became louder and louder and louder, until both came to a halt.

“Dennis,” spoke a man in a steady, smooth tone, “I’m pleased. You remembered again. That’s good.”

He did not need to turn around to know what the new arrival looked like.

Pastor Sinclair was a lean, broad-shouldered man in his early fifties, with short-cropped black hair and small, silver-rimmed glasses. He had kind eyes and a kind smile, both of which always looked like they carried a secret, which seemed to sparkle while he preached.

He was entrancing, and kind, and made the Bible feel like more than pages and numbers; he was trustable. Likeable. A figure of the community. Someone to go to with your problems.

Which is exactly what Dennis had done. He had felt the urges come. The dreams, the thoughts, the warmth, the sin that buzzed in his brain like gnats. He had come to the pastor, seeking a solution.

Absolution.

It’s how he had come to realize that his place was here.

Dennis did not respond to the pastor. There was no point in responding now; he’d learned that lesson before, years ago, too many times, by some wonderful teachers: the pain, the dizziness, the repulsion, the nausea, the fogginess, the shame, the shame, the shame.

“You were gone for quite some time. I was beginning to think you were avoiding me. Avoiding Him. You’ve been running, it seems. Confused, and lost, and deluded. Medicine, and college, and leaving us behind. It's a shame, really. You never finished, did you? You still had four sessions left.”

There was a sound from above him: a bag unzipping, and the telltale thump of something heavy and wooden hitting softly against the palm of the pastor’s hand.

He shuddered, but did not move. His eyes scrunched tighter, the inescapable stench of pine threatening to choke him.

“It’s alright though, son,” Pastor Sinclair continued, his tone becoming cloyingly sweet and sickening, “I’m not mad. Because you know your way home, don’t you, Dennis? The will of the Lord runs in your veins, in your blood, in your heart, and no matter how far and how fast you may run, He’s always looking for you. He will bring you home. Don’t fight it.”

“I’m not fighting,” Dennis spat back, almost on instinct, and immediately regretted it.

He almost threw up from the sound of his own voice. Because that wasn’t his voice.

That wasn't the tone of the 26-year-old resident doctor named Dennis Whitaker, who lived in a small apartment in Pittsburgh, who spent his mornings cracking jokes with his roommate while they ordered overpriced coffee, who found his purpose in medicine, who reveled in helping people on the worst days of their lives, who had fought against everything to become the person he was.

That was the voice of the 16 year old who had held that name, a decade ago.

The 16-year-old named Dennis Whitaker, with the gangly limbs and skinny frame, who lived on his family’s farm in Broken Bow, who spent his mornings knee-deep in mud and even deeper in scripture, who thought his purpose was buried under an ocean of verses, who didn’t know who he was outside of a problem and a sinner and the runt of the litter, who was called ‘little baby Denny’ by his brothers as they’d laughed at his inability to properly lift in his back, who knew that the thoughts and urges he felt made him unworthy of anything that wasn’t a lesson or an insult or a lecture or a punishment.

In sheer terror and curiosity, his eyes fluttered open for the briefest of moments, just a moment, and it was enough to make that nausea spike into a crashing wave of existential dread.

In the small flash of light he saw, he saw hands, and wrists, and a body; his. He saw a blob of light baby blue where his chest was and assumed it was his flannel: Luke’s old flannel, the one that was always awkwardly big on him, no matter how much he tried to make it fit.

He saw and felt something on his chest: a chain. A hint of gold.

The cross. It had to be.

The one he’d been given by his parents for starting this program. The reward. The reminder of who he was without correction, and the burden he had to carry. It was, in a sense, a permanent punishment. Sometimes he swore it burned his skin, on the hottest days of July.

The hands he saw were skinny and coated in small cuts and indents he knew had to be from the briar bushes by the cow’s pasture and the wrists he saw were free from the bracelet that had divided his life solidly into two, the one he’d worn every day and every moment ever since that one February night spent in the ER that would jump his life forwards.

It wasn’t there. This was before. This was a jump backwards.

He was 16 again.

He was 16, and his voice was squeaky and unsure, and his body was weak and needy, and his mind begged for a solution for the thoughts he couldn’t shake, and his hands stung from briar and the pressure of fingernails into palms, and his knees ached from kneeling and working and apologizing, and his brain was achy and needy and wrong, wrong, wrong, and he was 16 fucking years old again.

He felt the scent of the pine begin to migrate into his mouth, choking him, making his breathing catch and hitch.

His lungs would not fill.

His lungs would not fill.

His lungs would not fill.

“Don’t panic, now. It’ll only make all of this more difficult. You’ll need your strength, remember?”

The sounds of a book being flipped through echoed through the large, empty room, cutting through Dennis’ panic, as he began to recall what would happen next.

“What…what chapter, Father?” he mumbled, voice unsteady and unsure, two things he absolutely abhorred being. “And verse?”

Pastor Sinclair hummed condescendingly.

“Eager. You’re jumping ahead a bit. Think back, son. What do you need to do first?”

“I…I need to say why.”

“Why what?”

“Why I’m here.”

“And how do you do that, Dennis? How do you ask for what you need?”

He quite literally felt his mind shift as he tried to think, tried to remember, and somehow, there was another sound that filled his mind: a soft, irritating beep-beep-beep, like an alarm of some sort.

“Father,” he began, the practiced words feeling like concrete on his tongue, “I am imperfect. I am short of the glory. I have stumbled. I need guidance. I…I need to feel the hand. Please grant me the kindness of the Word.”

“And who asked for this? Who decided that you come here? Who chose this for you, Dennis? Who knows the depths of your need? Who came to me?”

He swallowed his pride down.

“I did, Father.”

“Good. You have been called here, by the words of the Lord. Chapter & verse?”

“I…”

He trailed off. The pounding in his head was overwhelming, his eyes scrunching tighter and tighter still, making any thought an undertaking. Currently, it felt like his head was in a hydraulic press.

In a flash of movement, he felt it: the board, heavy and strong, against his forehead.

It was a lightning strike, a quick and powerful reminder of the failure, and he felt his hands draw tighter and a yell form in his throat, but he swallowed it the best he could, tears threatening to fall, and the smell, the stupid fucking smell, of pine and sin and pain, was choking him, choking, choking, choking, and he felt his heart begin to race in his chest, and his lungs wouldn’t fill, and the floor bit at his knees, and he knew, he knew, he knew this feeling.

“13:24,” Pastor Sinclair spoke, his voice smooth and measured. “Try again.”

“‘W-whoever…sspares the r-od…” he began, voice rough and tight from pain, “...ha-hates their children, but the-the one who cares ffffor-”

Again came the board, quick and painful and electric, cutting him off. Stars began to swim in his vision.

“‘Loves’, not ‘cares for’,” he stated. “‘The one who loves their children is careful to discipline them.’ Do you think you’re smarter than the Lord, Dennis?”

For a moment, he could not respond, throat too tight to respond and the noise swirling in his head. The acrid mist of pine floors and old books and pain he couldn’t escape was a whirlwind.

“...n-no,” he finally choked. “no, Father, please, no, n-no…”

He felt the touch of the board to his forehead, the finished, polished wood in contrast to the unfinished floor beneath him, and he shuddered, bracing, but the hit never came.

“You are incorrect, son. Still incorrect. But the Lord is kind. I am kind. I’ll let this one slide, if you can admit to something for me.”

“What, I-I don’t-”

“You stumbled, Dennis,” he mused. “You fell. Tell me how. Tell me, and tell the Lord, who brought those sinful, Sodomous thoughts to your mind. Tell me about the hands. Tell me about the voice. Tell me about one you’re still thinking of.”

He felt his hands begin to shake. In no way could Pastor Sinclair know how he felt about…no, no, no, that was impossible. He didn’t know. Nobody knew. He had told no one, not even.. He had been good about it. He had regretted it, buried it, repented and asked for forgiveness.

Dennis had done everything right, and yet it still wasn’t enough.

Why can’t I remember his name, he wondered wildly, or my…she’s my roommate, right? The one I...she...

A horrible reality hit him: the people in his life, the ones he valued, might not have been real. He’d hallucinated before, in these sessions. Maybe the memories of coffee and avocados and shared shifts and words of encouragement and Pittsburgh weren’t real. Maybe they were never real.

Maybe he’d never gotten older. Maybe he’d never gotten stronger, or wiser, or gained the will to escape. Maybe he’d always been here, stuck in a dream, stuck in Broken Bow, stuck in these nights and scripture and the path he was always destined to tread, stuck here, stuck now, stuck always as the person he could not stand being.

Maybe he’d never left this room.

SMACK.

He was positive he was going to vomit now; he cried out, quickly, violently, and painfully, the noise ripping through his throat like hellfire.

“Wrong choice.”

The hit, the nature of it, didn’t feel like the Father’s normal hits. It was too rough, too soon, too violent. Pastor Sinclair aimed to teach. He aimed to fix him. He aimed to ensure the future of his success. He aimed to make him into a proper child of the Lord.

But maybe he didn’t tonight, Dennis thought.

A realization struck him, quick, violent, and painful, like the board: this was not a punishment. It was retribution. It was the ultimate consequence for running. It was his final repayment.

Maybe- No. There was no maybe.

He was never going to his car in the parking lot. He was never going to leave this room.

Dennis Whitaker was going to die.

Moreso, he would die as he lived: kneeling and apologizing at this pulpit, 16 and begging.

“You’re still lying, even now?” the Father chided, voice still soft and condescending in the way it always was. “There’s no reason to. You can tell the truth and vindicate yourself, and find the Lord’s forgiveness. Or, you hold on to your stubborn pride, and find nothing you’d want to find.”

In his periphery, somewhere on the edge of his senses, noises began to creep in: footsteps.

Why are there footsteps, the rational part of him thought? The chapel was empty. It was supposed to be empty. Nobody is supposed to be here.

That stupid, grating beep beep beep swelled into a BEEP BEEP BEEP, and suddenly, there were more, of different pitches and tones, a cacophony of yelling, screaming noises, stabbing like needles in his brain.

It was a wave, a crashing, icy wave of sound and sensation and overwhelming pain, and he couldn’t take it. It was so, so, so much; too, too, too much.

The footsteps felt far, distant, and the voices that spoke sounded as if they were muffled; it was like they were underwater. Or under something else, maybe, he thought: blood, or the earth, or barrier between existence, maybe?

“You feel them now, don’t you?” he asked coldly, in a tone that Dennis had never heard him use before; solid and harsh. “The spirits. The ones you chased. The ones who dragged you away from here. The ones you let drag you away from here, to Kearney, to Chadron, to Pittsburgh, of all places, further and further astray.”

He could now feel something; hands, or the ghosts of them, grabbing at his body, trying to pull him around, feel and poke and prod, and no matter how he tried to shake them, they continued, yammering on in an orchestra of voices he couldn’t understand.

Tongues, maybe, he began to wonder in mounting fear? Demons?

The shock, the emotion, played on his face for a moment, clearly, because Pastor Sinclair chuckled lowly.

“Demons,” The pastor finished, confirming what Dennis had already suspected: somehow, some way, he was inside his mind. “And they seem to have a destination in mind for you, son.”

He felt the sobs accelerate, and words began to awkwardly fall from his mouth in between them, sticking to his tongue like there was glue in his mouth.

“N-no, no-no-no,” he choked out, “get off, please, no, I said s-sssorry, I said sssorry, I repented, please, I w-went, went back…I went ba-ck…”

One of them, the demon holding his wrists and prying at his hands, finally said something he understood through the garbling of their speech:

“Let go, Whitaker, you need to let go….”

He tried, failed, to shake the grip; this demon was stronger than he was. But hadn’t that always been the case? Hadn’t he always been weaker than he should’ve been? Hadn’t his brothers called him a ‘wimpy little fag’ for always being easy to pin down when they wrestled? It was only fitting that now, when he was already going to die, he wasn’t able to resist.

Because of course he wasn’t able to resist. He never had been. It’s the reason he was here, praying and begging, desperate from the urges he could not still, the feeling he couldn’t escape.

“Do you want to apologize, Dennis?” called the Pastor. “Do you want to release it, to let yourself go in peace and send the demons away?”

He couldn’t speak; the ability wasn’t his to have at that moment. All he could do was nod, quickly and sharply.

“Then listen to me. You know, deep down, that I’ve always had your best interests at heart. More than anyone else. More than them.”

A lie. A lie, but one Dennis was in no condition to refute.

“Y’know, I think I just decided what your chapter and verse will be for today. Let’s see now…the verse you gave to him, when you were low and needy, desperate to feel like you could fix something, to feel like your touch was needed. Which one was it again?”

A vision, a memory, shunts back into his mind in small snippets; sensations.

The smell of blood. The sound of tears, not his own. The sound of a voice, his own. The soft, warm weight of a hand in his. The eyes. The fullness in his chest. The relief. The wash of adrenaline wearing off. The flutter of something more, maybe.

It was a good memory. A good one, not something to be ashamed of. He didn’t want to regret it. He didn’t want to repent, or apologize, or retract it back. If retribution meant giving that up and letting that go, he didn’t want to-

SMACK.

The board struck him once more, harder than before, high and quick and evil, and he felt his core of existence begin to shift, bursting at the seams; his head was literally going to explode.

He was going to die, he suddenly remembered.

“Why don’t you give it back to us, son? One last apology?”

He stiffened, and felt the pressure push against the sides of his mind. If he was going to die, it was better to let go, he figured. The demons began to stab him with something into his right arm, and two arms, strong and burly, restrained his own. If he did not repent now, it meant resigning himself to the whims of those dragging at him.

A stronger person would’ve chosen resolve. A stronger person would’ve chosen himself.

And Dennis was so, so, so weak.

“W-which-” he began feebly, capitulating, “which one?”

“You already know which. Isaiah 40:30 & 31. Give it back to the hands of the Lord, where it belongs. Recite it to me.”

Dennis decided now was as good a time as any to start to die. What other time did he have?

“‘Ev…Even youthssss…grow tired… a-and weary…’”

Every word felt like a release. It pained him to say goodbye to this memory, to the idea of the person who could’ve saved him from himself, but the wicked needed rest too. Dennis wanted to go home.

“‘...and y-young men ssstumble and-and ffffall…’”

The demons were relentless. They screamed and yelled and argued, different cadences emitting more words he barely caught.

‘GCS’. ‘AMS’. ‘Precedex’. ‘Mannitol’. 'Repeat CT'.

More tongues. More things to atone for.

“‘...but those…those who h-hope in the, the L-llllord…’”

Something broke his reverie: a smell, gut-punching and fast, shoved under his nose by the demons that currently would still not let go. It was sharp and sterile and clean, cutting through his head.

For a moment, he recognized the scent, and memories of a hospital and hours and shifts and laughter and sadness came back to him, but before he could think twice, the pain came back with a vengeance. His back arched in pain.

He had to continue. He was running out of time.

“‘...will…will-’”

One of the demons, the foul, ridiculous creatures, tilted his head back and wrenched his eyes open, and he was swathed in something he hadn’t expected:

Light.

Blinding, blinding, light.

Dennis could see something; figures, dark, outlined in the outpour, but he couldn’t distinguish any faces. It hurt, it hurt, it was so, so, so bright, but the light was pure, and clean, and sterile. Vindicating. Absolving.

Oh, how wrong he’d been. Oh, how foolish. Oh, how much he’d been trying to escape something that he should’ve been praying for.

The ‘demons’ were no demons. The ‘spirits’ held no malice. The touch and the voices and the efforts to quell his struggle were all for love, because God was made at him, yes, that fact did not change.

God was mad at him, yes, but the angels were not.

He was going to go home after all. They were going to take him home.

“‘...r-renew…their ssstrength,’” Dennis continued almost mindlessly.

Pastor Sinclair was gone. The chapel was gone. He wasn’t there, and he wasn’t really anywhere. The space was beginning to fade away, like waves, but warm, soft, lapping waves. It felt like the creek back home in the summer, warm water meeting skin in a careful embrace.

This was death, he surmised. This is what death was supposed to feel like.

He had to atone still, yes, but angels did not need to be abated. He could simply speak to them. His eyes closed once more, but they fluttered; they didn’t scrunch.

“‘T-they will…will sssoar on wings llllike, like eaglessss…’”

One of the angels rose above the rest as she entered the space.

Her voice was one that cut through the others; it was strong, and sharp, and utterly familiar. The angel took his hand, and squeezed, and ran the tops of her nails against the outside of his hand. The others seemed to back away for a moment; the touching and grabbing ceased.

“Hey, open your eyes, Huck,” she called, “Look at me, please, please, just open your eyes.”

Who was he to disobey an angel?

In the resulting blur of light, the angel was still nothing but a figure to him; a small mercy, he supposed. He blinked against the light, and for a moment, he could see more.

Hair. Swaths of dark hair, thick and inviting and healthy, hanging around her face like a halo. Perhaps it was her halo; could angels pick their own halos, he wondered?

Something about her, about the shape of the outline and the curve of her face, was so, so, familiar, but in the delirium, his mind couldn’t place it.

“It’s me, it’s…it’s Trin, it's Trinity. You know who I am. Please, you know. Tell...tell them that you know. You'll be okay. You're gonna be okay.”

Trinity, he thought. What a perfect name for an angel.

The angel sounded sad; absent, depressed, maybe? Could angels be depressed? Dennis did not know. He didn’t need to, either. He was not in the habit of questioning angels.

But of course he knew who she was. With the voice sent from heaven and the hands that found his, and the dark, beautiful swaths of her hair, and the bathing of holy light, she could be no one else.

His angel of Deliverance. His Trinity. She was going to take him home.

“A-are we...am I g-going ...going h-home?” he managed.

The angel paused.

“Of course you are," she finished, squeezing his hand even tighter. "I’m not gonna let you go. We’re gonna go home. Together. You’re getting out of here.”

He really did like this angel. Something about her, something about the voice and the way she spoke and the feeling of her hand in his and the touch of divine to his unworthy self, was so utterly, painfully familiar, but even now, he could not place it.

Sister, his mind came up with for some reason, she is my sister. I think. I know her.

She was family, he felt. Even more so than his real one. He loved his mother. He loved his father. He loved his brothers; Luke, and Matthew, and Elias. He did. He did because he is supposed to.

But something about her, about this angel, about Trinity, felt like home. Perhaps this angel had helped him before. Perhaps she’d always been helping him.

“B-but,” he continued, “I-I need to, I need to, to ffffinish letting-”

“No you don’t,” replied the angel, her voice soft and compassionate, “you don’t need to do anything. Just relax and let the Precedex work.”

The waves lapped further and further upwards. Dennis could feel them washing away at his feet, his hands, his shins. The world washed further and further away, his sins washing with them. The angel, Trinity’s, doing, he assumed. He smiled blankly, his eyes opening slightly to look upon her.

The holy light burned his eyes, but still, he wanted to look at her. He wanted to look at the angel who was going to deliver him. His eyes focused above her, searching in the light for something more solid, but he found nothing.

Perhaps death held nothing but light, but if it were only him and the angels and the light, Dennis does not think he would mind it. Something in his arm, where Trinity’s touch met his skin, began to feel warm, and soft, and holy.

Her light. She is blessing me with it.

There was a whoosh, distantly, from somewhere near his face; her wings, maybe?

“T-thank you,” he spoke to Trinity, hoping she could hear him, “y-you’re going, you’re going to take me…take me home…fffinally...”

The angel paused, cocking her head at him a little. She didn’t speak for a time.

“Wait. No-no-no. Where is 'home?'” she asked, her voice sounding almost desperate (could angels be desperate?). “No, Huck, tell me, what is ‘home’ to you right now? Where is ‘home’?”

Dennis was confused for a moment. How did an angel not know where Heaven was? It didn’t matter, though. She was his angel. She was Deliverance. He could help her for a moment. It was the least he could give back to her.

“H-home,” he began, reaching for her face, “It’s…it’s you, with…w-with you. It’s with you, and the lllight, and-”

Another presence entered the room; a distant crash, steps, powerful ones, a voice, and a shadow.

“Let me talk to him,” spoke the voice, strong, deliberate, meaningful, with an air of authority.

It sounded familiar, again, like his angel, like Trinity’s, had, but almost more vividly so, like an old friend. Like a voice he’d heard before, in his darkest moments, in his desperate attempts to be heard, and seen, and respected, and needed.

It sounded safe. Like the Shield.

Against the blinding, holy light, the figure was dark, but he could still see the outline of this angel, this figure. Bigger than his angel, he surmised, and more assured, with more decided movement. There was authority there. His eyes scanned the figure deeply, earnestly, like his presence was the only thing he could hold on to.

Hands, warm and grounding and strong, found his shoulders. A blanket of something, calmness, holiness, settled over him. Warmth. He was warm. He was so, so, so warm.

“Dennis,” spoke the angel, low and gravelly and sincere. The way he said his name felt like a blessing. “You’re safe. You don’t need to fight. Let yourself relax. They just want to help you. They’re not going to hurt you, sweetheart. Nobody is.”

The waves lapped further again, up his arms, his legs, his torso. He was going to go soon, he thought. Forming a thought became quite difficult. His mind gummed over, the light becoming too much to bear, and he felt his eyes begin to unfocus.

Dennis decided that he liked this angel, too. He really did. And in a moment, he realized that he knew who had come to him.

The angel’s hands, the warmth, left his shoulders for just a moment, finding a new place to rest: his chest, right at his sternum, holding something.

The cross. The cross he wore on his neck, of course. The symbol of his adoration, his devotion. It had felt like such a burden, burning into his skin, but now, with the touch of the divine, it felt like a gift, like something that had been given to him.

A promise.

“I promised you I’d be here, didn’t I?”

The touch of the angel sent waves of light, calming and soft and so, so, so warm, through his body. He felt a smile begin to build on his lips, satisfied and full, and his eyes began to drift shut.

A new smell filled his senses, a pleasant one: earth, and the wind, and the forest. Not pine, not like the floors of the chapel, but something else. It smelled like peace. It smelled like the path home. It smelled like warm mornings spent in the sun, and summer evenings spent under the stars. It didn't smell like home; it smelled like warmth and comfort and all of things he couldn't find within himself.

It smelled like a promise.

The light ceased for a moment, and a comforting darkness took its place; the angel stood over him, leaning in close, and carefully, softly, meaningfully, put his hand across the side of Dennis' face. The warm surface of his thumb ran across his chin and his jaw.

Claiming him, in a sense; anointing him in light.

Absolving him.

He had been absolved from himself, his repentance had worked, and he was going to leave this place, this person, this sinful, shameful body at last. The Father’s blows no longer felt like they ached. The waves, gentle and peaceful, pulled him under, further and further.

"There you go, kid," spoke the angel, warmly and kindly, "you're doing so good. We're gonna help you now. I'll be here, and so will Trinity. I'm not going to let go of you."

Dennis knew who this was. Of course he did. He was the one who appeared to those in the darkest hour. To Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob.

And now to him.

He’d been blessed. He’d been heard. He’d been listened to, because the highest among them, the leader of the angels, had come to help deliver him. His angel, his Trinity, had called upon the Chief to bring him home. It was the highest honor; she had bestowed upon the greatest gift she could've given to him.

He loves her, he thinks; maybe. If he was allowed to love an angel like a sister. He would need to ask Trinity.

But now, the Prince was here, talking to him, holding him, absolving him. The Commander, Defender of Men, the Warrior, the Saint, the Guardian of the Church.

The Archangel. The Leader of the Heavenly Army. The Highest, below the Lord.

Dennis knew the name. He fought, through the waves, to speak one more thing, one more word, one more collection of syllables, before he was going to slip under.

He had one last thing to give back to the world before he left it, and it was this.

“M….Mi-chael.”

Chapter Text

Trinity Santos was going to throw up for the third time today.

She’d wanted to believe that it was the stupid decision to eat week-old chow mein before her shift in an emergency room on a major holiday, but she knew it wasn’t the case. Old Chinese food would make her puke once. Twice, at push. Not three times.

No. It was Dennis fucking Whitaker. Huckleberry.

Well, more accurately, it was all of the things that were happening to him, and not because of him, but still. Every time Trinity took a second to think about what was happening, the urge to puke consumed her.

The first time it happened was the moment she’d gotten home. The rush of everything, the feeling of watching her friend (her best friend, although she’d never admit it) deteriorate, on top of an already exhausting day, was enough to drive a good man into madness.

Apparently, it was also enough to draw a mean lesbian into puking, because she had. She refused to let herself think about what that meant about her.

Right now, she stared at the tile floor of the ER, something she’d probably seen hundreds of thousands of times, but right now, was the only thing she could stomach looking at.

They’d gotten him off to the CT suite. She’d been told she could come with, and sit in the observation area, ‘if she truly felt like it would help’. Whatever that was supposed to be mean.

She didn’t go. She stayed here, in North 10, with the lights on and her head down, like the coward she was.

Trinity could still get in there, if she really felt like doing so. Her badge would scan her in. Said badge sat in her hands as she gripped it, the edges digging into her palms. She could see why Huckleberry did this with his fingernails; it helped a little.

They’d tried to make her get a visitor’s badge, too; the night triage nurse was new and hadn’t recognised her. It took Shen literally waving her back for her to be let in.

Goddamn, she hated being treated like a visitor.

Even if it was technically true right now.

-—-------------------------------------------------------------------------—--------------------------------------------

When Mateo had called her about thirty minutes ago, she almost hadn’t picked up. She figured it would just be night shift calling her back to work in that fucking cesspit, to help finish the transition of charting or something, and so when she’d picked up with a groan, she wasn’t kind.

Trinity remembers what she’d said so vividly:

“You asshole. It’s two in the fucking morning, and I just got to sleep. The answer is no. Do your own charting, I don’t give two shits.”

Then, of course, he’d broken the news. Of the AMS. Of the panic. Of the swelling.

She knew what it meant. She knew that she was the closest thing to a proxy for him. She knew also that if she didn’t come, good ol’ ER golden boy Huckleberry would be functionally alone on what was probably the hardest thing he’d ever had to go through.

And in turn, Trinity had gotten up, rushed to her bathroom, and puked for the second time. Barely anything came up, because she hadn’t had the stomach to eat anything after, anyways. She’d planned to cook tonight, as she’d left in the morning before this shift sent from the depths of Satan’s asshole. She had avocados that needed using.

She’d also planned on Huck eating about half of them, stealing pieces and snacking on them as she’d cut them up. He liked to do that; if she was making poke bowls, like she often did, he’d be there like the little pest he was, and oh-so-sneakily swipe bits off the cutting board.

They sat in the fridge, unused.

Trinity barely had the wherewithal to put clothes on, either; she’d quite literally shoved on shorts and an old pink sweatshirt that had faded to white, leaving her hair down, and grabbed for her phone, her badge, and the keys to her ‘tornado red’ leased 2020 Volkswagen Jetta SE that Garcia had jokingly nicknamed ‘Annika’ a few months back.

Trinity didn’t call it that anymore.

She didn’t remember exactly how fast she had driven to PTMC, her mind racing even faster than the car. She didn’t want to. It didn’t matter. Her phone connected to her car immediately, starting some music. Trinity didn’t know what it was; she didn’t hear any of it over the sound of her own heartbeat pumping in her ears.

After she’d basically bum-rushed her way into the ER, running to North 10, she was stopped by someone; the person who’d called her. She’d rushed to grab the door, before Mateo stopped her.

“Hey, wait a sec, Santos,” he’d said, voice lower than usual, “before you go in there, you should prep yourself. Besides, he’s not stabilized yet. I dunno how close you could get.”

“Teo, respectfully, cut the shit,” she’d shot back. “I’m a doctor, not some terrified family member. I’ve seen shit. I mean, my first shift was a mass casualty event. And I saw him earlier, he’s fine. Now let me-”

“No. Seriously. He's…”

Mateo had trailed off for a minute, pensive, looking her over.

“...he’s not here.”

“Not here?” Trinity had spat back. “What do you mean? He’s right there. Sure, AMS, but I don’t- fuck, just let me talk to him.”

“Mentally, Trin. He’s, like, completely not here. He’s somewhere else. It's bad, too. Really bad. We don’t know where, but it’s not here. He keeps saying stuff, like he’s talking to someone who isn’t there. Crying. Won’t acknowledge us. It’s-”

“AMS, yeah. You said that on the phone.”

Mateo had put his hands up in something resembling defense (or defeat, more likely), stepping aside and letting Trinity pass.

“Listen, if you wanna go in there right now, I won’t stop you. It might hurt, though. He might not recognize you. Probably won’t, actually. He might try to fight you.”

She hadn’t cared. She’d needed to see him.

And of course, the second she’d seen him, the urge puke returned stronger than ever, sitting low in her stomach.

Because Trinity Santos, with all of her characteristic good luck, had come just in time to watch Dennis Huckleberry Whitaker begin to die.

He had collapsed into sobs, his body twisting in on itself. He was bucking against the hold of the techs, and the person who was closest to him, Dr. Ellis, looked like she was trying to reason with a ghost.

Ellis had been trying (and failing) to get Whitaker to unclench his fists; she’d resorted to trying to wrench apart his hands, and talk him through breathing. Clearly, it was unsuccessful.

“Let go, Whitaker,” she’d spoken in an authoritative tone, turning back to face him, “you need to let go. You’re gonna make yourself bleed.”

He, rather predictably, did not listen.

Huckleberry had then moved on to speaking, but it was in words that held no indication that he could hear any of them.

God, he’d sounded so pathetic, so scared; the words coming out of his mouth were sticky, like they’d been before, but thin and choked, like his throat was threatening to close. The words were odd, though; they didn’t sound the usual ramblings of someone in an AMS episode. It was rhythmic, predictible, almost…

Memorized.

Trinity had only caught a few of those strained, awful-sounding words over the din in the room. Machines beeped—pulse ox, heart rate, and bp, she knew immediately—in a cacophony of noise. People, so many fucking people, were moving around, shoving, grabbing and squeezing at Huckleberry like he was some sort of crazed animal.

But that’s not an animal, she remembered thinking, that’s Huck. That’s Huckleberry. That’s my friend, that’s my idiot little roommate who cooks on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and helped me fix my hairdryer when it broke that one time, and watches shitty TV with me, and listens to me bitch about Garcia’s bullshit, that’s… that’s….

That’s my brother.

“Fuckin’ Christ,” she’d began, pushing past a CNA, “move, let me-”

“Santos, no.”

Someone had stopped her with a hand to shoulder; Dr. Abbot, who she hadn’t even realized was in the room. It made sense, she’d reasoned; traumas needed an attending present.

Holy fuck, she’d realized quickly, Huck’s a trauma. He’s a trauma.

“You know protocol. He’s approaching a code. Visitors step back until he’s stabilized.”

She’d turned to look at him, stepping forwards, fire in her eyes.

‘Visitor’?

Go fuck yourself, Jack Abbot, she’d thought. ‘Visitor’ her ass.

“Not in the fucking mood, Jack,” she’d near-shouted, trying to push past him, “Your night crew assholes are poking him and holding him down like a misbehaving fuckin’ cow, so yeah, I don’t really give a shit about your protocol!”

She’d looked at Huckleberry again. The anger, for a moment, ebbed into something much harder to deal with, and much more inconvenient: fear, and sadness.

“Just let me go talk to him,” she let out, blinking away things she didn’t want to admit were tears. “Please. He might…”

Trinity could not bring herself to say the word.

Abbot had just looked at her, with an expression she couldn’t read. Trinity was too pissed to care, and too desperate to get to the shivering mess on the bed. Abbot’s eyes looked her over, with her faded sweatshirt and her keys clutched in her hands, and his expression flickered; softened, almost.

“Let her, Jack,” called another voice from further in the room; Dr. Ellis. “She might actually be able to get him to calm the hell down. See anything else working?”

Ellis had given her a look; something Trinity interpreted as both pity and a deep understanding.

So Trinity had stepped forwards. ‘Stepped’ was the wrong word; she’d basically sprinted to that bed, taking Huck’s hand and squeezing it. He’d been shaking.

She’d watched as his eyes met hers; full, and crazed, and dilated despite the lights, unnaturally both half-lidded and widened. She didn’t know it was possible for eyes to be both.

“Hey, open your eyes, Huck,” she’d asked, in a tone that was much more stable than she’d felt. “Look at me, please, please, just open your eyes.”

And they’d spoken. And she’d watched as Huck’s eyes had raked her face, and listened as his voice found hers, and her heart had ached.

Mateo was right. It hurt.

It had hurt so much, in fact, that it had not even occurred to her at first to question why Robby, of all people, stepped into the room next. Nor did it occur to her to question why Robby’s chain was around Huckleberry’s neck, or why Huck seemed to relax unnaturally when he was close to him.

She didn’t even think to question as he’d uttered the name ‘Michael’ lowly from his lips.

—---------------------—---------------------—---------------------—---------------------—---------------------—----

So here she was, at 2:12 A.M, as stated by the clock in the hallway, sitting in an uncomfortable hospital chair in North 10, stuck with thoughts and not much else, as a direct result of her own cowardice.

Trinity didn’t like to think. She liked answers, sure. She liked to take in information and come to a quick, concise, conclusion, but she didn’t like to think. She didn’t like the quiet moments that came after the chaos. It’s why she’d picked the ER; as soon as that quiet began to hit, she could just hop onto another case.

Obviously not this one, though.

The universe did not feel like being kind to Trinity Santos today, it seemed. So she stayed here, in the quiet expanse of North 10, thinking.

The thing she kept catching on was the AMS itself; the look in Huck’s eyes, the tone of his voice, the way he’d looked at her, the things he’d said. It felt wrong. Too complicated.

Mateo said they ‘didn’t know’ what he was seeing, or hearing, or feeling. That it could’ve been anything from a childhood bedroom to a pure breakdown.

Trinity thinks that it was more. That it had to be more.

That look in his eyes when he’d seen her…it wasn’t normal. He’d looked grateful, and relieved, and peaceful, even. He’d cherish the sight of her. That’s not normal for anyone, even a little weirdo like her puppy-off-the-street roommate. That’s not what people felt when they saw her.

Trinity Santos was a ‘roadblock’. Trinity was a ‘snitch’. Trinity was an ‘annoyance’, or an ‘asshole’, or an ‘insufferable bitch’, or to fucking Garcia, ‘convenient relief’.

And Huckleberry–-Dennis–- had just looked her in the eyes and called her ‘home’.

Home.

In the midst of this thought, there was a sound of a door opening, and heavy, measured steps. She didn’t turn to face the noise. She didn’t want to. What did it matter?

“He’s stable,” spoke a voice, low and sobered; Robby’s. “For now, at least. CT showed the edema swelled, but didn’t herniate. With Keppra and Mannitol, the swelling should go down. Currently being moved to Neuro ICU. He’ll be okay.”

Trinity still didn’t look up. The ID badge continued to bite into her palms as she pressed harder.

“Thanks,” she replied, bitingly and venom-laced. “That’s…good, I think.”

“Better than the alternative.”

Robby paused, hesitating in the doorway, apparently; she didn’t hear him step any closer. He didn’t step back into the room just yet. She could feel the weight of his eyes on her; thick and warm and discerning. She wasn’t sure how to feel about it yet. Trinity’s eyes traced her badge, the outlines and the lettering swimming in her vision.

A small silence took hold, a few tense seconds, before Robby broke it.

“That seat taken?” he asked, and Trinity looked up just enough to see where he was pointing; the chair next to her.

“Knock yourself out,” she replied flatly, giving a noncommittal shrug.

She felt the weight of another person coming close to her, taking up the space; it was usually a feeling she despised, deeply, but somehow, not right now. Maybe Trinity was too tired and too spent to care. Out of the corners of her eyes, she looked at Robby.

He wasn’t dressed like she’d expected. She’d expected him in riding clothes, or the clothes he’d worn earlier. She’d expected him to be windswept or still clutching the keys to his motorcycle.

To be honest, Trinity hadn’t expected him at all.

The version of Robby she currently saw was not one she’d ever really even conceptualized. He was dressed in what were clearly pamajas as well; old sweatpants, and a t-shirt that looked like it might’ve been older than she was. His hair was kind of a mess; strands played on the sides of his face. He looked like he’d been sleeping about twenty minutes ago, like she had.

He looked like he’d been at home.

It was about time she asked the question playing on her mind.

“Surprised you’re here. You seemed pretty set on leaving earlier.”

“Earlier?” Robby mused. “When you blackmailed me by holding my keys hostage?”

“...yeah,” Trinity admitted with an awkward half-chuckle. “Sorry ‘bout that.”

“Don’t be. Got me to actually go talk to him in the first place. So, really, ‘you’re welcome’ would be more fitting than a ‘sorry’, Santos.”

Trinity let out a low hum.

“Doesn’t feel like anyone should be thanking me for anything right now,” she let out with a sigh. “Least of all you.”

Robby laughed a little bit at that, crossing his legs over and turning his head to look at her.

“Y’know, has anyone ever told you that you’re really bad at taking pride in yourself?”

She scoffed, and rolled her eyes.

“One more thing I’m bad at.”

She looked off at the mess of monitors and equipment that lined the walls, and for a moment, she considered room North 10. The curtains that had made this place into a sanctuary for Huck were put back in their normal place , and the lights were back on. The piece of paper designating this space as a brain rest space was gone. It didn’t feel like his room anymore.

The realization that she’d even considered it ‘his room’ before this hit her like a freight train.

She thought of what ‘his room’ meant. She thought of the small bedroom in their apartment, with the clean navy sheets, and the comforter (her comforter, mind you), and the neatly folded clothes in the drawers, and the only piece of decor he’d actually ever purchased: a plant.

She remembers the day they’d bought it. Huckleberry, with his little farmboy instincts, had wanted a plant. Trinity had refused, because of her propensity to kill anything she touched that wasn’t a human. Still, she’d capitulated in the end, because holy fuck, it was hard to say no to those sad-ass eyes of his.

Huck had picked it out himself, from the rows of plants in the nursery they’d gone to, somehow managing to pick the most sickly-looking plant she’d ever seen. His eyes had lit up when he read the words ‘egret orchid’.

‘It’ll be beautiful,’ he’d said. ‘Once it’s healthy, it looks like a bird flying.’

And it did. He nursed that little plant to a health she hadn’t even thought possible, and it looked like white bird with its wings spread wide. Like a bird, that he’d given flight.

Like a bird, that was going to go home.

And there she was again, on the thought that kept coming back: ‘home’.

“Robby,” she began, turning to look at him, “Jack called you, didn’t he?”

“Yeah. Uhm…yeah, he did. Why?”

“What did he say to you? About, like, all of this. How much did he tell you?”

Robby paused, eyebrows furrowing in thought. He bit the edge of his finger.

“Not much. ‘Decline, AMS, spiking of vitals, possible herniation, come if you can’, basically. Nothing beyond that. But…”

But?

“But?” she pressed.

“...Well, I’ve known Jack for close to two decades now. I know how he talks. When he spoke earlier…it wasn’t like how he talks to me. The way he kept pausing, and the tone of his voice, I mean, it’s like how he talks to patients. It’s like he was hiding something.”

“Huh. Well, that makes sense, I think.”

“Yeah?” Robby shot back, cocking an eyebrow. “Why’s that?”

“Because I think you’re right, Robby. More than you know. Because I think Jack is hiding something. And I think Huck’s hiding it, too.”

Trinity looked back at the badge in her hands, at the shitty little picture of her, at the thin lettering, at the writing.

‘Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center

Trinity SANTOS

EMERGENCY MEDICINE

RESIDENT DOCTOR’

How many times had she really felt like she’d earned that bottom line? Would she ever feel it?

She sighed, her gaze turning back to the floor.

“He called me ‘home’, Robby. He asked if I was gonna take him home. I asked him what ‘home’ meant, and he said it was ‘you, with you, and the lights’. I don’t…Fuck. How am I supposed to take that?”

“Take it exactly like that. In one of the darkest moments he had, he saw you, and he thought of home. You calmed him down enough for Ellis to start the Mannitol and Precedex. ”

Trinity felt another thought begin to barge its way into her brain, one that she’d been burying since everything had transpired:

Robby.

Why was he here, anyways? Why hadn’t he left? Why was he so invested in her little stray cat of a roommate? Why had his chain been around Huck’s neck? What was that look in his eyes he’d had earlier, that hope and certainty and air of calm? What was with the speed at which he’d rushed to the bedside, like a protective spouse?

And most of all, why had Huck called him ‘Michael’? And why had Robby called him ‘Dennis’?

“So,” she said, toying her with her badge. “Michael.”

Robby stiffened, and coughed, like he’d just choked on his own spit. Trinity smirked.

Bingo.

“What’s with the first names? Didn’t realize you were that close.”

“We’re...we’re not, really,” he replied, a little too fast. “I dunno, it just felt right, I think? It felt weird, calling him ‘Whitaker’ while he was having a psychotic episode. Felt too corporate. Besides, you call him ‘Huckleberry’ all the time, isn’t that worse?”

“He’s my roommate, though. He’s your resident. Employee. Whatever you wanna call it. Besides, it didn’t feel so ‘corporate’ when he literally begged me, multiple times, to go grab you before you left so he could talk you off the edge of your vision quest.”

Robby looked off into the rest of the ED. Trinity looked off as well, studying the place.

Abbot was off in Trauma 2 caring for a gunshot wound. Ellis was at the fishbowl, putting in orders of some kind. Shen was talking to Mateo, and some new intern doctor was attached to Cruz’s hip like a lost little lamb, asking him for advice on something. The Pitt had solidly moved on, as it tended to. Huckleberry had been moved somewhere else.

So, it begged a question: why were they still here? Both of them?

“Robby, I think if you’re trying to say you’re ‘not that close’, you gotta tell Huck that, because I don’t think he thinks so. He just called you ‘Michael’. Nobody calls you Michael.”

“Caleb does-”

“Caleb doesn’t fucking count, and you know it. None of us call you that. Not even Jack, and hell, we all call him ‘Jack’! Some of us go by our first names, sure, but you’re not one of them. Never have been. I think you get it, Robby. I think you do. I think you realize what he thinks of you. I also think you’re being kind of a dumbass about it, too.”

“Okay, well, what’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means…it means he likes you. More than he should, probably. He’s too stupid not to. Doesn’t realize liking your coworkers leads nowhere good.”

Lord, would she know.

“He’s…he’s not…” Robby trailed off for a moment, before letting go of a sign that felt like it was heavier than it looked. “He’s seeing that farm girl, you said it yourself.”

“I did. But I also just saw the way he looked at you in there. And the way you looked at him. And the way he reacted to your voice, and your hands on his shoulders, and the fact that you pulled up at 2 the morning to go comfort him, and…”

Let’s really test this, why don’t we?

“...and your chain on his neck.”

Trinity shot him a smile, and a small raise of her eyebrows.

“Okay, no, that’s not what you th-”

“Yeah, next time you wanna claim you’re not into someone and that you’re ‘not that close’, don’t go marking your territory with literal gold, how’s that?”

Robby tried to reply, his mouth forming the shape of words, but the noise died in his throat. His gaze turned to the floor, silent for a time. He played with his wrists a little.

“I made him a promise,” he finally said, voice quiet, like the words were precious. “He begged me to stay, and I listened. Made him a promise, left him the chain. And, hey, I listened to you, because I made him promise to listen to his doctors and actually recover, for once in his life. He needed that, I think. I think he needed a reason to stay that wasn’t himself.”

Trinity looked down at Robby’s hands, and saw something she hadn’t noticed earlier: a bracelet.

A black silicone band, with two charms, one engraved with the Star of Life.

She smiled again.

You little flirt, Huckleberry. You really got him wrapped around your finger.

“I’m glad you did, Robby,” she said, voice a lot lighter than before. “He needed that. And, really, I think he needed you. Needs you, still.”

“That’s not true,” Robby sighed, looking her in the eyes solidly.

Trinity felt a soft pressure from her right side; Robby’s elbow, softly jabbing into her side. He smiled at her.

“He doesn't need me when he's got you, Trinity.”

“Me? I’m nothing, really. I’m just his roommate that he steals food from. I’m not-”

“You’re ‘home’ to him. Remember that. He needs you.”

Trinity let the words sink for a moment, thinking. The urge to puke was gone.

Another silence took hold. It felt lighter, though, like the space was more forgiving. Nothing about this night had been forgiving, really. Nothing about what was happening was right, or made sense, or felt fair. But here, in the stark light of North 10, Trinity Santos finally felt like she’d found an answer to at least one of her problems.

“You can go home, Robby. Or the road if you still want to. I’ll stay. I got him.”

"No,” Robby replied, his voice and expression unreadable as he stared forwards out at the ER. “I'm not going home. I think... I think I'm tired of running. I think it’s time I actually face something for once. Made a promise, remember?”

Trinity smiled again, for an entirely different reason. She didn’t say why, nor would she ever, as she let the moment settle.

Three cheers for Huckleberry, she thought.

“Y’know what…wanna go somewhere with me?” Robby suddenly asked, turning to face her once more. “Little adventure?”

“To where?”

He laughed a little, standing up, and offering her a hand.

“Tell me, Santos. You ever met a wolf before?”

“Uhm,” she replied, taking his hand and standing up. “No, can’t say I have.”

“Ever met a wolf that wants you, specifically, dead as you can get?”

“...no?” she shot back, giving a raised eyebrow. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Just what in the fuck is he going on about now, Trinity thought? Did he just have a psychotic break too? Is he also in AMS? Do I need to call Jack? Or the police, or more like?

“Good, first time for everything, then,” he began, grabbing her hand and leading her through the ER, to the elevator.

“We’re going to the Neuro ICU.”

Chapter Text

Robby did not like the Neuro ICU, and the feeling was mutual.

It felt like every time he had to be in that godforsaken wing, the second he walked in there, everyone in the vicinity knew who he was, why he was there, and that his presence was not a welcome one.

More so, it felt like an ending point; people came in there, and they either came out changed, or they did not come out. You could be in and out of the ER in two hours, if you were especially unlucky and then lucky, in that exact order. You did not get out of the Neuro ICU in two hours.

To a certain extent, it made sense why they didn’t like him. He worked in the emergency room, land of quick decisions and noise and a revolving door of patients that came in and out in a cycle. It was chaos, yes, but the kind he liked, and the kind he could make a difference in. Robby could see a hundred people in a day and think nothing of it. He was just wired that way.

The Wolf was not wired that way, lest he ever manage to forget.

He toyed with the bracelet on his wrist as the elevator rose, the silence punctuated by the whir of the moving chains. Their promise, given physical form, felt like a weight as they rose.

“So, uhm,” Santos spoke, breaking their fourth silence of the day, “who’s this ‘Wolf’? I thought we already met the on-call attending for Neuro tonight, anyways, with Mohan’s TBI case.”

“That’s the Neurosurgery attending,” he corrected, using the same tone he’d use back in the ER. “Some places, yeah, it’s the same person. Not here. Neuro ICU is its own beast. Besides, you’ve never had the pleasure of meeting the Wolf, because you’ve never worked nights. You’re in for a treat.”

“Sounds fun. But first, no bullshit, just level with me real quick. On a scale of, like, Emma, to Park the Shark, where are we at?”

“Ohhhh, you’re thinking too small, Santos,” he replied, not turning away to look at her. “Park actually likes us, believe it or not. You’re about to meet someone who really, really, doesn’t.”

“Worse than the Shark? Is he gonna kill us, or something?”

The elevator reached its destination, floor 12, and came to a stop with a soft ding.

“You’ll see,” Robby said, as the doors opened. “Now, and trust me on this, shut the hell up and stay that way until you’re spoken to.”

Santos shot him a look, but he held firm, pressing a finger to his lips, and guiding her out into the bare expanse of the hallway. In a manner, this was his purgatory; the threshold.

There was a door; a thick, metal door with double-walled glass. Much like heaven (or hell, too, he supposed), you couldn’t just enter the Neuro ICU. You had to be vetted. Allowed. Judged ‘worthy’ enough to cross the boundary.

Robby reached for the buzzer on the wall, holding the button down, taking a breath before he spoke into the smaller speaker on the wall. It didn’t feel like talking to a colleague, really. It felt more like a confessional of some kind.

Maybe it was.

“Hello, this is Dr. Michael Robinavitch from the ER,” he began. “We’re here to check on a patient that was sent up here from us. He’s one of my residents that got injured earlier while working. Name, Dennis Whitaker.”

There was a silence from the other end, in which Santos mouthed the words ‘why do we have to ask, we work here’. Robby gave her a dismissive wave of his hand. She’d see why soon enough.

“‘We’?” responded the cold, calculating voice on the other end; clearly not the Wolf, though. It was far too kind. “‘We’ implies multiple people. The limit on visitors is two on this floor, Dr. Robinavitch. It’s not like your ‘pit’. How many people are with you?”

I already knew that, he mentally replied, I’m not a goddamned med student, whether you patronizing sons of bitches realize that or not.

“Don’t worry, I know the rules. Just me and one other.”

“Their name?”

Robby gave Santos a little flick of his head, silently indicating to her to speak up.

“Dr. Trinity Santos, R2 in the ER,” she said, voice slightly unsure.

“Relation to the patient?”

“Uhm,” Santos got out, hesitating, “coworker, roommate, and…”

She looked at Robby for a brief moment, a question in her eyes. Robby didn’t need to ask what the question was, based on what she’d said earlier.

“Acting medical proxy,” he finished for her, with a hint of a smile on his face.

Santos returned the smile, her eyes flicking up to meet his for a moment.

There was another silence. Suddenly, with a loud THUNK, the lock on the doors released, and they slowly began to automatically open, revealing the expanse of the Neuro ICU to both of them.

Robby stands by the fact that he hates the Neuro ICU.

It was, above all else, simply too quiet. To him, a hospital was supposed to be loud, and bright, and chaotic, and stressful, yes, but a controlled kind of stressful. The noise meant progress was being made, quick and visibly meaningfully. Progress in the Neuro ICU, on the other hand, was slow, and quiet, and measured in milliliters and feather-light touches.

This couldn’t be made more clear in the feel of the place. The lights were dimmed, outside of the one above the nurse’s station, casting the ward in long shadows and bringing an eeriness to the corners. All of the monitors were quieted, and the only sounds he could hear were the soft whoosh-clicks of ventilators, and the muffled sounds of footsteps; the nurses, clad in the uncanny lavender of the Neuro ICU uniform.

They took approximately three steps into the ward before they were intercepted by someone.

Robby shivered, feeling prickles of dread push at the back of his head. Good lord, he faced death every goddamn day of his life, but here and now, facing this, he felt actual, real dread. Fear. Regret. He swore he could feel his sins crawling on his neck like bugs.

There was truly no need to search for her. There was no chase, or spectacle, or task. They didn’t need to ask, because the second they entered her den, the Wolf had found them.

“Hello, Dr Vol-”

A single finger in the air and the force of a glare forged of ice and steel cut him off before he could continue, before gesturing over to a small room at the end of the hallway: ‘Family Visitation Room.’

Robby didn’t need to be told twice when it came to the Wolf. He gave her a nod of his head, then followed those sharp, quick steps with Santos trailing behind him, wearing a look on her face he could only describe as unadulterated shock and confusion.

‘What the fuck was that’, she mouthed to him, gesturing a little.

All he did was shoot her another look, pressing his finger to his lips.

Hahaha, he laughed mentally, she doesn’t even know the half of it yet.

As they filed into the insulated, sound-proof room designed for families going through the worst news of their lives, the Wolf shut the door behind them, sealing them (and their fates) in.

Dr. Vasilisa Vasilievna Volkova was, in a word, intense.

Not physically so, at least from a first glance; she was a short, petite woman in her fifties, with black hair speckled with gray that was always effortlessly and perfectly kept back in a clip.

But then you’d notice how uncannily perfect everything about her was. Her royal purple scrubs were always somehow immaculately clean and ironed, like she never worked a day in her life (which was the furthest thing from true; she stalked this ward like a predator).

The illusion further started to crack when you saw her face. Thin, small lines, the marks of decades spent putting people’s brains back together, decorated the crevices of her face, playing in the corners of her sharp black eyes and thinly-pursed lips.

Then, the illusion fully shattered the moment she spoke.

“Twenty recorded instances of traumatic brain injury,” spoke the slightly accented, icy, strong voice of the Wolf. “Measurable gliosis, chronic PCS, and additional long-term complications. Told to seek a STAT CT for any head trauma. Quite the story.”

For a moment, she did not even turn to face them, face transfixed on the tablet she was currently reading off of like it was a criminal record.

“Sit,” Dr. Volkova spat out, “because we have much to discuss. He is still unfit for visitation, so we will talk here.”

“Uhm, no, that’s okay,” Santos replied, voice fake and thinly-veiled, holding her hands up in dismissal. “We’re fine to stand.”

“It was not a question.”

A tense moment, so silent Robby swore he could feel it in his bones, crawled by. Santos, capitulating, sank into the uncomfortable fabric of the chair, looking more shaken than Robby had even seen her. That was the Wolf for you.

“Dr. Volkova, I want you to meet Dr. Trinity Santos,” Robby introduced, letting the fakest of smiles find a hold on his face. “She’s one of my residents, as well as Dr. Whitaker’s roommate, closest friend, and current medical proxy. Think of her as his family, because she basically is.”

Not even basically, he mentally corrected.

“Very pleasant to meet you,” came the curt reply.

“And, before you ask,” Robby continued, “he wasn’t open about any of this. Whitaker never talked about his personal life all that much. We didn’t know about his history until today, and we still don’t really know all the details, either. All we do know is that he’s sustained lots of trauma previously. He’s got a rough past of some kind.”

“Past is irrelevant, Dr. Robinavitch. We do not focus on ‘past’ here.”

Finally, those eyes, in their icy blue selves, turned to glare at him. Not Santos, even for a second: just him.

“You in the ER love ‘present’,” said Dr. Volkova, her tongue flicking on the tips of her ‘t’s. “You love finding people in their worst states, and messily patching them up, then sending them up to us to fix. Us? We like ‘future’. We take your messes, and we clean them. Yes, it is slow, on occasion, but this is not a place of speed. We give to broken people a view of the ‘future’.”

“The one that wouldn’t exist without us saving their fuckin’ lives for you first,” Santos grumbled under her breath.

Robby kicked her leg a little, cutting her off. Fighting the Wolf was a death wish.

“And that is exactly what we wanted to discuss,” Robby chimed, making his voice sound a lot more calm and assured that he truly was. “The future. See, Dr. Whitaker’s recovery is very important, not just to us, but to all of the ED, so we wanted to discuss what it’s going to look like. He’s one of our best residents, despite what today might have you think.”

Robby felt himself begin to think, his mind wandering back to memories of days that were not today, of nights that were not tonight. He thought of full, clumsy-looking smiles, big, entrancing blue eyes, and the kind, good-natured soul that always knew what to say, what to do, what to think, and how best to make Robby smile, even if he didn’t realize he had the power to do that.

He felt the hints of a smile, a real one, play on the corners of his lips.

“Y’know, I really wish you had the chance to meet him under different circumstances,” he continued, gaze focused on the floor. “I think everyone should get that chance.”

“A shame,” came the reply. “A shame that I did not, but also a shame of yours, Dr. Robinavitch.”

Dr. Volkova sighed, looking back down at her tablet, tap-tap-tapping with the edges of her perfectly manicured nails.

“According to his chart, after the initial incident, he was admitted to Neuro Obs for specialist care and neuro rest. He was, however, never taken there. What was the reason?”

“Beds,” interjected Santos. “There weren’t any openi-”

“Incorrect. There was an opening, beginning at 8:37 p.m. We had an opening, one that we offered as a special favor to a colleague. It was the bed and room he currently occupies. No, there was another reason he was never taken here. A selfish one. Isn’t there, Dr. Robinavitch?”

“We,” he began, voice unsure in the veil of confidence he was trying to coat it in, “discussed it. We met as a team, and decided it best to monitor him in the ER until we were sure he was stable enough to be moved. We know him better, and saw it fit to keep him in a familiar environment with familiar faces, especially given his slight confusion at the time.”

“A ‘team’ did not make that decision, Robinavitch. Do not lie.”

This icy bitch, he thought. Of course she’d know. Did Jack tell her, or Dana, or Ellis, or hell, even one of the nurses? Maybe nobody told her. Maybe she just figured it out, the nosy asshole.

Or maybe this is just what I deserve for being so selfish and awful. Maybe this is a profession. Confession. Maybe it’s my atonement, taking the shape of a tiny, terrifying Russian lady.

“You’re right,” he conceded, resting his hands on his thighs. “I made the final decision, Dr. Volkova. I wanted him there. I wanted to…”

Protect him, his brain finished for him. Save him. Keep him.

“...watch him.”

“And what a decision it was. You are truly lucky that you did not cost Mr. Whitaker his life in doing so. You claim to value him in your ER? As a doctor? You have shown me the opposite.”

Dr. Volkova was silent again, face hardening, tapping away on the tablet once again. Santos gave a sigh, resting her face in her hands and staring at the floor. Robby gave her a quick once-over and a little shake to her shoulder, mouthing ‘do you see why now’, to which she just gave him a defeated-looking shrug.

“You have lost yourself a doctor today, Dr. Robinavitch,” she spoke after a time, still not looking upwards. “Indefinitely.”

The ice from her voice and that statement filled the room, coating the walls in sheer cold and working its way through his body.

Indefinitely.

“Here,” she began once more, turning her tablet around so that both him and Santos could see the screen. “You asked for a recovery plan. Here is a draft of what it would look like, in the best case scenario.”

Robby felt his stomach drop, and an anger began to bubble in his chest with each new word of the note she had been typing.

‘-Neuro ICU 48-72 hours pending neuro checks & return to standard ICP

-Neuro Stepdown 7-14 days pending GCS and return to A&O x4

-Specialized inpatient care 4-6 weeks, home living pending return to cognitive function benchmarks as determined by appropriate medical professionals

-Co-living/supervised living 2-3 months, pending return of normal cognitive state

-Return to work on indefinite hold, pending progress on return to baseline’

“Okay, no, this is bullshit,” Santos halfway-yelled, moving to stand. “I’ve sat here and taken you chewing the hell out of Robby for shit that isn’t his fault, but I won’t take this, because it’s stupid. I know you hate us, for some wack-ass reasoning about us being ‘hot-shot cowboys’ or something, but what I’m not gonna do is sit here and let you ruin his life!”

“Santos,” he interjected, reaching out a hand to pull her back down. “Not the time.”

“Shut up, Robby, she needs to hear this!”

“Trinity. Sit down.”

Santos finally listened, looking back at him with a fire in her eyes, then a flicker of that same sadness from earlier. She sat, cowering almost.

The Wolf was silent, holding the tablet forwards still. She did not move or speak for a time, closing her eyes in what appeared to be thought.

“Dr. Santos,” she finally let out, voice unnervingly calm and stable. Robby realized quickly that this was the first time Dr. Volkova had actually acknowledged her by name or title. “Is that truly what you think this is? A punishment of some kind, because I do not like you, and him?”

“I don’t know what else you’d call it. You’re gonna end his career with this, and I won't let you.”

“I do not punish, Dr. Santos. I prescribe and protect. And, I am not the one ending his career. If it ends, it is not because of my decision, nor that of Dr. Robinavitch. It is Mr. Whitaker’s fault.”

Dr. Volkova sighed and adjusted her glasses, turning the tablet back around.

“You say that he did not tell you about his history, and that you only found out when it was too late. Well, he made that decision himself. This is what comes from that.”

The words ‘this is what comes from that’ bounced around in the recesses of Robby’s mind like ping-pong balls. It felt like the operant phrase of the day. This place, this personal hell, seemed intent on making him, and Santos, by extension, feel like the job was already done.

It felt like there was nothing they could do. Such was the fate of the Neuro ICU; knowing that nothing you do would be enough.

However, it apparently was not enough for Dr. Trinity Santos.

“What if…” Santos began, “what if he didn’t need to stay in Neuro Obs or inpatient?”

Dr. Volkova looked like she’d just been slapped in the face, her lips drawing tighter and her eyes narrowing.

Good fucking lord, she’s allergic to listening to me, Robby thought, grasping his hands together for some form of actual grounding in this clusterfuck of an interaction. And now she’s gonna kill both of us. Oh well. If this is my time, it just saves a couple steps.

“I apologize, Dr. Volkova,” he said, in some effort to lighten the thick tension in the room. “She’s still feeling a little shaken, and-”

“No, no,” she interjected, silencing Robby with a wave of her hand. “She has decided to speak. That is her decision. Let her finish.”

Unnervingly, the Wolf’s face began to form into something Robby had never seen, and hoped to never see again: a thin, almost imperceptible smile, while she muttered something under her breath in Russian.

I hope my will’s up to date. Should’ve checked that sooner, I guess.

“Well, believe it or not, I am a doctor,” Santos said, her voice lower and more controlled. “Got the piece of paper, the rounds, and the emotional baggage to prove it. So, don’t send him to a stepdown. Send him back to our apartment once his ICP is stable. I can watch him, give him his meds, and neuro check him. I already was, for the latter half of my shift. Check his chart, I was his assigned physician, and I can keep doing that. I’d just need to take some time off work. I mean, he was deep in AMS earlier, but he calmed down when he realized we were there. Why would we take away the only thing that actually worked?”

We, Robby clung to, selfishly, as in both her and I. We.

However, the logical part of his brain turned back on, and he watched again as the Wolf adjusted her glasses and looked deeply into Santos’ eyes, like she was looking through her. Never a good sign.

“Dr. Santos, remind me. What rank are you, again?”

“I’m an R2. I’m not some green-ass med student, if that’s what you're insinuating. My first shift here was Pittfest. I’ve dealt with hard stuff before.”

“With respect, your ‘two’ does not impress me. I cannot, with a sound mind, discharge a volatile neuro case to a resident, in a small apartment, with other people living on either side of you. That would be more than irresponsible and negligent.”

“What if it wasn’t a resident?” Robby spoke, interjecting.

Santos paused, and turned to look at him with a cocked eyebrow. Dr. Volkova matched the action, fingers gripping the edges of the tablet harder. The eyes of judgement had moved squarely back to him, cold and hard and heavy.

“What do you wish to say, Dr. Robinavitch?”

If she’s already going to kill me, he thought, mind racing, I might as well go down defending Whitaker. If this is a test, it’s time to act like it.

“I’m saying that, unlike Dr. Santos, I not only have about twenty years of experience beyond residency, but also a fully furnished guest room in a private home, not to mention I just started three months of sabbatical. I’m saying, discharge him to me. I'll spend my time off with him, and he's welcome to stay with me for any additional necessary time.”

He sighed, and put his hands together, lacing his fingers within themselves, almost as if he was praying.

“Besides, he’s my resident. Despite what you think, it’s not Whitaker’s fault. If anything happens on my floor, to my staff, it’s my responsibility, so let me act like it. I know you need the bed, too. Let me help both of us out. All three, or hell, all four, of us out.”

“But, you were supposed to…” Santos began, before trailing off.

The realization hit her slowly and visibly. Her face changed, eyes widening and mouth twisting, as her eyes darted between Robby's face and the bracelet on his wrist. Santos was smart; always was. She had probably figured out what he was using the word ‘sabbatical’ in place of by now.

She probably also put that together with what Whitaker meant to him, and realized what this offer actually was.

Because, really, this wasn’t an offer. This wasn’t a sacrifice, or a ‘just doing it to be nice’ type of attempt.

This was an exchange; a life for a decision. This was an offer, not to Santos, or to the Wolf, or to Whitaker, but to God, the one he still wasn’t even sure if he could trust in just yet.

This was his atonement.

So let me give you this one last thing. Let me prove it to you.

“...yeah,” Santos continued, nodding her head softly and slowly. “No, you know what? Yeah. I agree. Discharge him to Robby. As his medical proxy, I endorse it.”

Dr Volkova’s face scrunched in thought, and she looked down at the tablet once more. This silence, the one following the agreement, was the longest, most thick, and most meaningful of this accursed night. Or, maybe it just felt like it was. Regardless, when Dr. Volkova spoke again, it felt like time began passing once more.

“Do you know what that would mean?” she spoke.

“Yes. I’ve worked in medicine long enough to.”

“No. You do not know the depths of that statement, or you would not have made it. So let me tell you what it would mean to care for someone in the state Mr. Whitaker is currently in.”

She took a breath, placing her hands together, and finally, put the tablet down, placing it face-down on the table between them.

“He will not be your happy-go-lucky, capable, smart resident anymore. He will be different. For the first two or so weeks, he will need to be watched at every moment. He cannot be alone. You will need to feed him, wake him, test him, give him his medication, help him walk, and provide grounding when his mind betrays him, which it will. You will need to wake him every four hours, to make sure he has not regressed.

For the following months, assuming he has not regressed, you will need to watch him almost every moment he is awake. He cannot walk unsupervised. He cannot drive, nor can he use any screens for periods over twenty minutes. You will need to take him to every appointment, every follow-up, every test. Most importantly, however, he cannot perform any action resembling medicinal practice on another person. If he so much as places a bandage, his medical license could be revoked.

You will not be his boss, or his colleague, or his friend anymore. You will be his lifeline. His caretaker. In practice, you will be his personal ICU nurse. More so, you will sign AMA papers, because in no way do I consider this a sound plan of action. If he dies from this, let the blood fall on your hands.”

She took another breath, and looked Robby in the eyes; clearly, deeply, and with an expression he didn’t expect from her. The look in her eyes, the tone, wasn’t icy anymore. It was almost empathetic.

“From what I can gather,” Dr. Volkova continued, “Mr. Whitaker is someone who prides himself on being independent. So, he will fight you. He will not listen to you, he will try to do things behind your back, and he will dig his toes in the sand at every step. He very well may hate you, Dr. Robinavitch. Forever. Is this truly how you wish to spend your sabbatical?”

Better, then. Let him hate me.

If this is the task he had been given, let him take it. Let it hurt. Let this process feel like hot coals to his body. Let this be a journey. Let him make the trade. Let this be the promise.

To love was to let go, they always say.

So, let him let go. Let the last thing he gave anyone be to Whitaker.

Let him give him his life back.

“I’ll do it.”