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Langdon's yell is drowned out by the gunshot. And now he's looking at her funny.
“What,” she says. Thinks she says. She actually can’t hear very well right now—sudden onset tinnitus? Unfortunate timing. Their patient is still on the gurney, writhing around—no, they’re on him now, the fuckers in their overkill camo, they’re making it so much worse, this man needs blood and intubation meds, Walsh needs to get the fuck over here—
Langdon’s frozen in place, just staring at her, mouth hanging open, those stupid strands of hair flopping in his face. A flash of irritation; and you call me slow. It was all going so well. He wasn’t even here earlier; finally got out of her way, didn’t cut the line and take up all the space in the room. Robby picked her to be next to him and Abbot with the criticals. She was flying. She was on fire. She was—
“Samira,” and that’s highly unusual, since when does Langdon call her Samira, it’s not like she’s ever called him Frank, they’re really, really not friends. He’s always Langdon and she’s always Mohan, even when they’re—
She can’t quite finish her trains of thought; everything is looping right back to where she started. The stricken look on Langdon’s face she’s never seen before, even when they lose a kid to something ridiculous and preventable.
Sudden warmth pooling in her crotch, trickling down her legs, wetting her scrub pants underneath the bloodied gown. She can’t stop it, can’t contract the muscles in her abdomen. Tries to squeeze her thighs together.
At least Langdon’s disappeared—would have been just one more thing to taunt her about. Jesus, Slo-Mo, what kind of doctor pisses their pants during a mass trauma? My four-year-old has better bladder control.
Blinks: could have sworn she saw a glint of a gold chain, a neatly combed mustache. Discerning brown eyes. Blinks again and Robby’s in front of her—when did he leave the red zone?—yelling something. Maybe at her. Usually it was at her. His hands are on her then, wrapping around her shoulders, grabbing the backs of her knees, and lifting her like nothing. She can feel him through the layers of scrubs and gear—solid and strong, mountain of a man. She wants to crawl inside his clothes, his body, an animal seeking warmth. Clutches at whatever she can reach, fingers scraping along his prickly beard, collar of his gown, hooking around the thin silver chain she catches her eye on once, twice, three times a shift. Wrenches it out of his shirt, wants to know what’s on the other end.
Star of David. That’s funny—she’s never really considered him to be particularly religious.
There’s so much about him Samira doesn’t know. This the longest he’s ever touched her for. She supposes it’s for the best—he doesn’t even like her all that much anyways.
More hands clawing and tearing at her protective wear; she must have been laid out on a gurney at some point because all she can see is the stark white ceiling, fluorescent lights like too many suns in the sky, dark amorphous shapes in her peripherals. One of the shapes looms on her left. Samira can make out blue eyes ringed with purpling bruises.
Dana says, “I’ve gotta cut your clothes off, honey.”
Right. Right. Makes sense. There’s just so much going on right now, she can’t really think. World’s gone fuzzy.
She still can’t see Langdon—must have run away, like earlier. It’s just as well. Cool air hits her torso and breasts as her scrub top, undershirt and sports bra are sliced through with trauma sheers, peeled away from her skin, sticky with sweat and blood. She looks down at herself.
A jagged rip in her stomach, an inch to the right of her navel. And that must be her intestine spilling out.
Oh, she notes. That’s new.
“Samira,” a different voice, urgent and raspy, in her right ear. Abbot, if she actually believed Abbot could ever sound genuinely afraid. “We’re going to give you something for the pain. Do you understand?”
“I’m fine,” she says, but the words slur together. They just—it was simple, right? They just needed to shove it back in and she’d be good to go. Few stitches—they could get one of the new med students to do it. Really, they shouldn’t waste anything on her. They’re already dangerously low on just about everything and they still have more patients rolling in. More patients to treat. They’d never stop having patients to treat.
She tries to turn her head to see him, so he can understand. “No pain. Don’t have any pain.”
She mostly just feels cold. Soon, she doesn’t feel much of anything at all.
The pills are either in his locker or on his person. Robby checks Louie's charts and scripts, and double checks, and triple checks, and doesn't end up doing anything about it at all.
What is there to do? Send Langdon home? Because an intern on her first day thinks he might be stealing meds. Nah, call it an investment, risk assessment, whatever—sunk-cost fallacy doesn’t apply down here. It would hurt them so much more to pull a senior resident out of the game when they’re already neck-deep in the shit.
He absolutely does not have time for this but here he is, in the single stall bathroom, fiddling with the empty vial of Lorazepam Santos—with a hesitancy that irritated him—handed over ten minutes earlier.
Santos was right—the cap does look like it’s been glued shut. And the nursing notes appear to corroborate what she claims happened with the Librium, although the probability of Louie dropping them somewhere while in a drunken stupor is a bit higher than one of his senior residents pocketing them for himself.
Langdon’s not high. Robby would’ve clocked it. He’s treated and streeted dozens of addicts that pass through his ER and you get fooled once, twice, maybe three or four times—anything beyond that really meant you just simply didn’t have what it takes to work in emergency medicine. Something Robby has never been accused of. Ergo.
There’s just no way he can send Langdon home now. No one else gets through patients as fast as him—he doesn’t spend an hour on a history or order unnecessary tests or do the opposite of what Robby tells him to do. They’ve got too many admits and too many people in triage and no beds and a trauma rolling in every five fucking minutes and he still has to talk to Theresa Saunders at some point and make sure no more of his nurses are being battered in the ambulance bay.
God, he needs a fucking cigarette.
He needs his residents to do their jobs.
No one here ever just listens to him. It’s like they need to prove they’re better than him: better at keeping their shit on lock, better at leaving it at the door, better at treating his patients. As if they’ve learned everything there is to know in just a few years and decided, nah, that’s bullshit. He never did this with Adamson. Deferred to him, always. Should have asked him, before—should have asked him how he managed his problems. Maybe then Mohan wouldn’t have twisted out of his grip and run to Heather instead, played mommy against daddy, spoke so softly and stared up at him with big brown eyes, as if this performance was going to endear her to him, get her on his good side: I thought you were having a bad day.
And fucking Heather too; no trust in him anymore. Didn’t he used to have it? He must have, at some point. She liked him enough to fuck him.
It was never there with McKay. Too headstrong, too sure of her own shit. Too old, maybe, to want to keep learning anything but the medicine from him. And she looks at him sometimes, some glint in her eye, like she knows it and she’s not going to wait for him to catch up. Like today, before she fucked off and called the cops without telling him and acted like she just had no choice but to do so.
They don’t understand how fragile this whole thing is. How so goddamn close they are to shutting down and losing everything and then some. He’s just trying to save their asses and this is what he gets in return.
He thinks about the look on Frank’s face right after he dressed him down in front of the staff.
Robby shoves the vial into his pocket and strolls out of the bathroom, walks over to the hub. Langdon’s charting at the next station over. Glances over at Robby very quickly.
Santos isn’t around. No incoming trauma. This would be his only chance to nip this in the bud.
“You got a second?” Robby calls out.
He’s close enough to see Langdon’s throat bob.
“For you, boss, I got two,” Langdon responds, stiff, jumping out of his chair and rounding the desk.
Dana raises her brow at him. He taps his cheek and she rolls her eyes, bringing the ice pack to her face. At least she still sometimes listened to him.
They duck into West 12, miraculously empty. Robby locks the door behind them, draws the curtain and faces him. Langdon’s fiddling with the beaded bracelet on his wrist.
“Whatever issue you’ve got with Santos,” he starts, raising a hand when Langdon immediately opens his mouth. Pauses until he presses his lips back together. “Whatever it is—she didn’t listen to you, she talked back—I don’t care. Drop it.”
Because he’s physically incapable of not running his mouth for a single second, Langdon splutters out, “Robby—whatever she told you—she’s a fucking liar—”
“Frank,” he cuts in. Draws it out so it hits condescending. Brings his right hand up to clasp Langdon’s shoulder. “Shut the fuck up.”
Digs his fingers in. Just a little bit.
Langdon becomes very still, then. Quite the opposite of how frenetic he usually is.
It’s thrilling, in a way.
“What I need you to do,” Robby continues, in a low voice, “is your job. That’s it. And when I tell you to shut the fuck up, you—”
He tilts his head, raises his brows.
“.... I shut the fuck up.” Langdon says slowly, after a beat.
Robby sighs—it’s not even put-on. Takes his hand off of Langdon’s shoulder. “Yes, Frank, exactly. Didn’t I say this earlier? What, you already forgot? Did you even listen to me?”
“Of course—”
“You need me to yell at you again in front of the whole fucking department?”
“No, I just—”
“You’re a senior resident and you’re still acting like this. It’s like you don’t even want the education fellowship, or—”
“I do!” Langdon cuts him off. “No, of course I want it. I’m—I’m sorry, I fucked up. You’re right, I didn’t listen to you.”
Robby scrubs a hand over his face. Wishes he was doing anything else. “Yeah, you didn’t. You’ve been distracted. You’re letting this job get to you. You’re letting interns get to you.”
“I’m not letting the interns get to—”
Cuts off and swallows when Robby gives him a look. Already learning.
Something Adamson told him once rings in his head. Something about meeting your student where they’re at. Getting on their level, so you can eventually bring them up to yours.
Voice still low, Robby leans in like it’s just the two of them in this whole hospital.
“You know how much I rely on you. To teach the others. To keep us running smoothly. This doesn’t work unless we’re on the same side. I need you,” he says, tilting his head down until Langdon looks him in the eye, “to be on my side.”
Langdon nods. Less frantic than his energy before. “I’m always on your side, Robby,” he insists. He’s still fiddling with that bracelet. “Always. That’s not—you don’t need to question that, man. And you don’t need to worry about me. I'm not going to be distracted anymore.”
Robby can’t stop a scoff from escaping. “Right.”
Langdon steps in, even closer, like he thinks it will help his case. Robby can see how dilated his pupils are, black swallowing blue. A sheen of sweat slicking his forehead. His voice drops to a whisper, soft and raw at once: confession. “This is the only thing I have.”
Yeah, Robby thinks. You and every other person in this ER.
This has already taken long enough. He nods. “Okay. It’s okay. I know.”
This time when he puts his hand on Langdon’s shoulder, Langdon leans into it. He always did respond well to positive reinforcement.
And they really did need to get back to work.
“Take a beat,” Robby says, soft, coaxing, “and then go find Whitaker, clear some beds. And keep working with Mel,” he adds, almost as an afterthought. “At least the two of you seem to be getting along.”
“Okay,” Langdon exhales. Rakes a hand through his sweaty hair, blinks a few times.
Robby squeezes his shoulder once more. He’ll want Langdon to remember it for the next time they inevitably need to have this type of one-on-one.
He clears his throat, drops his hand, and drags the curtain back round. Immediately Langdon seems to deflate. He even takes a step back from Robby, glancing out the windows. Like that was going to help anything.
”I’ll be in T1,” Robby says, turning to leave. Unlocks the door and opens it a few inches. The noise of the ER, muffled before, infiltrates the room, sharp and angry once more.
“If I hear you’ve slipped up,” he adds, one hand on the handle, the other on the frame. “If Santos comes to me again, if a nurse or someone else tells me you’re yelling instead of teaching, anything at all—I’ll tell you exactly what she told me. She’s not much of a liar.”
He considers flashing the vial: drive the point home.
Not yet. This part of it needs to wait until Langdon comes to him, which Robby suspects won’t be too long. Within the month.
Langdon nods. Doesn’t say anything more. Glances between Robby and the sliver of the ER.
Robby knocks on the door frame once and leaves.
Good, he thinks, shoving the culprit vial deeper into his pocket as he walks over to the board. It’s better this way, they can all just go back to work now. No more stupid distractions, no more mysteries being solved by nosy interns, no more shit going on in his department behind his back. He knows it all now and Langdon will come to him when he’s ready—he just needs reassurance, is all, needs to be told he’s doing a good job. Positive reinforcement. Hell, Robby was the same way with Adamson—only makes sense he’d end up drilling the same thing into Langdon.
And he probably will screw up again, if he was getting sloppy enough to let an intern sniff him out on her first day. Even so. Langdon’s a smart guy. His best resident.
And if all of that didn’t work, there were always other tried and true ways of getting him to listen.
David comes back with a Glock tucked in his jacket. His mother's brains paint the concrete before anyone can blink.
In the time it takes for Victoria to process the initial flash of metal, the deafening bang, louder than she expected, the second of the one-two punch has landed.
“Fuck,” she says. There’s something on her face that wasn’t there a second ago.
She’s not even supposed to be here. She was doing quite well for herself in pinks, actually. And McKay was being really nice to her, even though she fucked up earlier, ran her stupid mouth and scared that homeless—unhoused—woman away.
“Fuck,” she says again. David joins his mother on the ground, cut loose like a marionette. The gun slips from his hand, clatters a yard away from Victoria’s non-slip shoes.
Really, it was Samira’s fault. She had practically skipped up to Victoria after she sent an overdose to yellow and told her to roll with me like learning how to triage gunshot wounds in under ten seconds was supposed to be fun, like she was tagging along on an exciting adventure to the ambulance bay.
Samira doesn’t look like she’s having fun anymore.
There seems to be a lot of horrified screaming and frantic jostling happening around Victoria. More so than what’s become her baseline in the last two hours. She sees Samira drop to her knees next to David’s mom. Victoria doesn’t remember her name. Another doctor—Ellis, she thinks—helps Samira carefully roll her onto her back.
She’s still moaning pitifully; horrible wet rasps, fingers twitching like she’s trying to reach for something. Blood pools on the pavement beneath her head, matting in tangled grey hair. Probably cracked her skull when she hit the ground.
The exit wound is on her forehead. Her eyes are open.
Victoria’s father told her a story once, of hunting up in Michigan one season, long before she was born. Before he married her mother. The details are fuzzy—she can’t remember why he decided to go through the whole process of training and buying a license. If it was something he actually wanted to do or it was something his med school friends dragged him along to. She can’t quite create the picture in her head; her dad, a brown man, a doctor, in camo with a gun slung over his shoulder. Casual.
All she remembers is what he told her about a doe shot by one of them. Was vague on who, exactly, pulled the trigger.
Sometimes they took a while to die, if they were shot in the lungs or the liver. So you had to wait it out a few minutes, track them as they slowly exsanguinated. This doe was hit in only one lung, so it took even longer. Four hours of bleeding out, suffocating, trampling through the forest, until she could finally drop.
She doesn’t understand why Samira keeps pounding on this woman’s chest. Or why Ellis is still calling for help. Or why, out of the dense barrage of cops and SWAT teams and hospital security surrounding them, swarming around David, who’s already dead, who didn’t even do this one thing right, why just one person won’t get a handle on their gun, a finger on the trigger, and—
“Don’t look, Javadi.” On her right, Doctor Shen, eyes sharp behind the protective goggles. Then he’s directly in front of her, grabbing her firmly by the shoulders, spinning her around—she goes, pliable. “Just. Don’t look. Look forward. Just walk. Let’s go. One foot in front of the other.”
No, she almost whines. She wants to get her fill. Morbid fascination, maybe. Rubbernecking matricide.
But it’s getting harder to see; something dark drips down her goggles, over the left eye. She raises her hands to wipe them; realizes she still has gloves on, covered in just about everything the human body can produce. Still tries pushing the goggles up her forehead with the back of her wrists. Can’t manage it. Shen must see her struggling—of course he does, he’s right behind her, marching her in some direction towards some location—and pulls the goggles the rest of the way off of her face. She’s still looking forward. He told her to.
She met him two hours ago. No—Robby introduced him to all of them, John Shen, night shift attending. Those were the first words he’s ever said to her. Don’t look, Javadi. It’s nice, that he knows her name. What a nice surprise.
The strap snags beneath her ponytail. She reaches back to free it, but Shen untangles it completely. She’s grateful; she would hate to get blood in her hair. That’d probably be a bitch to wash out.
There’s more people streaming into the ambulance bay now. They seem to be the only ones trying to get back inside. Shen, hands clamped around her shoulders just this side of too tight, pushes them through, upstream, until they stumble back under obscene bright lights. The stench of blood and antiseptic hanging in the air, thick like smog.
Robby’s on his way out, too, when he spots them.
“It’s bad,” Shen says from behind her. “I’m just gonna—”
Robby nods. He looks like he wants to say something to her. Only flicks his eyes up and down her body and twists his mouth.
She swallows, sour-mouthed, annoyed. Please. Like she looks any worse than every other patient in here.
Dana comes up to them as Robby leaves. The fluorescents make the mottled bruises on her face stand out, stark against pale skin.
Shen transfers her to Dana like a child passed from dad to mom—there’s not a second someone’s not touching her, Dana’s slender hands coming up to replace Shen’s heavier ones. Both feel nice. It’s nice to be touched. She might float away otherwise.
“Jesus,” Dana says, squinting at her. Her hand raises as if to touch Victoria’s cheek. “Are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere?”
A hysterical laugh bubbles in her throat. She’s always laughing at the worst times: like earlier today in triage, or when her parents are lecturing her. Or now. It would be so inappropriate to laugh right now. She’s pretty sure the white sheet-covered body on the gurney behind Dana is that girl McKay told her about. Someone Robby knows.
“Too late,” she gets out around a gasp, but—wait, that was for Doctor Shen, a joke about his futile effort to not have her witness the aftermath of a botched murder-suicide out in the ambulance bay, like it would somehow also negate that fucking foot and what seemed like gallons of blood she suctioned out of that poor woman while her daughter just had to stand there and hope Victoria knew what the fuck she was doing. Like, wanted him to know he was about thirteen hours too late but it was still really nice of him to consider her feelings—he might even be nicer than Mateo.
“Do you want me to get your mom?” Dana asks. She brushes something out of Victoria’s hair.
Not really. She doesn’t think her mother should have to see her like this. She’s probably up in surgery at this point, and her mother just hates to be bothered when she’s in surgery.
It would just be cruel to ask her to come down for this; she’d think Victoria was trying to prove a point. Trying to wiggle her way out.
“Please,” she says. Then again, she’s always been just a little bit selfish.
She figures making an appointment with her obstetrician to tell her what she already knows can wait until after they get to the other side of this. Assuming there would be one to get to. Jury’s still out, two hours in.
She ended up in pink at some point in the last fifteen minutes, ever since they brought that girl in—Jake’s girlfriend, Langdon had said. She’s shoulder to shoulder with a wild-eyed and frizzy-haired McKay. McKay, who Heather has never seen as absolutely stalwart and sure of herself as she is right now. She can’t say the same for herself.
“Fuck—hold on—” McKay mutters, readjusting her grip on the laryngoscope.
Heather’s preparing to place a chest tube in their patient; developed a tension pneumothorax. She’s stopped trying to think beyond the present moment, trying to anticipate the next step, trying to get ahead of it. Just going by her gut—all muscle memory, hands moving leagues faster than her brain. Slipping into a flow state.
McKay shakes her head; tough airway. “I need—”
“—crichoid pressure,” Heather finishes, placing her fingers on either side of the crichoid ring. Pushes down.
“Dr Collins!”
Mel skitters to a stop in front of their gurney. Her braid seems to have really been through it. She gestures, frantic, I/O drill in hand as if melded to her palm at this point, to the North hallway. “Need you. No attendings.”
McKay pulls the stylet, triumphant, with Perlah crowding in to attach the bag. “Go,” McKay says with a jerk of her chin, hand outstretched. “I got this.”
A flare of pride in Heather’s chest; it’s good to see Cassie like this. She passes the scalpel over.
And she really should check in with the new kids in yellow. Make sure they haven’t done more harm than good.
“Give it to me,” she says, skirting the gurney and falling into step with Mel. Takes one last glance behind her.
Catches the moment right before Dana covers the girl’s face with a white sheet.
There’s a new crowd of people near the behavioral rooms, cops and the SWAT team among the nurses and techs. She can’t see Robby.
Mel’s rattling off the list of issues in yellow with increasing weariness. Heather focuses back on her just as she says, “—and, um. Don’t be mad, but I think Santos is doing a REBOA.”
“Oh, no,” Heather says. “Oh, you’re fucking with me.”
“I wish,” Mel sighs, downright miserable.
She catches the end of the procedure—Whitaker looking paler than usual and Donahue grim as Santos pulls back the syringe—and is somewhat buoyed by the sheer panic on Santos’ face when she sees that Mel brought over Heather and not one of the cowboys. They get lucky; Carmen stabilizes and Whitaker gets a handle on it again. Abbot shows up ten seconds later and glares at Heather.
She raises her hands. “I just got here.” She nods at Santos, who is attempting to look contrite but also can’t stop grinning. “Ask your new ER cowboy.”
“A REBOA,” Abbot starts, and Heather can’t help but be impressed that, on her first day, Santos managed to make Jack Abbot sound even older than he actually is. “Are you shitting me.”
Heather takes that as her cue to leave.
She doesn’t go far; Mel asks her to check out an old hippie with a burr hole in his head (“Don’t ask,” Mel says), a clown with a bloodied hand who eyes the I/O drill in Mel’s hand warily (“Don’t ask, got it,” Heather says when Mel opens her mouth), and several other patients who just need sutures and pain meds and some peace and quiet. Heather spots Jake on a gurney in the far corner and guesses no one has told him his girlfriend is dead yet.
“He’s alright, just minor leg lacerations,” Mel says. “Did Robby, um—”
“No,” Heather says. She looks away from Jake. Mel’s wringing her hands together, drill abandoned, shoulders tense.
“I’m sorry,” she says, painfully earnest.
Sorry for what, Heather thinks. Unbidden, the image of her bloodied underwear pushes to the front of her mind.
And she was doing so well ignoring it for the past five hours. Thrust it down far enough for Robby to accept it when she told him no, nothing is wrong, I’m completely fine and please stop asking me this every ten minutes. He left her alone after, though the hangdog look on his face made Heather unreasonably infuriated every time she’s thought about it since. Like now.
She could have told him, but what good would come of it? I had a miscarriage. Again. Third time, actually. The only time I’ve ever been pregnant was when I was with you and I got rid of it because of you. And because of me. But mostly because of you.
She can’t do this right now. Swings her focus back and nods at Mel, who seems relieved Heather doesn’t have much else to say about the matter.
She continues to get pulled every which way for the next five minutes: checks in with Javadi and Shamsi (who seem to be engaged in some sort of mother-daughter psychic war), ensures Carmen isn’t somehow bleeding out again, and runs into Walsh, who has not even broken a sweat (which scares Heather more than it impresses her, honestly), before returning to pink. Cassie greets her with a grin and a wave of her scalpel.
She’s got both hands on an eviscerated bowel when she hears Dana, from across the floor, call for Robby.
Come to think of it, Heather hasn’t seen him since before Jake and his girlfriend came in. She frowns at McKay, who shrugs helplessly but gets back to their patient.
He can’t still be in pedes. Unless he took Jake back there. Despite it being a crime scene.
She grits her teeth.
She calls for Langdon, who’s just sent another patient up to the OR, to take over for her, tells a confused Cassie to hang on for just a minute, and heads towards pedes, stripping her gloves on the way.
There’s a security guard posted by the door. Through the glass, at this angle, she doesn’t see Jake or Robby.
“I need to get supplies,” she says, not waiting for the guard to say anything before slipping inside.
Jake’s not there but Robby is. On the floor, near the far wall past the six sheet-covered gurneys. He’s not—he’s moving, rocking back and forth slightly, but she can’t see his face.
Collapsed against the wall, curled in on himself. The shape of a wounded animal.
He hasn’t noticed her entrance. Or, if he has, it doesn’t register fully. It’s quiet enough in here, the din of the outside world muted, that she realizes he’s talking to himself.
A chill goes down her spine.
He’s never looked so small. Not when he sobbed uncontrollably in Heather’s bed in the middle of the night. Not when she tucked him into the crook of her neck and held him, scared out of her mind, completely at a loss of what to do, how to help him. He had clutched his necklace so hard in the palm of his hand, the points of the star broke skin.
She felt sick to her stomach the morning after—like something really bad was going to happen soon. And it would be her fault. As if he passed on some of his eternal torment to her during the night, along with a lethal dose of self-loathing for good measure.
As quietly as she came in, she slips out of pedes.
She’s walking and she doesn’t know where she’s going and her heart’s pounding really hard. Feels it in her throat and has the urge to cough it out completely. God—she needs water. A nap. A vacation. An exorcism. A burr hole to the skull.
She needs a fucking drink. Or maybe an emesis basin.
She ends up in the hallway near yellow and ambushes the first person she sees.
“Whitaker,” she starts, before she even knows what she’s going to say, “go get some blankets out of pedes.”
He swivels his head between her and the still-chaotic yellow zone. “Um.”
“Take two, and see if you can get some blankets,” she says, with more conviction than she feels. “I’m sure these folks are feeling chilly.”
She’s lucky Whitaker’s green enough to just nod, wide-eyed, and jog down the hallway towards pedes. As soon as he disappears around the corner her brain catches up with what the fuck just happened and she realizes she sent the twitchy med student to pick the rapidly unraveling Chief of Emergency Medicine up off the floor and get him back in the game.
She doesn’t know what’s worse: that she thinks it will work or that she’s not guilty about it.
She takes a second to lean against the nurses desk to catch her breath, get her heart rate under control. Bridget catches her eye.
“Dr Collins? You good?”
What does it look like. Grits her teeth, stands up straight again, and rolls her neck. “Fine.”
Bridget nods. “It’s slowing down out there. No new pinks or reds for the last ten minutes.”
Heather exhales.
And things do taper: she hovers around each section for the next five minutes, checking on the wrap up of all of their patients. She spots Robby, upright now, doing the same, and slinks back to the red zone to check-in with Samira and Abbot.
The next time she sees him for more than a blurry five seconds is when Gloria announces the shooter killed himself.
Heather watches him out of the corner of her eye. Head bowed, gaze on the floor, as Gloria’s talking. Everyone’s by the hub: the nurses, the doctors, the students. Whitaker, looking dead on his feet but otherwise alright, standing next to Santos and Javadi.
She has the sudden, horrible urge to sob.
It was everything: it was the old man dying in pedes this morning and the kid who overdosed and the girl who drowned saving her little sister, and now this poor girl shot in the heart, and the five other deaths too. All added to the long, long list of people permanently settled in Heather’s brain, the ones she closes the door on so she can get through the day and opens back up at night so can punish herself just a little bit more.
And underneath it all was Montgomery Adamson, whom she never met but wants to mourn too, if only because she wishes she knew Robby before he gave up.
She wants nothing more than to curl up in a ball and hide, curl up in her bed and mourn her babies that weren’t even babies yet, just cells her body rejected over and over and over again. But she doesn’t get to go home, and Dana doesn’t get to go home after a punch to the face, and she doesn’t think Robby should get to, either. Whether or not it was cruel to think—to resent him for the ten minutes he spent hiding away from it all—was not something she was all that concerned with at this point.
Part of her wants to run over to Dana or Abbot and—what? Pawn off the responsibility to even more people? Shake them down and ask them how they could let this happen? It wasn’t their jobs any more than it was her job to keep on Robby, like he needed to be closely monitored for signs of collapse, to calculate exactly when the cracks would widen just enough.
The other part of her knows this is something she’s just going to have to shut up about.
No. No, it’s fine now. She sent the kid in there and Robby’s up and about again. All of them none the wiser, and it really was for the better that she didn’t get involved—she’s already entangled enough in this grotesque knot as it is.
The sob in her throat turns into something closer to a laugh. There’s been a mass shooting and she’s worried her ex-something, current boss might find out she saw him rocking back and forth on the floor. How stupid.
Whitaker catches her eye, then. Holds her gaze for a beat and then glances at Robby, then back to her.
Nods, once, a minute tilt of his head. Then schools his expression like nothing ever happened as Gloria dismisses them for hand-off to the night shift.
Alright. Maybe the kid does have some game.
Heather follows in stride. If Whitaker isn’t going to say anything, neither is she, and they can all go back to work.
Just one more year. She’ll learn from her mistakes this time. What’s one more thing to keep from him until then? Tack it onto the end of the list: abortion, miscarriage, miscarriage, yet another miscarriage, unseen witness to his mental breakdown in the children’s ward. At least this one had nothing to do with her faulty uterus.
And, well. What Robby doesn’t know won’t kill him—or something to that effect.
Robby doesn't show up today; exactly as he's done for the past four years. For once, Dana doesn’t feel pure unadulterated irritation when Hagan waltzes into the ED through chairs—breezing past the memorial wall on his way to the hub, gaudy yellow Yeti thermos in hand, chipper for apparently no good reason. Fucking moonlighters.
She’s never taken this day off; doesn’t really see the point in popping in and out of the ER like it was somehow going to be drastically different just this one day. Like she was going to be different just this one day.
Immediately they deal with a drugged out toddler, a probable hate crime, and the march of the living dead. Only gets better when a college kid overdoses on fentanyl and Dana tries very hard to not think about her youngest daughter, three states away, in her first ever dorm room. Best to not dwell on these things.
It’s still a weird fucking day, but in the way most days are like now, five years out. She’s so good at rolling with the punches; she’s even better when she doesn’t need to run interference between Robby and Heather, Robby and Langdon, Robby and Mohan, Robby and the whole world. And Hagan’s worked with them enough times that Dana just focuses on her nurses and the new kids—three of them like newborn fawns and one cocky shit she already knows is going to end up being a pain in her fucking ass.
And it’s going as well as expected—Hagan doesn’t linger, not like Robby (Frank and Heather never picked up the habit from him. Adamson didn’t really have it either. The Robinavitch special). ICU continues to give them the run around (as Langdon very diplomatically put it, barking into the phone, “What the fuck is the point of having an intensive care unit if you won’t admit anyone?”) and Heather is… not looking all that perky, and the waiting room’s turned into the Octagon for white millennial women, standing room only, by early afternoon. She’s got anywhere between one and five rats scurrying underfoot, a shitty casino operating out of dispatch, a teenage girl locking herself in the bathroom after Heather says she’s missed the cut off for an abortion, what Cassie believes to be a trafficking situation in North 2 they utterly fail to get ahead of, an ever-increasing wait time in triage, and Myrna, who keeps trying to chew through her handcuffs.
Then she unclenches for one moment and gets a right hook to the face as divine retribution.
Hagan, in his infinite wisdom, strongly advises her to go home and rest. Dana stops just short of laughing in his face and gets back to work.
Regrets it not two hours later. What was it, that the Greeks said about hubris? She catches the same miserable thought on Heather’s face and is selfishly glad she stayed, in spite of the miscarriage.
All hands on deck, so she calls Robby. Four times in the first minute since the code triage was called. Upwards of ten after Abbot walks in. Voicemail every time, Dana trying to tamp down on the increasing panic in her voice so her nurses don’t freak the fuck out.
From there they just circle the drain.
Thirty-two years means jack shit. It’s chaos on a level Dana didn’t quite believe was possible. Too many times today she’s been completely blindsided, like God concluded she still needs to be taken down a few pegs. Tries Robby until she can’t, needs to be in five places at once.
Everything’s an obscene blur until she sees Jake walk in from the ambulance bay covered in blood.
For a split second, Dana thinks she actually does have a concussion and she’s hallucinating. Then remembers Robby had tickets to Pittfest and said he’s going with Jake and she can’t believe she forgot about this until now, she’s running before she even knows it, calling out to Jake who can’t even speak right now, there’s another gurney pulling in, oh, God—
And then hates herself for the immense relief she feels when she sees a teenage girl riddled with bullet holes instead.
When the time comes, there’s no one around to drag out this girl’s life.
“Call it, Abbot,” Walsh intones, calm, two fingers on Leah’s carotid—an order.
Jack follows suit. He looks at Dana, stone-faced.
Motherfucker, she thinks savagely, when the flood finally slows to a trickle. You fucking motherfucker. Leaving her with this mess to clean up. His pseudo step-kid dry heaving on her shoulder. Thirteen bodies in pedes. The gurneys spill into the hallway.
She only wanted him next to her, where he’s supposed to be. She wants him to come when he’s called—when she calls him. That was the deal.
After she rounds with Lena and makes sure no one’s actively dying anymore, Dana takes a juice box and an ice pack to the stairwell and makes one last phone call.
She knows it’ll go to voicemail and she knows what she’ll say. She’s been unconsciously tacking on every grievance she has to the end of a long, long list for the whole day, the last five years, the entire time she’s known him. It forms so easily in her mouth.
The voicemail records close to a minute of silence until it cuts off with a burst of static. Let him figure out what the fuck it means.
She doesn’t do or say much else. Just rips the photos from her desk and takes a long look at Monty’s portrait on the wall before walking out.
The dust has settled well enough that Jack doesn’t feel too bad about catching Dana’s eye from across the hub.
Within the next minute they’re rounding the corner of a back hallway on the second floor of the hospital. There’s a small storage room at the end of it—presumed years ago to somehow be locked from the inside with absolutely no way of penetrating it. Only a select few know that story is pure bullshit.
Charge nurse privileges, Dana had smirked back then, shaking the only key in front of Jack’s face.
It was probably the last place any normal person would want to fuck in, but Jack’s come to think of it as cozy. Romantic, even. Good enough for the occasional quickie, at the very least.
“Robby?” he asks, as Dana unlocks the room. She jerks her chin up, towards the roof.
“Just a few minutes ago,” she says, opening the door and flicking the light switch. It’s dim, warm, just enough to let them see each other. “I turned over to Lena and Bridget, they’ll take care of the rest of it.”
Jack crowds behind her, walks her in, hands on her waist. Locks the door behind them, and pulls her in.
“Careful,” Dana mutters against his lips. He pulls back a little, meets her eyes.
She backs him up against the wall. Leans back, their hips flush, his left thigh caught between both of hers. He could easily have her grind down on him, but he waits. She always takes a beat to assess before acting. It lets him look at her, too.
He wants to skim the bruise with a fingertip, press a kiss to her beautiful nose and each eyelid, and man, what the fuck kind of place was Robby in charge of, letting his nurses, letting Dana be disrespected like this? Ungrateful bastard. Doesn’t know what he’s got. Let Collins go, too. Losing his grip on Mohan, tenuous as it was.
Jack would be there. Sew up the wounds Robby gave them, and then some.
“Just you,” Dana says, and ordinarily he’d protest, ignore the twinge in his right leg, get on his knees—but he’s keyed up and twitching with it. Always is after a shift like this one, needs to draw it out so the high tapers into something sweet. She holds her right palm under his chin. “Spit.”
Jack obliges.
She shoves her hand down his pants and boxers in one go, slender, familiar fingers wrapping around him. He cants his hips forward, letting out a low moan.
“Shut up,” Dana whispers, tightening her grip and twisting, as if that would somehow get him to hold his tongue. As if there was anyone around at all to hear them. But he knows she likes the idea of it; anybody might be right outside the door. “You’re always so fuckin’ loud, Jesus.”
“It’s Jack,” he says, grinning lazily, and how many times has he made that same joke in this same position, back against the wall, thrusting into her hand. A sharp bite on his jaw: a reprimand. He concedes, keeps his mouth shut and his hands on her hips, stroking the soft skin above the waistband of her scrub pants. This isn’t something meant to be savored. Quick and dirty, their specialty.
Only takes another minute of tight hot wet so fucking good before he pants, “Ah, fuck, close, I’m close.”
“Already?” she murmurs, lilting. With her left hand, flicks his shirt up, strokes over his stomach. Her nails are just long enough to dig into his skin.
He can’t produce any words; just pathetic whimpers, high and reedy in the back of his throat. Dana laughs. Readjusts her stance, getting even closer to him. Licks a stripe up his neck before coming to rest her head on his shoulder. A flash of bronze in the corner of his eye: the light catching on her cross necklace.
She hums. “You wouldn’t have let me get hurt, right?”
Tired, almost. As vulnerable as Dana ever gets.
Jack shakes his head. Licks his lips and finds his voice. “Not in a million fuckin’ years.”
“You would have protected me. You wouldn’t wait for admin to approve more security.”
“Would have killed him for you.” Turns his head, captures her lips, careful of her bruises. Tries to pour all of it into her.
She pulls away with a tug on his lower lip. Exhales shakily, tips her forehead to lean against his.
“I know,” she says. Her voice breaks a little. Jack closes his eyes. “I know. You’re a good man, Abbot.”
And with that he’s surging over the edge. He groans through it, helpless, Dana pressing kisses to his jaw on the come down.
The walkie clipped to her scrubs beeps. “Great timing,” Dana says drily. He laughs weakly, tips his head back against the wall. Good shit.
They clean up with practiced efficiency, Jack producing tissues from one of the many pockets on his pants and stuffing them back in there to discard later. Disadvantages of trying to get some at work—don’t leave any evidence behind. Worth it, for the way his limbs feel pleasantly stretched out like taffy, the aches and screams and dead bodies quieting, for the time being.
There’s no real guilt involved in this for him anymore. Maybe at one point, in the beginning, when the way Dana would look at him from across the floor, across the bar, made his blood heat and any logic or critical thinking to dribble out of his ears, and the idea of fucking a married woman—the headstrong and stubborn and beautiful charge nurse that gave as good as she got—was thrilling and ego-boosting. And they were young enough to actually fuck in these semi-public places and at the hospital, and he could take his time with her after a shift left her with tears in her eyes and an urge to use him to make it all better.
Most of those things changed in the last five years. They were never together but now their trysts are akin to debridement; trying to exorcise whatever was killing them that day so they could get up and do it again tomorrow. No guilt, but an ache in his chest replaces the heat. She’s tired all of the time now. Years of taking it on the chin catching up. Has a look on her face sometimes, after, when they’re coming down, that makes him think there was always guilt there for her.
He’s not going to ask her about it. He doesn’t want to know if it’s because of her husband, or because of Robby.
That look isn’t there as they clean up, now. Dana hands him a bottle of hand sanitizer from her pocket and gives him a small smile, just the corner of her mouth turning up, and he lets that be it, for now.
They lock the door behind them, start back down the hallway. Just seven minutes have passed since the initial look. Dana turns the walkie back on.
“Code Tan,” a tinny voice immediately garbles from the speaker, followed by a series of fuzzy crackles and pops and vague snatches of whatever situation is occurring on the other end. “—onnel needed. Code Tan— sidewalk. Don’t know what— ere’s Shen?— Robby— trying to reach—”
Dana hits the walkie against her palm. “Damn batteries.” She switches it off and clips it back on to her pants. “Nevermind that.”
“Another one?” Jack frowns. “Why isn’t it on the PA?”
“I don’t know. Everything’s just been screwy tonight." She stifles a yawn. “I bet Robby’s still up there. Can you—” She gestures vaguely to the roof. “I don’t think I can deal with him right now. Or ever again.”
“I’ll drag him back down one way or another,” Jack says, glancing at his watch. Quarter ‘till ten. Might still be able to catch up with Mohan before she left. Maybe offer her a ride home. “Don’t get involved with whatever it is, Shen and Ellis can handle it.”
Dana snorts as best she can with a bruised nose. “Trust me. I’m getting the fuck outta here.”
Dana splits away, towards the staircase, just one flight down to the ER. Jack schleps to the elevators. He’s not going to make the ache in his right leg any worse by hiking up twelve flights of stairs, already anticipating how inflamed the skin where the prosthesis meets his stub will be. Gets in, still riding the high of the furtive handjob, even as the hair on the back of his neck prickles—instinctive, like he forgot something important. Braces himself for whatever version of Robby he’ll have to deal with up there: angry, resentful, depressed, numb. All four, probably. Jack’s always been lucky like that.
He steps out onto an evidently deserted rooftop. Circles around once, twice, a third time—before realizing it’s only mostly deserted.
There’s a stethoscope slung around the top bar of the metal barrier situated at the far edge of the roof, the side overlooking the parking lot. It gleams chrome in the night, swaying with the wind. Twinkling like a distant star, just out of reach, the silver sheen catching the moonlight over and over and over again until morning.