Chapter Text
It’s an unusually hot day in Pittsburgh when Jack arrives at PTMC for his first shift. That’s what he keeps hearing, anyway. The morning talk shows on the radio said it, and the barista at the coffee shop that he scoped out a few days ago in his new neighborhood, and now the weather report playing on the TVs in the waiting room of the emergency department. It shouldn’t feel like much, coming from Vegas, but he’s forgotten now how much worse the humidity makes things, even if he was only out in the desert for a couple years this time.
He makes his way through the cramped, noisy room – already overflowing at not even 7am, though he suspects, like EDs everywhere, it’s never not overflowing – and to the doors that lead to the department itself.
Of course his badge doesn’t work.
There’s a line at the window but he’s supposed to be meeting Adamson in five, and he already feels like he’s late for being on time. He knocks on the window and holds up his badge, then shouts through the glass, “I’m the new attending!” The woman – he’ll have to get her name later – gives him a thumbs up and waves him through. He waves back, then heads back into further chaos.
It feels like coming home.
He had taken a few weeks between jobs to finish getting everything in order out in Vegas before moving out to Pittsburgh. It only felt right to drive the distance. The quickest route was 32 hours, just under 2,200 miles, and went through Denver, Kansas City and St. Louis; there was another, just a shade longer, that went right past Chicago.
Jack figured out his own path. It was hard to avoid getting close to anywhere he had lived before but he managed it, crossing the two-thousand-plus miles in just under a week. PTMC had offered to pay part of his moving fees, so most of the big things he wanted to keep – his bed, his desk, a few bookshelves and not much else – were shipped ahead of time and waiting for him at his final destination, a rental in Squirrel Hill South, a neighborhood he had never heard of but seemed as good as any when he did his few minutes of research. It didn’t really matter to him where he lived at this point, just that it was in the city of Pittsburgh. What actually mattered was who was on the other side of the move.
Dr. Adamson’s office is away from the hubbub, out in the rest of the hospital that feels like another world compared to emergency. Jack takes a deep breath, pulls his shoulders back into his best military posture, and knocks on the door.
Adamson had clearly been expecting him, of course he had, because the door opens immediately and Jack is ushered inside.
“Welcome,” Adamson says, sitting behind his desk, which is a mess of papers, files and family photos. “Please, take a seat.”
“Thanks,” Jack says. He does, still keeping his back as straight as if he was back at basic. There’s a twinkle in Adamson’s eye like Jack’s not the first former soldier he’s come across.
“Relax, take a deep breath,” Adamson tells him. “You haven’t even gotten to the hard part yet.”
Jack lets out a laugh. “Yeah, I guess not.” He does take a breath, and eases back a little in the chair.
“I’ll be honest, there’s not too much to go over with you now that we haven’t already,” Adamson says, “but I like to give new hires a few minutes before their first shift to sit with me, let me know anything they’re worried about, excited about, anything at all.”
Fuck, Jack really can’t believe he actually landed this job. “I appreciate that,” he says, and he really, really does. “I think I’m just ready to get out there and get my hands dirty, if that’s alright with you.”
Adamson smiles, warm, his eyes crinkling. “Well then we’d better get out there.”
Jack follows him back through the maze of halls to the emergency floor, trying to take mental notes as Adamson tells him the history of the building and his own tenure within it.
They’re just in time for morning rounds, the rest of the staff looking around expectantly as Adamson approaches with Jack in tow. They all must know he’s starting today, and with all the first days Jack has had in his life, it still somehow manages to feel different than the others; still manages to make him just that little bit nervous.
But maybe that’s the man standing just to Adamson’s left at the nurses’ station.
“Would you like to say a few words, Dr. Abbot?”
His name brings Jack back to the present moment, and he hopes, fleetingly, that no one caught him staring, and if they did, that they put it on first day jitters and don’t think too much of it. He clears his throat and looks around at the rest of the faces surrounding him. A few are looking back at him, encouraging tilts to their mouths and eyes, while others are already glancing at the board, probably mentally preparing to present their cases.
Jack nods and tries to focus in only on Adamson. “Happy to be here, excited to work with all of you and learn from all of you.”
Adamson gives him a nod back and from behind him one of the nurses, a woman with short blonde hair and a thin cross necklace, gives him a thumbs up and a smile. He smiles back, then watches her work while Adamson finishes up and dismisses the rest of the staff. She catches Jack’s eye just before she’s pulled aside by one of the students and gives him a wink. He has a feeling they’re gonna get along well.
“Dr. Abbot,” Adamson says, once again pulling Jack back to the moment, “I’d like you to meet Dr. Robinavitch, one of our senior attendings.”
Jack knew this moment was coming, but no matter how many times he imagined it in his head, there was absolutely no way of truly preparing himself for it.
The man standing before him is older, a beard on his face, already streaked with gray, when last Jack knew he couldn’t grow a thing; his eyes are a little more tired, lines creasing the corners that match Jack’s own, but still the same deep, warm brown. He’s not lanky anymore, more filled out and broad, and Jack thinks if he had a little more time to linger on it he’d appreciate that even more. But now it’s nearly awkward, and he has to say something.
“Nice to meet you…” He just stops himself from saying Mike, and instead trails off like an idiot.
There’s a look that crosses Mike’s face then, one that has been living in Jack’s head for the past thirty years, the same one he used to get when Jack stumped him at chess, like he’s realizing he missed something just a second too late. Jack thinks for a moment that maybe, just maybe, Mike recognizes him, but then he holds out a hand and says, “People around here call me Robby.”
Jack lets out a breath.
He takes the offered hand and shakes it, quick and firm, and tries to push down the memories, flooding back in full force, of the last time he felt it.
“Robby,” he repeats, a little hoarse. “Great to meet you.”
“Looks like we’re gonna be working together for a bit while you get your sea legs,” Mike – Robby – says with a grin.
Jack’s pulse thunders in his ears. “Is that so?”
Mi-Robby- laughs as he glances at Jack again. “Don’t look too excited. I promise I won’t be too hard on you.”
Despite the chaos around them, he looks more at ease than Jack thinks he ever did before. It’s like he’s finally grown into, well, everything about himself. Even in these few fleeting seconds Jack can see it.
“Dr. Robinavitch is an excellent teacher,” Adamson says proudly. “I’m sure our residents and med students would back me up on that.”
“Yeah, sure,” pipes up the person on Robby’s left, a resident Jack thinks, “once you get on his good side.”
Robby looks mock affronted. “All my sides are good,” he teases.
Adamson shakes his head and turns back to Jack. “It’s a bit of a family down here,” he explains. “It has to be, with the way we work.”
“A dysfunctional family, maybe,” the probable resident says with a grin.
“Is there something you need, Dr. Johnson?” Adamson asks, authoritative but not condescending.
“I’m actually here to present something to Dr. Robby, if you don’t mind me stealing him?”
Adamson nods. “Robby, why don’t you take rounds today while I give Dr. Abbot a quick tour.”
Robby salutes and nods, then follows Dr. Johnson away while Jack tries to make his sigh of relief not overly obvious.
“I know you saw a bit of the place when you interviewed, but seeing as this will be your new home for what we hope is a long time to come, you’ll probably want to be a bit better acquainted with the place.”
Jack nods. “Lead the way.”
The first stop is just behind them at the nurses station, where he’s introduced to the nurse from before, Dana, who compliments him on his little speech earlier, if it can even be called that – “Nice and short, just the way people like ‘em.”
“I aim to please,” Jack shoots back with a wink of his own.
“I like this one already, Monty,” she says to Adamson. “Don’t scare him off.”
“Ignore her,” Adamson says, leading Jack around the station to the rest of the department beyond. “Actually, don’t. She’s the only reason anything gets done around here. Just don’t take her too seriously.”
“I heard that!”
Jack smiles again, already feeling something different here than he has in any other medical setting he’s worked in. Still, as he follows Adamson around the department, trying his hardest to make note of all the names of staff and the layout of the rooms, he is constantly aware of Mike, of Robby, always just over his shoulder, just out of reach.
It happens just as Adamson’s tour is finishing: a critical patient is wheeled in, and everything is suddenly Go. Jack watches as Robby jumps from the last of his rounds to the man, a roofer who fell and managed to land flat on top of the pallet of shingles he was installing.
Back then, when Jack knew him as Mike, he was always a little ill at ease in his own skin, still figuring out how to be who he was. This man he’s seeing now, this Dr. Robby, is the arrival that Mike sought all those years ago.
He’s watching from afar as Robby and Adamson and a couple of the students assess the man and get to work on him. He barely notices as Dana sidles up next to him, nudging his arm.
“He has that effect on everyone,” she says, lightly teasing. “You get used to it.”
Jack looks at her sideways. “Even you?”
She barks out a laugh, and Jack loves it instantly. “A lady never kisses and tells, Dr. Abbot.”
He smiles and bumps her shoulder. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
“I’m gonna hold you to that,” she tells him with a stern look over the top of her glasses, but he can still see the twinkle in her eye. “You should get in there, learn from the best.”
“Right,” Jack says with a nod, “but if I get kicked out I’m blaming you.”
“They’ll never take me alive,” she calls, already heading back to Central.
Jack smiles again, shaking his head, then takes a deep breath and makes his way into the trauma room.
It feels good to be back in the fray. In the few weeks from his last shift at Sunrise in Vegas to getting settled in his new place here in Pittsburgh, for better or worse, he’s missed the chaos of an emergency room at high tide. He wonders sometimes if there was ever any hope for him to have a different life, if his chosen career rewired his brain, or if something in him was always going to be drawn to this. But hey, there’s a reason he’s not a neurosurgeon. Or a psychiatrist.
The shift is standard, as much as any of them can be, and while he works closely with Robby for a lot of it, it feels like they’re different people here. It’s easy to forget. Enough that it startles Jack when Robby approaches him at the lockers at the end of the day.
“So, first shift in the books. How ya feeling?”
He’s leaning casually against the wall, easy and comfortable in himself, and Jack has to look away.
It’s strange to hear his voice now, not calling out orders and making diagnoses but just making everyday conversation. In some ways he sounds exactly like Jack remembers, and yet beneath that there’s something deeper and more world-weary than Johnny ever knew. Jack’s sure his is probably that and then some; he wishes he could ask.
“Good,” he says truthfully, keeping his head stuck in his locker, pretending to search for something in his bag to put off the inevitable for as long as possible. “Everyone was really welcoming.”
“Yeah, like Adamson said, we’re a family down here,” says Robby, and Jack can hear the smile in it. “I’m glad you found that to be true, too.”
“Just happy to be back in a hospital,” Jack says, again, truthful. Even if Robby doesn’t remember him, Jack still feels an urge to be honest with him. He finally straightens up and closes his locker.
“My kind of sadist,” Robby says, flashing him a wicked smile, and that at least hasn’t changed one bit. “Some of us grab beers in the park across the street after shift. You in?”
Jack glances down the hall to where Dana is still handing things over to the night nursing staff, to whom he should introduce himself, seeing as he’ll be working with them soon. But when he looks back at Robby he’s fourteen again, watching a storm roll in from a back porch, and standing in a borrowed swimsuit on a rocky beach, and fighting back tears in a darkened yard as he says goodbye.
“I’m in,” he tells Robby. “Lead the way.”