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Though it isn’t true, Jack feels like the rhythmic pounding of the helicopter's rotor blades are grinding deep inside his chest, dragging certainty closer, fixing possibility in place. He stands in Trauma One, arms wrapped tight around his body, shoulders square, gaze fixed on some indeterminate spot on the other side of the room, just beyond the empty space about to be filled by a gurney. It feels like two seconds and an hour all at once since Ellis set herself firmly in his path and said, “you know you can’t. I got this,” and jogged to the elevator with Shen in her wake, leaving Jack swallowing his protest, tasting bile. If Dana had still been on shift, she’d have reached for him then, guided him by his elbow to somewhere quieter, or grabbed for his wrist in some shared moment of dread, but she wasn’t, and no one did. He pointed himself in the direction of the open trauma bay and stationed himself close to the wall, cataloging every nurse who wouldn’t look his way as they prepped the room.
Time stretches around him, bends and twists back on itself, and his head is full of accidents long past, splintered bones and too much blood, and his stomach rolls. There are quiet places he can go to inside his mind, he knows, corners of his body where he stuffs himself on a regular basis to keep functioning in a world that’s built from loss, but he can’t get there now. He balances, instead, on the edge of readiness, though he knows he can’t be objective and he shouldn’t be in the room; balances like there’s a race ahead that depends on him resting on his toes, waiting for the crack of a rifle and the startled impulse to run like hell.
Toward what, he asks himself, a useless, staccato thought when he knows the answer. Toward Robby, comes back the reply in his own knowing voice.
That the EMTs recognized Robby and relayed the information to central command feels like someone handed off a live grenade. If Jack moves, the world might shatter, but there’s no guarantee that standing still will protect him from the worst. There’s no prize here for the purity of his waiting, no commendation for keeping his peace. The quiet’s a live thing, burrowing inside him, and his thoughts are a jumble of pleading and wants right up until the moment the gurney arrives with a blur of activity and noise. Jack feels both like a punch to the jaw.
It’s controlled chaos; voices and moving hands; the lift, the settling, the placement of leads, the sound of sine waves and quickly-articulated sats. Shen knuckles Robby’s chest. —“Can you hear me? Robby. Wake up, man.”— and Jack can hear the cadence of every instruction given, but can’t isolate the particular words or the responses from the rest of the team. He can’t seem to shake himself loose from the sight of someone cutting through the legs of Robby’s jeans, streaked with oil and blood. The fabric tears, reveals a pale limb, a deep laceration, blood and a hint of bone and Jesus this is Robby, and he can’t do a thing. It’s all wrong, every bit of this, the way that Robby’s loose and pliable and not protesting one whit, not saying a thing or making any noise, and from where he’s standing Jack can’t see his chest or his neck or his head, and has no idea how bad this is.
Bad enough, his brain supplies.
That fucking bike. He knew—everyone knew—it was a bad idea, and where Robby saw freedom, Jack saw statistics, a ten-car pile-up of data about head injuries and mangled limbs. He remembers with a clarity he’d like to toss into the fucking river a college kid with a shard of someone’s bumper embedded in his belly, and he doesn’t want to consider the softest parts of Robby’s body meeting asphalt and concrete in a blinding rainstorm, the kind that had been brewing all day. He knows almost nothing and yet can see in his mind’s eye Robby’s bike skidding from under him, his body tossed where—the median? Into the path of someone’s car?—and he’s seen things, the stupidest fucking injuries, the guy with his guts on the outside, the one who pulled through when he shouldn’t; the woman who didn't make a sound, eyes screwed shut against her pain, tears running into her hair. The odds are never what you think they are—internal bleeding; a wound a bare half centimeter to the left of what would kill; goddamn fucking sepsis—but Robby’s naked on the table, and his blood is dripping on the floor, and they’re still trying to rouse him, and Jack could fucking scream.
But then he hears it, a wet, sluggish groan, and Robby’s whole body jerks with pain. Shen is leaning in, coaxing Robby to talk to him, and someone’s surely pushing morphine into the IV at the crook of Robby’s elbow. The relief Jack feels seeing Robby’s bare foot flex and twist is pure and sharp, like a knife drawn right down the inside of his arm. There’s a roaring in his ears, and his fingers spasm with the want to help, but he can’t get in the way, has no idea what he could mess up just by putting his body where he wants it to go. But then it hits him. He belongs, he realizes—what a fucking dumbfuck—as the guy who loves him, and his heart beats quicker because maybe it took him so long to realize it he maybe lost his chance.
“Ellis,” he says, and the word is clumsy in his mouth, barely makes it over his lips. He swallows hard. “Ellis.”
Her head jerks up and she zeroes in, stares for a second before she nods and waves him over. Jack concentrates hard on each and every step, slots himself in at Robby’s side, glances from Robby’s groin to his chin. He takes in the bruising, the gashes, the purpling at Robby’s collarbone, the smell of blood and urine and sweat. “He okay?” he asks Ellis roughly, the kind of question that’s absurd given the evidence and necessary just the same.
“Surgery’s on the way,” she says, and Jack nods tightly once.
Robby stirs weakly, flails a hand that Jack catches on instinct. “Jack?”
“Here, brother.”
Robby turns his face toward him, focuses with visible effort, offers the barest smile beneath his oxygen mask. “I wore . . . it. Helmet.”
Jack’s eyes burn and he nods, squeezes Robby’s hand. “Good fucking job, man.”
It’s not like losing his wife, and it’s everything like losing his wife. It’s not sepsis, not yet, and Robby’s conscious and looking directly at him, and fuck the qualifiers, fuck calling him brother, fuck gentling his speech for the benefit of people he can’t even name. He bends and kisses Robby’s forehead firmly, says, “I love you, okay?” right to his face. And then Yolanda’s at his elbow, telling him firmly to get out of the way, and he lets go of Robby’s hand, stands in the awful silence that’s left when they wheel him away, swathed in blankets. Jack tries to turn and walk in the other direction, but finds his feet are too heavy, and he sways for a moment, not knowing exactly what to do. It’s Shen who walks over, pulling off his gloves, and curves a hand beneath his elbow. “Come with me,” he says, and steers Jack beyond the bloody detritus of the room, out into the frenetic ED, and over to the staff lounge, where he deposits him in a hard-backed chair.
“I’m fine,” says Jack, out of habit.
“Sure you are,” says Shen, and opens up the fridge, pulls out an iced something-or-other in a tall Dunkin cup. “It’s my back-up,” he says by explanation. “Drink it. Sugar. Caffeine. You need something or you’ll crash.”
Jack can already feel it, the hollow ache of an adrenaline dump beginning to fade, so he takes the cup, pulls at the drink. He wrinkles his nose. “How much fucking sugar does a person . . .”
“Drink,” says Shen.
Jack does as he’s told, drains half the cup before he sets it down on the battered table and scrubs at his face with his hands. “I have patients,” he says, and his voice sounds like it’s coming at him from a distance. He doesn’t make a move to stand.
“No you don’t,” says Shen.
“It’ll be hours before we know anything . . .”
“Yep.”
“I will lose my mind, man.”
“I’ll take that chance.”
“John.”
“I can walk you to the elevators or you can go under your own steam. But take the Dunkin with you.”
Jack picks up the cup—though he wants to do something else with it; throw it across the room; crush it under his heel—and stands. “Thanks. For . . .” He nods toward Trauma One. “You know.”
“Go wait for him.”
“Yeah.” He pats Shen once on the shoulder and heads back out into territory he’s charted once before.
*
It’s two hours before Dana finds him in the waiting room. She’s wearing jeans and a sweater hauling two tote bags on one shoulder, and she should be asleep back home with Benji, but Jack’s never been so glad to see someone in his life.
“How you holding up?” she asks, wrapping him in a hug when he stands. It’s swift but mighty; she hugs like she means it, and then she pulls back and looks at him, an evaluative expression on her face.
Jack just shakes his head, sits back down. She sits down beside him, pats his knee, reaches into one of the tote bags and pulls out some food.
“I made you a sandwich,” she says, holding it out. “And don’t ask why. You have the sense not to ask me why I’m here instead of in my own damn bed, so hang onto that sense and take it.”
Jack does. “Thank you.”
“And I brought you a shirt and hoodie of Benji’s. It’ll be too big, but who gives a shit, and you can’t sit here in scrubs all night.”
Jack’s tempted to disagree, just to be bloody minded, but he doesn’t. “Thanks.”
“Any updates?”
“Nothing. Ellis came by—she worked on him. Shen.”
“She called me.” Dana knocks her knee against Jack’s. “And later we’ll have a conversation about why you didn’t do that yourself.”
That makes Jack’s lips twitch. “I’m sorry. I’ve been—”
“Nah, we’re good. Eat your sandwich.”
Jack does as he’s told.
They keep each other company. Dana dozes, jerking back to wakefulness every time someone comes in the room, relaxing into watchfulness when she’s sure they’re still waiting. Jack’s wired, takes two turns climbing up and down the stairs between floors just to give his body something to do, the volume on his phone turned up high in case Dana needs to reach him. Sometime in the small, dark hours of the night, they work on a crossword puzzle together, and it’s later yet before Dana clears her throat and says, “So, he hydroplaned?”
“Best guess,” Jack says.
Dana shifts in her seat, mouth turned down at the edges. “Better than I’d feared when I heard.”
Jack nods. He’s wearing Benji’s hoodie, his hands stuffed in the pocket on the front, slumped a little in his chair. “I don’t know if it’s better or worse.”
“How so?”
“He should’ve waited for the storm to pass. He didn’t, and . . .”
“Yeah.”
They slip into silence again. “I love that man,” Jack says, voice rough. He feels almost angry about it.
“Course you do,” says Dana. “The two of you are . . .”
“No.” Jack shakes his head. “I mean . . . I’m in love with that man.” It hurts to say it, a nasty, acidic burn in his stomach where regret and yearning and fear are sitting.
“Okay.”
“Didn’t realize it.” Jack blows out a breath and sits up straight. “Or maybe I did, I don’t know.”
Dana watches him patiently. “Well now you’re sure.”
“Yeah.”
“So that’s something.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Dana reaches up to set her hand at the back of his neck, shakes him gently. “No point in wishing on things that can’t be different. You know now. You can choose what to do with it.”
“I can’t choose,” he says waspishly. “I can’t go in there and . . . do anything. I can’t force him to hang on, tell that dumb fucking heart of his to keep beating. I can’t make him heal.”
“No. But you can be there on the other side of it.”
Jack laughs softly, eyes burning. “There’ll be another side?”
“Oh, Jack,” Dana says quietly, and leans in to press her forehead against his temple.
*
Depending on the situation, Jack’s felt many things on seeing Yolanda Garcia, but he’s never associated her with a wash of fear the way he does when she finally walks into the waiting room. He stands up, finds himself at attention, shifts his stance to parade rest, folds his arms to do something to break himself out of years of habit.
“He’s stable,” she says, before Jack can say anything, before Dana can stand up herself.
“Thank Jesus,” Dana says under her breath.
Yolanda looks tired, Jack thinks—realizes she must have still been clearing up the day’s mess when Robby came in, pulled a half-a-shift extra, maybe more, to be the one to take his case. She looks tired, but she looks satisfied, like things are going to be okay. Jack reaches out and wraps his fingers around Dana’s wrist.
“Ortho pinned his right leg, two places,” she offers. “We got the bleeding. He’s remarkably lucky, all things considered.”
Jack nods. “Can I see him?”
“Of course. Next of kin. As soon as he’s out of recovery.”
Jack frowns. “Next of kin?”
Her expression shifts to something familiar, a look that says she questions Jack’s intelligence. “He had you listed.”
Jack finds himself sitting back in the chair. “Right.” He’d had no idea. There was paperwork?
“What’s the timetable?” Dana asks, a hand on Jack’s shoulder.
Jack tunes out the conversation, turning the next-of-kin business over and over in his head. Robby hadn’t said a thing. How long? Was this tied up with whatever fucking death wish the man had been cultivating? Was this his goodbye? Love you, Jack. Pick up the pieces. Or had he thought of Jack as the closest thing he had to family for months? Years? Jack scrubs his hands over his face. “Fuck.”
Yolanda stops mid-sentence to look at him, but Jack waves her attention away with one hand. Next of kin means a lot no matter how he looks at it, but it stokes his anger as much as it twists something in his heart.
*
There’s daylight peeping around the blinds in Robby’s room by the time Jack goes in to see him. Jack pauses just inside the door, itemizes the equipment around the bed, checks the stats on the monitor showing Robby’s heart rate, his O2, his blood pressure—all good, holding steady. Jack glances at the IV drip, the catheter bag hung low by the bed, the blanket lifter tenting the blankets over Robby’s legs. Only then does he cross the room, stand beside the bed and really look at the visible damage—the road rash, the bruising, the superficial cuts. Robby’s pale, and drawn, though breathing on his own, and Yolanda was right. The man was so fucking lucky. But Jack feels heartache rather than relief.
It’ll be a while before Robby surfaces from the sedation, and Jack picks up a chair and moves it to the side of his bed. He picks up one of Robby’s hands in both of his, feels it lax in his grip, too damn close to lifeless for comfort. Jack lowers his forehead to meet his hands and breathes in deep, smells antiseptic and floor cleaner and the warm-cotton scent of the blankets. There’s nothing of Robby in the mix, not his sweat, not his blood, not his bar soap or deodorant. It’s like there’s a holding pattern in place, a Robby-shaped person in the bed, but no animating spirit of the man he loves to greet him. “You are a giant fucking dickhead,” Jack says, low. “I am so fucking angry with you. You couldn’t wait out a fucking storm warning? You had to go that fucking badly?” Robby says nothing, does nothing. But his skin is warm, and his chest rises and falls, and Jack feels himself choke on every confusing, conflicted feeling he’s had in the last several hours. He swallows hard, but there’s no way around the tears that are welling in his eyes, no cheat code to avoid how much he aches. “By the way,” Jack says, dashing at his face with one hand, annoyed and hurting. “We’re having this conversation again once you’re conscious. Don’t think you’re getting out of it by sleeping through this version, you bastard.” And he closes his eyes, rests his forehead against his hands again, and just hangs on.
*
There’s a two-seater sofa in Robby’s room, covered in slick fabric that’s easy to wipe clean, and Jack sits there to take off his prosthesis when the nurses do their vitals check. His leg aches, but his stump is clean and free of sores, and he absently digs his thumbs into a spot that looks inflamed. Prosthesis on the floor, Jack swings his legs up and over the arm of the sofa, jams a pillow behind his head, and falls asleep so fast he’s blindsided when he wakes, has no idea where he is or why. He glances at the hospital bed, lets the memory of the last god knows how long crash back in, and sits up gingerly, his neck protesting until he tilts his head and feels his cervical spine crack back into place. He clocks the set of crutches the nurses have left for him to use, levers himself up and maneuvers back toward Robby, and he’s sitting back in his uncomfortable chair, rueing the uncomfortable sofa, before he realizes Robby’s head his turned toward him, and his arm is bent.
“You woke up,” Jack says.
Robby’s eyes flutter and he opens them a fraction, frowning with the effort. “Jack,” he rasps and pulls a face.
“Water?” Jack asks.
Robby nods and Jack picks up the plastic cup on the bedside unit, angles the straw toward Robby’s mouth.
“Thanks,” Robby whispers when he’s done.
Jack reaches for Robby’s hand and squeezes it, wonders how to sort through the myriad things he’s feeling and settle on one thing to say. “How do you feel?” he asks, buying himself time.
“Hurt,” Robby says, eyes closing again.
Jack nods, rubs his thumb over Robby’s knuckles. “Next of kin?” he asks, voice cracking over the words.
Robby opens his eyes again, looks at Jack with such a naked expression of longing that Jack feels winded. “Yeah.”
“How long?”
“Long time.”
“And you didn’t want to mention it?”
Robby, for once, doesn’t look away. “I thought . . .” He offers a weak smile, the corners of his mouth turned down. “Not brave.”
“God, you piece of shit,” Jack says in a rush, squeezing Robby’s hand. “What did you think I would do? Say no? Send you packing?”
“Yes.”
Jack makes a strangled sound of anguish. “Robby.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t. Don’t . . . I . . .” Jack sighs and scrubs his free hand through his hair. “I told you I loved you right there in Trauma One last night, you jackass, and I don’t even know what you’re apologizing for, why you’re sorry, which part of this fucking mess is even . . .”
“Jack.”
Jack squeezes his eyes closed for just a second and then looks back at Robby.
“I love you, too.”
Jack laughs softly. “Jesus Christ.” He shakes his head, but can’t keep himself from smiling a little to hear Robby say it, tangled up though it is with a frustration so deep it’s carving a canyon clean through the heart of him. “Could you not almost die just to . . .” He leans in and kisses Robby’s forehead, pulls back just a little. “You’re an idiot.”
“I’m an idiot,” Robby whispers.
“Yeah.” Jack nods, and presses a first kiss gently to Robby’s lips.
*
By the time Robby’s discharged, they’ve agreed he’ll move into Jack’s spare bedroom. “The whole place is one level, no steps, already set up for a guy with a leg injury,” says Jack. Robby concedes it’s a better idea than rambling around his own place alone. Still, the morning he gets out, he’s pissy with everything and everyone, most especially and immediately with the act of being wheeled through the hospital to get to where Jack’s left his truck.
“I can walk. I have crutches. “
Jack laughs, not slowing his pace even a little. “Says the guy who’d bust his sutures on principle rather than take the easier way. Besides, it’s policy. You know it’s policy. I know it’s policy. You want me to wheel you out there or the nurses? Because I’ll let them. I’ll take photos.”
Robby grumbles something under his breath.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing,” he says with ill-grace.
Robby’s mood improves as they drive away and put distance between him and the hospital. By the time they get to Jack’s place, he’s pretty damn cheerful, and Jack can’t blame him. Guy hasn’t slept properly in a week, barely made it through the indignity of being cared for by his colleagues, and maybe needs another dose of painkillers.
Jack pulls into his driveway. “I gotta wheel you in, dude.”
“Hmmm.” Robby’s looking out the passenger window, toward Jack’s front door. He turns after a moment, says, “Thank you.”
Jack tilts his head.
“I mean, you don’t have to do this.”
“We are not having this conversation again . . .”
“You’re right, we’re not.” Robby’s chin carries the worst of the visible bruising on his body, but even with that and the graze that’s still healing along his jawline, he looks more like himself now than he has in a while. “I mean it. Thank you.”
Jack nods, lets himself out of the truck and hauls his folding wheelchair out of the truck bed, gets Robby settled and pushes him into the house, right past the living room and bedroom, and parks him in front of the fridge in the kitchen.
“Uh . . .”
“This,” says Jack, tapping the calendar pinned to the fridge door with magnets, “is your schedule.”
Robby raises an eyebrow.
“Physical therapy in blue, therapy in green.”
Robby nods slowly. “Okay?”
“Okay. Just. I’m making it clear.”
“I get it,” says Robby.
“Do you?”
“I get it,” Robby repeats. He looks up at Jack. “I’m sorry.”
Jack taps the calendar again. “This is how you show me.”
Robby winces but nods. “Fair.”
Jack crouches and sets a hand on Robby’s good leg. “I’m not looking to fight.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Jack shakes his head. “I just . . . I thought I was fucking frightened when you left at the end of the shift,” he offers. “But it was nothing next to how it felt when we got the call.”
Robby reaches to cup Jack’s jaw with one hand. “I’m sorry. You were right.”
Jack hitches a shoulder. “About what?”
“To be frightened.” Robby presses his lips together and shakes his head. “I was . . .”
“I know.”
Robby nods. “If we’re going to keep talking, I have to lie down.”
There’s a stack of pillows beside the couch in the living room, and Jack isn’t satisfied until he’s stuffed them beneath Robby’s head, the leg that’s in a cast, and the shoulder that he wrenched. He shakes out a blanket and brushes a hand the length of it, tucking it in, stands back to evaluate his handiwork and the patient and bemused expression on Robby’s face.
“Probably feels weird,” says Jack, feeling oddly defensive.
“What? The blanket’s great, I . . .”
“No, letting someone help.”
Robby closes one eye and grimaces. “Direct hit.”
“Sorry.”
Robby holds out one hand and Jack takes it, sitting on the very edge of the couch. “I wish I could hold you,” Jack says impatiently. “This is . . . this is bullshit, this need I have to take care of you, but I’d hurt you if I . . .” He trails off, and lets out a long slow breath as another thought forms. He juts out his chin. “You know, when they told me Ellen was gone all I wanted to do was hold her, too.”
“Oh, god—Jack . . .” Robby looks stricken.
“It’s okay.”
“It is not okay.” Robby squeezes his hand. “You’ve been thinking about her.”
“I think about her all the time.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah.” Jack rubs his nose with the heel of his hand. “Some of this . . . me getting on your case . . . I thought I was going to go through that again.”
“No wonder you think I’m a jackass.”
“I don’t. Not really.”
Robby’s eyes are red-rimmed now. “I don’t know what to say.”
Jack leans in and kisses him, for want of having the right words himself—a soft brush of lips until Robby tilts his head, changes the angle, and the kiss becomes something else. Jack’s eyes fall closed, his lips part, and despite the rough fit of their bodies, the fact that Jack can’t blanket himself over Robby as he’d like, can’t weigh him down and feel him press back against him, it’s still good—better than; slick and warm, enough to make him shiver. He pulls back and kisses Robby’s temple, his forehead, the end of his nose.
“You should sleep,” Jack whispers.
“So should you.”
“You first.”
Robby laughs a little. “Okay.”
There are a hundred things Jack could be doing, a dozen more places he could be, but he sits in an armchair and watches until Robby slips under, the lines on his face smoothing out as he drifts.
Jack could have lost him, but he didn’t.
That’s foundation enough, he thinks, rebar and concrete they can build on, making something strong for all that it’s new and undefined. “Somewhere to guard our soft places,” he murmurs, and he lets go of the here and now, bookmarks the pain of the past, and he closes his eyes and sleeps.