Work Text:
The ED is thrumming when he arrives. Robby intercepts him at the lockers and hands off a tablet with a chart already populated.
“Water slide collapse earlier today. Only a few majors, thank god.”
“Yeah. Heard it on the scanner,” Jack replies, absently. The screen lights up his pale face, freckles popping under dark smudged eyes.
“Jack,” Robby says soft and crisp, tipping the tablet down to force Jack’s eyes away. “You were supposed to be napping.”
Jack scoffs. “I napped. Ish.” He tugs the chart back, gently, and scrolls down. “Was this a fall?”
“Yeah, top of the slide platform onto a wire fence. But man, I've never seen such a clean cut. We sent her up with the Shark about…” Robby checks his watch, looks at the ceiling where it sometimes helps to do math, and rubs his beard. “Two and half hours ago. No word yet.”
Jack flips to the scans, and whistles low and long. “If Shark can’t replant that, no one can.”
Robby hms in agreement. “You sure you’re good to keep working?”
Jack does look up then, both eyebrows raised. “Are you kidding me?” He looks around, exaggerating his movements. “We need a fucking mirror so you can say that again, brother.”
Robby doesn’t reply. They’ve had this conversation too many times. He settles into the silence between them, relishing in the minute or two of respite before he returns to work. That is, until Jack makes a disagreeable noise.
Robby glances down. Jack has reached the end notes of the chart where Ogilvie detailed the consent process. Ah-
“Hey Robby,” Jack starts. “Don’t get me wrong, because my foot was blown into a million gritty pieces, but from a physician's standpoint-"
“Hold on-"
“It certainly cannot be good practice to bring a traumatic amputation patient out of sedation-"
“That wasn’t our plan-“
“and then show them their amputated limb from across the room.”
Four weeks later, Jack treats three burn victims, one crushed pelvis, and a MVC between a scooter and a Tesla overnight. He finishes his charting then waves at Vanessa, their temp charge nurse, and points to the stairwell. "I'm going to take five," he says, already walking that way. Robby and the rest of the day shift will be arriving within the hour and Parker always knows where to find him.
Dawn breaks muggy and clear, the temperature never really cooling overnight. The heat seeping from the brick and metal through his boots is a sense memory from baking concrete under relentless Iraqi sun. He finds it comforting in its predictability.
He doesn't bother looking down to the pavement below the building today. Instead his eyes are drawn outward where he can see lush, tree-lined streets. It's difficult to reconcile the carnage of the ED while children skip down sidewalks and decorate pavement with chalk, oblivious to the horrors of life.
But ambulance sirens in the distance bring his focus back to the hospital, as does the vibration of his pager at his hip. Except, it's not a call to the ED for an incoming trauma; it's an alert that Emily Werner, Robby's BKA, is waking up. It's been almost a month since her initial re-plantation surgery, and Jack had asked for periodic updates.
The lights in the main ICU are always partially dimmed, which gives the whole floor a haunted, hushed gloom. It's like someone read somewhere that healing happens best in the pre-dawn and protocol ran with it for twenty years. Jack can attest that there's no healing to be had in the middle of the night - not alone, not drunk, and not laid up in bed.
Dr. Park exits Emily's room as Jack shuffles down the corridor. His face, as always, is an emotionless mask, eyes casting about for their next prey. "Move," he barks, shouldering past despite the wide hall. Jack's twelve hours were hectic and between that and a miserable stretch of poor sleep, he doesn't have the strength or balance to brace. He bounces off the taller, bulkier man and into the wall, catching himself with his hands in time to avoid a face of aging wallpaper.
"Hey!" He snaps, whipping around. "The fuck?"
The Shark barely pauses, but he does turn his head. "Watch it!" The flash of recognition hits him as he flicks his eyes from Jack's face to his feet and back. "Abbot. Good. Go talk to her." Then he's gone.
"Yeah, I'm gonna. And not because you told me to," Jack says to the empty hallway.
The nursing hub is smaller here than downstairs, and no one is around when Jack wanders by. He borrows a tablet from the charging station and flicks to Warren's chart. Ah.
Despite favorable factors of severed limb and surgical dissection intraoperatively allowing for progression, patient experienced major thrombosis after vascular clamps were removed during third arterial connectivity revision. Therefore…
Park's final note on the chart simply reads: Patient informed. No follow up. Transfer from service to med surg and refer to prosthetics.
"Well, fuck." An impossibly old nurse walks past and scowls at Jack. He ducks his head and knocks softly on Emily's door before stepping inside.
Robby is sitting outside Emily's room when Jack slips out. He's got his old man glasses perched on his nose and is holding his phone an obscene distance from his face while poking at it with one finger.
"Geriatrics is on the twelfth floor."
Robby doesn't reply - he diligently finishes whatever his task is, determinedly tap tap tapping on the screen for another full minute. Jack droops. He likes to be acknowledged when he's funny.
Finally, Robby removes his glasses, stands, and holds out the phone: he has ordered an Uber for Jack. It was a big production for what is a simple, kind gesture. Jack would have been fine to walk home and he opens his mouth to say so, but Robby beats him to it.
"I know you would have been fine, but I want you to be more than fine, and besides if you cancel, my star rating will drop and -" he squints at the screen. "-Helen will lose out on a job. Is that what you want? You would deny Helen?"
Despite himself, Jack laughs. Full, uncomplicated laughter. He thunks his head to Robby's collarbone and inhales the burnt laundry scent of his sweatshirt - their dryer is too hot and he hasn't had time to fix it yet. Both of Robby's bear-paws wrap around him and squeeze.
"She lost the leg." Jack says into the fabric.
"I know."
"Same age as me. A bit younger." Jack turns to say it into Robby's neck. There's a spot where Robby never quite gets with his clippers because the hair grows in a strange whorl. Jack presses his nose to it. "You can't keep introducing me to them."
Robby squeezes and relaxes again. He's a python. The friendly kind. "Why?" There's genuine curiosity in the question.
The answer sits at the pit of his stomach today, something he's never given voice to. The mirror has seen it; sometimes it comes so close to the surface that it waits patiently behind his eyes.
Robby squeezes. Relaxes. The words rise. Robby never lets them buy new toothpaste until every last drop has been pushed out of the curled up tube. Jack lets Robby do the work and surrenders to the pressure until the confession explodes. Jack pushes free from Robby's embrace.
"I'm pissed. I read that chart or walk into the room and I'm so goddamn mad." Jack points at the room where Emily is lying, likely still in tears. "She didn't deserve this. You know what she asked? She said, 'Does it get easier?' They all say shit like that. 'Will it always hurt?'"
Robby raises his eyebrows. "And? What do you tell them?"
"Of course it doesn't get easier. Your body heals but you learn how to hide. You duck your head and curse, and fucking cry, and people leave you behind because you feel so goddamn sorry for yourself." He wipes a hand down his face and takes a deep swallow. "You- you get stronger, and you get better, and there are tools if you can fucking afford them but there's pain and every day is still hard. Welcome to the fucking club, we don't even get jackets."
(Jack has lived longer without his right foot than with it. Stump care, using his prosthetics and mobility tools, physical therapy - it's all part of who he is. Still, it wasn't three weeks ago that he got up to piss in the middle of the night, took a step and met air, and fell on his goddamn face. His yelp woke Robby, who after checking Jack's skull for any lumps, laughed for a good five minutes.)
Jack waves a dismissive hand through the air. "They want to be reassured. They want someone to hold their hand and say it will be alright, that they'll be YouTube inspiration porn. That they'll run a marathon or climb a mountain. Be the first amputee lion tamer or some shit. I'm not that guy. I'll never be that guy."
"Sounds like a great way to lose more limbs," Robby mutters. Jack shoots him a look. "Okay, okay. But Jack, if someone had said that to you at Landstuhl - told you it would get better, that prayer and hope were the answer - what would you have done?"
Jack pauses where he's been pacing. His arms are tucked behind his back, one wrist clasped in the other hand. He looks Robby in the eye when he says, "Found a pistol."
"So, what are we arguing about here?"
"This isn't an argument. It's a heavy discussion."
Robby plunges his fists into the pockets of his hoodie, shrugs his shoulders. "Okay, so what are we discussing here?"
Jack finds the wall and leans, his hands pinned behind his body. "There's a reason I don't work at the VA. A lot of reasons. I'm not a doctor when I go in there." He gestures at Emily's room. "I'm not. I'm just some crotchety tripod who sometimes can't breath around his own fucking trauma. I'm gonna say the wrong thing and set this person back months, kick their grief in the nuts."
Robby nods his head, listening. He doesn't move to speak, so Jack tumbles on.
"Sometimes they just need someone to rant at and I get it, right, it feels good to let it out because it just isn't fair, and the path ahead is monumental, and if anyone knows the scope of it, of course I do. I can listen, I do that, and oh my god," Jack says, eyes wide. His mouth hangs open before he says, "Am I good at this?"
The hallway is quiet while Jack adjusts his worldview and Robby nearly bites his lip bloody to keep himself from shouting, "I read you like a book, Jack Abbot."
Robby's phone trills to announce that Helen has arrived in her navy blue Subaru. Jack stares at Emily's door and holds out a hand to Robby. "Gimme a receipt or something." Robby always has some kind of nonsense in his pockets, and today there's a choice between a lab slip or a gum wrapper. Jack scribbles on the back of the slip and hands it to Robby.
"Give this to Emily, will you?" It's his phone number and email. "She might have more questions and apparently I'm good at this."
Robby breaks into a wild smile and Jack pushes him hard with both hands on his shoulders, Robby stepping back twice with the force of it. He shakes his head and coughs a laugh. "Could you just go home and actually sleep? I left spaghetti for you."
They hold hands in the elevator on the way back to the ED. Jack kisses Robby's cheek and then pats a work-rough palm there. "Gotta go. Helen awaits. If she's hot, maybe I'll invite her to a spaghetti dinner and have her tuck me in."