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Robby thinks.
He thinks about everything.
Everything and nothing.
He thinks about the little five-year-old kid with a gunshot wound he treated on his first day as a resident; the little five-year-old kid whom he couldn’t save and let die on his watch.
Of course, as expected, everyone had told him how that wasn’t his fault, how the wound was so severe and had already done damage beyond saving, how the kid could’ve had better chances of surviving if he had been rushed to the hospital a bit sooner, how he had done more than enough to treat the inflicted region by sealing the pneumothorax and controlling the bleeding—better than any first-year resident could do—how he just... fought for the kid up until the very end as if he himself had been the one to get shot.
But he knew.
Deep down inside, only he knew that none of that mattered.
The kid was his responsibility.
His.
And he died.
He went into cardiopulmonary arrest less than ten minutes after Robby had left the room for a catch-up with his attending.
Robby still doesn’t understand how that happened.
His vitals had become stable. His breathing was even. There was no more excessive blood flow, no infection as a result of the injury.
At some point, he even opened his big, eager blue eyes and looked at Robby, with that infectious joy one would expect a child to carry with them throughout their childhood and into their adulthood, too. They held admiration, and curiosity.
Faith.
And Robby let him down.
Let him die.
Let those eager blue eyes close forever.
Let the curiosity sleep a slumber so, so deep and scary.
Curtis Jameson. Five years and four months old. Time of death: 4:06 AM.
Robby will never forget Curtis.
How could he, when he sees him run around his living room and hears his laughter haunt the empty hallways of his house?
How could he, when the little boy, so fragile and pale and distant, asks him why he didn’t save him?
Curtis started living with Robby ever since— started living with the man who couldn’t even live with himself.
Curtis was braver than Robby.
Robby thinks about Dr. Adamson.
He thinks about their daily ritual of meeting each other after the shift was over and discussing who had the crazier experience.
He thinks about his family, how they all had adopted him in a way, inviting him over for dinners and parties and holidays and weddings. At one point, he was living at their house more than his own place.
He thinks of all the things he taught him and all the things he could’ve taught him but didn’t because he was dead now.
He was dead, and the blood was on the hands of the man he had turned into who he believed to be a more capable doctor than himself; the man he had poured every drop of his knowledge and experience into.
Robby made a decision to take Dr. Adamson off ECMO because he had already been on it for seventeen days and everyone could see he wasn’t getting better—that he wasn’t going to survive, but Robby would’ve rather died than admit that. Nevertheless, a twelve-year-old girl needed ECMO and they were scarce on equipment, and Robby had to make a choice.
So he did.
And he lost them both.
He killed them both.
Unlike Curtis, Dr. Adamson and that girl didn’t live with Robby in his house.
No.
They lived in Pedes.
Robby saw them every time he would pass from there— them looking at him with so many questions in their eyes and accusations clear on their faces.
Walking into Pedes was like walking into Purgatory, and his house was his own Hell.
Caught between Purgatory and Hell, Robby was slipping away.
And then there was Leah.
He didn’t just kill her, he also lost Jake; the closest thing he had to a child, one good thing about the nightmare called life he was trying to pull through.
And so, so many more people he couldn’t save, and those he turned into a walking corpse who had put their faith and hopes in him.
He let everyone down.
Robby also thinks about the people whose lives he’s turning into a hell, quite like his own, because he is too much of a bull-headed asshole to accept that he needs help, or death. He thinks about those who, still, even after all of his never-ending reluctance and signature douchebaggery, try to help him regardless.
He thinks about those who depended on him, who he wronged as if he was born with a right to.
He thinks about Mohan, Langdon, McKay, Javadi, King, Santos, Dana, Jack.
Whitaker.
Dennis.
That kid always brought a smile to Robby’s face somehow, one of the rarest nice things in Robby’s life that surfaced in the background and made his home in the darkness of it, bringing some light along.
Dennis was smart, sensitive, thoughtful, empathetic, helpful, kind.
Everything Robby knew he wasn’t.
Dennis was also beautiful.
And Robby was a sinner for thinking of him in that way but if he had been better, and a bit younger, and put-together and deserving, he would’ve let himself have that kid.
He would’ve let himself enjoy love, life, God, and everything in between; everything that Dennis represented.
He would’ve bled open with the ache and lust and desire that just a sight of that boy induced in him.
He would’ve let himself heal.
Only if he deserved all of it, that is.
Robby knew he didn’t.
So he thinks.
He thinks as he speeds into the night, revving his bike full throttle, feeling her tremble with the roar of the engine beneath that metal frame.
The helmet is attached to his backpack, but it isn’t quite where it belongs.
Robby would carry it just so others won’t worry to death and would simply stop giving him less shit about how reckless and self-destructive he actually is to be allowed to hold a driver’s license, let alone a doctor’s.
But he knew everyone knew that he would never put it on.
Putting it on would defeat the sole purpose, after all.
Robby thinks, maybe a bit too much because he’s now losing focus on the road ahead of him, and is mostly in his head.
He feels his hands tremble and his legs giving out to the extent where he now can’t even change gears. He feels his cheeks go damp, his heart beat picking up, his tongue going bitter.
And he still thinks.
Until he stops when he feels a brutal force hit him from the rear and leads him to drag on the gravel before ultimately sending him spinning so hard off the road he collides with what he believes to be a tree trunk.
With a smile on his face, he silently wishes that not putting the helmet would now, finally, work out in his favor.
Before the void starts to pull him in, he hears the faint voice in the distance, calling out his name.
The voice sounds painfully familiar— youthful, a bit naive, high-pitched, scared shitless, and horrified.
Like….
No. It couldn’t be.
It couldn’t be who Robby was thinking it was, right?
It just couldn’t.
But Robby kind of wished it was.
And if it truly was, then all was justified.
Karma was a bitch and it Robby full-force, literally.
He killed Dr. Aadamson.
It’s only fair if his own mentee does the same.
It’s a funny thought.
He just hopes Dennis doesn’t blame himself for it all and turns into Robby.
He doesn’t want Dennis to think all the time, like he does.
For what he wishes would be the one last time, he hears the Dennis-like voice call out for him.
Something along the lines of, “Michael, stay with me, please….”, followed by, “I’m so fucking sorry,” but there are more sobs than words and everything hurts too much now.
At least somebody remembers him by his first name.
The sobs don’t stop.
Robby, though, stops thinking.