Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Robby is forty-seven and has decided to take up running again for the first time since college. His roommate sophomore year, Adam, was a tall, lanky guy who had run cross country in high school and went out for a few miles every day, no matter the weather. After several weeks of needling from Adam and constant claims that it would help relieve some of the stress of classes, Robby finally agreed. Much to his own surprise, he did actually enjoy it. He never became a four-miles-minimum-per-day kind of guy like Adam was, but a couple times a week, when a reading or paper or exam was especially stressful, he’d lace up a pair of shoes and hit the pavement, running until his mind was clear.

At some point, well after they parted ways – Adam to law school out on the West Coast and Robby just a handful of miles up the lakeshore to Northwestern – he fell out of the habit. He took up smoking full-time instead, like many med students do, and eventually his shoes gathered dust and he gave them away.

Lately, though, he’s been feeling a lot like that nineteen year old again – a little pent up, a little out of sorts, a little at loose ends. So a couple weeks back he went to an honest to god sporting goods store and let a spry 20-something named Josh measure his foot and check out his arches and find him a pair of running shoes that would give him the best support while also being light weight and good on pavement and trails.

Now, he laces them up for what will be his third run in almost as many days. He’s slow, and has to take breaks more often than he’d like, but it feels good to get back out there, pumping his legs and pushing air through his lungs.

He’s so caught up in the feeling, he doesn’t notice the horn blaring at him until a split second too late.

As he drifts in and out of consciousness, he feels like everyone he’s ever been, all at once.

He’s four, standing with his Bubbe at the airport.

“Wave to the airplane, Misiek, wave bye-bye,” Bubbe says, holding one of his hands firmly in hers while he uses the other to wave.

He knows Tate and Mame are on the airplane, and he knows Bubbe is sad they’re leaving, but every time they leave they come back. They’ve never left on an airplane before, but they always come back.

But last week they helped him bring all his things to Bubbe’s house. There’s a bed there that had new sheets on it, red and blue and green stripes, and Mame helped him put all his clothes in the closet and the dresser and told him that he would be staying with Bubbe for a while. He doesn’t know how long a while is. It feels like it’s already been longer than that.

But the airport is exciting. His Tate told him that O’Hare is the busiest airport in the whole world. Watching the planes land and take off is fun, and he likes seeing so many people going so many places.

“Have you been on an airplane, Bubbe?”

She squeezes his hand tight. “Not for a long time.”

Is a long time longer than a while? Grown ups never explain things like that.

“When you were my age?”

Bubbe crouches down and straightens out his shirt collar under his jacket. “No, never when I was your age. When I was much older, older than your Mame is now.”

Michael thinks about that for a moment. “Why not when you were my age?”

“Well,” Bubbe says, standing back up and leading him over to one of the big chairs where people sit to wait for their planes, “flying costs a lot of money. My parents did not always have a lot of money.” She sits, but Michael stays standing, watching out the big windows as planes land and take off and drive all over.

“But you went when you were bigger.”

Bubbe smooths a hand over his hair. “Yes, when I was much bigger.”

“Did you go to London like Mame and Tate?”

“No,” Bubbe says, settling her purse in her lap, “we went to a place called Poland. Where my Bubbe and Zeide came from. When we are home, I’ll show you where it is on your Zeide’s globe.”

“Poland,” Michael repeats, scrunching up his face. “They came here from there forever?” Bubbe nods. “Why?”

She smiles down at him. “Many, many people came here from all over the world. They still do now.”

“Why?”

“For a lot of reasons. Life is very different in other countries. People want the kind of life they think they can have here.” She looks out the window to watch the planes with him. He remembers once his uncle told him that if you go to the top of the Sears Tower and look out, you can see for miles and miles. Maybe if Bubbe went there she could see all the way to Poland.

“What’s different?”

Bubbe laughs softly. Michael doesn’t think it’s a funny question, but grown ups laugh when things aren’t funny all the time. Maybe when he’s grown up he’ll understand why.

“A lot of things are different. I don’t know all of them. My name would be Ruta there. But I only visited the one time, and Poland when I visited was not the same Poland that my family left. It was a long time ago.”

“How long?”

“Oh,” Bubbe says on a sigh, “very long. Before I was even born.” She opens her arms and pulls him close and kisses his cheek. “Come on, now, we want to get out of here before the rush hour. If we get home soon enough maybe I can make kolachkes for you.”

“With raspberry?”

“With raspberry,” Bubbe confirms. She stands and takes his hand again and they make the long journey back through the airport to the parking garage, and then the long drive home. How long is a plane ride all the way to London? Probably even longer.

There are voices, close, shouting, and sirens, distant.

He’s forty, and things are ending, again.

“I just don’t think this is working,” Angela says.

It’s not that Robby didn’t know this was coming – he’s felt it for a while, to the point that it’s almost a relief when she finally says it – he just didn’t expect it to be here, now, at her family’s Fourth of July barbecue.

He’d warned her, years ago, the first major holiday they spent together, that there was always a chance he’d be called in. Holidays are always shit shows when it comes to emergencies, and more of than not they turn into a most-if-not-all-hands on deck situation. She had been understanding at first, proud even, when he’d had to duck out of Thanksgiving dinner to help Adamson through a particularly bad MVC; later, she’d nodded a little sadly, but still with a smile, and said, “Go, we’ll save you a plate,” when he had to leave in the middle of her mom’s 70th birthday festivities; eventually she’d sighed and muttered, “Let me guess,” when he approached her at Easter with an apologetic look on his face (though, all things considered, he didn’t feel especially bad about leaving that one).

And now she was calling it.

They’d had a good run, nearly five years together by the end of it. He’d met her about a year after moving to Pittsburgh, when she’d brought her niece into the Pitt with a nasty gash on her forehead from a playground injury.

“You turn your back for one second,” Angela had said, holding the girl tightly on her lap while Robby inspected the wound. “Your mother’s gonna ban me from babysitting ever again.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Robby said, standing up and making a note in Gracie’s chart. “Head wounds bleed a lot but I don’t think she’ll need stitches.”

“Really?” Angela asked, looking up at him. Her eyes were the color of honey and Robby felt something swoop inside him, something he hadn’t felt in a long time.

“Really,” he told her. “And kids heal fast, although she might have to take it easy for a few days.”

Angela gave him a grateful smile as she rocked Gracie in her arms. “Hear that, kid? No more actual monkey business on the monkey bars until mommy and daddy get home.”

“I’ll get her cleaned up and bandaged up and then you should be good to go, but bring her back if it starts bleeding through the bandages or if she starts acting strangely at all.”

“Of course,” Angela said, and that should have been the end of it, until a few weeks later when they bumped into each other at the grocery store.

Robby spotted her first, inspecting a carton of eggs in the dairy aisle. He was debating saying anything at all until she looked his way, a wary look on her face because, well, yeah, there was a strange man staring at her as she inspected eggs in the grocery store.

So in the end he really had no choice but to go up to her and say, “Dr. Robby, I saw your niece at the ER last month.”

“Of course!” Angela said, relief flooding her face. “I didn’t recognize you without the–” She gestured up and down to his street clothes and Robby laughed.

“Yeah, I get that. How’s Gracie doing?”

From there it was helping her take her groceries to her car, and taking a look at one of her tires as if he knew any more about cars than she did, and giving her his number, “just in case,” and then an invite to bar trivia with her friends that happened to line up with a night off, and going back to her place, and now here they are, nearly three years later, and Robby doesn’t know what to say in response that won’t make both of them feel worse.

“Yeah,” he says in the end. “I know.”

“You could have said something sooner,” Angela says, and it’s not accusatory, just tired.

Robby sets down his slice of cake, suddenly too cloyingly sweet to handle. “We both could have.”

“Yeah,” Angela replied.

Adamson sends him home at four in the morning with strict instructions to not show his face again until at least noon, despite Robby’s protests that he can work through the next shift.

Four in the morning is always a lonely time to walk home, but it’s worse knowing what he has waiting for him on the other end. Or what he doesn’t have waiting. He would have been coming home to an empty apartment anyway – they had talked about moving in together a couple times about a year ago, but she’d always had a reason to put it off – but it still feels different knowing it’s a more permanent emptiness this time.

The first thing he sees when he opens his door is a coloring book on the table, courtesy of Delilah, Gracie’s younger sister. Angela had dropped the girls at his place for a few hours a couple days ago when she had to deal with a fire at work – someone tweeted something that the public were unhappy about and they needed to come up with a media plan, stat – and Robby figured he’d pulled more than enough of the reverse to be solo babysitter for an afternoon.

He’ll have to pack up the coloring books and markers and dolls and puzzle pieces, as well as all of Angela’s things that had migrated over to his place from spending two nights a week in his bed for the last several years and arrange a time to exchange them. He’s sure enough of his things are at her apartment, too. He’ll probably never see Gracie and Delilah again.

He kicks off his shoes and tosses his keys on the table by the front door, then heads for the kitchen even though he knows he should head for the bedroom. He grabs a beer from the fridge, the last of a six pack Angela’s friend Tania had brought when they’d all watched a Pirates game a while back, and only manages a few sips before he falls asleep on the couch, waking up hours later with a crook in his neck and his phone buzzing on his chest.

“Hello?” He tries to make his voice sound human and not like he hasn’t had a sip of water in probably twelve hours.

“I know Adamson made you promise not to come back before noon but how fast can you shower and get yourself down here?” Dana’s voice is urgent over the line.

Robby looks at his watch – 10:23 – and scrubs a hand through his hair. “Should be able to make it by eleven.”

Someone is touching him, speaking in his ear, a bright, searing pain through his chest.

He’s nine, and he's grown tired of the airport.

“Michael!” his mom nearly shouts, sweeping him into her arms. “Look how tall you’ve grown.” She smooths a hand over his hair and down his face. “I’ve missed you so much.”

She says it like she means it, but it’s hard for him to believe her. If she really meant it she wouldn’t have left in the first place, only visiting once a year at most. But still, she hugs him close, and he hugs her back until she pulls away, placing a kiss on top of his head.

His dad isn’t so showy. He places a firm hand on his shoulder and says, “It’s good to see you, son.”

Beside them, Bubbe and his mom are hugging, and they stay that way for a long time. In his mind, Michael knows that Bubbe is his mom’s mom, but it’s hard for him to really understand that. He can’t imagine his mom being his age, or Bubbe being his mom’s age. He’s seen old family pictures from when his mom was young, and even though he recognizes the faces, it doesn’t really feel like the people in the pictures are the same people he knows. But he feels kind of like that when he sees pictures of himself, too. Bubbe has his school picture from kindergarten framed in the hallway in the house and sometimes he can’t help but stop and stare at it. He remembers having that haircut, and the shirt he was wearing is probably still in a box somewhere, but he doesn’t really remember being that person. He has memories from then, but when he thinks about them it’s like him now is living them, not him when he was five.

“Come on,” his mom says when she and Bubbe finally break apart, “let’s go home.”

As they start the walk back to the car, he has a flashback to when he was four, making this same walk just him and Bubbe, and suddenly all he can think is that he doesn’t know these people. Tonight, he’s not going to sleep in his bed in his room, he’s going to sleep in a bed in a room in his parent’s house that they decided would be his without asking him. He doesn’t even know what it looks like, what color the sheets are or the walls or the curtains; all he knows is that Uncle Aron and Aunt Rachel came by this morning and took the last couple boxes of his things over to the new house before he and Bubbe left for the airport.

The new house is only about twenty minutes away from Bubbe’s, but it feels like a different world. The trees are all not quite right, and the light comes through the windows in a different way, and instead of being able to see another house from the back there’s just the endless green of the neighboring golf course. Everything is too big, and too quiet, but his mom is so excited as she shows him around.

“This is your room,” she says, opening a door just to the right of the top of the staircase. He can’t remember their first house, when he was little, and it’s weird living somewhere that isn’t all one level.

The walls are white. The bed is bigger than his bed at Bubbe’s – “A full!” his mom informs him – and the sheets are gray, and the comforter is gray and black and white plaid. There’s a desk with a chair and a dresser and a lamp and a closet and a bookshelf and a bedside table and beige carpet and it’s all fine and he hates all of it.

“What do you think?” his mom asks, hanging back in the doorway while he looks around. His books and a few toys are already on the shelves, and there are no boxes anywhere so he guesses his clothes are all put away, too. He doesn’t know who did it, but whoever it was he’s sure they don’t know Bubbe’s system; he’ll have to redo it himself.

“It’s nice,” he says, sitting on the bed.

His mom steps in and crosses the room to sit beside him. “I know it’ll take some getting used to after so long with your grandmother, but I know you’ll be happy here.”

He looks out the window past the gray and black striped curtains. “I guess.”

His body is being lifted, moved, something soft beneath him.

He’s thirty-four, and he barely comprehends the words being said to him.

“Charity’s not going to re-open, Robby.”

He’s been running on fumes for days on end. The past two weeks have felt surreal in the worst possible way, beyond worst into unimaginable, and he’s sure he hasn’t heard MacFarland right.

“What?”

“The building was too badly damaged. The city’s closing it down.”

“How?” He doesn’t know how she can still string two words together, let alone two sentences, after everything they’ve been through. He’s been on autopilot for longer than he thought humanly possible and then some, and there’s still no end in sight.

“I know this is a blow. For you, for all of us, but I want you to start thinking about what’s next.”

“Next?” What’s next is that they get through the next twelve hours, and then the twelve after that, and then the next and the next until there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. What’s next is that at some point he goes back to his house to see what can be salvaged and finds a new place to live. What’s next is they keep fucking going as long as the people of this city need them.

“I don’t know how long we’ll be able to keep this up, but at some point we’re not going to be able to keep operating out of a mall.”

“Okay, so?”

“So we all need to figure out where we’re going when that time comes.” She looks at him steadily, like she’s waiting for him to put together two puzzle pieces that he just can’t seem to rotate the right way and make click.

“I’m not going,” he says simply.

She nods and gives him a smile, but it’s not a happy one. He gave her the answer she expected him to give, and it wasn’t the right one. “I know you’d stay here until the last light goes out, Robby.”

Robby hears the rest of her thought lingering in the air between them. “But?”

“But we both know that’s not your future.”

He snaps to at that, something in him lighting up in a way he hasn’t been able to for days. “Why the fuck not? You don’t think I can hack it here?”

MacFarland gives him a wry look. “You know that’s bullshit, Robby. I think you can do anything you damn well set your mind to. But you’re still early in your career. You deserve to settle into it somewhere that’s not going to be in twenty four-seven crisis mode for god knows how long before inevitably being shut down entirely. There’s a lot to learn here but there’s more to learn elsewhere.”

Robby knows that tone of voice. It’s the one she always uses when she’s made a diagnosis within two seconds of seeing a patient and is waiting for her students to catch up. “So what’s this elsewhere you have in mind?”

She smiles again, pleased this time. “There’s the Robby I know. I’ve been reaching out to everyone I know looking for openings across the country. An old friend of mine from medical school, Dr. Montgomery Adamson, has an opening in his ED up in Pittsburgh. I sent him your name with the highest of recommendations.”

“Pittsburgh?”

“You don’t have to decide right this second,” she tells him, as if that position won’t be filled in two minutes flat, his future career be damned, “but give Adamson a call, see what he has to say, and let me know.”

Reluctantly, Robby does. It takes less than two minutes of talking to Adamson for his mind to change.

Four weeks later, he’s standing in front of an apartment door with a couple suitcases, a few boxes, and not much else; as he’d packed, he’d been surprised there was even that much.

He'd hated New Orleans when he first got there, the heat and humidity something he never thought he’d get used to. But after a series of shitty apartments and worse landlords, he’d finally found himself a little bungalow that he eventually grew to love; he learned the proper way to host a seafood boil and how to spend a day in a boat on the bayou and the secret to a good beignet. It wasn’t the home he ever expected to have, but it was a home he made for himself. And now it’s gone, washed away, and he’s hundreds of miles away in a new city, starting over again when he felt like he’d finally found his footing.

He spends the first week in Pennsylvania in a hotel, viewing apartments and finding a car and getting the lay of the land, and it feels somehow both more and less real than ever. Eventually he finds an old Camry that’ll get him from point A to point B for the time being, and a two bedroom with a decent kitchen and a little balcony off the living room. As he opens the door to his new home, it hits him how far he still has to go, how much he still has to buy to rebuild a life he had never wanted to leave behind. But a small thrill goes through him, too. MacFarland was right: he could have stayed at Charity until the last breath, and maybe there’s a universe where he did, but in the end something about this move felt right.

Reaching out, trying to grasp, knows he’s hurt but can’t figure out why he can’t fix himself.

He’s thirteen, and he knows something is coming, and he probably won't like it.

“Sit, Michael,” his father says, business as always, as if family is no different than a courtroom. He’s on the couch in the living room, the big L-shaped one Mike had been so excited about at first, but ended up just feeling too big with never enough people to fill it. Mike’s mother sits next to him, a look on her face that Mike thinks is supposed to be comforting, but just raises alarm bells in his head.

He’s been trying to get everyone to call him Mike lately, because his bar mitzvah was a few weeks ago and he’s a man now and Mike feels more grown up to him. Everyone has gone along with it except, of course, his own parents. He doesn’t bother correcting his dad this time, though, and he’s not sure how much longer he’s going to bother trying.

He sits.

His father looks at him, one arm around his wife, the other angled toward Mike like he was going to reach for his son and stopped halfway there. He sighs.“The firm wants me back in London.”

Mike sits up a little straighter. He’s not surprised, not entirely. He’s heard them talking in hushed voices long into the night, so he knew something was coming, and of all the scenarios he came up with, this one was higher up on the list, right beside someone is dying and you’re going to have a sibling. Honestly, this is one of the better outcomes, or at least one he’s prepared himself for.

“Can I come this time?”

His mother places a hand on his father’s leg. “You’re about to start high school, Michael.”

“Next year!” he says, sitting up and leaning forward, hands braced on the seat of the couch. “It would be perfect, it’d be a new school either way.”

“The school system works differently there,” his father says. “They don’t start things at the same ages as here.”

“So? I wouldn’t know the difference.”

His mother tries to give him a soft look, but she’s not well practiced at those. “You’ll still be in school with many of your friends here, even if the building is new. We think it would be best if you stayed here and lived with your grandmother again.”

Mike looks at them, his eyes flitting back and forth between their faces, and he realizes this wasn’t ever going to be a discussion. He slumps back down.

“When?” he asks, deflated.

“In about a month,” his father tells him. “We’ll make sure you’re situated back at Bubbe’s again before we go.”

He’s silent for a minute, looking out the window at the house next door. They’ve been here for four years and he doesn’t know any of the neighbors, not like at Bubbe’s where she knows everyone on the street. He wonders if those people ever argue or get angry at each other or wish they lived somewhere else.

“Michael?” His father sounds unsure, which is unusual for him, but Mike doesn’t care.

“Guess I should start packing,” he mutters, and without looking back at them he pushes off the couch and leaves the room, not waiting to be excused.

He storms up the stairs, putting more oomph in it than he really feels, just because he wants to make it hurt; he doesn’t quite slam his door, but he doesn’t make it quiet, either. He’s never really gotten used to the bed here, or anything about the room or the house at all. It’s his parents’ house – he just lives in it. Really, he’s glad to be going back to Bubbe’s. Even if the bedroom and bed and closet are smaller, and he has to share a bathroom with her, and all the furniture is old and worn out, it’s the place he actually feels at home.

But it’s hard to care about the positive side of it when the hurt is still so fresh. He’s being left behind, again. An afterthought, again. His parents could make room for him if they really wanted to, but he’s not part of their plan. He sometimes wonders why they even bothered to have him move in with them when they came back. It’s clear they don’t really want him around.

He lays on his bed, staring at the ceiling, until he hears a knock on the door. He has no idea how much time has passed, but the light coming in through his window isn’t the same light as it was before.

“It’s dinner time, Mike,” his mother’s voice calls gently through the door. Mike. Like she’s actually making an effort.

“I’m not hungry,” he yells back.

The knob turns slowly, gently, and his mother’s face appears in the crack of the door. “Come sit with us at least.”

Mike sits up and stares at her, her perfectly done hair and makeup and perfectly neat shirt and skirt. He’s not even worth messing up her makeup for.

“Fine,” he says, and he follows her downstairs.

Moving again, a wall he knows, doors he knows, but not like this, he shouldn’t be here like this.

He’s twenty-nine, and alone.

Bubbe’s grave is still fresh with the earth thrown over it by what felt like half the town. Aunt Rachel had called him five days ago, saying it could be any day now, and he’d flown up from New Orleans on the next flight out, residency be damned. They’d all talked in hushed tones when he arrived, quiet and somber and stoic, but Bubbe broke into a smile that took years off her face when he walked into her room, and he didn’t leave her side once, sleeping upright in a chair until Uncle Aron moved the cushions from the living room sofa to her bedside.

His parents showed up two days later, and he resented them for it: that they were later than him and could have missed it; that they bothered to show up at all. But his mother sat beside him, and held his hand, and brought him soup; they didn’t speak, but for the first time in his life he understood that before she was his Bubbe, she was her mother.

Now, he’s the last one left standing at the gravesite, everyone else back in their cars, heat blasting against Chicago November. He’s missed the cold down in Louisiana; it gets a little chilly from time to time, but never in that northern way where a breath makes your lungs ache enough to remind you you’re alive. It’s not that cold now, probably won’t be until at least December, more likely January, but it’s cold enough, and he’s dressed poorly enough, that his hands and face start to turn red with it.

Still, he refuses to leave. She would call him a fool for it, but he’s not staying in the cold for her. It’s a penance for not being there as much as he should have in the end. A minute for every day he should have been there, until his face is chapped and it’s soaked into his bones. Only then does he turn around and begin to walk away, even as every step feels like a betrayal.

Everyone else is long gone, their cars parked somewhere back near Bubbe’s house, which isn’t Bubbe’s house anymore, but he’ll never be able to think of it as anything else. If the world were kinder, if the timing were different, it could have been his house the way he often dreamed as a child. But instead, no one else wants it; none of her children feel for the place they were raised, all with homes and families of their own, so once it’s cleared out it’s going up for sale, and then he’ll have no more ties, nothing but a headstone to keep him coming back to this place.

He walks out of the cemetery slowly, rubbing his hands together and blowing on them, trying to get some life back in his fingers. He considers taking the bus, knows he really shouldn’t shell out for a cab after what he just dropped on a last minute flight from New Orleans, but it would have to be at least an hour and two buses and he just doesn’t have it in him. Not that he’s especially eager to get back to the house in a timely manner, but they’ll all already have something to say about him not leaving with the rest of the family.

Later, when the neighbors and friends and distant relatives are all gone, and it’s just the immediate family left, he is, again, nearly the last one left.

“You should sleep, Misiek,” his mother says softly, emerging from the kitchen with a cup of tea.

Something unpleasant crawls down his spine at hearing that name from her, the woman who should have raised him, here in the house of the woman who did.

“I’m fine,” he replies, terse.

She crosses the room and settles on the couch across from him, about as far as it’s possible to get. “Staying up like this is for the children, not the grandchildren.”

He looks at her as she carefully sips her tea, her eyes drifting closed, and he can’t hold it in anymore. “Whose child was I if not hers?”

His mother opens her eyes slowly and gives him a long, searching look. “Michael…”

“I lived with you and dad for less than half of my childhood. And half of that I don’t even remember. She raised me, and if you didn’t believe that, too, you would have taken me with you the second time.” Her face is wounded, crumpled in a way he’s never seen before, a different kind of grief than she held at the cemetery just a few hours ago. If he were feeling more charitable he’d feel worse about causing that, but he has his own grief; he’s not responsible for hers. He stands, setting aside the pillow he’d been holding. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

He’s nearly out of the room when he hears his mother’s voice behind him. “When do you go back to school?”

“It’s residency,” he says, cutting, not turning back to look at her, “and I’ll go back when I’m ready.” He hasn’t actually cleared his leave past today, but he bought a one way ticket for a reason; he’s not letting any of the rest of them get the last word. They can divvy up her things and throw them out and sell the house, but he won’t let them feel good about it.

In the morning, he arranges with MacFarland to stay the entire week, promising as many doubles as it takes to make it up to her and his fellow residents.

“Robby, it’s fine, we’ll make it work. Take all the time you need,” MacFarland tells him, and he chokes out a thanks before hanging up.

“So you’re staying, then?” his father asks from the kitchen doorway where he’s standing with a stack of empty plates.

Robby turns around, crossing his arms. “Yes.”

His father sighs, and in that moment Robby sees into the future: one day his parents will die. As the only child, he’ll be expected to perform all the rituals, say and do all the right things, for these people who never once did right by him. Will they expect him to fly all the way to England when the time comes, put his life on hold even though they never bothered to make room for him in their lives? Or will they move back before that and expect more from him in their later years than he ever got from them when he was young? There’s no scenario he feels good about, no outcome that leaves him feeling anything but bitter.

He and his father stare at one another for a long time before his father sets the plates in the sink and turns to leave. He pauses in the doorway again and turns back to his son.

“Let me know when you get your flight booked. I’ll take you to the airport.”

Voices again, familiar this time, someone calling his name. Panic.

He’s fifteen, and frustrated.

“Okay, now move that piece back where it was before and think about another play that would get you a better outcome.”

Mike clenches his jaw and glares at Uncle Aron, but moves the piece back. “Why can’t you just let me make the wrong move and learn that way?”

Uncle Aron shakes his head. “If I did that then by the time we got to the end, you wouldn’t know which move it was that did it.”

“So I’m just gonna win every time? That doesn’t seem like a great way to learn.” He stares at the board, but he can’t figure out what possible move would be better than the one he just made. He’s tempted to make the same move again just to see what his uncle will say to that. Surely there has to be some level of pride in standing his ground.

“The more you recognize the places where the road diverges, the better you’ll be at recognizing it when you’re on your own.”

Mike hunches his shoulders and shakes his head. “Why couldn’t you teach chess to one of your own children?” he mutters.

Uncle Aron reaches across the table and claps him on the shoulder hard enough to make the board shake a little. “This is your Zeide’s chess set, and he learned from his father, and I have daughters. It’s a Sadowski man tradition. Aren’t you proud to be a Sadowski man?”

“I’m a Robinavitch,” Mike tells him. He reaches out and moves the piece; it’s a different move, and he can see how it’s the better choice, but he’s not exactly happy for having found it.

“Good,” Uncle Aron says, considering his own pieces. “And you’re a Robinavitch by name, but you’re a Sadowski by spirit. Gonna be a doctor, right? Just like me and your aunt and your cousins. Not a lawyer like your father.”

There’s a trace of bitterness in there that makes Mike sit up a little straighter and take notice. “I’m not gonna be a dermatologist, though.”

“Hey, don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it,” Uncle Aron says, finally making his move.

They go back and forth, his uncle correcting him or otherwise nodding proudly on each of Mike’s turns, until, somehow, Mike still manages to lose.

“What was the point of all your corrections then?” he says angrily as Uncle Aron packs the set back into its case.

“To show you that you can make all the right moves but your opponent might still make better ones.” He clicks the case closed and places it carefully back in the cabinet behind the dining room table. “Besides, how do you know I corrected you every single time I could have?”

Mike splutters for a moment, frustrated and defeated. “Then why even bother with correcting me at all?”

His uncle sits back down across from him and gives him a long look. Mike stares out the window and doesn’t look back. “Someday you will learn to recognize the right moves for yourself, and even when you do, you might still lose.”

“Someday I’m not gonna bother playing this stupid game anymore,” Mike grumbles, crossing his arms.

Uncle Aron just laughs, looking at his watch. “I have to go meet your aunt. Same time tomorrow?”

Mike doesn’t respond, but Uncle Aron still ruffles his hair as he heads into the kitchen to say something to Bubbe; while he’s in there, Mike slips off to his room without saying goodbye.

The truth is, he does enjoy chess, and he does like his uncle, most of the time. And it’s not like he’d really be doing anything else with his time – Bubbe banned him from helping her in the kitchen years ago after he nearly burned himself one too many times being reckless with the oven, and most of the people he knows from school are off at camps for the summer. It’s just that, he wishes he did have something else to do, and he’s annoyed that he doesn’t. He’s annoyed that he’s the youngest one in the family, always being left behind, and he’s annoyed that no matter how hard he tries, he can’t beat his uncle at chess and he can’t quite fit in with his classmates and he can’t make his parents come back, even if he doesn’t really want them to.

As he’s falling asleep that night, he has a vision of the chess board from the afternoon: there was a moment when he could have moved his bishop left or right, and at the time he didn’t see what difference it would make. He’d end up losing a piece either way. But now, as he looks even further forward, he knows that’s where he went wrong. Left instead of right and he might have been able to salvage the game. He knows no one wins every game, but just once he’d like to feel like he has a chance.

Tongue heavy in his mouth, his own voice loud in his head, but they don’t hear him, don’t know.

He’s twenty-six, and feels like he's finally hitting his stride in life.

“There’s a seven year old in room eight with a nasty cough, why don’t you join me.”

MacFarland brushes past him quickly and Mike shoots an apologetic look at the nurse he was talking to and follows after her. As much as he loves the pace of emergency medicine, and the feeling that he’s actually making a difference, he does hate how often conversations get cut off halfway through, often mid-sentence. He’s still working on picking up his pace, learning how to get the necessary info from patients without getting bogged down in the way they always want to unload their entire personal history onto someone who has to listen.

When they get to the room, Doreen, his favorite nurse, is already in the room speaking softly to the girl while her dad looks on, arms crossed, more defensive than angry, like he doesn’t think he belongs in the room.

“Good afternoon, Mr…” MacFarland starts.

“Thomas,” the man says. “Richard.”

“Mr. Thomas, “ MacFarland repeats, “nice to meet you. And who do we have here?”

“This is Natalie,” Doreen says, giving the girl an encouraging smile. “Natalie, the doctors are gonna ask you some questions now, is that okay?”

Natalie nods, and before too long, Mike concludes that it’s more than likely whooping cough, to which MacFarland agrees.

“You can finish up in here, right?” MacFarland says, and without waiting for confirmation she heads out, leaving Mike with Natalie and Mr. Thomas and Doreen all looking at him expectantly.

“We’ll have to run a few tests to be sure,” Mike tells her dad. “Do you know if she got her Tdap vaccine?”

The dad uncrosses and recrosses his arms, shifting back and forth uncomfortably. “That’s one of the ones they get when they’re babies, right? I think we did all the recommended ones.”

Robby tries to school his face into something neutral. It hadn’t taken long to learn that nine times out of ten, the moms are the ones who know pretty much any useful information: vaccine history, school information, even birth dates. He had been a little surprised by it at first, not because his dad knew anything about him, but because neither of his parents did.

“If the tests confirm it’s whooping cough, and she got all the doses, then that should help with the severity of the infection, but she’ll still need to take some antibiotics.”

“Right,” Mr. Thomas says with a nod.

Just then, Natalie speaks up for the first time without being asked a question. “Doc-Doctor Ro-Rob-” She tries to get it out, but shakes her head sadly as her cough starts up again. “Dr. Ro-”

Mike crouches down to her level and gives her a smile. “Hey, how about just Robby, okay?”

She nods and lets out a sigh. “Robby,” she says. “Will I be able–” she coughs again, her small body heaving with it “–to go to Kayla’s birthday party?”

Mike looks up at her dad. “Any idea when Kayla’s birthday party is?”

Dad gives him an apologetic look. “A couple weeks? My wife would know, she’s the one that keeps track of all that. But she’s at a girl scouts thing with our other kid today.”

“Right,” Mike says, keeping his tone even. “Well, it depends on how she responds to the antibiotics. If she responds well, it should clear up within a week, and she won’t be contagious anymore after another week. Do you know if anyone else in her class has been sick?”

Mr. Thomas shakes his head. “No, again, my wife…” He trails off, like he’s suddenly both aware of and embarrassed by how much he’s dropped the ball. At least, Mike hopes he’s embarrassed.

“Okay, well her school should definitely be informed so other parents can be on the lookout,” Mike says. “And if she’s spent time with any other children outside of school in the last couple weeks, any extracurriculars or play dates, they should all be given a heads up.”

“Yeah,” Mr. Thomas says, “I’ll, um…”

“Let your wife know,” Doreen says. “I’m sure she’ll know who to call.”

Mike is always impressed with how well Doreen can mask her disdain in front of people like this. For as much as he’s learned from MacFarland and the other attendings and senior residents, as far as actual patient care goes, he’s learned just as much if not more from the nurses.

“Someone will check back in with you once her test results come through. Can you sit tight with your dad for just a little longer, Natalie?”

She nods, and smiles when Mike gives her a high five.

“Why don’t you say bye to the doctor, Natalie?” Mr. Thomas says as Mike heads for the door.

“Bye, Dr. Robby.” She waves, and Mike waves back, and he hopes that if nothing else, her dad is a little more checked in after this. It shouldn’t take bringing your kid to the emergency room to get someone to step up and be a parent, but at least he brought her to the emergency room at all. Some kids aren’t so lucky.

“So,” Doreen starts later when Natalie and her dad are gone and they’re back at the nurses’ station, Mike checking the board for his next patient, “Robby, huh?”

He glances at her, sees the coy smile on her face that he knows means trouble. “Yeah, I guess. Just kinda slipped out in the moment.”

“You always are a big softie with the kids,” she says, whacking him gently with her clipboard. “Aren’t you, Dr. Robby?”

Through no fault of his own, and probably entirely the fault of Doreen, the name spreads. Before too long, everyone from MacFarland down to EMTs he’s never spoken to is calling him Robby. No one ever asks his opinion on it or where it came from, it’s like they all just woke up one morning and forgot he was ever called anything else. And if he’s being honest, he kind of loves it. He never hated Mike or Michael, and being Dr. Robinavitch is a point of pride, but there’s something about Robby that feels right in a way nothing else has for a long time.

Another voice, and a face, above him. “Stay with me, Mike.” Mike. Something pressed into his hand.

He’s eighteen, and he wants to go home.

He’s been sitting alone at the side of the shed in Lucas Pearson’s back yard for the better part of half an hour when Johannah finds him, trying to coax him into a game of truth or dare with the big group sitting around the fire pit.

“I’ll pass,” Mike says as she tries to goad him, tugging on his arm. “Too loud over there. But you should go if you want to.”

She gives up and sits beside him on the pile of firewood, tucking her knees up to her chest. “It’s cool. I kinda like watching everyone from back here.” She picks up her beer off the ground and takes a sip.

Mike watches her, frowning. “I’m sure they’re more fun than sitting here with me,” he says.

“Nah, you’re cool, Robinavitch,” she says, knocking her shoulder against his. “Why’d you never hang out much?”

He shrugs. “Dunno. Never really felt like I was very good at it.”

She laughs, throwing her head back. “It’s not something you’re good or bad at, it’s just something you do. God, I’m surprised you weren’t Valedictorian with that attitude. Better you than Meyerson.”

Mike shrugs again, like he can’t figure out anything else to do with his body. “He’s alright.”

Johannah shakes her head and takes a sip of her beer, casting her eyes over the party. “Hey, whatever happened to that kid who came to the beach with you last summer? He was cute.”

“He was fourteen.”

“I don’t mean it like that,” she says, shoving at him. “God. Just like, he was adorable, you know?”

“Sure.”

“And he got you to come out to the beach for once in your life,” she teases.

“I think I dragged him out, actually,” Mike says. He’s surprised she remembers Johnny. Sometimes it feels like no one does but him, like that whole summer was just a pocket that he and Johnny existed in alone, tucked away somewhere else aside from the rest of his real life. “He and his mom moved around a lot.”

“So he moved away?”

“Something like that.” He doesn’t want to talk about Johnny. Not here, at a party full of people who never even knew him, who barely even know Mike himself, although it’s not like he’s really given them many chances to.

Johannah finishes her beer and crumples the can between her hands. “Too bad, maybe if he’d stuck around you would have showed up to more parties this year.”

“Maybe,” Mike says, pulling his shoulders up. “But who cares about that?”

“You know for being so smart you’re really so dumb sometimes.”

Mike has a sudden memory of that day at the beach last summer, of Johnny’s claims that Johannah was interested in him, and just as he’s beginning to process that moment with what’s happening now, her lips are on his. The noise Mike makes is probably fairly undignified, and probably, he thinks, not what a girl wants to hear when she’s kissing a guy for the first time. But maybe she’s right, and he is dumb, because despite Johnny’s insistence last summer, Mike didn’t see this coming at all. He manages to get his wits about him quickly enough to kiss back just before she pulls away, smiling.

“You ever done that before?”

“N-no,” he stammers, still not quite sure that it really happened.

“Cool,” she says, and then a wicked grin spreads across her face. “Wanna try again?”

Mike looks at her, her long hair and deep brown eyes, all glinting red and gold in the light of the fire, and her teeth, so small and neat and white, and he thinks that he maybe does. “Yeah,” he says, “okay.”

“Good answer,” she replies.

He’s slightly more prepared for it this time, enough that he can get a tentative hand on her shoulder just as she’s leaning in. Her lips are soft as they move against his, and her mouth tastes like beer and the cigarette he saw her smoking earlier with her friend Christine. He wonders suddenly if they talked about him, if she was planning this all along. What does his mouth taste like? He jerks back suddenly.

“Sorry,” he blurts out. “Sorry, just–”

“Don’t worry about it,” Johannah says with an easy smile. “We can always try again.”

Mike nods, and then they do. For the rest of the night they trade kisses until someone finds them, wolf whistling until they break apart, and calls out, “C’mon, Fisher, or you’re walking home!”

“You know your mom would kill you if you left me here, Larson!” she yells back. She turns to Mike and puts a hand to his chest. “Sorry, but I’ll see you around, right?”

“Y-yeah,” Mike says, nodding. “See you around.”

She stands, throwing her hair behind her back, and walks away. He watches her go, still a little stunned, before slipping away by himself a few minutes later without saying goodbye to anyone.

A hand in front of his face: a black object, somehow familiar.

He’s twenty-two, and somehow feels annoyingly young and impossibly old.

Med school starts in a week, and he’s here on campus, just miles from where he grew up, and while there’s some level of excitement at actually achieving what he’s been saying he would for years, there’s still an ache somewhere in the back of his mind that he should be further along by now.

He’s spent the summer at U of C, helping one of his professors with a research project, and it had been a fairly painless move up the lakeshore, one campus to another. He hadn’t acquired much beyond the necessities in his four years of college, most of his life still in his old room at Bubbe’s, so his move is mostly boxes of clothes and textbooks, packed into Dr. Levin’s car as thank you for staying on campus to work on the project.

“You’re gonna be a great doctor some day, Mike,” Dr. Levin had said, shaking his hand after the final box had been carried up the four flights of stairs to his student housing. “You ever need anything, you know where to find me.”

“Thank you,” Mike said, “for everything. I’ll remember that.”

He stayed out on the sidewalk long after Dr. Levin’s car disappeared before finally heading back inside.

His new roommate, Lyle, is so quiet Mike’s not sure he’d know his name at all if it hadn’t been written on every single one of his possessions. Neurotic, definitely, but it’s med school, so who isn’t. At least they have separate rooms, unlike college, and Lyle seems to prefer to spend all his time in his, leaving Mike to get the lay of the land on his own.

Part of the land turns out to be another few rooms of med students on Mike’s floor: Dave and James; another James and Will; Neil and Benny. They’re from all over – Florida and Minnesota and New York and Colorado – and they all think it’s cool, one of the first times they all hang out together, to learn that Mike can visit home any time he wants.

“We’re all going to your house for, like, every holiday, man,” Will says.

Mike pushes his shoulders back in an effort to keep them from creeping towards his ears. “My Bubbe would be happy to have you,” he says, testing the waters, “as long as you’re cool with a Jewish holiday schedule.”

“Hell yeah,” Will says. “My best friend in high school was Jewish, I’ll eat kugel any day of the week.”

They’re all nice enough, but like with any bigger group, they naturally split into smaller factions as the semester wears on. By October, he’s spending almost every spare moment he has studying, and almost always with Benny. He tells himself it’s because their class schedules line up, but it’s the first year of med school – no one’s schedule is all that different. The truth is, from almost the first moment they met, he and Benny clicked, and as much as Mike enjoys hanging out with the other guys a few nights a week, he wants to be around Benny as much as possible.

Benny is a red head, almost more freckles than skin, and though he’s soft-spoken, he laughs easily and often. There’s something magnetic about him, and Mike wants to spend as much time studying him as he does his textbooks.

The first semester flies by, and November dawns cold and harsh. A few of his new friends aren’t able to make it home for Thanksgiving, snow storms grounding planes for anyone unfortunate enough to not leave earlier. He knows his uncle usually hosts something – none of them have ever cared too much about Thanksgiving itself, but they all love an excuse to get together and cook and eat – but when he calls Bubbe and explains, she says, “Bring them here. We will cook together.”

So they drive out all cramped into one car, the roads mostly clear enough for driving even if most other transit is still down, and Bubbe welcomes them with open arms, just like always. It’s probably the least traditional holiday most of them have had, but they’re endlessly grateful, and Mike thinks that the spirit of it all matters more than the food on the table in the end.

“Your friends are very nice young men,” Bubbe tells him once they’re gone, piled into Neil’s car. “That one with red hair…”

“Benny,” Mike reminds her.

“Benny, yes,” she repeats. “A very nice boy. Just like Johnny.”

She throws it out there like it’s nothing, like she’s not aware at all of what she’s doing, and she probably isn’t. Mike has noticed Bubbe’s memory slipping here and there the past few years. Nothing major yet, mostly little things like this – forgetting names just after she learned them, losing track of tasks halfway through. He knows he should bring it up with someone, one of his uncles or his aunt maybe, but then he thinks that maybe it’s just the fact that he’s not around as often these days, and he’s just noticing things she’s always done in a different way.

But now she’s bringing up Johnny for the first time in years, out of nowhere, like they just saw him a day or two ago, not five entire years. It’s not that they explicitly stopped talking about him, but it always hurt Mike to think about when it was still fresh, enough that he knew Bubbe could tell, and so she learned to tread carefully around that summer whenever it came up, until it stopped coming up at all. Until today.

“What makes you say that?” Mike asks, his throat dry.

“Say what?” Bubbe asks, turning away and heading back to the kitchen.

Mike follows her. “That Benny is like Johnny.”

“What about Johnny? Is he coming by today? I haven’t heard from his mother in so long.” She picks up the sponge and starts scrubbing at a dish.

A lump rises in Mike’s throat, and tears threaten his eyes. “Bubbe,” he says loudly, forcing it all down, “look at me.”

She looks up, and there’s something in her eyes that scares him. He steps forward and takes the dish and sponge from her hands, setting them back in the sink. She frowns up at him, looking lost.

“Bubbe, do you know what day it is?”

“It’s the holiday,” she says, staring down at the dish in the sink, one of the ones she only takes out on special occasions.

“Which holiday?” She doesn’t respond, and Mike squeezes his eyes tight, gritting his teeth. “You’ve had a long day. Why don’t you get some rest?”

He helps her get to bed, and when he’s sure she’s asleep, snoring softly, he calls Uncle Aron.

“Mikey,” Aron booms down the line when he hears Mike’s voice, “to what do I owe this pleasure?”

It makes Mike furious, somehow, that his uncle can be so jovial as Mike’s whole world feels like it’s suddenly crashing down.

“Do you have a minute to talk?” Mike asks.

“Of course,” Aron says, sounding taken aback, “I always have time for you.”

Mike takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “What’s going on with Bubbe?” He doesn’t clarify because he knows, knows, that Aron knows what he means, and he’s going to make him say it.

Aron sighs. “What are you talking about, Mike?”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

“She’s been like this for years, you know that.” It doesn’t help Mike’s growing anger that he still won’t say it outright.

“It’s getting worse and you know it.”

“Did something happen?” He sounds so concerned and it just pisses Mike off more, like Aron only cares if her memory problems are something other people can see.

“Does it matter?”

“Just tell me if something happened,” Aron insists. He sounds like Mike’s fifteen again and they’re sitting in the dining room, Aron coaching him through a wrong chess move.

Mike lets out a hollow laugh. “What would that change? Tell me what it would change if something did.”

“Listen, kid,” Aron starts, placating, “I know you’re angry, I know you’re scared–”

“Yeah,” Mike cuts in, heat searing up his chest, “and I’d be a lot less of either if I had known anything before showing up here with a bunch of my friends. But you decided I didn’t need to know anything because I’m just a child, right?”

“She’s not your mother, kid,” Aron says, and Mike knows he probably means it kindly, that he means it to ease the burden, but it only makes the rage bubble over.

“Fuck you,” Mike spits out. “Like hell she’s not. And I’m not a kid anymore. You should have told me.”

“You’re in school, you have enough to worry about. We can handle it.”

“Handle it?” Mike asks, caustic. “She’s not a car that needs to go to the shop, she’s your mother.”

“And not yours,” Aron reminds him again, anger starting to seep into the edges of his voice.

“Remind me, again,” Mike starts, fury dripping off of every word, “whose house did you go to all those weekends when you taught me chess? Huh? Was it the house in Skokie that my parents bought and then abandoned again a few years later just like they abandoned me? Or was it the house that we were both fucking raised in?”

There’s a long silence on the other end of the line, and for a good long while Mike can only hear his own heavy breathing. Finally, Aron speaks again. “Okay.” He sounds restrained, like it's taking everything in him to be the bigger person in the face of Mike's anger. Good, Mike thinks. He deserves to struggle with it. “Maybe you’re right, maybe I should have said something. But–” he adds loudly, before Mike can cut him off again, “–we shouldn’t talk about it right now. Cool off, get some rest, and hey, why don’t you stay there tonight and I’ll pick you up in the morning, take you for breakfast, huh?”

Mike wants to stay angry, wants to yell until his voice is hoarse, but in a flash all the fight drains out of him. He’s tired, and he’s scared, and he’s in the one place that has ever really felt like home. “Okay,” he agrees. “Fine.”

“Okay,” Aron says again. “Go get some sleep, Mikey. I’ll see you in the morning.

They hang up without saying good bye, and once the phone is back on the hook, Mike slips down onto the kitchen floor and for the first time in a long time, he cries.

There aren’t many times, at this point in his life, that he wishes he had been raised in a conventional way. He’s more or less made his peace with his childhood, and as he’s always said, he wouldn’t trade living with Bubbe for anything. But here, on this old familiar floor, Bubbe’s flower stenciled cabinets pressing into his back, he wishes he had that: parents he could call, someone to shoulder the burden, a mother and father who would make everything okay.

At his bar mitzvah his uncle had given him a magen david necklace that had belonged to his Zeide. Embarrassed at the thought of wearing a necklace, even though he knew other boys who did, he had put it away except for special family occasions, and eventually it became one of those things he moved around with him but never really unpacked, always sticking it in a drawer somewhere. He wishes now that he had it, that he had never been ashamed of it, and vows to find it when he gets back to campus.

He stays on the floor until his head aches and his body feels dried up, nothing left to give. Standing feels like a chore, but he manages to haul himself up, leaning against the counter until his breath evens out. Once he feels mostly stable, he gets himself a glass of water, drinking it down in record time. Then he picks up the phone again and dials the most recent number he’s memorized.

“Hello?” Benny’s voice is a comfort and Mike feels his shoulders sink back down away from his ears just a fraction.

“Hey, it’s Mike,” he says. “I’m still at my grandma’s.”

“Is everything okay?” Benny asks. Mike has the sudden thought that he wishes he could collapse into Benny and know that he’d be safely caught. He shakes his head, chasing the image away.

“Something came up with my family,” Mike tells him. “I’m not gonna make it back to campus until tomorrow. Can you just make sure my door is locked? Lyle forgets sometimes.”

“Of course,” Benny says. “You need me to get you or anything tomorrow? I don’t have plans and I’m sure Neil would let me borrow the car.”

Mike closes his eyes, letting the offer wash over him. He wants so badly to accept it, but he knows he can’t. “I’m getting breakfast with my uncle, I’m sure he can drop me off. Thank you, though, man, I really appreciate it.”

“Sure thing. Why don’t you stay on the line for a second while I go check your door? Be right back.”

Before Mike can respond he hears a click as Benny sets the phone down. While he’s gone, Mike can’t help but think that Benny is going to make an incredible doctor some day. If he’s half as attuned to his patents as he seems to be to Mike, he’ll have people scrambling to be seen by him. He gets so lost in the idea of that, it startles him when Benny picks up the phone again.

“Door locked,” Benny says. “Need anything else?”

If Mike were a different person, if this were a different world, maybe he’d be honest, with Benny and himself. But it’s not, and he’s not, so instead he says, “That’s all. Thanks.”

“Any time,” Benny replies. “See you tomorrow, Mike.”

He hangs up, and Mike lets out all the breath in his body in one go. When he breathes in again, it feels like brand new air.

Bubbe is still sound asleep, exactly where Mike left her, when he goes to check. Right here and now he can pretend, just for a moment, that everything is okay again, and always will be.

Exhausted, he turns away, and goes to bed.

He’s forty-seven.

He blinks awake, head heavy and pounding and neck stiff when he tries to move it. There’s a chair in the corner and a figure curled up in it. Jack, he thinks, and then his brain whispers, Johnny. As the name floats through his mind, beeping kicks up around him, and the shape in the chair stirs.

Robby watches as Jack becomes aware of the beeping and the fact that Robby is awake and immediately springs into action, like he was never asleep. He knows Jack was a doctor in the army; he’s probably used to springing up fully alert on a moment’s notice. He can’t imagine Johnny in the army.

He tries to speak, but there’s something in his mouth. Then, a hand on his forehead, soothing.

“Hey,” Jack whispers, rough. “Welcome back.” His voice sounds haggard, and Robby wonders just how long he’s been sleeping in that chair for. He frowns up at Jack, still unable to make his voice work. “You were hit by a car, Mike,” Jack tells him. Mike. No one has called him that in years. “Gave us a damn good scare but you’re one lucky bastard. A couple broken ribs and a few more bruised, and a sprained shoulder and your back’s probably gonna be fucked for the rest of your life, but at least you’ve got a rest of your life.” He lets out a watery laugh and something in Robby’s chest aches that has nothing to do with the injuries he has apparently sustained.

Robby wants to reach out to him, but all he can do is flex his hand. When he does, he finds it’s still holding on to something. His arm feels like lead when he lifts it, just enough to uncurl his fingers and let the object land on his chest. A chess piece. A black knight.

He stares at it, and at the edge of his vision, Jack goes stiff for a moment, then deflates. He pulls his hand away from Robby and Robby wants to yell at him, no, put it back. Instead he can only watch as Jack goes back to the corner, grabbing the chair and pulling it up to Robby’s bedside.

He sits, then leans forward, resting his arms on the bed and his head in his hands. “I’m sorry,” he starts. “I’m so fucking sorry I didn’t say anything. I applied for the job on a whim, never thought I’d even be considered let alone get it. And then the interview, you didn’t seem to recognize me, and on my first day… I thought you forgot me. I never forgot you.” His voice breaks, and the beeping on one of the monitors kicks up again as Robby’s heart pounds in his chest. “Fuck, I’m fucking everything up again. I’m sorry. I should get Dr. Miller. I should go.”

He pushes back the chair roughly and leaves before Robby can do anything to protest. Left alone again, he manages to pick up the knight again, squeezing it in his hand over and over until Fred comes in to give him a rundown of his condition.

He’s in the hospital for the better part of a week before being discharged into Dana’s care. She gets him home and settled, and sets up a rotation of the Pitt crew to check on him almost round the clock.

Jack doesn’t come back.