Work Text:
July 25
"Hey, Dr. Robby?"
It feels strange, the honorific coming out of Frank's mouth. Doctor Robby. He’s pretty sure he hasn’t called him that since his intern year, when the shine of the mythical Doctor Michael Robinavitch was still new and bright to him. Frank had covered it with arrogance, and a brash attitude at the time, young and stupid as he was, as all new doctors are in their intern year; but it had taken some time to get used to working under the man. Robby was, and still is, almost a legendary figure in the medical field.
Frank feels, now, like he felt on the first day of his internship, twenty-eight and fresh out of med school and itching to start saving lives. Four years have passed, but trying to talk to Robby feels as though no time has passed at all, Robby just as unknowable to him now as he was the day they met. Like Frank is just a patient or a nurse, a stranger passing through; like he hasn't been in Robby's living room a dozen times, or slept on his couch, like they haven’t sung karaoke duets with their arms slung around each other's necks, like they haven’t gotten drunk in the park telling stupid jokes after a long shift until they were both laughing so hard they nearly fell off the bench. Robby feels totally off-limits to him now, too familiar for someone he hasn't spoken to outside of formal work meetings in ten months. Too familiar for someone he betrayed so deeply.
He'll have to earn his way back to Robby. If that's even possible. If he'll be allowed to.
He sees Robby's shoulders go up slightly at the sound of Frank’s voice, that odd shrinking motion he does when he wants to hide from Gloria. Frank's heart stutters and he looks away as Robby turns to face him, so he won't have to see the look on Robby's face, whatever it may be.
"You got a minute?" Frank asks Robby's left shoulder.
He can't tell exactly, but he thinks Robby sighs. "What is it, Langdon?"
Frank shakes his head. "Can we talk in private?"
Robby hesitates for the briefest of seconds before nodding, pursing his lips. He leads Frank to the staff lounge and closes the door with a gentle click. It feels like a nail hammered into Frank's coffin.
"Um," he says. Great start. He folds his hands in front of him, twists his fingers until his knuckles go white. He still can’t look at Robby, who is standing by the door, possibly preparing to bolt. "So—I've been sober now for ten months, and—"
"Frank," Robby interrupts, "if you're about to complain about the urine testing, you can stop. It's non-negotiable and you know that."
Stung, Frank finally looks up. His boss's mouth is set in a tight line; there are more wrinkles creasing his forehead than Frank remembers, heavier bags under his eyes too. Frank wonders how much of those changes are his fault. I didn't have a complete meltdown, he remembers snapping at Robby during their last argument, and Robby’s answer cracks against him like a whip, still, to this day: No, you just cause them in other people.
"No," Frank says quietly. "No, it's not that. I—look, I have it written out, here, let me, um—"
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a folded piece of notebook paper. "It's my amends, it's—it's step 9," he explains fumblingly, waving the paper a bit to disguise the shake in his hands.
Robby inhales sharply through his nose. "No."
"Dr. Robby—"
"I don't want to hear it."
"Robby, please listen," Frank begs, the nickname slipping out sans honorific by accident. Robby stops with his hand on the door handle at the sound of it. "Please."
It breaks the rules to ask this; if amends would do more harm than good, if the receiver does not want to hear it, the addict is supposed to back off. Frank begs anyway. He can’t let this fester. Robby has to hear him out. Has to.
Robby sighs, looking downward, and for a heartstopping second Frank is back there on that day, the day Santos caught him, watching helpless as Robby sighs through his nose and looks down at Louie’s librium that Frank had stashed so carelessly, so arrogantly, in nothing more than a plastic sandwich bag in his locker. Robby in the present, looking down at the doorknob in his hand; Robby ten months ago, looking down at the thing that will ruin Frank’s life. The two Robbys overlay each other, making Frank’s vision go double for one head-spinning second.
Then Robby turns, not quite all the way back to Frank but somewhere around three-quarters of the way toward him, and lets go of the door handle. He wraps his arms around himself and nods, once, then drops his head and stares at the floor in a gesture Frank recognizes as Robby’s way of steeling himself for bad news.
Frank’s fingers flutter with nerves and shame as he opens the letter; it’s short, or it ended up that way after McKay helped him edit out the unnecessary parts, and it’s been folded and unfolded so many times that it feels almost delicate under his fingers. As much as he has inwardly hated and resented the program, this part of it he has taken utterly seriously, this step toward rebuilding his relationships with people. So far, people have listened, and most have been gracious. Even Abby, who bowed out of their marriage a week after he got home from rehab, listened to his letter last week with her whole attention and hugged him after he finished, thanking him for saying all of that. It hadn’t fixed anything, obviously; but they’d both left the coffee shop a little lighter that morning, a little less burdened.
“Okay," Frank says, mostly to himself. “Okay, here goes.
“I’ve been sober for ten months now," he starts, and his voice is low and cracked. He clears his throat and continues. "And I’ve had a lot of time to think about everything. One of the things I’ve thought about the most was how much I hurt you. I am so, so sorry for everything." He flicks his eyes up to check Robby’s reaction; Robby is flinching, his face turned away. Their fight in the ambulance bay—it had started with a flinch like that, Frank’s first words to Robby hitting like Frank’s very presence was a slap in the face. He hadn’t understood it then, but he does now.
"I lied to you," Frank says, feeling the stinging truth of every word. "I stole from you, and I let you down and broke your trust in me. I said terrible things to you that you didn’t deserve while you were just trying to help."
I wasn’t the one talking to cartoon animals in pedes.
He has replayed that day in his mind over and over, pored over every second, every word that he and Robby threw at each other. He spent so much time in those early days of rehab wondering how he could have been so stupid, getting caught by some intern on her first day; so much time replaying his thefts, doing it better, smarter, smoother. But as he slowly dragged himself out of the worst of the withdrawals and back into the world, this is the thing he’s thought the most about: that night shift nurse in the back hallway murmuring to her friend, with the heady excitement that comes with good gossip, that Dr. Robby had had some kind of psychotic break in their makeshift morgue, the pedes room. That he’d been curled up on the floor—here the nurse had mimicked wrapping her arms around her knees and rocking back and forth—and had been sobbing and talking to himself, almost as though he were arguing with the animals painted on the walls.
On any other day, Frank would have swept around the corner where he’d been standing just out of view, scoffed out loud and told the nurse to mind her own damn business; he would have assumed she was making up stories to keep her and her friends from getting too bored and dismissed the thought from his mind entirely. But this time he froze. Her words felt like ice water down Frank’s back. Robby, broken? It seemed impossible, but with Jake and the shooting…
And then they’d argued, and Frank had cruelly thrown it in his face, and Robby had, perhaps unintentionally, blamed him. You cause meltdowns in other people. In me, he hadn’t said, but Frank heard it anyway. You broke me.
"You gave me your time, your effort, your mentorship, and your friendship," Frank read from the paper, "and I wasted it. I wasn’t thinking about anyone but myself."
He takes a long deep breath and blows it out quick to keep it from shaking. Again he snaps his gaze up to Robby’s face to check his reaction. Robby is grimacing and clutching his upper arms tightly, like standing in Frank’s presence, listening to his voice, is some uniquely painful form of torture for him.
One more breath to steady himself and Frank continues with the last paragraph, the actual amends. “I need you to know that this will never happen again.”
Be firm and clear, Cassie had said. And specific. Apologies for the past are important, but the real meat of this step is in setting goals for how you plan to do things differently now.
“I will never steal from you or lie to you again, ever, and I will do anything you want to prove that. You can check my locker, my pockets, my bag, whatever. Every day. I will stay in the program for as long as I have to. I will do all of the steps and the meetings and the tests and the check-ins and anything else you need me to do."
He swallows around the hard lump in his throat, the emotion pressing behind his eyes. Tremors run through his hands clutching the paper; his knees feel watery and weak. "You don’t have to forgive me or ever talk to me again outside of work, but I want you to know you can rely on me here."
It’s gonna be hard, Cassie’s soft voice echoes in his mind. Harder than you think. But it’s worth it. “Thank you for giving me a second chance," Frank finishes, voice cracking around the last word. “I swear I won’t waste it this time.”
There’s a deep black silence blanketing the room as Frank folds the letter up again along its well-worn creases. After a couple of long beats he lifts his eyes to Robby again—expecting—what, he doesn’t know. Nothing, probably, but hoping for some hint of warmth or kindness. Anything would be better than the brick wall Robby’s been giving him for the three weeks he’s been back.
Robby is crying.
Well, not quite. Not yet. But it’s close, close enough that Frank can see his eyes going bloodshot, rimmed in red; the fine tremors in his shoulders, the way he bites his lower lip to keep it from wobbling. Frank’s heart swoops and breaks into a thousand pieces—this wasn’t what he’d wanted, no, God, not hurting Robby even further, that was the last thing he’d wanted to do—
“You done?” Robby asks roughly. He doesn’t make eye contact; his gaze darts around the room.
“Yeah,” Frank answers automatically. “Yeah, that’s it, here—”
He holds out the letter and Robby takes it lightning quick, so fast it startles Frank a little.
“Great.” The word is flat and final. Without another sound, without even glancing in Frank’s direction, Robby turns away and leaves the room, the door clicking shut softly behind him, leaving Frank alone.
His knees won’t hold him up anymore. He stumbles to the closest chair and sits down with a heavy thump, elbows on the table, resting his forehead in his hands.
Be kind to yourself, Cassie says in his head, soft and gentle. But Frank can’t. There is no world in which he can be kind to a version of himself that hurts Robby, especially sober. He’s supposed to be better now; he’s spent ten months clawing his way back inch by inch to being a person instead of a loose collection of hurts and cravings and spikes that pierced anyone nearby. But it seems that the version of himself that can connect with Robby, see eye-to-eye with him, talk to him without feeling like a gut punch, died the day of Pittfest last year.
God, he wants a pill. Anything, he doesn’t even care what it is; whatever he can get his hands on, like he used to do, just something he can swipe easily from a patient to steady him, calm his stupid heart so he can go back out on the floor and save lives like he’s meant to. His feet itch, his hands shake. He touches the scar on the inside of his left wrist—
No, he tells himself. He breathes instead, long steadying breaths. Counts to thirty in his head and stands up, not ready to go back out to the floor yet but not giving himself a choice.
He walks out of the room and closes the door behind him.
September 24
Robby spots the scar two months later.
A trauma pulls up and he and Langdon are the closest to the ambulance bay doors, so they grab the gurney as the paramedics rush it in, throwing out letters and numbers that Robby sorts and catalogs in his head automatically. He assesses the patient visually, a little tougher than it used to be since his eyesight started going a few years ago; eventually, he will have to wear the glasses all the time, his doctor says, and he thinks he might just shoot himself whenever that becomes a reality. Don’t let Jack hear you say that, Dana warned half-joking when he muttered this thought to her one day. He’ll 302 you faster than you can blink.
The patient isn’t conscious, pulse ox far too low, bleeding from a deep stab wound to the chest. Langdon happens to be closest to the head when they reach Trauma 1 so he calls for a laryngoscope; and, when Jesse leans over to hand him one from behind the patient’s left knee, Langdon stretches his left arm out to grab it and his sleeve rides up for just a second and there it is, right in front of Robby’s eyes: a scar, at least six months healed, a straight and confident cut but railroad-marked from sloppy stitching, starting just below the wrist and traveling downstream, ending somewhere under the sleeve.
He only sees it for a split second, so quick he can almost convince himself it wasn’t there; Jesse’s quick with the scope and Langdon snatches it without looking, which means he doesn’t notice Robby freeze. Langdon manages to get the scope placed before Robby can move again.
“Doctor Robby,” one of the nurses calls, and Robby snaps back into action, his body on total autopilot. He throws out orders for tests and instruments and lets his hands move without thinking, allowing his training to take over while his mind reels.
They give the patient a massive blood transfusion and he stabilizes enough to go up to the OR; this is Robby’s favorite part, yanking off the gloves, knowing they did everything they could and kept the patient alive for the next step, but there’s no rush of satisfaction this time. There’s just Langdon, throwing his gloves in the bin and walking out a little ahead of Robby with a small smile of relief for the patient, having no clue that Robby saw anything at all.
Robby manages to make his voice sound normal when he calls Langdon’s name and motions for him to follow him to the bathroom. Langdon’s smile falls but he follows immediately, clearly preparing himself for what he thinks will be one of the random urine tests Robby has been giving him. Robby lets him into the bathroom first, then walks in and locks the door.
“Hand me the cup,” Langdon says, businesslike, ready to get it over with.
Robby shakes his head. “Show me your wrists,” he orders instead, and somehow manages to keep the tremors running through his body out of his voice.
Langdon’s face goes white. “My—?”
“Now.”
Immediately Langdon sticks out his arms, face up, but his sleeves are pulled all the way down. So Robby reaches forward, roughly grabs his left wrist, and pushes the sleeve up himself.
He doesn’t need his glasses to tell what this is, and it’s just as heartstopping a thought as when he saw it in the trauma room: it’s the remains of a suicide attempt, one by someone who knew what they were doing.
The bathroom echoes with the sound of Robby’s breathing, harsh and uneven. “What the fuck is this?” He tosses Langdon’s wrist away from him and Langdon crosses his arms over his chest, protective and defiant.
Langdon’s face is still white, but he scoffs a bit before snarking, “It’s a dog bite, what does it look like?”
“You said you were done lying,” Robby snaps.
“I haven’t lied,” Langdon says, equal parts baffled and furious.
“You didn’t think I needed to know about this?”
“I didn’t think you’d want to know.”
It’s vicious and resentful and a little pitiful, and it pierces Robby straight through the heart; but it also knocks his anger off kilter for a moment and he’s left with what he’s really feeling, which is bone-chilling fear. It’s the delayed swoop in his stomach when he misses a step on the stairs; the sound of a metaphorical bullet whizzing past his ear, an inch closer and everything over. Just a centimeter or two deeper, a little bit more sure of himself and Langdon’s whole life, gone. Robby can’t breathe steady around the guilt, the terror. What could have happened while he sat in his apartment watching television just a few minutes away.
He wonders if he would have sensed it. People do, sometimes.
“So—,” he starts, then stops, shakes his head and starts again. “When did—uh. When—?”
“Nine months ago,” Langdon says flatly. “Yes, my psychiatrist knows, yes my sponsor knows. I asked them if they thought I should disclose it and they said it was up to me. So I didn’t, all right? I didn’t lie. I said I wouldn’t do that.”
Nine months, nine months. Robby scrambles to place nine months ago on the calendar. It would have been right around Christmas. Maybe a week or two earlier. What had he been doing? Had he even seen Langdon yet, after shipping him off to rehab? Had they had their first formal meeting yet? He doesn’t think so. When was their first meeting? January? Had Langdon seemed depressed beyond the usual depression that comes with being forced into rehab and getting divorced from your wife? He can’t remember, he can’t remember. He tries to recall seeing Langdon in short sleeves since the day of Pittfest, as though he can convince himself this didn’t really happen, but he can’t find a single memory of Langdon post-rehab without long sleeves covering his forearms. How could he possibly have not realized what Langdon was doing?
Langdon sighs, relenting a bit at the stricken look Robby’s sure must be on his face. “Look, I’m not trying to hide stuff from you. I’m not, I swear. It just seemed like… one more thing you wouldn’t be able to trust me about. And I knew you were dealing with your own shit. I didn’t want you to have to worry about this too.” He gestures to his arm, dismissively. “On top of everything else.”
An oblique reference to the breakdown Langdon had heard about through the grapevine, surely; but it’s a glancing blow, clearly not meant to hurt him, so Robby lets it go.
There’s no reason he should be looking for the scar again, but his eyes keep searching for it, trying to get an angle while Langdon fidgets with the sleeve. Langdon notices him looking.
Robby can’t help but ask. “Can I—” He gestures toward Langdon’s arm again. Deeply uncomfortable, but still obviously wanting to remain honest and obedient, Langdon holds his arm out again, pulling the sleeve up to his elbow. Robby takes his wrist, gentle this time, trying to apologize for being rough before without saying the words.
He puts his glasses on. He’s not even sure what he’s looking for; clues, hints. A way in. Instead he sees what he saw in the trauma room; one cut, long and neat but clearly shallower at the end closer to the elbow, indicating that Langdon had maybe had second thoughts mid-cut. The keloid is a dusky pink, the white skin to either side puckered unevenly with the telltale sign of stitches done sloppily, some too loose and some too tight.
“Did you nick the artery?” Robby asks, like it had just happened seconds ago and not last Christmas.
“No.”
“Keep it clean?”
“Yeah.”
“Any infection?”
“No.”
“Who did the stitches?”
Langdon doesn’t answer. His silence makes Robby look up. “Frank?”
Langdon starts. “I did,” he answers, quiet and a little afraid. “That one-handed stitch you showed me in my intern year.”
Robby’s heart breaks at that—the thought of Frank by himself at home making a terrible mistake and then feeling like he had to clean up the mess alone too. Robby manages to keep himself from giving a lecture about going to another doctor for proper care and just says, “You did a terrible job.”
“Well, I was a little stressed out,” Frank replies sardonically.
Robby nods, acquiescing with a tiny smirk. He smoothes his thumbs over the scar as though he could erase it by touch alone. “The other?” he asks, gesturing for Frank’s other wrist.
Frank shakes his head as he offers his right arm for inspection. “I didn’t,” he says as Robby pushes the sleeve up and sees the unmarred skin there. “It was just the one before I—um, stopped.” He pulls back his arm just a tiny bit, not enough to slip out of Robby’s grasp, but Robby understands and lets him go. Frank pulls his sleeves down to his palms and grasps the edges in his fists like a child. The gesture tugs at Robby and he suddenly feels terrible for forcing Frank to expose himself like this. He wants to throw a coat or a blanket over Frank’s shoulders and let him hide for a while, until he feels ready to emerge.
It’s a feeling markedly different from the way Robby has been feeling toward Frank since he returned. Robby has been punishing him for weeks, since the day Frank got back, if he’s being honest with himself—and why not, might as well—punishing him in every interaction, every non-interaction, every glance that Robby slides over Frank’s head. He’s made himself a wall and has given Frank nothing and Frank has been taking it, like a beating he saw coming and could do nothing about, silent and with no complaint, not a hint of the resentment Robby is sure he must be feeling.
“Listen, Frank—” he starts, not quite sure what he’s going to say, but it doesn’t matter because just then someone knocks on the bathroom door, urgent and loud. “Robby?” Dana’s voice.
“Yeah!” he yells back.
“Trauma coming in, two minutes out, MVA, three victims. One major, two minor.”
“Thanks Dana, be right there.”
Robby looks back at Frank, but his face is shuttered now, the moment shattered. Saying anything else would be useless, and anyway, they’re needed.
“Back to it, then,” Langdon says, and Robby follows him back out onto the floor.
December 19
Everything crashes down around him on the anniversary of his attempt. Frank wouldn't have expected any less.
The call comes in when the paramedics are two minutes out, so it must have been very close to the hospital—a kid, barely seventeen, found by his brother in a bathtub full of water, long slashing wounds to both arms. Unconscious upon discovery, very weak pulse when they loaded him into the rig. Everyone but Robby and Frank are already tied up; Mohan and McKay in trauma 1 with Abbot, working a rare day shift for once to cover Collins on her Christmas vacation. Robby and Frank gown up and are shoving their protective glasses on just as the gurney bursts through the doors, paramedics shouting his vitals at them, an instant assault on the senses. One paramedic is mounted on the gurney, administering chest compressions; apparently they’d lost his pulse en route.
Frank can feel Robby wanting to check on him and actively resisting the impulse. He's grateful; it wouldn't help anybody, least of all the patient in front of them, who is pale and soaking wet, covered in splashes of smeared arterial spray. Frank lifts the blood soaked gauze on the left forearm and assesses the wound as they careen into trauma 2. He'd gone deep, deeper than Frank had had the courage to. This kid had meant it. No hesitation marks, straight clean lines from wrist to elbow each. The right one looks slightly shallower from Frank’s vantage point, probably due to lessened dexterity of the left hand after the first cut to the left arm. The paramedics tied tourniquets above the wounds, which stopped the active bleeding, but it’s clear they arrived quite some time after the attempt. His skin, under the bright trauma room lights, has a bluish tint. He has not regained consciousness since he was found.
Robby's calling out tests and orders for the nurses; Frank shifts to hover over the patient’s head and intubates, an easy one, straight through to the cords and bagged like clockwork.
“Still no pulse," Nurse Jesse says urgently.
The paramedic on top of the kid climbs off. “Continuing chest compressions,” Frank says as he moves around to the kid’s side, something he’s said a hundred times, but it feels different this time, more urgent; as though he’s pressing on the ribcage of someone he knows, or on his own.
"V-fib," Nurse Kim calls.
Robby calls for defibrillator pads and a pair of hands gives them over; he reaches around Frank to place them. Frank stands back. “Charge to 200. Clear."
They shock him. It does nothing; the machine shouts back at them, almost mocking. Frank resumes compressions.
"Charging to 250.” Frank stands back once again, hands up. “Clear."
There's blood and water everywhere; on Frank's shoes, smeared on his gown. The kid’s clothes are still streaming pink-tinged bathwater and the floor is dangerously slippery now, everyone’s shoes squeaking and sliding a bit as they move. He remembers the feeling of that evening one year ago, the way his own blood felt somehow different than all the other people’s blood he’d been up to his elbows in—it was hot and vital and deep red and it had shocked him out of whatever compelled him to grab the scalpel in the first place.
“Charge to 300. Clear.”
Nothing. The kid had lost so much blood, hit both arteries with intent and hadn’t left anything to chance. He’d left his poor little brother to find him.
No one would have found Frank in time either. His sponsor, John, would have called, might have shown up at the apartment when he didn’t come to the meeting the next day, but his body would’ve been long cold and stiff by then. Tacky blood dark and drying on the cheap kitchen linoleum. A horror show for John to find.
Nurse Kim calls asystole. Frank keeps the compressions going for far longer than he ought to, something desperate cracking inside him; he makes eye contact with Robby across the body as he tries and tries and tries. Sweat drips off the ends of his hair.
“Hold compressions,” Robby says for the fifth time.
Frank lets go: asystole.
Robby looks at him. There’s pity in his eyes, that softened look that says it’s time to let go now. Frank’s gut twists in anger and he starts the compressions again without being told to.
“How long has he been down?” Robby asks Jesse.
“Forty-nine minutes, unknown downtime before his brother found him.”
“Doctor Langdon,” Robby says.
Frank stops, breathing hard.
“Time of death: 4:50 pm.”
Frank is floating somewhere inside his head. He strips off the gown and gloves and tosses them on autopilot, the protective glasses thrown off and landing somewhere on the floor to the right of him. And then suddenly he’s in the ambulance bay, his awareness thunking solidly back down into his body as he sags against the brick wall with his knees drawn up, staring out at the snow falling just a few inches away, with no real memory of getting from the trauma room to there.
He is well versed enough in therapy and psychiatry to know what has happened. He has been deeply triggered, the electric connection made between a current event and a traumatic memory. It feels different from how he’s seen it described in books; he can catalog the effects on his body, his chest shivering with cold, his toes starting to freeze, the snow in his socks, his knees knocking together, arms flopped down by his sides. He can hear everything, too: traffic in front of him and muffled sounds of a busy ER behind him.
But his brain can’t latch on to the direction it wants to react, and it pulls him in a hundred different directions at once, paralyzing him. In one second he’s running through scenarios of how he could most easily and quickly kill himself—the roof, surely, Abbot had a point there, but no way would Robby even let him get to the stairs before dragging him off and locking him up in the psych ward. Waiting till he gets home, then; but he doesn’t know if he can wait that long. Maybe if he palms a scalpel. Or he could go fully all-out, steal some medication one last time and overdose in the park. They’d find him quick, of course, and pump him with charcoal, but he’s a fucking doctor, he knows how to overdose properly.
And then in the next second he’s reeling away from those thoughts, utterly horrified at the darkness of them, terrified of his own practicality. He’d been so sure he was doing better. His suicidal ideation had never really gone away, despite what he’d told Robby and his therapist and everyone else; but it had remained passive, in the background. Safely inactive, a comforting thought in the dark but no more than that.
And then he’s back picturing himself that evening, a year ago today; no snow that night, but a cold stinging rain slapping against his windows with cruel intent. He remembers that the lighting in his apartment had felt unbearable, colder than the fading December light outside. And he remembers the split second of absolute bone-crushing relief as the blood spilled over his arm, before logic and panic kicked in and the whole plan went sideways. It had been a good one, simple and clean and easy, but he’d fucked it up. Just like everything else, he’d fucked it up.
It flips again and cold panic floods his body head to toe. He hasn’t moved. He doesn’t know how long he’s been out here. If the snow on the toes of his shoes is any indication, it’s been several minutes at least. He’s shivering in just a long sleeve t-shirt and scrubs, the protective overhang above him providing little shelter, but feels no urge to move or even wrap his arms around himself.
Robby’s going to throw him out.
He’s been so good since coming back in July. He’s kept his head down, never once complained or pushed to do more than he was allowed; he’s made his amends to everyone, he’s done the tests and the HR meetings and gone to every NA meeting he’s been scheduled for. He even spoke once or twice, when he couldn’t avoid it any more. But none of that is going to matter. He has to be perfect, unimpeachable; if he can’t handle suicide cases anymore without getting triggered, it’s over. He’s finished.
“Frank?”
Frank doesn’t even move his head. It feels like a monumental effort just to blink in response to Robby’s voice. He grabs hold of enough effort to make a sound and pushes an “Uh-huh?” out of his chest.
“Frank.”
Out of the corner of his eye he can see Robby crouching down nearby; close enough to touch if he wanted, but he doesn’t reach out. He’s just a blurred hunched shape in the periphery of Frank’s vision. Frank can’t seem to move his eyes to look.
“Frank, you did everything you could,” Robby says, quiet. Frank snorts through his nose, barely an acknowledgment. Honestly, he’d forgotten about the kid in the maelstrom of his own bullshit. He takes a moment to hate himself for that, someone dead because he wasn’t good enough.
“Frank, can you look at me?” Robby’s voice again.
The request seems to unlock his joints a little and Frank finds that with some effort, he can move. He forces his head to roll on the brick and looks at Robby.
He tries to read Robby’s face, to focus on something other than the whipsawing panic and planning in his head. There’s the gentleness that Robby has always been known for, sweetness in the crow’s feet around his eyes; there’s the pursed lips of barely concealed concern, the internal calculation of how long he can let this go on before dragging Frank back into the fray.
“Will you come inside?” Robby asks quietly.
Frank doesn’t think he can even move his hands, let alone stand. He wonders if Robby can see it in his face, because Robby nods, twists his mouth and drops his head. A perfect mirror for how he looked last fall when Frank had hit him with What about you, man? Disappointed. Dejected at this expected outcome. Sad to see it play out exactly as he’d thought it would.
Frank can feel everything slipping away. Like a stack of papers set on the edge of a desk with too much of it hanging off into the abyss and there’s no way to save the pages from tipping over and spilling all over the floor. His job, his life. The sobriety he has worked so hard to maintain. It’s all over, sliding out of reach, dissolving into a mess of failures when he tries to touch it. That disappointed twist of Robby’s mouth says it all.
Something sweeps up and grabs him by the throat. Fight back, Frank, you asshole.
“Will you just fucking say it already?”
Robby’s head snaps up, confused. Frank raises his eyebrows. Pulls his head off of the wall. That’s a start, anyway. He digs deep into the corners of his strength and pulls out enough to fight with. “Go ahead. Go on!” At Robby’s baffled look, Frank lets out a dismissive snort, his head hitting the wall again. “Never mind,” he says, injecting as much nastiness as he can into his voice to cover for how pathetic he must look. “You don’t have to.”
“What am I supposed to be saying, exactly?” Robby asks.
His voice is even and calm, and it infuriates Frank. Fury is at least something he can latch onto, so he does.
“That you made a mistake, letting me come back,” he spits.
Robby blanches.
“Oh, come on,” Frank scoffs. “You’ve been punishing me for months. Which is fine, I deserve it, but then you saw this—” he raises his left arm, wrist turned outward so the scar peeks out from under the sleeve “—and you just—like—I can taste your disappointment, man. And your judgment.”
“I am not trying to judge you—”
“But you just can’t help it?”
“Frank,” Robby says, sounding tired and done with him.
More words crest over him like a tidal wave he can’t stop. He laughs. “You are such a fucking hypocrite. I know Abbot found you about to jump off the roof that night.”
It’s absolutely not what he wants to be saying; if he had a knife within reach he would stick it in his own throat with no hesitation now, just to stop his voice betraying him. Robby freezes, a deer in headlights, and that familiar cold shame washes down the sides of Frank’s face. Again, he recognizes exactly what just happened here: he was triggered, he got defensive and scared, he lashed out. Went for the jugular with sensitive information he wasn’t supposed to have, instead of guarding it safely inside his chest.
Which terrifies him as much or more than anything else: the last time he was in this situation with Robby, biting the hand that was trying to help him, he’d been using. He’d been able, later, to scrub some of the guilt away by reasoning that the drugs, and the prospect of them being taken from him, had altered his personality deeply enough that it had forced him into something he never would have done normally. But now… This is just him. He’s doing it sober, now. Which means there is something in him that is inherently unfixable. He’s destined to hurt the people he loves over and over and there’s no way out of it, no way to stop it.
“Fuck,” he whispers, shaky, all of his anger and stupid righteous self-pity abandoning him, and he can see himself for what he is, an ugly and twisted and mean shell of a man, and he only realizes he’s going to cry a second before it starts, not enough time to gather himself and put a stop to it, and he breaks like a high speed car crash, a skull slamming through a windshield, shattered immediately on impact. He feels his face crumple into an ugly mask and he can’t stop that either so he brings his arms up, a kind of gesture of surrender, and ducks his head, covering it like the tornado drills he’d gone through in school. It does nothing to stop the tears but at least this way Robby can’t see it.
“Oh, kid,” Robby sighs, barely audible over the blood rushing in Frank’s ears. Frank balls up tighter, trying to disappear completely, trying with all his might to squeeze this feeling down into a tiny little morsel, small enough to swallow it again. But it keeps spilling out against his will, all horrible chest-cracking sobs and wet cheeks and snot. He buries his face in his knees and grabs fistfuls of his hair and waits for it to be over.
A crunching noise, the soles of a pair of tennis shoes grinding gravel into the blacktop; a low groan and sigh of a middle aged man moving his body in ways it is no longer used to. A heavy presence settling itself against the wall next to him; a tentative hand on his shoulder, sliding across his back and pulling him gently in, and then Robby is holding him, both arms wrapped around his tightly coiled body.
He doesn’t say anything, no shushing sounds or murmured words, just makes himself a solid unquestionable presence to lean on. Frank lets go of his hair, uncurling a little, and clutches the front of Robby’s coat with one hand, his other arm wrapped around his midsection.
There is a long, long silence while Frank cries himself out. The snow blankets the city in softness, blunting its sharp-edged noises. Even the sirens go quiet for a moment, everything holding its peace for him.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers into Robby’s chest as soon as he is able to speak.
“What for?” Robby murmurs, stroking his thumb absently along Frank’s shoulder.
For getting snot all over your coat. For throwing your own pain back in your face. For letting you down, being an addict, for being too much of a coward to cut deeper.
Instead of choosing one, he mutters, “Take your pick.”
Unexpectedly, Robby chuckles; pressed together as they are, Frank feels it shake through Robby’s body, and it warms him a little, loosens his locked muscles a fraction.
“Well, you left the coffee pot in the breakroom empty last Thursday,” Robby says, in an obvious attempt to lighten the mood.
Frank snorts. “Yep, that’s what I meant,” he croaks. It’s pathetic but it's something to hold onto, and it stabilizes Frank enough to sit up. Robby lets go, but as Frank presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, he can still feel Robby watching him, assessing his state of mind. They sit like that for a brief moment while Frank breathes. He suddenly realizes how cold it is, flakes of snow drifting in and settling around their feet, breaking through the meager protection that the overhang they’re sitting under provides.
“I do want to know,” Robby says suddenly, apropos of nothing.
Frank lowers his hands to his lap. “Want to know what?”
Robby hesitates; Frank imagines him gathering the words he wants to say and putting them in order, like magnetic poetry. “When we talked before,” he says, careful, “you said that you didn’t think I would want to know.”
Frank remembers now: their confrontation after Robby had spotted Frank’s scar, which he’d been so careful to keep hidden. Robby had treated him differently after that; before, in the few months right after coming back to the hospital, he’d been ignoring Frank deliberately, almost pointedly, a clear punishment. After, though, the distance between them had felt thickened, calcified with Robby’s condemnation, his disappointment hardened by the knowledge of Frank’s weakness.
For the first time, Frank wonders if he’d misread concern and care as judgment.
“I do,” Robby says. “I want to know. I don’t want you to feel like you can’t come to me and tell me honestly how you’re doing. Obviously I have made you feel that way.”
Frank shakes his head. He’s too raw for this. “What I did—it was unforgivable. You let me come back anyway. I couldn’t ask for more than that.”
“I am your attending.” Robby’s shaking his head now too. “If there’s something you feel like you can’t come to me with, that means I’m not doing my job.”
Frank watches Robby’s hands move restlessly, a less complicated thing than looking at his face. He’s rubbing the backs of his fingers with his other hand, over and over; it’s something he does when he’s nervous or worried, one of his little tells.
“I know re-integrating has been tough for you.” Robby sighs. “And I haven’t made it any easier.”
It’s true, so Frank says nothing.
“But you have done so well,” Robby continues. “Despite everything, you have proven yourself to be the same amazing doctor you always were. Your resilience is a real inspiration to the other residents. And to me.”
It’s almost too much, with the state Frank is in, finally hearing the words he’s been desperate to hear for months. He can’t process the praise head on; it’s like a bright light shining into his eyes. He feels like if he looks at it, or Robby, directly he’ll be set on fire. Instead he focuses on a patch of sidewalk, an animal track printed in the light snow. Focuses on breathing around the lump in his throat.
“Frank,” Robby says. He tilts his head sideways, moving into Frank’s eyeline, and Frank looks up despite himself. Hungry for something he never thought he’d get again.
Robby’s eyes are kind and stern at the same time, as though through sheer force he can make Frank believe him.
“I am proud of you,” he says.
It’s clear and strong, no doubt, no hesitation. It bursts in Frank’s chest like a sunrise, leaves him breathless. He can’t speak, or look at Robby without bursting into tears again, so he nods at the ground.
After a moment, Frank opens his mouth to speak—not sure what he's going to say, but he needs Robby to know—
A siren’s wail, close and coming closer, breaks the bubble of their conversation, and they both look up at the same time. When it turns onto their street, Robby sighs that back-to-work sigh; Frank knows the sound so well he could recreate it note-perfect in his sleep. Robby gets to his feet first and offers Frank his hand. Frank takes it. Robby hauls him up.
Frank turns to go inside, but Robby holds onto his hand, making him turn around and look at Robby questioningly. “There are sandwiches in the staff lounge,” Robby says. “I know you haven’t eaten yet today.”
“Oh, I’m fine,” Frank protests.
Robby shakes his head. “Take fifteen. Eat something. We’ll hold down the fort until you come back.”
Frank bristles at first, being told to take a break like a third year med student who fainted on their first day, then catches himself. Breathes, and sees the care in Robby’s face. The concern and love there.
I am proud of you. The words echo in his head, warming him.
Frank smiles, a little wobbly still, but real. “Save me an interesting one?”
Robby holds out his fists and Frank pounds them. “You got it.”