Chapter Text
Dennis laid on the hospital bed, AirPods in, blasting Erin LaCount like that would help anything. Studies show listening to sad music when you’re sad makes you feel better because it feels like someone understands you, he thinks to himself. Is he even sad? He’s angry. And I suppose that means he’s sad because he’s angry. He recounts all his failed hobbies and medicine just feels like another one of them. Something he’s poured too much money, time and effort into just for it to prove useless. To prove him useless. Again.
He tried art his whole life, it fails every time, it makes him so enraged he throws his pencils and sketchbook, he follows YouTube tutorials to make himself better and learn but they’re all so confusing and his results never look the same, because he doesn’t have the hand eye coordination they all do. He saw his twin brother, Peter’s, sketches once, of people. All cartoon-y profiles but so perfect and well done, it made him so mad the next time he went to draw and couldn’t produce the same that he didn’t pick a pencil up again for months.
He tried guitar as a teen, bought his own guitar for $120 after his eldest brother, Isaiah, snapped the acoustic he’d had since he was ten (that his grandmother gave him) at the neck. He couldn’t get his hands to work in time, always just a beat after and he couldn’t move his fingers quick enough to change chords. His hands too small to reach the right places. He vaguely wonders where it’s gone now.
He tried poetry as well - which sounded so trivial and stupid as he tried to articulate his thoughts and feelings of himself, others and the world, compared to that of his classmates. He hasn’t written anything in two years.
He never could do any sports like his brothers. Peter won a state golf tournament in middle school, while Dennis stood holding his mother’s hand watching and wishing he could do it, but every time he tried to hit the ball with the club he’d hit it too hard or too far right and it would miss the mark. Isaac and Isaiah were on the high school football team and Dennis never even tried to learn how to play. ‘There’s no point’ his father told him as he left to go to their game with his mother and Peter. Leaving Dennis alone again, as he was his whole childhood.
Twin’s are not built in friends Dennis learned early on. Peter is the favourite child, academically, physically, and behaviourally he’s been leagues ahead of Dennis since they could talk. Dennis barely made it through college and nearly gave up entirely because the coursework was built too much too fast, while Peter finished his degree early and got A**’s in everything. His parents didn’t cheer for him at graduation. His parents were the loudest people in the room when Peter Whitaker was announced.
Isaiah and Isaac are on the same level to his parents because they both help out on the farm full time and made his parents grandparents in the same month. Something Dennis is acutely aware he will never be able to do for them.
He wonders mindlessly if they resented him from the get go, for making them go into debt when he was little. He was born premature via C section, his mother was rushed to the nearest hospital because they thought she would die if they didn’t deliver the twins then and there but a natural birth wasn’t a possibility. It cost them to incubate the twins for almost a month, and to do the surgery, and monitor his mother. Dennis was 3lbs when he was born and Peter was 5lbs.
And then when he was born, he was born with strabismus. When he was four years old he had to get surgery on his right eye to fix his squint and permanent lazy eye. So now he has a semi-permanent lazy eye, it usually only wanders when he’s tired or unfocused. So that cost them as well.
He knows sitting in the abandoned hospital room that he’s currently illegally squatting in while ruminating on his life failures is a bit… ironic. Ironic that the fact he’s homeless isn’t the thing that brings him the most shame. Ironic that the fact Dr Robby had caught him before he hit the floor when he tripped over nothing that morning didn’t bring him the most shame. He’d just misjudged the amount of distance between his steps.
Dr Robby.
If anything that should bring him shame it was the biggest crush he had on Robby, and after he’d done a couple weeks with the night shift, on Abbot too. His mother would slap him for the thoughts he has every time Robby grabs his shoulder or looks at him over his glasses. The heat that fills his guts when he looks at the two of them is entirely different to the heat that filled them when he looked at Peter’s best friend during high school. It’s comforting, sitting safely deep in him, because he knows he’ll never tell anyone but, he lets it sit warmly inside anyway.
Dr Robby’s eyes seems to carve itself into his heart and Abbot’s smile wraps it’s hands around the carvings, tracing them gently. Dennis can’t get enough. Although he’s caught himself leaning into the touches more, eagerly waiting for a fist bump, and it’s as though Robby has noticed and started touching him less which obviously he can’t stand. But what’s good wallowing about it.
-
Shaking himself off, Dennis clambers off the bed and heads to the bathroom, remembering he should probably take his scrubs off and stop listening to sad music. Funk music has always helped lift his spirits, his aunt introduced him when he was 8 and it’s practically the only positive thing to come out of his childhood. Once he gets into the groove of funk music, he doesn’t even notice how stupidly he’s dancing.
“Nice moves, Whitaker,” Came a voice from behind him.
“Holy shit!” He screams as he turns around and comes face to face with Dr Robby and Dr Abbot in the doorway to his makeshift bedroom. Abbot looked amused at his jumpiness and state of undress, while Robby looked tired and concerned. As he usually did when Dennis was in the vicinity.
“What’re you doing up here?” Robby asked, rubbing his eyes. He had his coat and backpack on, Dennis noticed. Just about to leave to go home, which is what he expected Dennis would have done. And what he technically did do.
“Um sometimes on a hard shift I crash up here,” It came out more as a question than Dennis wanted to.
“This is your first shift here,” Abbot pointed out.
“Oh. I. Uh. I did my OB GYN rotation here last month.”
“Right. Okay,” Robby sighed. “Look, kid. I get it but it’s not healthy you can’t stay here. I’ll give you a lift home.”
“Oh no sir, it’s okay,” Dennis protested, already scared Robby was going to accidentally interrogate him and find out he lives here.
“I’m insisting. I can’t work a shift knowing you’re up here, Whit,” Abbot says. Whit. He fucking loves when Abbot calls him that. “You can’t live too far, it’s probably on the way to get to ours” Ours. Dennis suspected they lived together, that even though they called each other ‘brother’, there was something more there.
“No, I’ll walk if you really need me gone.”
“How far’s that walk?”
“Do you actually have somewhere to walk to, kid?” Abbot and Robby ask at the same time, gently, as if talking to a stay cat to coax it into a box. Dennis faltered, stumbling out noises he’s not sure are words. Robby comes into the room and puts his backpack on the floor by the door. Sitting down on the bed, he pats next to him, indicating for Dennis to sit. He sits.
“Kid,” Robby starts.
“It’s not what you think!” Dennis interrupts. Robby pauses,
“Are you living here?”, Dennis hangs his head.
“I’m in between places, sir”
“How far in between?”
“About a year and a half”
“Where were you living before you did your first rotation here a month ago?” Robby talks even more gently than before, wrapping his arm around Dennis’ shoulders.
“The shelter over on Fifth Ave, by UPMC,” he whispers as he leans into Robby’s side.
“Shit.” Abbot mutters from the doorway, moving into the room himself and sitting down on the other side of Dennis.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone? If you told the hospital we could have helped”
“No you couldn’t have. They’d have kicked me out the programme thinking I can’t afford it”
“Can you?” Abbot asks.
“What do you think?” Dennis laughs bitterly. “God you’ve ruined the mood I was building up.” He tries to lighten the mood and it works for a split second before the arm around his shoulders retracts and Robby stands up.
“Come on, kid. We’ve got a spare room.” Dennis stands up too, protesting,
“Oh no, no sir. That’s too much to ask. I’ll find another shelter. Just please don’t tell anyone. I know you’re the attendings but please you can’t. I can’t go back to Nebraska”
“You’re not asking. And nor am I. You’re coming and we’re gonna talk about it when Jack gets off his shift or in the morning. We won’t tell anyone if we know you’re safe for tonight at least.” Robby puts his hand back on Dennis’s shoulder, thumb rubbing up and down where his neck meets his shoulder. Dennis is nodding before he even knows it.
“Okay.” He agrees.
“I’ll be home at about 1am, Whit. Do you have a shift tomorrow?” Abbot asks, standing up too and grabbing Robby’s bag off the floor for him.
“No, the day after”
“Okay, same as Robby. So I’ll nap for a few hours when I get home and then we’ll talk about this all properly. You just have to get a good sleep tonight.”