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He goes to synagogue on Saturday.
It’s been a while, honestly, longer than he’d probably admit to his parents, so Robby slips in the back and sits alone in the corner. He borrows a tallit, because his own is somewhere in a garage, and wears a kippah from the box.
His usual kippah is blue and uneven from the scissors that Jake took to it when making that arts and crafts project. There is yellow stitching holding the sides together, too large and clumsy, because a fourteen year old knows how to sew but not well, and every time Robby touches it, it makes him smile because Jake-
Well. He didn’t bring it today.
He stands for the prayers, and kisses the torah when it comes past. He closes his eyes to whisper the verses of the shema, and carefully doesn’t recall the small beady eyes of a painted fox on the wall.
The rabbi is unfamiliar to him, because it has been too long since Robby last went to synagogue. She has a nice singing voice though, pleasant to the ear, even though she keeps choosing versions of the prayers that he doesn’t know.
There’s another reason that he usually doesn’t come with his mother to the synagogue these days, and it is because when the rabbi begins to say the mourner’s kaddish, he joins in.
Growing up, he knew that the kaddish was only for those who had lost a parent. It’s tradition, even if the words are simply that of loss, and so he listened quietly to the murmur of the Hebrew around him, Ivrit indecipherable and yet so familiar.
He hasn’t lost a parent, thankfully, so it feels like breaking a rule, to join in the chorus of the minyan’s voices in prayer, but the mourner’s kaddish is for loss. Robby joined in after the first time he lost a patient, and so today, there are many he must mourn for.
“-We remember Dr Montgomery Adamson, father and beloved teacher, who died on this day four years ago,” the rabbi says solemnly, breaking into his thoughts, and he glances up through his eyelashes to see that she is not looking at him. Whatever her name is, she is not his rabbi, and so she doesn’t know who it is who honours his teacher this day.
Robby turns instead to look at the candles that burn quietly on the back table, to the side of the bimah. They mark the yarzheit anniversaries of the people who have left, and yet Robby has not struck a match or set up a candle yet in anyone’s honour. He needs to do that, but there is one more thing that the rabbi will say.
He wants to hear it.
“As we are all aware, this week has been one of tragedy. The Pittsburgh Festival saw many lives claimed before their time, and it is a travesty that such a thing could have occurred. All of our communities have been affected, whether you knew someone affected, have a loved one who did, or are a member of the same species. And so, we remember them, Vincent Rivera, father and loyal husband, Yvette Llyod-“
Robby sways in his seat, and closes his eyes, gripping his tallit tight at the returning flashes. Has it only been three days? He won’t ever know most of their names, not the people who he saves, but it is right that he sits here and listens to the names of the ones he lost, the ones he wasn’t good enough for-
“Leah McManon.”
-And just like that, Robby can’t breathe.
Is it possible that he didn’t know her surname before? It feels like he should have known it, somehow, from the moment she kissed his son (stepson, stranger), or as though it should have been written in the blood cells that poured out from her unmoving body and over his steady hands as he fought desperately to keep her alive. He knew this girl in her final moments, and Jake will never forgive him for that or for the fact that
She died in his place.
Robby stands up abruptly, not caring that his chair squeaks against the hardwood floor, and makes for the door behind him. He doesn’t stop to see if anyone else is watching, nor does he know if the rabbi falters in her speech (because he can’t even hear her over the ringing in his ears), and falls more than pushes the door open.
There is an empty hallway, blurring fluorescent white at the edges, like a visor pulled down over his vision, and he has to go. He manages to raise his hands slightly, but recoils at the sight of them covered in red and stumbles back through the first door he sees.
Empty. Thank God.
Robby allows himself to bend over, pressing his palms down against the outside of his thighs, support and compulsion, like they’ll be wiped clean. The air is thin, and he knows he’s panting more than breathing, but fuck what else can he do?
Leah’s dead body. Jake’s face. Adamson, when he switched off the ventilator.
He keens lowly, stuffing a finger into his mouth quickly and biting down on the meaty skin to stop any further noise. The other hand alone isn’t enough to keep him upright, so he slides down against the wall and lets the fist ball up, as though it can do something for all the people that are gone.
Maybe he’s just not meant to keep people.
He rocks slightly, knees pulling closer to his chest in protection, and quickly dashes away the moisture that beads at the corners of his eyes. Not here, not fucking now, not over nothing-
Adamson hadn’t wanted to be kept alive on a machine forever. He would have wanted to save a little girl, no matter the cost to him. He would have wanted-
Why is the fucking cartoon room always a morgue? Why can’t Robby see actual kids in there for once-
Leah was a kid. She wasn’t old enough to drink.
“I should’ve been there,” Robby whispers, and his voice is hoarse, but no less true for it. There is moisture on his cheeks now, he knows it, but there’s nobody here to pretend for anyway.
I should’ve been the one to die, is what he means.
That’s a thought that scares him, for all that he’s become familiar with it recently, and he shoves it away with all the mental willpower he has. There is no room for that here, just a graveyard to box it in and tuck it away.
Instead, he fumbles for the chain of his necklace, and grips it tight enough that the points hurt his palms, and blanks out his mind with the quiet familiarity of his grandmother’s old prayer, and pretends as though everything is fine.
There is noise, sometime later, but Robby can’t bring himself to move. A gasp of air, footsteps, it makes no difference when all he is is tired.
It feels impossible that he can sleep and find that this tired is gone.
“Dr Robinovitch,” a voice says softly. He doesn’t move until it says “Robby,” in a tone that he knows.
He blinks open exhausted eyes slowly, and looks up to the old form of Rabbi Kraft.
“Rabbi,” Robby murmurs politely.
“I would say I’m glad to see you back again, but it seems like perhaps it isn’t for a good reason,” the old rabbi says gently, and Robby hears him lower himself carefully to sit besides him against the plaster of the wall.
“It’s not been a great week,” the doctor smiles a little, painful and wry, and doesn’t let go of his magen David.
“Care to tell me why? I’m a great listener, you know. Practically made a career out of it,”
“Just…good people die. And it’s not fair,” Robby’s voice breaks pitifully on the last few words, and he bites his lip to hold back the sob that tries to break free.
“My dear…no it’s not. That’s a problem that Jews are intimately familiar with, hmm? Suffering,”
Robby feels a hand clasp his shoulder, firm but tender.
“Our history is that of a people who suffer, Robby. We aren’t special in that, but we do often have to ask ourselves what God could exist who lets people suffer. It doesn’t seem right, does it,”
“How could God let kids die?” Robby whispers, and tilts his head back against the wall. There are still tears drying on his cheeks, but he finds that he wants to know the answer.
“In the wake of tragedy, we all must ask that question. Are we Job, tested for our faith by a trusting and almighty Adonai? Are we Noah, seeking to run away from the duties that we have been given and punished for it? Are we Abraham and Isaac, offering up willingly what we hold dear because it is what we must do?”
“So many people died. So many I couldn’t save. How am I supposed to live with myself?” Robby asks.
There is a gentle pressure on his cheek, and he opens his eyes slowly to see his rabbi smiling sadly at him, empathy glimmering in his dark brown eyes. “I like to focus on something else. We will all meet again at the foot of Mount Sinai, but in this life all we can do is make new meanings for ourselves.”
“Jake won’t forgive me. And Adamson is still dead,” Robby admits, and feels his eyes well up again. God, hasn’t he run out of tears yet?
“Is there someone you can call, Robby? Someone who knows what you’re going through?”
“Jack,” Robby says instinctively. Jack has already talked him off a ledge once. At least this one isn’t physical.
“Jack.” The rabbi repeats, tone a little guarded for a moment, but before Robby can read into it, his phone is pressed into his hand. “Call Jack.”
“Okay,” Robby murmurs, because he is exhausted to the soul. For a second, he realises he’s still wearing the tallit on the floor, which seems disrespectful, but he can’t think of what else to do with it.
Instead, he opens his apps, and dials his friend. It rings through twice, but just when Robby thinks he won’t pick up, the line connects.
“Robby? Everything alright man?” Jack’s tinny voice comes through the speakers.
Rabbi Kraft waits a moment, seemingly urging Robby to respond, but he has no more words to say. Instead, the rabbi leans forward to say “Is this Jack?”
“Yes, who is this? Is Robby okay?”
“My name is Rabbi Kraft, and I’m with Robby at the south-side synagogue. Would you be able to pick him up?”
“I’ll be there in 20,” Jack says immediately, like a friend that Robby doesn’t deserve. “Robby? Can you just say hi, so I know I don’t need the flashing lights?”
“Hi,” Robby rasps out, and tucks his head down onto his knees. Everything is just too much.
“Jack, I’ll tell the steward to bring you in to the Beth Hamidrash when you arrive, and you can come straight in. I’ll stay with him until then,”
“Thank you,” his friend says over the phone, and hangs up. Distantly, Robby wonders whether he’s pulled Jack from a shift, or from sleep, or from a date, but it really is just a distraction from the numbing pull of the hole that sits just below his sternum and swallows up every positive emotion as it passes by.
They sit in silence for a while. Rabbi Kraft doesn’t move his hand away from Robby’s shoulder, not even when he starts talking again, in low tones, like a sermon but like a lullaby.
“God tested a lot of people. In the Torah, he tests the great men, and sees who is found wanting. But I want you to remember the story of Ruth and Naomi, left behind by their husbands, penniless and without a home. They have nothing to their names but each other, and even then they aren’t tied by blood. They choose each other, Robby, they choose to cling together, and in doing so, they find the strength to go on and make the lives of everyone better,”
“Life is suffering. But we learn how to move through it together.”
Jack arrives in record speed, if he was coming from his home. He arrives in the synagogue in a whirl of worried motion, scaring the steward who is waiting for him, and anxiously pacing right behind her to a closed door where he is supposed to be.
It’s on the ground floor. He is more relieved by that than he’ll ever admit.
“He’s not doing so good. But he said you could help him,” a man says, opening the door before Jack can knock, and the doctor just about pulls up the energy for a quick smile over his frantic concern.
“Is Robby in here?” he cuts to the chase.
“Come in. Take him home safe,” the man (who must be a rabbi, with those robes) says.
Jack strides in and finds his friend collapsed on the floor in a pile of limbs and hair and cloth. They’ve seen each other after far too many long shifts for it to be the worst Robby’s looked, although he normally has the semblance of a smile on his face still.
“This doesn’t mean I’m converting, okay?” Jack says with a smirk, because he’s good at a joke. He is surprised then, when Robby reaches up desperately and hugs him, clutching him tightly to his chest and wrapping strong arms around his form.
“It’s alright, man. It’s gonna be alright,” he finds himself whispering, amid the shudders that silently press damp against his shoulder, and hugs Robby back even tighter.
“Maybe I should get the number of that therapist,” Robby chokes out.
Jack smiles, sorrowful but with hope, and presses a kiss to Robby’s head. “Whenever you’re ready, I’ve got it waiting on a cold beer for you,”
Over Robby’s shoulder, Jack sees as the rabbi steps out of the room silently, closing the door behind him. It leaves behind a pocket of quiet, even as birds chirp outside the window on the opposite wall.
Peaceful, like a void, like the silence when the work is done.
“You’re my family, Robby. We got this.”