Chapter Text
It happens slowly.
First, it’s just small things. Samira keeps waking up already tired, even after a couple days off. The headaches are more frequent than usual and her shoulder and neck muscles get tighter and tighter. She feels her stomach constricting a little every time she approaches the PTMC building.
The young doctor, however, brushes it off as normal stress. That’s what residency is supposed to feel like.
Then other symptoms come. She finds herself smiling at patients less often, and though her words stay the same, the compassion behind them isn’t as genuine as before. Patients irritate her more than they used to, and tricky cases which once fueled her desire to get to the root of the problem now feel exhausting. When Robby tells her to let it go and finish up, she doesn’t fight him. No. She’s weirdly relieved. And even though her patient satisfaction scores decrease only slightly and none of her colleagues seem to notice yet, the young resident struggles with crashing guilt in the moments of awareness of her changing attitude.
It only gets worse from there. Samira loses the ability to rest properly. She has trouble falling asleep and when she finally does, it’s no longer peaceful. Instead, it’s riddled with restless dreams making her relive her most traumatic cases. Even when unconscious, she’s failing her patients over and over again. Sometimes, she wakes up suddenly with her heart racing, not knowing why.
It’s not just the sleep though. Even when awake, something isn’t right. Her senses, in particular, seem to be broken. More and more often, she feels like the noises of the ED are louder, more piercing than they used to be, and the cries of patients and their loved ones stay with her long after she left the building. Sometimes, a beeping monitor or smell of blood triggers a painful memory she can’t escape, no matter how far she runs. Once, she even gets startled by Whitaker (perhaps the least startling man on this planet) when he puts a hand on her shoulder and inquiries whether she’s alright, explaining he asked her a question three times and she didn’t seem to hear him.
But Whitaker isn’t the only one to have such experience with her. As time passes, Samira feels more and more disconnected – from patients, from her colleagues, from her job as a whole and, most harrowingly, from herself. Often, she can’t help but feel like she’s watching her own life from afar, as if everything was happening behind a thick glass wall. She keeps forgetting whole conversations now as she realizes she’s moved through them on autopilot. Santos, being her usual straightforward self, once remarks that it felt like Samira was looking through a patient instead of at him. It it as if her mind insists on drifting somewhere far away, somewhere safer, while her body keeps up the facade of a functioning, stable resident.
And sometimes, late at night in her apartment, with no one there to pretend for but herself, Samira wonders if she wants to keep going at all.
Robby doesn’t notice. Why would he? Though he’s always had his reservations about Dr. Mohan’s speed, she was a brilliant young doctor – smart, eager, compassionate, the kind of doctor everyone wants at their bedside. And a lot like you at her age, his subconscious would add if he let himself hear it.
But he doesn’t.
Robby has always been good at noticing details in other people, especially his ducklings. He knows how Whitaker’s shoulders slump when his confidence falters, how Javadi’s posture tenses and fake smile appears anytime her mother is around, and the way Mel’s eyebrows scrunch in confusion whenever Dr. Mehta comes up with one of his jokes. He even learned to distinguish between all the shades of Santos’ sarcasm – when it’s a real joke or when is signals hurt, vulnerability, frustration, defiance.
But with Samira, it’s different. The gradual shift in her mood and behavior elude him, not because she masks it that well, but because it resembles his own. It’s the symptoms he’s lived with since Montgomery Adamson died – or perhaps longer – and has been too stubborn to recognize for what they are.
Robby can read any patient, any colleague without much effort, but when Samira’s cries for help mirror his own, his brain doesn’t notice. Even even Dana voices her concerns about the young resident to him directly, he brushes her off, cataloging his R4’s symptoms as normal – the same excuses he makes to himself now passed onto Samira the same way parents pass their debts onto their unsuspecting children.
But he can’t bring himself to see it. Because to truly see her pain, he would need to confront his own. And that isn’t a door he wishes to open. Frankly, he doesn’t even know how to anymore – he threw away the key years ago.
But the thing about doors is that even the strongest ones can give way. Especially if something hits hard enough.
For Robby, that happens around midnight after shift. He has just showered and devoured dinner, finally making up for the past 14 hours spent surviving on gallons of coffee and a single protein bar. He contemplates going to bed, too exhausted to get his ass off the couch and walk to the bedroom. Instead, he stays where he is and watches a random sports channel – a desperate attempt to numb his brain enough to turn his restless exhaustion into actual sleep.
That’s when his phone rings. It’s Abbot.
He considers ignoring the call but ultimately decides against it.
“Yeah?”
“Robby,” Jack says, urgency leaking into his usual steady, calm cadence. “You need to come back in.”
Not another MCI, he thinks to himself. “What’s going on?”
There’s a pause, the kind that stretches just slightly longer than it should, and it's enough to make Robby's gut tighten.
“It’s Mohan.”