Work Text:
“Michael?”
The nurse materializes at his door. Her hair is done up in two braided buns that seem more appropriate for a cheerleading competition than the psych ward, and her underscrub is a long, multicolored, waffled shirt that’s practically neon against the drab beige walls. Her arms are wrapped around a clipboard so densely covered in bright pink stickers that he can hardly see the light brown wood underneath. Her ID badge, Cortney, is clipped to her pocket with a little cartoon character reel from a show he only vaguely knows about. She’s smiling at him with that same placid smile that every single one of these people seems to have. It grates on him.
“Robby.” He repeats with finality as he snaps his book, some self-help book his therapist recommended that he’s only half paying attention to, closed.
“Um.”
She shifts uncomfortably against the wall. Her soft blue scrubs are from that new brand all of the residents seem to love, and her brow crinkles. In that moment, he sees in Cortney every fresh resident and nurse he has worked with through his career. Scared, but eager to make a difference. Brilliant, but still unsure of themselves and their place here.
He can’t help but soften. He tries his best to project a reassuring, warm smile at her, but he’s sure it comes out more like a grimace. “I’d prefer it if you’d call me Robby. Everybody does.”
“That’s fine. I’ll be sure to mark it down on your chart too.” She responds back to him, the cheer in her voice a little less artificial. He could see her shoulder sag in relief. Something like guilt untwisted itself in his stomach. “Robby, I wanted to stop by and let you know that you have a visitor.”
“Oh.”
Outside of the small window in his room, permanently latched shut for his safety, a robin creaks on the branch of a birch tree. Robby rubs at his knuckles, savoring each small pop. He takes in a steeling breath of ice-cold air from the industrial air conditioning unit they use at the facility. The artificial cold is comforting, familiar.
“Would you like to see them?” Cortney presses gently. From this distance, he can see a series of plastic holders going all the way up her ear. In here, the staff wasn’t allowed to have jewelry or piercings. No one could have anything that could be construed as a weapon or could injure them in a scuffle. Even his favorite sweatshirt was confiscated. The string that ran through its hood was determined to be too dangerous. “You don’t have to, if you don’t want to. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, actually. But most patients find it helpful to have a chance to see their friends and family.”
“Helpful,” laughs Robby sarcastically. “Depends on who it is.”
He runs through the short list of people who might be inclined to come see him in his mind, turning it over like a worn stone. It’s mid-morning on a Tuesday in August. Abbot was probably asleep from the night shift that just got off two or three hours ago. Dana was probably in the thick of it. Most of this current class of students and residents were probably right there beside her. Heather had moved off to Portland, thousands of miles away, and from what Robby could glean during the few times he logged onto Facebook in the year since she left, was living an almost idyllic life. She was an Attending at a sleepy suburban hospital with excellent funding, an avid hiker of the lush Oregon trails, and the mother of a little boy with cheeks so chubby they just begged to be pinched. His grandparents, the people who cared most for him, were long dead.
“Uh,” Cortney flips through a stack of paper on her pink clipboard. “He said his name was Frank.”
Robby can’t help the bark of laughter that escapes his lips. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
“So...”
The visitor’s room isn’t as bad as he thought it would be. Instead of the dull beige that everything in this place seemed to be painted, this room is a soft sage green. He and Frank sit across from each other in plush beige armchairs. A bouquet of fresh flowers, donated by a local florist according to the little plastic tag unelegantly poking through, covers up the omnipresent smell of rubbing alcohol and cleaning supplies.
“How are you?” Frank inquires, his hands awkwardly in his lap. He looks like he’s either coming or going from the gym. His running shoes are obnoxiously neon yellow. His shorts are unnecessarily short, in Robby’s opinion. The little logo that sits over Frank’s thigh suggests they’re from one of those fancy stores that all the college kids who come into the ER seem to love. No doubt his wife picked them out for him. Despite the August heat, he’s wearing a long-sleeve gray Penguins shirt. There’s a hint of sweat around his collar and under his arms. He smells too much like artificial cedar, like he just reapplied deodorant or cologne before coming in. His hair isn’t slicked back like it usually is. Instead, one dark strand sits at the center of his forehead and makes him look years younger.
It’s always strange for Robby to see someone from the Pitt outside of their scrubs, and this is no different. Even at the height of it all, it was odd to see Heather walk around his house in yoga pants and his sweatshirt rather than the plain black scrubs they always wore. Sometimes, he thought absentmindedly, he wondered if his life would have been better, easier, if the Pitt was truly all there was. Things were never simple there, but he understood the rules of engagement. It was everything outside the hospital that seemed to confound him.
Robby shrugs uncommittedly. “Been better. You? The wife?”
“Been better,” returns Frank. Whatever that means.
They sit in silence for a while. Frank twists himself restlessly. He rubs the wedding ring on his finger. He adjusts his shorts. He taps his foot against the linoleum flooring. Robby simply sits still. All else is too exhausting. Outside the door, someone laughs. It’s a real belly-aching laughter, and Robby finds himself turning towards it like a sunflower towards the sun. He can’t remember the last time he had laughed like that. It might have been years.
“How’s the food? You eating? You look skinnier.” Frank finally breaks the ice and crosses his arms across his chest. The overpriced smart watch on his phone comes to life, illuminating a picture of his two kids smiling. They all share the same eyes and deep dimples. A lump forms deep in Robby’s throat. Outside the door, the laughter has died down.
“You saying I look bad?” Robby’s glad he doesn’t have to admit that he gets a private thrill as he watches Frank shift again nervously in his chair.
“Well, if you wanted my professional opinion, you could stand to lose a couple of pounds. Maybe lay off the post-work beers.” Frank’s eyebrows fly up towards his hairline in the universal sign for panic. His voice is purposely light and breezy. Robby remembers that tone of voice well. He remembers a Frank, younger, less self-assured, whose voice nearly cracked when talking to patients’ family members when a case was particularly bad.
He’s torn somewhere between a deep ocean of nostalgia and burning fury.
“You, of all people, are really going to tell me to lay off drinking?” There’s a sarcastic bite to Robby’s words, and he regrets them almost as soon as they leave his mouth.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Frank’s face turns into a carefully neutral mask. Despite that, there’s a vein starting to bulge in his neck.
Robby shakes his head and brings a hand up to his eyes. He presses the bridge of his nose so hard that he can feel tears starting to form involuntarily. He sits like that for a moment, relishing the sting, before he waves his other hand absentmindedly in the air. “It’s the Duloxetine. It’s giving me headaches, making me nauseous.”
Frank leans forward. His hand hovers just above Robby’s knee. He’s earnest, and all of his words come out in a rush. “Are you telling your psych team? They can adjust the dosage. You know that it takes most people a couple of tries to get the right amo-“
“Cut the shit, Langdon,” snaps Robby. When he finally stops pinching his nose and opens his eyes, Frank is haloed in a dozen dancing stars and big black orbs. Robby blinks back the involuntary tears that still burn.
“Excuse me?” Frank looks at him like he’s been slapped. The little color that he had drains out of his face, and he is nearly white as a sheet.
Robby shakes his head. The tears are still pooling in his eyes, and he finally gets so frustrated that he swipes at them with the back of his hand. “Oh, please, you didn’t come here to give me a physical. So what are you really here for? To gloat?”
The old Frank would have said something bitingly sarcastic or something blithe. He would have perhaps stormed out of the room, pushing the chair as he stomped out. He would have started raising his voice, yipping about how unreasonable, how unfair, how stupid this whole situation was from the beginning. He would have identified this whole endeavor for what it was - an inevitable mistake.
Instead, this Frank sits there in his chair, finally still for the first time. He rests both of his hands on his knees. He stares at Robby, unblinking.
“Is that what you think of me?”
“I…” Robby flounders under such an intense gaze. Heather used to say that Langdon had the kind of stare that reminded her of a Husky at the pound. Even if he didn’t mean to, he made her uncomfortable sometimes. Robby wrote it off at the time, but it’s easy to understand what she meant now. It’s unnerving.
“You said I needed help, and obviously -,” he paused to gesture at the nondescript room around them. Everything in rehab, for the weeks he’s been there, seems to echo that point. His life was so out of control, and he was the only one who couldn’t see it. “I do. So you were right, and I was wrong.”
“It’s not about being right or wrong.” Frank finally blinks, and Robby can’t help but feel a knot in his chest release a little. “I don’t understand how someone so smart can be so fucking dumb sometimes.”
“So then what’s it about?” Robby grasps at his knees. He drives his thumbnail into the fleshy part of his thigh, but he finds no pinprick of pain, no release. They make sure that he keeps his nails dull and short here. He tries to find some small pocket of fat to pinch, just to scratch that itch, but can’t. Frank must be right - again. He must have lost more weight than he had thought.
“Saving your life.”
There’s a heartbreaking sincerity there, and if he didn’t know better, he would think that those unnerving blue eyes are starting to go glassy with tears.
“Saving my life?” Robby can’t help but laugh. “Why would you want to do that? You want to finally get to be the hero, the one in the right? Is it so you can have something on me? Or is this some kind of penance to society that NA is going to keep making you do until you die?”
“You’re not making this easy, man.” Frank finally leans back into his armchair. The dark gray ring of sweat around his neck and under his arms has grown steadily larger as the conversation has gone on. “Because I owe a lot to you. You taught me everything I know about being a physician. I wouldn’t be half the professional I am today if I didn’t have you. And I know at least twenty other people who’d say the exact same thing if you asked them.”
“I taught you how to be a doctor.” Robby couldn’t help it as another self-deprecating chuckle escaped his mouth. “Adamson taught me how to be a man.”
There wasn’t a week that went by that he didn’t think about Adamson. He had been a phenomenal doctor. More than that, though, he had been an incredible mentor. He had been patient and kind and firm when he had needed to be. He had held the hands of parents who watched their children die and rejoiced as babies were born on the ER floor with equal measure. He had helped Robby begin to pull apart the heavy, tangled threads of his life. He had done it all with such warmth and grace, and yet somehow, it was all for nothing. All of that goodness couldn’t save him. And if his goodness couldn’t save him, what fate was in store for lesser men?
“Christ,” Frank buries his hands. Robby watches as the muscles in his back expand and contract as he takes deep, slow breaths.
“Man, I ruined your life. I ruined your life, and you’re here and…” Robby doesn’t know why he’s talking, but it feels like a floodgate has opened. The words are coming out of his mouth, and he can’t stop them. “I don’t understand why you even came here after what I did to you.”
“What are you talking about?” Frank finally lifts his head out of his hands, and there is that unnerving gaze again. There’s a blush high on his cheeks, like he’s trying to suppress rage or embarrassment.
“The drugs and your marriage. All that shit, I -.” Robby putters out.
“I mean this in the nicest way possible, Robby,” Frank laughs in a disbelieving way. Still, though, there’s a hard edge to it that hasn’t left them all day. “There’s a lot of shit I did to myself. Not everything is about you.”
“Gee, thanks. A really nice thing to say to a guy who wanted to kill himself. Thank God you didn’t go into Psychiatry, I guess.”
“I got great reviews on my Psych rotation.” Frank shrugs defensively.
“I know. I was your Resident Director. I read all the reviews. Everyone said you were one hell of a doctor.”
Robby can remember the first time Frank returned from an Away Rotation. He had done an Emergency Psych stint down at a hospital on the outskirts of Washington DC. Abby had wanted to be close to her parents for a few weeks when Tanner was a baby, and Frank thought it would be good for his career - or at least, that’s what he told everyone on his last shift at the Pitt before he left. He returned with a baby that was much chubbier, plenty of pictures with his wife among the cherry blossoms, and glowing reviews. Frank was calm, centered, and fearless. He put patients at ease. He spoke the truth when he needed to. He was never afraid to try something new. When they talked it over, like the hospital and the Office of Graduate Medical Education required them to, Frank just shrugged.
I’ve got a really great role model.
Robby rode that high for the rest of the week.
“Thank you,” Frank responds, a little off guard. “Even within the grave, all is not lost.”
“What long-dead philosopher are you quoting now?” In the present, something softens within his chest.
“Poet.”
“Are you gonna make me guess?” Robby leans back in his own chair, spent. Outside, laughter picks up again. He can’t help but let himself smile in response.
“Could be fun.” The hint of a smile pulls at the corner of Frank’s mouth.
“For you.” Robby shakes his head, but he finds himself laughing anyway. For the first time in months, despite the unusual location, this finally feels like a normal conversation between the two of them. He is shocked to realize how much he missed it.
“Fine. I’m only letting you off easy because this place sucks. Trust me, I know.” Frank’s face cracks open with a full smile. “It’s Poe.”
“Quoteth the raven, nevermore.”
“One and the same.”
“Is that what you came to tell me? A quote from the guy who wrote a story about a heart that beat under the floorboards?” Robby squints at him in confusion. Everyone had their thing outside of the hospitals. They needed something outside of medicine to keep them from going crazy. Robby had motorcycles. Frank had reading. Evidently, for both of them, it wasn’t enough to maintain their sanity. Still, he’s struggling to see the point.
Frank leans forward again, elbows resting on his knees. There’s a bruise on his forearm that only peeks out of the sleeve of his shirt, and Robby is curious what story is behind it. It’s odd to think that the Pitt, in all of its maddening and beautiful craziness, has soldiered on without him. “I drive past this place on my way home from work. Tanner’s school is down the street from here.”
“So what? Was I an easy pitstop? Go for a run, pick up milk, stop to check in on my suicidal boss?” Something in Robby’s stomach sours. The need to feel special, chosen, has chased him since his childhood, and even all these years later, it still feels ugly and inescapable.
Frank holds his hands out defensively, like he’s trying to pass off blame or calm a wild animal. “No, I just wanted to show you that there’s something on the other side of this.”
“Hmm?”
“I’ve sat on the other side of this table. I know what it feels like to feel shitty, and I know what it’s like to want to keep feeling shitty because at least that is familiar. Even if you don’t like it, it’s comforting to know that you can keep on dealing with it because you have. Everything else, asking for help, that’s the big unknown.” Frank’s voice wobbles. “I thought if I told someone that I needed help, I’d lose everything. And I’m here to tell you I didn’t. I still have my wife, my kids, my job.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You had those things to begin with. What - what do I have when I leave here?” Robby can’t help but blink back tears of his own.
“A lot of people who’d do anything to help you.” Frank reaches out and places a hand on his shoulder. It’s heavy and sweaty, but Robby can’t be moved to push it away. “Me included.”
“I don’t deserve that.” Before he knows it, hot tears are carving paths down his cheeks. He wants to turn away, to hide, but Frank’s grasp won’t let him. Somehow, though, that feels important.
“Yeah, well, that’s the beautiful thing, right?” Frank squeezes. “Sometimes, if we’re lucky, we get what we don’t deserve. Then we get the chance to pass it on. We are not bad people trying to be good; we are sick people trying to get well."
“Poe again?” Robby tries to crack a smile, but the tears keep coming. It’s been a very long time since he’s cried like this. Maybe he could have avoided landing here if that fact hadn’t been true.
“Nah, that’s too corny to be Poe. It’s a quote from NA.”
Before Robby realizes it, Frank has pulled both of them to their feet. He’s wrapped Robby up in a hug, a real one, and Robby can’t help but squeeze tighter. Frank still smells like cedar, the faint scent of the flowers in the vase, and acidic sweat. He can feel the dampness where Frank’s own tears have absorbed into the thin t-shirt Robby’s wearing. The year that has stretched out between them has been hard and unforgiving, filled with anger and resentment. Yet here, it all melts away.
Thank you. I love you. I forgive you. Please forgive me.
Perhaps that wasn’t only reserved for the dead and dying.