Chapter Text
Living wasn’t supposed to feel this way. You were certain of that when you’d sunk to the concrete ground of the PTMC roof, your knees tucked up to your chest which was heaving raggedly to get a full breath in. You’d done a remarkable job of holding all of this in, whatever this was, during your shift. It was a skill any doctor had to learn and you had learned it quite well, even though you weren’t even a doctor yet. You were an over-achiever in that way, an expert on emotional avoidance. The hospital felt like it existed outside of everything else. You could go in and focus on the medicine, the science of it. Today, the illusion of it had distorted like a funhouse mirror, all of your fears bulging and twisting right before your eyes.
It had been a difficult case for any person to take on. A woman had been in a bad car crash and nobody had been able to save her. You’d watched her children, who were already around your age, sob as they clung to her hands and choked out their goodbyes. It would have been hard on anyone, but it was especially hard on you today.
That is what had reduced you to something gasping and curled up on the ground, face in your knees and your nails digging hard into the flesh of your upper arms. You’d held it together through your shift, letting yourself move on autopilot as you finished your charting. You’d ended up staying later than most everyone else, feeling an unease at the idea of going home. Dark thoughts hid in spaces that were lonely and quiet. You wanted to exhaust yourself to the point of collapse.
Dana had been the one to send you off, telling you to go home, kid. You’d lingered still until she gave you a pointed look. You’d taken your time getting your things from your locker, making sure you’d done everything you could possibly do for the day. You should have gone home, sat on the bus and bit the insides of your cheeks raw until you got home and could break down where nobody could see. Instead, you’d stumbled up to the roof. It hadn’t been a conscious decision. Maybe part of you knew that the pain inside of you had grown too large to be contained in your body. You were breaking open and it wouldn’t wait.
You’d stepped out into the open air, gasping and trembling. You wanted to take your sweater off and strip to your tank top, disturbed by how your skin felt hot yet your blood felt cold. You couldn’t seem to get your hands to take on the task. Instead you’d choked in unsatisfying breaths and rubbed circles of your chest, your shoulders, your body trying to soothe itself. You couldn’t stop thinking of that woman and her children. You couldn’t stop thinking of your own mother. The thought of her hit you with such force you felt like you’d fallen down to the ground floor. In reality, you’d only sunk down to curl up, sobbing. It’s always going to feel this way, you thought. You’d never feel okay again.
You hadn’t even heard the heavy, metal door swing open, hadn’t heard the concerned call of your name. It was only when two warm hands found your shoulders that you even registered you weren’t alone. You lift your head to see Robby crouched in front of you, his eyebrows furrowed. Your fear in that moment was so great you forgot about being embarrassed to be seen like this by your attending. Instead you just shook your head without even knowing what he’d said, your expression crumpled as another sob escaped you.
“You’re okay,” Robby says, nodding his head when you shake yours again, “you’re okay.”
“I don’t know what happened,” you choke out, the words don’t sound like your own voice. They’re breathless and weak as you dig your nails harder into your arms. Why is it so hard to speak right now? “I just thought of that mom and her kids and-”
Your words are cut off by a sob as you look away from him, unable to meet his gaze. You feel his hands squeeze your shoulders a little harder.
“Look at me.” He says in the same tone he uses on traumatized patients, “breathe with me, okay? Breathe with me. In…” he takes in a slow, audible breath through his nose, “out…” he exhales through his mouth, slow and exaggerated.
He does it twice more before you try to follow, your own breaths shaky and shallow, not as long as his. He rubs his hands up and down your shoulders now in rhythm with his breaths.
“C’mon, look at me. In…” he breathes again as your eyes flicker up to his. He looks steady, his dark brown eyes meeting your own as you breathe in and out with him.
It feels a little like waking from a nightmare. He’s so calm, so focused on you that it makes you feel safe, a rare feeling for you these days. The familiarity of his voice helps too with breaking through the churning terror inside of yourself. He was a ship cutting through the angry waves threatening to drown you. As you breathe with him, the panic seeps out slowly, leaving you feeling dazed and half-awake. You’d been so certain that you would be stuck that way, that the hopelessness inside of yourself was infinite. Yet, here you were, breathing again.
“There we go,” he says. His hands slide down to gently take your hands in his and you realize you’d still been digging your nails into your arms. You swallow and let him lower your hands. His touch feels so grounding that when he goes to pull away, you squeeze them in a panic before you can stop yourself. In any other circumstances you would have been ashamed, but the fear of that feeling returning is overwhelming enough for it not to matter.
Robby squeezes your hands back, not trying to pull away again. You let out a shaky exhale.
“I’m sorry.” They’re the first words that you can think of.
“Don’t apologize.” Robby says. You’re calm enough now to notice he’s wearing a grey sweatshirt, exhaustion from the day wearing on him. He was supposed to be going home, instead he was on the roof treating you like a feral cat. “Do you feel any chest pain?”
“No. I think I’m just tired.” You whisper, seeking an excuse now. You had calmed down in an odd and distant way. You felt outside of yourself somehow, but the fear had gone which was a relief enough to not mind the detachment you felt.
Robby nods and adjusts to sit down in front of you now. He’s staring at you and it makes it hard to be quiet, especially as the calm allows your mind to process the fact that consequences exist and your attending has just watched you curl up on the ground and break.
“It won’t happen again, I promise.” You whisper, looking away again.
Robby reaches out then and brushes your hair back off of your face and you look up, eyes locking. For a moment, you both freeze. You can smell his detergent from his jacket sleeve, his long fingers brushing warm against your temple. Before you can process it he’s pulling his hand away and you are too, releasing the one hand you’d still been holding.
“You need to get checked out,” he says quietly. You shake your head, wiping your tears on your sleeves which makes you feel a bit pathetic.
“No, it’s fine.” You say. The last thing you need is to go get labs done and make a spectacle of this.
“It’s policy-” Robby starts, but you cut him off.
“My shift is over. So this isn’t really a workplace incident.” You say. He laughs a little, a sarcastic sound as if your stubbornness is more unbelievable than amusing.
“You know, as your attending, I’d feel a lot better if we just made sure,” he says. You’re still sitting with your knees drawn up to your chest, still feeling an urge to curl up into yourself. “You’ve never done this before and we don’t know what this could be, so-”
“I have done this before.” You cut him off. Your tears have dried but your voice is still weak sounding. You clear your throat, trying to regain the strength in your speech.
That causes Robby to frown, lines forming between his brows.
“Not at work,” you’re quick to add, not liking the look in his eyes, “just… at home. I normally have it under control here.”
“You get panic attacks regularly?” Robby asks.
“No, I don’t get panic attacks.” You don’t like how the words sound coming out of his mouth.
Robby gives you a look then, tipping his forehead towards you slightly and raising his brows.
“What this was isn’t…” you sigh and shake your head, fresh tears welling in your eyes as your voice slips away from you. You shake your head and shrug, forcing a faint smile. “I’m fine, okay?”
Robby exhales slowly and watches you for a moment, his hand raising to scratch at his beard.
“This is a very difficult profession,” Robby says finally, “there is a lot of heartbreak in what we do. It’s normal to have bad days.”
You lean back against the wall, gaze tipping up towards the sky. There aren’t any stars to look at, just a thin layer of clouds. You think about his words and wonder how it’s possible to survive this much heartbreak.
“I lost my mom a year ago today,” you begin quietly. You wait for a moment but he doesn’t say anything, so you continue, gaze firmly away from him, “and when I saw that mom today…” you bite your cheeks to silence a cry, squeezing your eyes shut, “forever is such a long time to miss someone.”
Robby is quiet for a long time before his hand reaches out to squeeze your knee.
“I’m very sorry,” he whispers, and from his tone you can feel how he means it, “you should have told me you experienced a loss. You could have taken today off.”
“No,” you say, sighing shakily as you tried to get a hold on your tears before they turned into sobs again, “I needed to work. Better to stay busy.”
Robby huffs and you think maybe he’s annoyed with you.
“You still could have told me,” is all he says. You look at him and watch as he opens his mouth to say something else before changing his mind. His hand is still on your knee, warm and heavy.
Now that the rush of dread is gone, you’re left feeling hollowed out. You think you may want to sleep but it’s hard to tell. It feels as if you’ve been numbed, you can feel that there is a wound inside of yourself still and it makes you nervous for the pain to return.
“Tell me five things you can see.” Robby urges gently. When you frown a little at the demand he continues, “You’re still somewhere else. Come on. Five things.”
You watch him lean a little closer to you. Even though it’s dark up on the roof you can still see the grey in his beard. You can see the lines by his eyes.
“I can see you,” the words come out quiet. You see a muscle in his face tick and hear a shakiness to his exhale.
“Okay, what else?”
You go through the senses, counting down the things you can feel or hear. When he asks what you can taste and you say, earnestly, my tears, the two of you can’t help but laugh a little and it makes you feel a little lighter even through the disappointment you feel as he pulls his hand away.
“It pisses me off that it worked,” you mutter as you take your hair down just to tie it back up again so it looks half-decent. It feels ridiculous to feel a pain that seems completely untouchable only to have it eased by something so simple. You look to see Robby watching your hands before flicking his eyes back to meet yours.
“There are a lot of resources available to you,” he says, and while his words are professional his voice has softened into something you haven’t heard from him, “you don’t have to go through these things alone.”
You scoff a little. The downside of being inside of yourself again is that you are aware of the shame that is prickling uncomfortably at your spine.
“I’m okay,” you say quietly, “I swear none of this will affect my work.”
“I know.” Robby’s voice is low and steady, “I know. You did really well with that family today, kept your focus on them and the work. This isn’t about that.”
That takes you by surprise. You’d been certain Robby’s concern laid primarily in your work. He was obsessive over this place. There was a sternness to him that made you feel sometimes like the ER had been militarized, you were a soldier on a battlefield most days it seemed. You’d seen it in how he treated Langdon and Samira, the way the camaraderie fizzled out fast in the face of his displeasure. You knew how mean he could get.
“I’m really fine. Just… just had a bad day.” What you really want is to ask what this is about if not work. Part of you wants to know if he’d say he cared about you, but you ignore the feeling. You were fine on your own.
“There’s no shortage of those here.” Robby says quietly. You both fall into silence for a moment and you stare at your hands, unsure of what to say. How do you move on from having a panic attack in front of your boss? Ignoring it, you decided. Pretending it never happened.
“I should go home,” you finally say, standing up. You feel shaky and new on your legs and it takes effort to remind yourself that they belong to you. Robby is standing too, grunting a little from the effort, before taking your hand to steady you. It felt like there was a magnetic pull between you and his hands and it was doing nothing to help your head.
“Do you need me to drive you?” He asks. The question makes your face get a little hot. He’s being nice, you know that, but it still makes your defenses rise.
He doesn’t see me as capable anymore. The thought has you pulling back again, crossing your arms over your chest. His expression falters when you pull away, the ghost of a grimace causing his face to tense before falling back into neutrality again.
“No… I’m alright,” you say, then remembering that you should probably be polite you add, “thank you, Dr. Robby.”
He studies you and his hand finds his beard again before he slowly nods.
“Alright. At least let me order you an Uber. I don’t need my med students walking home alone at night when they’re exhausted.”
Something about being called one of his med students makes you feel special in a stupid naive kind of way that embarasses you.
“I can order my own…” you trail off as he raises his hands, signaling for you to be quiet.
“My treat.” He says.
You stare at him for a moment. His hair is a bit ruffled from the day. You’d noticed how he would card his fingers through it when he was frustrated. Between that and his sweatshirt, there’s something cozy about his appearance. The skipping in your heart at the thought is unpleasant. You’d had enough of your heart racing for the day, maybe a lifetime.
“Sure, okay,” you finally murmur, deciding he would find arguing more annoying than spending some money on an Uber. Besides, he made way more money than you.
He seems relieved at that and hands you his phone to type in your address.
“Thank you,” you say quietly, looking up at him. You’re sure you look like hell. You can feel the dried tears on your cheeks and your eyes feel sore and puffy. You drag your hands over your face, wondering if everyone else would see the fragility in you Robby was seeing now.
“Come on, you better get downstairs.” Robby says finally.
x
During your next shifts you pretend nothing happened and Robby does too. It had been a difficult night going home after your breakdown. You had been glad that you didn’t have to take the bus or walk, the adrenaline finally wearing down while you sat in the backseat of a stranger’s car. It left you feeling hollowed out and devoid of energy. You were too exhausted to feel much of anything at all and you’d tried to cling to the rare quiet of your mind. Of course, it didn’t last. You were learning nothing did. After a too hot shower, you’d crawled naked into your bed, hair wet and tangled against your pillowcase as you’d curled up and sobbed until you were sick. That had been your night routine for the past week now, sleep only coming once you had expended all of your energy on some unbearable spiral.
It wasn’t that you weren’t trying. You really were. When Trinity and Whitaker invited you over to watch movies you said yes. You tried meditation, which had ended in a particularly nasty panic attack and the idea to never try something like that again. You asked Mel if she wanted to get boba and go to a bookstore when you overheard her saying, a bit woundedly, that Becca would be staying with her boyfriend that night. None of it was enough to make you feel better.
You felt as if you’d been set back in the grieving process. You were starting to doubt that it was a process at all and, instead, was closer to a terminal illness slowly stealing your life from you. There was no time to think of this however, not here at work where you had to be clear-headed. That spiral could wait until you got home.
“That’s a nasty bruise you got there,” Dana says as you walk into the break room to grab something for the migraine you felt creeping in. You pause, pill bottle still in hand, and glance down at where a purple blotch had formed on the back of your hand.
“Yeah, accidentally bumped it.” You open the pill bottle, avoiding Dana’s eyes. You hadn’t been eating much lately, your appetite was too dulled and your panic attacks too often brought you to the point of vomiting. Bruises blossomed easily on your skin and you looked as if the color had been drained from you, which was fitting you thought, seeing as the color had been drained from the world in your eyes.
“Well, be careful, alright? Med students are precious cargo, we need you alive and well.” There’s something you can sense under Dana’s tone that tells you she knows something is wrong. Which shouldn’t surprise you much. You weren’t doing a great job of hiding that you were struggling.
You manage to get through the next few hours of your shift when Robby announces he’s bought pizza for everyone, saying you all deserved the morale boost. It was Robby’s way of taking care of all of you, you’d noticed. He could be a dick sometimes, but he also worried enough to make sure you were all fed and kept alive. He’d seen enough to know the feral kind of loneliness most of you felt. Robby and his ER of strays.
You’re just stepping out of a room where a man is waiting for his Zofran to kick in when Robby appears beside you.
“You should eat when you have a minute.” Robby is wearing a green fleece zip-up today and you risk a few glances over at him as you walk. You couldn’t deny that you’d had a small crush on him since your first day. It wasn’t in your control really. He was handsome, older and capable. He also had a way of disarming you with attention before distancing himself again. He was just your type and it would have been impossible not to notice that. You didn’t take the crush seriously because of that. He was a workplace infatuation that sometimes made a shift feel less awful, nothing more.
“When do any of us ever have a minute?” You say, letting out a sigh to relieve some of the tension in your chest.
Robby rolls his eyes and you smile a little.
“I’m sure you can find one.” You’ve reached the hub and he steps a bit quicker until he’s in front of you, stopping spinning around to face you, a hand resting on the counter. “You doing alright?” His voice has dropped a bit quieter. Nobody is around but it still makes your face heat up to have him ask where someone could hear.
“Never better.” You don’t mean to be sarcastic. Normally you’re a polite person, sensitive and gentle. The hunger and exhaustion has soured your mood, made your words sharp even when you don’t want them to be.
“You know, what I said the other day still stands. If you need anything you can tell me.” He sounds tired too and it makes your stomach twist in guilt and shame. You were inconveniencing people with your sadness now.
“I said I’m fine, okay?” You wince at your own tone, instantly regretting it. Snapping at your boss at work is probably pretty low on the list of workplace appropriate behaviors.
Robby doesn’t scold you, which is worse somehow, and instead just raises his eyebrows and glances around like maybe he isn’t sure if it’s really you who just spoke like that. You’re thinking of how you can swallow your pride and apologize when his eyes land on Dana who was walking by.
“Dana, why don’t you take our med student to grab some pizza,” Robby says, watching the woman pause and cross her arms. She studies Robby for a minute and then you where you’re standing there, mouth agape.
“I really don’t have time,” you insist, watching Dana and Robby have some weird wordless conversation with just their eyes.
“No, we need to get those patient satisfaction scores up and that is not going to happen with you being hangry.” Robby says, shaking his head.
“Come on, kid. Let’s get something in your system, keep you standing upright.” Dana says, trying to gesture to you to go with her. You look over to Robby who is already slipping away, not giving you the chance to argue further. You scowl in his direction, annoyed.
When Dana gets you in the break room she watches you scarf down a slice of pizza while standing over the counter using a napkin as a plate. It’s salty and still a little warm, the slices wide enough you end up folding yours in half. She gives you a disapproving look to which you can only shrug before tossing your crust in the trashcan.
“You’re lucky you didn’t choke,” she says as she fills a mug with coffee.
“Well, isn’t this the best place to be if you’re choking?” You ask as you grab your steel water bottle and take a few long drinks from it. You hadn’t realized it until then, but you had been starving. It made you a bit uneasy knowing you could hardly take care of yourself it seemed.
“You okay?” Dana asks, leaning against the counter and studying you, “Robby’s worried.”
You swallow and nod, feeling a shameful twinge of excitement at the knowledge that Robby had thought of you enough for someone else to notice. A crush, it seemed, was capable of taking you to new lows.
“Yeah, I’m fine…” You trail off and consider not saying anything else, but you can’t resist asking. “Did Robby say something?”
You swear Dana smirks a little before responding.
“He’s worried.” Her non-answer is enough evidence that you’re being far too obvious.
It takes a lot of effort to pretend that her purposefully unsatisfying answer is unnoticed by you.
“Oh, well I’m doing great. He has nothing to worry about.” You offer Dana what you hope to be a convincing smile, though you’d never been any good at faking a smile. Even for photos it came out awkward and strange. Judging by Dana’s suspicious look now, you weren’t doing a very good job.
“I’m great!” You call again as you walk out of the break room, trying to put some distance between you and her. She definitely was picking up on things you’d rather stay shoved into the dark corners of yourself.
Eating had, unfortunately, helped immensely. You felt clearer headed and less anxious. It was ridiculous, you knew, but simple solutions really got under your skin. How could the most unbearable things you’d ever felt be eased, even if just a touch, by something so mundane? Somehow, it happened.
You got through the rest of your shift easier than you’d started it. There was still an ache in you, but the feeling was quieter, a dull hum that you could let fall into the background noise rather than the roaring rush that clouded your mind. You were starting to really value these moments where you felt neutral. They were an invaluable reprieve from the grief and sorrow that plagued you.
When you finally went to leave, you froze in dismay, staring out of the covered ambulance bay and towards the street where rain was pouring down heavily. You groan and shiver a little, the air wet and cold against your skin. You stare hopelessly out. You can smell the wet pavement and hear how the rain sounds like a waterfall has split open in the sky. Normally, you might find this a bit cozy. It was impossible though to take any pleasure in the rain when you knew you must walk home through it.
You were standing there and debating just spending the last of your money on an Uber when a warm voice sounds from behind you:
“You know, that offer to give you a ride still stands.”