The sabbatical was supposed to be three months, but somewhere around Bar Harbor Robby decided he needed more time. For what he wasn’t sure. But he knew he needed to stay far, far away from the Pitt for a little longer. With his position at the hospital safe, he stayed in New England through the end of the summer.

On his first day back, he’d been gone as long as the two of you were together. Six months. Six months without text messages or phone calls or, hell, postcards. Six months of feeling like Robby was a ghost in your life, something you had and lost that lingers around every corner. Six months of rebuilding your life after he disappeared from it.

You found out about Robby’s sabbatical the same way everyone else did, during one of his evening speeches exactly two weeks before he was scheduled to leave. Two weeks’ notice for a relationship you’d honestly believed was headed toward an engagement ring in a few months. He didn’t think to ask you, didn’t think to check in, didn’t even bother to tell you in the privacy of the home you’d basically moved into. Your life fell into brutal clarity in that moment: Robby was a huge part of your life, but you were a footnote in his.

He sent you a text five nights ago: Back in town. When can I see you?

You didn’t answer.

You don’t plan to.

The morning of September first, Jack hands off shift change seamlessly, like Robby had never left, and Robby finds his footing on the ED floor with a newness, a fluidity, a casual lightness on his shoulders that strikes everyone as foreign. A version of Robby with no tension in his shoulders and no sarcasm biting at his tongue might as well be a new doctor.

Once he has the ED machine churning on pace, Robby leans his elbows on the nurse’s station and scans the shift board. “And where’s my favorite nurse this morning? Night shift?”

Dana barely spares him a glance as she processes the last of a stack of paperwork. She’d always disapproved of Robby pursuing you, so she’s not exactly sympathetic when she tells him, “She transferred months ago. I’m sure the notice is in your email inbox if you ever get around to clearing that out.”

His mind spins at the idea of the Pitt without you – your steady hands, your shy smiles, your forgiving wit. “Transferred? Where? Why?”

“Not my business,” Dana replies with a shrug. She pushes a chart into his chest and says, “They need you in exam six.”

As Robby takes the chart and looks over it with blank eyes that don’t see a word, Princess stands up on her toes so she can meet Robby’s eyes. With a knowing but curious gaze, she tells him quietly, “She’s working at the hospital’s satellite methadone clinic up the street now. Rumor is that she had an ugly breakup with someone at the hospital and wanted to get some distance.”

Robby sucks in a sharp breath. Holds it. Lets it out slow. His eyes focus to actually look at the chart and he mutters out, “Thanks for the info.”

She adds, “Smart money’s on Frank, by the way, since they were always so close.”

Robby grits his teeth. “They weren’t that close.”

“Whatever you say, cap.”

The biggest thing Robby notices in his shift once he’s working closely with his doctors again is a change in the batch of residents he helped onboard last year. They’ve gained confidence during his absence, which he’d expected, but there’s something else. To put it briefly, there’s a lot of scowling and it’s definitely in his direction. Even Whitaker, who used to glance up for his praise like a puppy, is now averting his eyes and keeping his sentences short, professional, unsmiling. The newest batch of students and interns is all polite deference and eager introductions, but the ones he’d come to know and care for and consider friends are acting like he stinks of BO and betrayal.

In the locker room preparing for his lunch break, he approaches Dana, trying to be casual about his tone, and asks, “What’s wrong with the kids, by the way? I have a sign that says ‘ignore me’ on my back or something I didn’t notice?”

She snickers, “Maybe they’re just mad that daddy went to the gas station for milk and didn’t come back for six months.” She gives him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder and adds, “Give them some time; it’ll take a minute for people to find their rhythm around you again.”

He nods slowly and swallows, hoping that’s all this is. “Right, sure.”

The truth doesn’t even occur to him: You had been their favorite person around the hospital, his abandonment had made you leave, and they aren’t quite ready to forgive him for that.

—

It’s almost your lunch break when a whole flood of people arrives at once. You’re behind the check-in desk today and you can’t help groaning to yourself. You have to pee, your stomach has been growling non-stop for an hour, and you’re desperate to put your feet up.

You’re on autopilot as you check in patients, collect consent forms, and support doctors however you can without getting up from the desk. You’d started modified work duty this month and it’s driving you nuts not being able to do the hands-on clinical work you love. With your eyes on your monitor, the next patient enters your peripheral vision and you tell him, “I’ll be with you in just one moment.”

“No worries, gorgeous.”

Your focus snaps.

Anger rises up like bile in your throat. Part of you wants to cry, part wants to run, part wants to scream. Ultimately, with so many wars raging inside of your body, your expression goes flat as you meet Robby’s eyes. “You pick up an opioid habit while you were screwing your way up and down the eastern seaboard?”

Robby almost laughs. Almost. He hadn’t expected you to act so hostile – in his mind, you’re still the woman he loves, waiting patiently for his return home – and it pinches like frostbite. Voice soft and respectful, he offers, “I just wanted to stop by and see you.”

You set your jaw and cut back, “Well I didn’t want to see you, but I forgot that my opinion doesn’t affect your decisions.”

He sighs. “You’re still mad at me.”

You turn back to your computer and finish up the file you need to before lunch. “‘Still’ implies that eventually I’ll stop, which won’t be happening.”

“C’mon sweetheart, you can’t-”

“Don’t.” Your eyes flick up as you shake your head. “Just- just don’t.” After closing out your computer and sighing heavily, you tell him bluntly, “You’re officially eating into my lunch, so I’m gonna ask you to leave or I can get security. I’m happy either way.”

Robby presses, “Let me at least buy you lunch.”

You extend your hand and reply without emotion, “Sure, give me $20 and I’ll happily spend it.”

Robby grits his teeth and digs his heels in. “Please.”

Anxiety sparks in your chest as you realize he really isn’t going to leave without talking to you alone first. You’re going to have to stand up from behind the safety of the tall desk and half wall right in front of him. The moment was inevitable, but you’d hoped to at least be in control of it.

“Fine. Buy me lunch.” You’re almost laughing as you mutter, “Let’s see how this goes. Might as well do it in public.”

Then you get to your feet. You stretch your arms above your head, back tight from sitting all morning, and your navy scrub top rides up slightly.

Robby’s next words are breathless and desperate. “You’re pregnant.”

“Glad your eyes still work after six months of wind burn without your goddamn helmet.”

He swallows hard, barely hearing the malice in your voice now. “How- how far along?”

“Take a fucking guess, Doctor,” you huff, shouldering your bag and walking around the nurse’s station. He moves to follow you, but you point at the ‘only employees past this door’ sign and give him a mock pout. “Wait outside if you care so much.”

Robby debates for a second and says weakly, “It’s my lunch, too; I need to get back to the hospital.”

You give him a look that reeks of ‘that’s what I thought’ and say, “Then get back to the hospital. I’m immune to being left behind now.”

It’s not your hatred that hurts. It’s your apathy.

He sends you texts. You don’t reply.

He leaves you voicemails. You don’t listen.

After a few more days of silence, he’s got his head in his hands at the bar while Jack nurses a beer, pitying his sorry ass. He’s been silent for two straight beers, clearly gathering the courage to tell him the good news. It takes Jack reminding him that this is his only night off for Robby to choke out, “She’s pregnant. Very pregnant. Seven months, probably.”

“Ah.” Jack studies his best friend’s face for a long time before settling on a simple, succinct, thorough, “Fuck.”

Robby sucks in a long breath and lets it out slow. “Yeah. Fuck.”

“And she doesn’t want anything to do with you now.” It’s not a question. It’s the truth of the matter. Jack shakes his head and then gives Robby one of those pointed looks only a brother could get away with. “I don’t blame her.”

Robby balks, “You said I should go on the trip.”

“But I’m not your girlfriend.”

“And thank god for that.”

“You didn’t talk to her about leaving?”

“I didn’t realize I needed her permission.”

“You didn’t. But you should’ve wanted it.” Jack puts on that sage old friend voice and goes on, “You told me before you left that she’s the one. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“A lot. That’s why I had to go,” Robby replies, grappling with too much of himself. “Look, leaving was the right thing to do. I know that now more than ever. I figured a lot of shit out and I feel a hell of a lot better – about myself, my future, my life. But now? Now there’s going to be a baby. My baby. Our baby.” Robby gently thumps his forehead on the bartop and groans, “The whole time I was gone, I thought she’d be waiting for me when I came home. Every step of the way, I figured- I figured she’d still want me.”

“Delusions of grandeur,” Jack opines almost absently. Then he yanks Robby to sitting upright by the back of his hoodie. “She’s so far out of your league you’d have to get drafted first just to be her water boy. Why the hell would you think that?”

“Because she always waited for me,” Robby mutters, sounding so absolutely pathetic Jack debates recording it for blackmail down the road. “She- she was always there. She always stayed.”

“And you repaid her by leaving.”

Robby’s voice drops to an ashamed whisper. “I didn’t realize she loved me enough to care that I left.”

“But she did.”

“She did.” Robby stares straight ahead, through Jack and through the walls and through the world until his eyes settle back on his relationship with you – the one good part of his life that had spiraled squarely out of his control. “She was shining a light in my face, but I was too busy covering my own eyes to see her. Too deep in my own self-doubt and self-hatred to recognize what was right in front of me.”

“Alright, Socrates, pack it in.” Jack claps a hand on Robby’s back and summarizes, “You fucked it up and you need to fix it.”

“I fucked it up and I need to fix it,” Robby confirms. “But how do I even begin to say sorry for something like that?”

“She doesn’t want you to say sorry,” Jack replies. It’s effortless for him, this kind of thing. Robby is supremely jealous of how simple Jack makes it all sound. “She doesn’t want Robby the rich attractive attending anymore.”

“Flatterer.”

“Shut up. I’m saying she’s spent the last six months thinking you were gone. While you’re god knows where, she’s figuring out how to be a single mom on a nurse’s salary. So I know she doesn’t want what you used to be for her.”

Jack pauses for long enough that Robby has to sigh and prod, “You’re really gonna make me prompt you? Tell me what you think she wants.”

“She wants a dad for her kid. A real dad, not a sperm donor. She doesn’t want a boyfriend. She wants a husband. And a husband doesn’t have to run away to figure his shit out. Show up for the baby and you’re showing up for her.” Jack finishes off his beer, slaps down a handful of cash, and tells him, “Let’s get a cab. I think you need to cry yourself to sleep to figure out your next move.”

At nine a few nights later, after his shift, Robby knocks on the door of the new address he definitely didn’t steal from your personnel file. It’s a small townhouse in an okay part of town, better than your previous shoebox, but it’s still nothing compared to his spacious home further out of the city. The place he always imagined raising his family in. The place where you’d taken up half his closet, half his bathroom counterspace, half his life. Half his heart, undeniably.

When Trinity Santos answers the door, Robby nearly falls on his ass. With a green face mask cracking on her skin and her eyes burning with anger, he’s never seen her looking so full of wrath. Which is saying something. “What are you doing here, Dr. Robby?”

His brows furrow as he explains, “I was trying to see my girlfriend, but I guess I got the wrong address somehow.”

Santos scoffs and crosses her arms over her chest. “You girlfriend? Pretty sure you forfeited that title when you ditched her like she didn’t mean anything to you.”

“Woah, Jesus,” Robby chuckles, holding his hands up. “Is that the general consensus? Guess that explains all the hostility today.”

“Not hostile, just professional.”

“You were definitely hostile.”

Trinity glares. “File a complaint.”

She moves to shut the door, but he catches it with one large hand. “Is she here?”

Trinity continues to use her body to block him from entering. She knows he’d never do anything crazy like push her, but she wants to make her allegiance perfectly clear. “Yup.”

“She lives with you and Whitaker now?”

“Yup. Saving money until the last minute.”

“God.” Robby runs his hand over the back of his head. “Can I- Can I just come in and see her?”

Holding bitter eye contact, Trinity calls over her shoulder, “Do you want to see Robby?”

Your voice is immediate. There’s more hurt in it than he’d heard this morning, and something about that makes him feel hopeful. Like there might still be something for him to hold onto. “He’s here?”

“At the door.”

Robby listens as a chair squeaks across the floor and your footsteps recede toward a staircase. Away from him. Fainter now, you call, “Get rid of him.”

Trinity nods and turns back to her boss. “You heard the woman. Go home.”

“Fuck, fine. It’s getting late anyway; she should sleep.” With a rough sigh, he reaches into his inner jacket pocket and hands her an envelope. “Can you give this to her at least?”

Santos snatches it from his hand and demands, “What is it?”

“It’s ten thousand dollars.”

She rolls her eyes. “Fuck off, Robby.”

Without saying anything else, she slams the door in his face. Shaking her head, Trinity ascends the steps to the second floor, where all the bedrooms are, and knocks on your door. You answer with puffy, tear-swollen eyes. Right away, Trinity wraps you up in a hug and sighs, “He’s the worst. I’ll kill him at work tomorrow.”

You laugh, sniffle, and shake your head. “No need. I was going to have to deal with this eventually, right?”

“Yeah, but it should be your choice on your terms, not him showing up unannounced.” You nod and pull back from the hug, swiping your cheeks one more time. Trinity holds up the envelope and says, “Robby wants me to give this to you. I can rip it up or hold onto it or-”

“I’ll take it.” You smile softly at her and add, “Thanks, Trin. You shouldn’t have to deal with my drama.”

“You deal with my gay soap opera with Yo,” she points out with a conspiratorial grin.

Your reply is interrupted by the sound of Dennis emerging from his bedroom, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He’s been on the late-night shift the past couple weeks, slowly becoming nocturnal. “What’s going on?”

Trinity answers with malice lacing her tone, “Robby showed up.”

Dennis shakes his head. “Bastard.”

“You don’t have to say that,” you reply with a laugh. “I know you want to go back to being his personal assistant as soon as possible.”

“Trinity would kill me,” he mutters.

She punches him on the arm. “And I’d be right! We don’t defend shitty men who-”

“Robby’s not a shitty man; you know that,” he interrupts her. “He handled leaving in a shitty way; that doesn’t make him a shitty person.”

“You’re too forgiving, Nebraska.”

“And you’re not forgiving enough.”

You sigh sharply, “And I need to go to sleep.”

“At least open up the letter for us,” Trinity insists. “My nosiness is absolutely screaming for the intel. I won’t be able to sleep without it.”

Ripping open the envelope, you sigh, “I’m sure it’s just some stupid saccharine guilt bomb designed to make me-” Your voice falls to the ground and melts through the floorboards. There’s a folded-up note wrapped around something much more interesting. You hold it up to Trinity and Dennis and breathlessly announce, “It’s a check for ten thousand dollars.”

“Oh my god, I thought he was being a dick,” Trinity replies, her voice equally low and surprised, almost reverent – not for Robby but for the sheer amount of money. “Why the hell would he…?”

With shaking hands, you read the corresponding handwritten note to your roommates.

I don’t know whether or not when you’ll let me back into your life. That’s up to you. I accept it. I respect that it’s your choice. But I’m not going to be a deadbeat dad. You know I can’t do that. You know about my father. I’m never going to become him. I hope you believe that. So this isn’t a bribe to take me back. I promise it isn’t. It’s not an apology. I’m still working on that. It’s for our kid. For you as the mother of my child, not just the a woman I want need miss love care about. Nursery stuff, vitamins, doctor’s appointments, your favorite hot chocolate from Vino’s, anything you need until they’re born. I’m not going to let you want for anything. If money is all you’ll accept from me, then take every penny I have. Please. I promise I won’t abandon the baby. I promise I will do whatever you need from me and more. And I promise I love you. Both of you. I hope you’ll Please, let me prove it. Love, Sincerely, Yours, M.

All three of you hold your breath in the space that follows Robby’s painstakingly scrawled words.

Then Dennis takes a long breath and urges, “See? He’s good. He cares. He wants to take care of you and the baby. You could do a hell of a lot worse.”

Trinity shakes her head and swallows hard. “She could do a hell of a lot better, too. He still left.”

Dennis argues, “He didn’t know she was pregnant.”

You whisper, “Do I really want a man who would only stay because of a baby?”

Knowing far too much for his own good, Dennis touches your shoulder and presses, “Do you really want any man besides him?”

You pinch the bridge of your nose and try to breathe. “I need sleep. I’ll…Fuck. I’ll let you guys know whenever I figure out what the hell I’m doing with my life.”

Trinity brushes your cheek with her thumb. “Love you, sunshine. Goodnight.”

You wish her goodnight and Dennis a good shift before retreating into your bedroom. You change into your pajamas, ignoring the tee of Robby’s that still lives in your drawer, and curl up with your thoughts. In bed on your side, you rest your hand on your bump and wish the little life inside could tell you the right thing to do.

In his home across town, all Robby knows is that he’s never felt so much relief watching $10,000 leave his account.

In the morning, on your way out, the door thumps against something heavy on the stoop. A large plastic tote with a brown bag from your favorite cafe on top of it. You call over your shoulder for Trinity and she hauls the heavy box inside while you focus on the little bag of treats with a note card stapled to it. Inside the bag is your usual order that Robby always brought into the hospital for you in the mornings, the coffee replaced by a ginger tea but the bear claw looking as delectable as ever.

I figured you might want your things back from my place. I’m sorry for being gone longer than you expected for not giving you a key in the first place for unintentionally stealing your stuff for coming by last night. I don’t want to make anything worse. M.

Trinity reads the note over your shoulder and announces, “He’s groveling.”

“What do you think I should do?”

“I think you should let him grovel.”

Biting the sweet fluffy pastry, you consider, “I don’t want to be cruel. I’m not going to keep his own baby from him.”

“Of course not. But that’s not what we’re talking about. Do you want him? Not just as your co-parent or sperm donor or whatever. A husband. A real man. Do you want to be Mrs. Robby someday soon?”

“Of course I do,” you sigh, “but I just…I don’t trust him anymore. How could I?”

“I’m just saying,” she reasons with a shrug, “if his baseline grovel is 10k, I for one would love to see where he goes from there. Maybe you’ll end up with a private plane or something.”

“Robby’s got money, but he doesn’t have that kind of money.”

“As far as we know,” she replies with a snicker. “Look, at the end of the day, you have to decide if you can trust him, so I say you tell him exactly what you need and see if he can hack it. Be blunt with him about your expectations. He can worship the ground you walk on from here on out or he can spend the rest of his life signing child support checks and seeing his kid every other weekend.”

You laugh and polish off the bear claw. “You’re a menace, Trinity Santos.”

“My specialty.” She pours herself a coffee and collects her bag. “Now do you want a ride or are you grabbing the bus?”

“It’s a beautiful morning; I don’t mind the bus.”

“Maybe Robby will get you a car.”

“Yeah,” you snort, “maybe.”

Right as your lunch break starts that afternoon, a delivery driver shows up by the staff entrance with an order bearing your name. After one of the other nurses calls you back, you take the heavy bag of absolutely heavenly-smelling Thai food and ask the driver, “Is this from Michael Robinavitch?”

“Yeah, he said you’d be expecting it.” He checks the order on his phone and reads, “The delivery instructions said ‘tell her I know for a fact she doesn’t eat enough protein to be growing a whole new person.’ Congratulations; he sounds like a nice dad.”

You shake your head and sigh. “Yeah, he can be.”

And it goes on like that for the next five days before you decide what to do. Robby always orders you lunch. None of the following meals come with messages, though, just something carefully chosen for your tastes and needs. He even remembers the way you order things – extra lime on your pad thai, salsa verde instead of pico on your tacos, and any bonus dessert he can throw in – to the point where you wonder if people at the Pitt are helping him out, campaigning for the two of you to get back together.

Robby checks his phone way too many times that entire first week that he’s back. He keeps waiting for you to text, call, email, hell he’ll even take a DM at this point. But you don’t. It’s agony. If nothing else, Trinity’s dagger-glare has dulled into more of a butter-knife-glare by Friday afternoon.

Then.

After he clocks out and heads to the parking lot, there you are. Leaning on his fucking motorcycle. You’re a vision in the waning afternoon, sunlight catching your hair and brightening your eyes. You speak first: “Can we talk?”

“Yes,” Robby answers too fast. “Of course we can. Do you…want to go somewhere else?”

“No. I don’t.” You swallow hard and then nod to a nearby bench, sitting down before he does the same. With one hand on your belly, you train your eyes forward and tell him, “You said in your note that you want to prove you love me. But I know you love me. That’s not the problem.”

Robby has to resist the urge to take your hands in his, to tilt your face toward him, to do anything that would ground your bodies together. “Tell me.”

Confirming his every fear, you whisper, “I don’t trust you enough to raise a child with you.”

Throat thick and limbs heavy, he rasps, “You don’t want me to be involved with my own kid?”

“Of course I want you to be in her life; that’s not- that’s not what I meant. But I don’t know if I can trust you to be her dad – her mom’s partner – and not just her biological father.”

The world tilts slightly.

Robby’s breath catches in his throat. 

Tears sting his eyes and he blinks them back. His voice trembles alongside his hands as he confirms, “It’s a girl?

You can’t help the way that softens you. You can see the universe he’s building behind his eyes: Robby holding a pink-blanket bundle, Robby learning to braid hair, Robby being fiercely protective and achingly tender.

You want to share that life with him so badly that it hurts. To sit by his side at dance recitals and tell bedtime stories together and be real.

“Yeah,” you settle for saying, intimately quiet, just for the two of you, “she’s a girl.”

“Wow. Holy shit. A girl. A little girl. Have you-” He clears his throat and swats a tear from his cheek. “Have you picked a name yet?”

You shake your head and admit, “I have some favorites, but it wouldn’t feel right to choose by myself. Without you, I mean. She’s not just mine.” Robby lets the next few tears fall onto his scrub pants and you can’t bear to watch. So you dig around in your purse and hand over the few ultrasound pictures you’d set aside, always hoping you’d be able to give them to him. One from each of your check-ups, a timeline from blob to baby. “Here. Yours to keep.”

Robby stares down at pure gold in his hands. He looks over each photo like a precious ancient text, smiling with those lovely wrinkles of his. After looking at the most recent one for a long time, he murmurs lovingly, “She’s got your nose.”

You touch your pointer finger to the picture and reply, “And your huge feet.”

His eyes stay locked on the scan for another full minute; he’s too choked up to add anything else. Once he’s finally starting to recover from growing a new chamber of his heart so quickly, he tucks the photos into his backpack, slides onto the sidewalk in front of you like he’s about to propose, and gazes up at your face. “I’ll do anything to be yours again.”

Biting your lower lip, you nod. Slow. Thinking. “I can’t just pick up where we left off.”

“I don’t expect you to. I don’t want that.” He sits back onto the bench next to you, this time tilting his whole body towards yours. Creating space he begs you to fill. “I know we can’t exactly start over, but I- I want to be new together. I want to fix what I broke.”

“Okay,” you whisper back, trying hard not to cry. Hormones and hope make a brutal cocktail. You sniffle hard and suggest, “Trinity told me you have the weekend off. Breakfast tomorrow? Well, brunch; the baby likes to sleep in.”

“Absolutely. Anywhere you want, any time.”

Your eyes narrow. “That fancy place you took me after the first time I slept over?”

“I’ll pick you up at ten.”

You wince as the baby launches a foot into your ribcage. “Sold.”

With those dumb beautiful wide cow eyes of his, Robby asks, “Are you okay?”

“Your daughter’s beating the shit out of me,” you groan. When he laughs, though, you soften even more. Tentative, you offer, “Do you want to feel?”

Robby’s voice is ragged and desperate like you’ve never heard it. It’s heavy with love and with need and with hope. One word holds every dream he’s ever had. “Please.”

You take his hand and guide it to the spot where the baby is currently dancing a samba, watching his tender, reverent expression every moment.

“Holy shit.” Robby laughs and grins at you while the baby nudges him over and over like she’s saying hi. “That’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever felt.”

You roll your eyes and try not to smile. “Please; you’ve felt a million babies kick.”

“But this is-” He shakes his head and chuckles again at another flutter. “This is different. Is she always this active?”

“In the evening, yeah. Like she can tell I’m done with work and it’s playtime.” You put your hand over his, nothing more than an instinct, and rub your thumb over his skin. “She’s gonna terrorize us.”

‘Us’ settles, warm and cozy, in the hearth of Robby’s chest. He leans down and kisses your bump gently. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

You’re halfway through the insanely decadent strawberries-and-cream crepes you ordered when you actually get up the confidence to break the charged silence between you and Robby. He’d overly complimented your cozy but stylish enough ribbed knit dress and you’d noted his freshly trimmed beard making him look too handsome for you to think clearly. Then a healthy dose of small talk while you waited for food. Now silence.

After licking a bit of vanilla cream from the corner of your mouth, you rush out, “I want you to audition to be my husband.”

One side of Robby’s lip ticks up into a cute, amused smirk. “Shall I prepare a monologue or a musical number? Will there be a dance portion?”

You hum teasingly, “There’ll be whatever I want; that’s the whole point.”

“This has Trinity Santos written all over it.”

You shrug and relent, “She may have had a hand in the concept.”

His fork wavers in the air. “Should I fear for my life?”

“No more than you usually do around her,” you giggle, just a bit, and Robby feels part of himself taking flight at the proof of any lightness left between the two of you. Then you go on seriously (so seriously it wraps back around to adorable for him), “For the next two weeks, I’m going to tell you what I need from you and you’re going to do it as soon as you can. Every time. I want to be the most needy, most demanding, most pregnant person in the entire world. If you can survive that, you can apologize. Give me a real, thoughtful apology and I’ll accept.”

Right away, Robby nods and confirms, “Consider it done.”

You raise a challenging eyebrow. “That easy?”

He puffs up his chest a bit. “I’m an emergency room doctor; I think I can handle a few midnight craving runs.”

“Is that so?”

“I’m 100% confident.”

“Great. Love that.” You sip your drink, gaze at him over the rim, and then tell him with the most vindictive smile you can manage, “The first thing I want you to do is sell the motorcycle.”

That night, Robby’s phone rings with a call from you for the first time in six months. It wakes him from a dead sleep, but he’s been craving your custom ringtone so much that he still manages to answer within less than a second. Rubbing sleep from his eyes, he slurs out, “Hi, mama.”

“Hey, Michael.” He can clearly picture you sitting cross-legged on your bed with a menacing smile as you ask, “Can you bring me a tub of that cake batter ice cream I like? The one with the blue frosting swirl and rainbow sprinkles and the actual chunks of pound cake.”

Robby puts you on speaker so he can sit up, stretch his arms, and hit the lights. As he tugs on whatever clothes he runs into, he clarifies, “You mean the one they sell at that kitschy 24-hour diner roadside attraction thing off the highway out in Bridgeville?”

“That would be the one.” Sounding downright wistful, you tell him, “I’ve been craving it my whole pregnancy, but I felt bad asking Trinity to do nearly an hour of driving to scratch the itch.”

Robby frowns as he fumbles through tying his shoes. “You still don’t have a car?”

“I’m living with Dennis and Trinity to save money so I can get one by the time the baby needs to go to daycare,” you tell him softly, trying not to let it sound like an invitation. You swallow hard and repeat firmly, “Ice cream. One hour.”

He smiles to himself as he picks up his car keys. “See you soon.”

Before Robby opens the door to the garage, his phone pings with a text. It’s Whitaker, for some reason.

Good luck on your first mission. Her feet are killing her extra today, by the way.

With a grateful little smile, Robby grabs a tube of the cocoa butter lotion you’d put him onto back when you were together and tucks it conspiratorially in his pocket.

Noted. Thanks for the tip.

Dennis shoots off two more texts before Robby gets to driving.

I’m rooting for you.

If you could also grab me some of those real rootbeers in the dark bottles they sell there that would be great.

Robby rolls his eyes and starts the car. It takes almost exactly one hour to make his way to the neighboring town, stand in line at the Cracker-Barrel-esque diner shop, and head over to your place. It’s quiet this time of night in your neighborhood, so quiet that he doesn’t even have to knock. You answer the door in a crop top that sits on top of your bump and gray sweatpants that hang low beneath it, rolled up around your ankles. You’re visibly exhausted and need a shower and you’ve never been more beautiful.

Then you glance over his shoulder at the car still idling by the curb and your mouth falls open in shock.

“Michael David Robinavitch,” you say breathlessly, hopping down onto the stoop to get a better look, “is that a minivan?”

“Brand new Chrysler Pacifica,” he confirms, following you over and slapping his hand on the hood like it’s a sports car. “Most safety and security features in its class. Ain’t she a beaut?”

With a shy smile, you confirm, “You got rid of the motorcycle?”

Robby shrugs modestly. “Not very practical when you have kids.”

“Kids. Plural.”

He cuts you a look that’s all cocky and loving. “Yeah. Plural.” Then, before you can stop buffering and come up with a response, he slides open the side door of the van and removes his spoils. Hoisting heavy reusable bags, Robby announces, “Two gallons of ice cream as ordered. Hopefully that’ll last you until after my next shift.”

You squeal and grab one of the bags from him, practically skipping back into the house. You leave the front door open and Robby hesitantly takes it as an invitation to join you inside, lingering in the doorway as you beeline to the kitchen, scoop yourself a hearty bowl, and put the rest away in the freezer. You pause, turn to Robby, and check, “You want some?”

Robby carefully steps the rest of the way into the living room and closes the door behind him. “I think all that sugar and fat would give me a heart attack even faster than the stress.”

You sigh and flop down on the couch, lifting your feet onto the coffee table and settling the bowl on your stomach. “Try telling that to your daughter; all she wants is sugar and fat.”

“Thus why I keep sending you balanced meals to eat.”

“Thank you for that, by the way,” you lilt gently, smiling around the spoon as you indulge in the ice cream. You close your eyes and throw your head back, moaning, “Fuck, this is so good. Are you sure you don’t want any?”

“I’m happier watching you eat it,” he chuckles as he memorizes your pleased expression. It’s the first time he’s seen you so content and not on the verge of yelling at him since he’s been back. “Is there anything else I can do for you tonight?”

“Yeah, actually,” you tell him as you try to get comfortable, adjusting pillows around your limbs, “I want to hear about your trip.”

Robby’s brows go up; he genuinely hadn’t expected you to want to talk to him at all. “Really?”

“Yup.” You pat the couch next to you. “Princess kept calling it your midlife crisis fuck-a-thon, so I want to hear about all your exploits.”

Robby tilts his head to the side and says plainly, quietly, urgently, “I didn’t have sex with anyone while I was gone.”

You try to ignore the way that knowledge makes you breathless, focusing on creating perfectly balanced bites of ice cream. “You didn’t?”

“Of course not.” He shrugs, joins you on the couch, and says sheepishly, “I thought I had my girl waiting for me when I got back.”

“Girls don’t wait for men who don’t even text while they’re gone,” you murmur back, sounding more pathetic than you’d wanted.

“I know. I was really screwed up before I left because of everything with the shooting and with Langdon and I- I didn’t see anything clearly. Couldn’t.” Without making anything of it, Robby shifts your bare feet into his lap and starts to rub the arch of one with his thumbs, deep and perfect. He gives you a cheeky look and adds, “But someone I’m trying to impress told me that I had to earn the opportunity to apologize, so I won’t get into all that yet.”

You give him a pointed look. “Any particular reason you’re rubbing my feet?”

He shrugs innocently and reasons, “You’re pregnant; I’m sure they’re killing you all the time.”

“It’s just interesting timing,” you muse, “considering I was complaining about needing a foot massage to Whitaker right before he left for his shift and you just so happened to bring him that weird Pennsylvania root beer he’s been wanting.”

“A man has to have some secrets,” he murmurs. Then he removes all pretense and rucks up the legs of your sweats, takes the lotion from his pocket, and really gets down to business. While he works tension from your feet and ankles and calves, Robby tells you honestly, “All I really did on my trip was think.”

You tease, “Sounds horrible.”

“It was, a lot of the time.” Robby takes the empty bowl from your hands and sets it on the coffee table, promising to wash it before he leaves, and insists you just relax under the expert working of his hands. “I didn’t go because I needed a vacation. I needed to…reset. I watched a lot of sunsets in beautiful places, wrote in my journal twice a day, tried to get eight full hours of sleep every night.”

Your mouth falls open. “You wrote in a journal?”

“Still do,” he replies, sounding a little impressed with himself. “It helps me think. Helps me view my thoughts more rationally – see how stupid they can get, how untrue – when I can read them on the page instead of just repeating them over and over in my mind.”

“That’s really good,” you sigh, head on the cushion and eyes closed. He’s not sure if you’re talking about the journaling or the foot massage or both. Frankly, he doesn’t care. Just getting to hear your sounds of simple pleasure is enough. Interlocking your hands over your bump, you sleepily prod, “Tell me about all the beautiful sunsets, then.”

Robby knows you’re about two minutes from falling asleep, but he happily obliges regardless. He talks about the rolling Appalachians that separate Pittsburgh from the East Coast, the light over the Atlantic early in the morning, the busy cities and empty back roads alike. He talks about the old man he sat with for three hours in a coffee shop listening to him glow about his late wife. He talks about the beach where he saw a family playing and finally felt at peace about Heather’s miscarriage years ago. He talks about the synagogue in New York City where he went just to feel connected to some peace but a rabbi sought him out from the sea of faces and said the Tefilat Haderech over him. He recites the lines he remembers.

…lead us in peace and direct our steps in peace, and guide us in peace, and support us in peace, and cause us to reach our destination in life, joy, and peace…grant me grace, kindness, and mercy…bestow upon us abundant kindness…

After a while, he hears you softly snoring, but he doesn’t stop. Instead he touches your exposed belly, gently working the lotion over your stretch marks, and soothes, “Someday I’ll take you all the beautiful places I’ve seen. You’re going to have the most perfect life I can give you. You and your mom and me.”

Coming in quietly after her shift, Trinity walks into the living room, takes in the scene in front of her, and grins unabashedly. Big bad attending Dr. Robby waiting on you hand and foot just like she told you he should. Grabbing a late snack, she chuckles and praises, “Now this is what I like to see, Rob.”

Robby whispers back, “Be quiet. She’s out like a light.”

“You were just talking to her.”

He corrects, “I was talking to the baby. Mom might be asleep, but my little girl is up and kicking in there listening to my stories.”

She gives him a slap on the back as she walks by. “You’ll bore her to sleep soon enough, gramps.”

Robby’s eating leftovers in bed the next time you call on him. He pauses the TV and picks up the call. “Michael Robinavitch personal assistant service, how may I help you?”

You groan, “I want to shave my legs and I can’t reach anymore.”

He chuckles quietly and hastens to eat the last few bites of his dinner. “Sounds like something I can handle. Do I need to pick up anything to enhance your experience? Chocolate?”

Your voice perks up just a little. “Twix. Several.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And a blue raspberry slushee if you get the Twix at a 7/11.”

“I think I can manage that.”

Half an hour later, you’re in the bath sipping on a Big Gulp and wearing a bikini – much to Robby’s eye-rolling amusement, you insisted he had to earn even non-sexual nudity – while Robby lathers up your legs with your fancy moisturizing gel. You don’t miss the way he takes the time to massage the knots from your calves with those deliciously large hands. God, you missed his hands.

“You’ve got a real jungle going down here,” Robby tuts as he starts in above your ankles, working his way over your skin methodically and thoroughly, his glasses sitting low on his nose as if he’s prepping a surgical field. If this is a measure of how much he cares for you, then he’s not going to miss a single hair. “Gonna need a weed wacker for those shins.”

You glare at him. “I will send that razor straight through your hand, Michael.”

“I’m just saying you could’ve asked me a week ago.”

“I didn’t have any reason to shave my legs a week ago.”

“But you do now?” He raises a suspicious eyebrow. “Hot date?”

“With the OBGYN, yup. She’s a real hunk.”

He gives you a very pointed look at that. “Do you want me to trim your bush?”

“Michael!”

“I know you prefer to keep the topiary neat and the ground below smooth.”

“I will not hesitate to splash you.”

Robby just laughs. As he rinses off the razor and touches up some areas – he even shaves your big toes without saying a word, the gentleman – he sighs and lets his voice go low and honest. “That was a sincere offer. I’m not trying to get off on your personal maintenance, I promise. You always told me you felt uncomfortable when things got a little unruly.”

Sounding far too flirty for Robby’s sanity, you reply, “And you always told me you like unruly.”

“But it’s your body,” he replies. Earnest. Insistent. “I’m not going to push it, but it’s on the table if you change your mind. I want to do anything that will make being pregnant more comfortable for you. I know being up in the stirrups every few weeks can’t exactly be fun.”

After a moment, you whisper, barely loud enough to be heard above the gentle movement of the bath water. “You’re making it really hard to stay mad at you.”

His eyes drift up to yours. You both hold the eye contact for so long that, for some reason, tears sting at your waterline. His golden brown irises are too familiar, too warm, too full of love you’re afraid to accept and afraid to lose. Finally he says, “I want you to be mad at me until you don’t need to be anymore.”

You scoff, “You want me to be mad at you?”

He swallows hard and amends, “I want you to feel everything you need to feel. I can take it.”

And you want to kiss him.

You hate him – and you want to kiss him. So you sigh and say, “Okay.”

“Okay?”

Untying the sides of your bikini bottoms, you confirm, “Let’s trim the bush.”

He makes a show of patting his pockets before announcing, “Crap, I think I left my pruning shears at home.”

You smile and roll your eyes, grateful for his levity and the effortless way he makes you feel safe in his presence. You slip the rest of the way out of the bikini, wring it out, and hand him the sopping fabric. He hangs it over the sink and returns to his place by your side.

As he cleans off the razor again, Robby assures you, “Tell me if you want me to stop. It’s okay if you change your mind any time. You know as well as I do that the OBGYN won’t care what your vulva looks like.”

You snicker, “I know. Get to it, doc.”

Robby chuckles, sinks his hands into the water, and guides your legs apart just enough to give him access. When his fingertips graze your labia, he hisses in a needy breath at the familiar feel of your soft lips. Then he curses softly, shaking his head with a laugh. “Sorry, sorry. Reflexive reaction. Nothing short of professionalism from here on out.”

You laugh, “It’s okay. Glad to know someone still finds me remotely attractive even though I feel like a beached whale.”

“You’ve never been more attractive,” he says quietly. Quickly. But he doesn’t let it hang. He gives a sharp soldier’s nod and gets to work, using his precise doctor’s fingertips to guide his motions. “You know, the last time I did this, it was because a woman had superglue in her pubes. Gluing her shut.”

You wince. “Jesus fuck. How does something like that even happen?”

He shrugs. “Freak sex accident, I’m assuming. That’s half the job.” Then he furrows his brow and drags his fingers up your innermost thigh, cleaning up the edges. “Alright, no more jokes, I’ve gotta focus when I’m relying on touch.”

You roll your eyes. “Yes, sir.”

You close your eyes and lean your head back on the bath pillow Robby ordered to be delivered to your place a few nights ago. In the low light with a backdrop of soothing water sounds, you relax easily; Michael’s touch could never be unfamiliar to you. He uses the fingers of one hand to guide the other, methodically following his own touch along your labia, down near your entrance, up towards your clit. You try to control your breathing as his confident motions start to work some neglected parts of your brain. When he gently pushes against your mons to make the skin straighter and easier to shave, the heel of his hand rests against your clit and you can barely think. He’s not doing it on purpose – that much is clear from how he’s got his tongue slightly out in focus, attuned only to what he’s doing – but it’s working you up nonetheless.

Your shaky voice breaks through the silence. “Michael?”

Totally concentrated on the task at hand, he slows his hands and offers, “Hm?”

Like a guilty child, you admit, “You’re turning me on.”

Right away, he withdraws his hands from under the water and moves away from the tub. “Shit, I’m sorry. I swear I wasn’t trying to do any-”

“No, it’s- it’s okay,” you assure quickly. “I just haven’t been able to, um, do anything about, ah, that particular sort of thing for the last two-ish months. I’m a little…pent up. I didn’t want to, like, start moaning or something on accident.”

Robby hesitates. There’s a war in his eyes. You watch his adam’s apple bob as he swallows hard, trying not to think about anything at all. His cheeks turn red the way you always teased him for and he opens his mouth to talk. Closes it again. Repeats that a few times.

Ultimately, he doesn’t say a thing, just waits for you to lead.

You love him for not offering, for not cracking a joke, for not deflecting. He just creates space for you, leaning against your counter and keeping his eyes on your face. The man in front of you is the same Robby you’ve adored for years and claimed as yours for months, but he’s different, too. There’s a calm to him you haven’t seen before. When Robby used to touch you, it was hot and claiming and craving and yearning. You felt his desperation in every kiss. This man is waiting. Deferent.

For the first time, you’re in charge. You get to decide.

So you decide.

Gently, certain but sheepish, you ask, “Would you mind, um, helping me out with that?”

His voice is strangled and his face is contorted into something akin to agony. “Are you sure?”

“I don’t want to change anything with where we’re at right now,” you clarify, speaking slow, like you’re worried about a nervous cat darting, “but I could really use some relief on that front. If that- if that wouldn’t be too weird.”

“Weird?” Robby laughs and rubs the back of his neck. “No, it wouldn’t be weird.”

“What would it be, then?”

He takes in a shaky breath and replies, “It wouldn’t have to be something.” Sitting down by the tub again, he says, “I said I’d do anything to make you comfortable. Anything.” He lets his hand once again drift below the water, looking at you like it’s a challenge. “I’m not a chicken about fingering a girl when she needs some help.” As his thumb ghosts over your clit, you gasp and stifle the ensuing moan with the back of your hand. Suppressing a self-satisfied smirk, Robby reminds you, “Just tell me if you want me to stop. This isn’t about me.”

You nod eagerly and tilt your hips forward to give him better access. Robby shakes his head a bit; you were always so greedy for him to touch you and it doesn’t seem like that’s changed. Robby uses the pad of his thumb to work your clit, keeping firm contact as he rubs it in small circles, not too fast but not teasing, either. Your need is obvious in the fast rising and falling of your chest, the twitching in your thighs, the way you bite your lower lip and pinch your eyes shut. He treats this like what it is: Relief.

When he can tell you’re wanting more – letting out those soft and desperate little moans he always replays when he jerks off – he dips his other hand between your legs and feels between your lips. You’re wet and begging and he’s not going to deny you for even a second. With the water not letting anything get particularly lubricated, Robby keeps his fingers seated inside of you, curling them instead of thrusting. Your pretty lips fall open in a pleased ‘o’ and Robby’s borderline dizzy from how good it feels to get you off again. He’s not sure if it’s the pregnancy or the desperation but you feel downright swollen with lust, hot and plush and like he could spend the rest of his life keeping you knocked up and-

Woah, asshole.

Calm down.

He takes a deep breath of his own, matching one of yours, and focuses back on you and not on his achingly hard cock straining for freedom from his sweats. As he massages your g-spot way too effortlessly, the palm of his other hand pulls the hood of your clit back slightly, just enough to light your nerves on fire from the intensity of his touch. Heat rises in your cheeks, your chest, your thighs. Robby knows how to work a long, hard orgasm out of you. He never rushes. He matches the curls of his fingers with his thumb on your clit and doesn’t stop, doesn’t slow, doesn’t race. He lets you feel every singular sparking second until you’re tightening up around him, your toes curling, your thighs clamping around his hand, your back arching as much as it’ll allow.

All Robby gives himself permission to say as you cum around his fingers is a soft, loving, “There you go. That’s it.”

When your pussy finally starts to release him, only faint fluttery aftershocks remaining, Robby pulls out of you, resists the urge to lick his fingers, and wipes his hands dry. He shuts his eyes for a second and takes a deep breath before he can bear to look at you. The sweat on your brow, the blown darkness of your pupils, the slight swell from biting your lower lip. You’re too beautiful for him to cope with. Robby gazes at you only as long as he can handle before averting his eyes. 

To distract himself from the goddess bathing below him, Robby absently strokes your oversized towel hanging on the nearby rack and offers, “Ready to get out? I’ll help you up.”

Still breathless, you stare up at Robby in surprise. He didn’t kiss you, didn’t ask for any pleasure in exchange, only gave you what you needed, what you asked for. Pure, unadulterated respect. For your body, your boundaries, your desires. That’s so much sexier than the desperate love the two of you used to make between agonized sheets. “That would be good. Thank you.”

Robby pulls the stopper on the tub and extends his strong hands for you. Your eyes lock together as you stand with a groan. As he wraps you up in the towel, he holds your shoulders a moment and says urgently, earnestly, “Anything. Any time.”

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

In the morning, Robby’s securing his sleeves with his nicest cufflinks when you call him exactly when he’d expected. He may have snooped on your calendar – it was hanging on your wall as he helped you into bed, sue him – and saw that your OGBYN appointment this morning is, in fact, your third trimester anatomy scan at 9:00am. He knew as soon as he saw it that you were going to ask him to come at the last minute, so he’d asked Jack to stay a few hours late and he’d do the same at night.

He picks up the phone, trying not to sound to pleased with himself. “What can I do for you, oh glorious mother of my child?”

“Laying it on thick already,” you tease. He can hear you talking around your toothbrush and the image makes him smile as he smooths out his charcoal gray blazer and applies a few dabs of cologne. “Would you mind coming to my ultrasound with me today? Trinity was supposed to drive me but I guess she can’t now.”

Robby grins from ear to ear when he catches you in the blatant lie. Trinity’s working a double, which of course Robby would know as her supervisor. You were never planning on asking anyone else. Tucking that knowledge away in a secret place in his heart, Robby nudges, “Do you need a ride or am I invited in?”

“It’s your baby, dumbass,” you reply, the words half-formed now as you floss. After you rinse and spit again, you tell him more seriously, “I want you there.”

“You do?”

There’s a beat of silence where he’s worried he’s pushed too far. But then you say, “Yeah, I do. I wish you could’ve been there for the first few.”

With a deep breath, he replies, “Me too. I’d give anything to go back and-” He takes another deep breath and shakes his head at himself. “I’ll be there to pick you up in a few, okay?”

“See you soon, Michael.”

“Lo- See you, sweetheart.”

When you see Robby leaning against that goddamn minivan, you nearly jump his bones. He’s wearing slim-cut jeans that make his thighs look like tree trunks, his white button-down is undone just enough to show off some chest hair, and he’s got on a fucking blazer. A blazer. The bastard. When did he start putting mousse in his hair to make it so…tousled? Touchable. You can just imagine grabbing it while you ride him into oblivion.

Robby can’t suppress the very similar thoughts he’s having at seeing your outfit. You’re wearing a tea-length floral skirt with a slouchy, oversized sweater half-tucked into it. You look so comfy. Something about how soft and domestic you look as you approach him with your lace-hemmed socks and your oversized travel mug of tea is driving him crazy. He sees his whole life walking toward him with a sleepy smile on her lips.

Trying not to gawk too hard, you eye him up and down and say, “Michael, you look-” sexy as all fuck “-very handsome.”

He puffs up his chest. “Gotta look good; it’s my first time seeing my baby girl. I need to make a solid first impression.”

You roll your eyes, grinning as Robby pulls open the front door. “She can’t see you through my organs, babe.”

You don’t notice the word slipping out, so Robby doesn’t call attention to it. He just makes sure you’re buckled in and then sits on your other side with a glow in his gut. Then he reaches into his messenger bag in the backseat and hands over a king-sized Twix before starting the car and heading toward the hospital.

As you greedily open the wrapper, you hum, “What happened to Mr. Balanced Meal With Lots of Protein?”

“Mr. Balanced Meal With Lots of Protein knows you’re having your favorite burger with bacon and an egg on it from your favorite dive for lunch, on me,” he replies, glancing at you knowingly over the tops of his too-sexy sunglasses. “Throw in a side of sweet potato fries and I’m pretty sure science says that balances out a chocolate bar or two.”

You give a mock-salute with the half-eaten Twix. “Whatever you say, doctor.”

When Robby parks in his reserved spot near the ED, you both seem to realize the same thing at the same time. Robby stiffens up in his seat and offers, “I’m sorry; I wasn’t thinking. I can, ah, drop you off at the main entrance and meet you inside?”

You turn to him with one of those soft, shy smiles that made his heart stammer every time he looked your way when you started in the Pitt. “It’s okay. Really. I mean, you’re gonna be on paternity leave in at most ten weeks, so it’s not exactly a secret, right?”

“Fair point,” he concedes. “You know they’re gonna make it a whole thing, right?”

“Of course I do.”

“There might even be cake by the time we’re done.”

“God forbid.”

“Alright, fuck it.” Robby kills the engine and then walks around to your side of the van, helping you get your footing. “Let’s announce our lovechild to the world.”

“They probably already know; Trinity isn’t the most tight-lipped person,” you reason as he guides you with a large hand on the small of your back. It feels too protective and grounding for you to even pretend to protest.

“Jack didn’t know until I told him.”

“Because he’s such a notorious gossip.”

Robby can’t even respond because, as soon as you’re through the staff entrance, Dana’s staring straight forward at the two of you. Without moving her eyes from your stomach, she beelines your direction and gasps. After wrapping you up in a a warm hug, she looks you over and, disbelieving, mutters, “Holy hell, you are extremely pregnant.”

“Not extremely,” you balk as if it’s a ridiculous idea, “30 weeks.”

Dana seems to notice Robby’s presence and she narrows her eyes suspiciously, running the numbers in her head. “Thirty weeks, eh? Is that a new Robinavitch she’s growing?”

You absolutely beam when Robby blushes like a middle schooler. He confirms, “Yeah, that would be my little girl.”

“A girl!” Dana hugs both of you again and then looks at you seriously. “This one treating you like you deserve? Groveling profusely?”

“Yes, mom.”

“Good. As he should.”

Robby cuts in gently, “We’ve got an appointment upstairs, so we need to try to get through the floor to the elevator without too many interruptions.”

“Yeah, good fuckin’ luck with that,” Dana laughs as she gestures to the buzzing crowd gathering around the nurse’s station to get a look at you and Robby. “Have fun, lovebirds.”

Your cheeks are burning hot, so you poke Robby in the side and murmur, “Can you do one of your magical Dr. Robby speeches to make them go away? I don’t do well with public interrogations.”

“Your wish is my command,” he assures you quietly, pressing a kiss to your temple. In the nerves of the moment, you want to turn and nuzzle your face into the comfort of his broad chest.

Then Robby claps loud a few times until the handful of free doctors and nurses gather up, including a deeply amused Jack, Trinity, and Whitaker. He announces in his Big Serious Attending voice, “Alright guys, a handful of things to stop-slash-start the rumor mill. One: Yes, I’m wearing a blazer; pictures are $45 a pop. Two: Yes, your former APRN is heavily pregnant. Three: Yes, it is my baby. Four: I’m in a period of repentance to regain her favor after being an ass for the last six months, but we’re figuring it out. Finally: The buy-in for the due date betting pool starts at $25; I’m not skimping out on my firstborn. Any follow-up questions can be directed to the admirable godmother Dr. Trinity Santos. Got it?”

Whitaker gives a charming little whoop and starts off the clapping, joined quickly by everyone else. As Robby accepts a handful of congratulations, Jack pulls you into a strong hug and looks you in the eyes, serious and stern as ever. There’s an undeniable warmth in the twitch of his lips, though, as he tells you, “He’s got you, kid. I know he does. He loves you to death and he knows he fucked up.”

You squeeze his bicep gently. “Thanks, Dr. Abbot.”

“No problem.” Then he points at your bump and adds, “That’s Uncle Jackie to you, miss.”

You blink back hormonal tears as you laugh. “Uncle Jackie, huh?”

He grins and boasts, “I was born to be an irresponsible but lovable bad influence uncle. That girl is gonna have the biggest and most annoying family of doctors and nurses.”

The baby gives you a swift kick in the bladder like she heard him say it. You place your hand over the ginger spot and smile. “Yeah, she will. We’re lucky.”

And suddenly so much love washes through your body you’re not sure you can hold it all. When you watch Robby absolutely glowing talking about becoming a dad, you know this is right. He’s the right man for you. For her. You’re swept up into the collection of hugs and congratulations, too, but you can’t stop watching Robby’s smile lines. The way he checks in with you every time he laughs. The way he’s looking at you not like a girlfriend or a baby mama but like the sun of his solar system.

Robby tucks you under his arm easily and calls, “Alright, alright, we have an ultrasound to get to, people, let’s back off the pregnant lady. You all have lives to save and baby shower gifts to buy.”

You giggle under your breath as he leads you to the elevator. “Baby shower gifts. Please.”

“What? You don’t want a shower?”

“I just don’t know who would put it together; I don’t really have the time.”

Robby scoffs, “As if either of us could physically stop the nurses from throwing one now that the cat’s out of the bag.”

“Good point,” you concede, trying to suppress the smile that won’t stop threatening your cheeks.

Maybe it’s just luck or maybe it’s the presence of one of the hospital’s more important doctors standing behind you, but you’re in the exam room with Robby holding your hand within a few minutes of checking in. The OB attending, Dr. Montgomery, arrives shortly after your vitals are taken.

She’s borderline glaring after she greets you and extends a hand to Robby. “Dr. Robinavitch, good to see you back at the hospital after so long away.”

“Good to be back,” he replies carefully, shaking her hand. “I’m guessing you’ve been given a harsh but fair view of me the past few months.”

“That would be an accurate assessment, doctor.”

Robby does that thing where he kind of hunches his broad shoulder to seem smaller and more approachable. It’s what he does when he’s hiding from Gloria or talking to a little old lady with chlamydia. He insists, “Call me Michael, please.”

“We’ll see.”

You snicker, “Addie, I promise he’s putting the work in.”

“Fine. Claws away while we say hi to baby girl.” Dr. Montgomery preps the ultrasound station as you get your clothes tucked out of the way. As she applies the warmed gel and manuevers the wand, she tells you, mostly addressing Robby since he wasn’t there for the other appointments, “She was a little small at our last scan, so I’m gonna take a few extra measurements to track her progress.”

Robby nods slowly and stares at the back of the ultrasound monitor like he can see through it and gather information. “Has there been anything else on the scans I need to know about?”

You gaze up at him while Dr. Montgomery takes her notes. “Nope, she’s been a total champ. I’m the problem between the two of us.”

Robby strokes your hair with his other hand; you can tell it’s more to soothe himself than you, so you let him. “What does that mean?”

You lean into his touch unconsciously and reply, “I’m just anemic; I passed out early on. That’s how I found out I was pregnant in the first place.”

Guilt skewers Robby like an ice pick. “You’re taking iron now?”

You roll your eyes. “And eating spinach and letting handsome baby daddies buy me burgers.”

Robby’s ensuing smile is cute and proud. Dr. Montgomery looks up from the ultrasound and happily announces, “Baby girl’s growth has gotten much better since your last vosot. She’s no longer small for her gestational age and is now firmly average. Good work, mom. Have you been adding more protein and healthy fats to your diet like I suggested?”

When Robby opens his mouth to speak, you narrow your eyes at him an say, “Michael Robinavitch I will strangle you right now with my bare hands if you say ‘I told you so.’”

He chuckles and gives your hand a squeeze. “I would never. I’m just glad to hear our girl’s healthy – and not a bowling ball. I was 11 pounds.”

You cringe at the thought. “Lucky she takes after me on that front.”

So softly it sounds more like a prayer, Robby asks, “Can we see her now?”

Flipping the monitor around with a smile, Dr. Montgomery replies, “Yeah, of course. There’s her side profile; she’s perfectly posed for us. I’ll turn on the doppler, too.”

Robby leans forward and looks at the screen. Something cracks open in his chest as the baby’s heartbeat fills the room, whooshing fast and steady. He lets out a tiny, barely audible whimper. Your eyes fly up to his and you see the tears flooding down his pink cheeks as he gazes at his daughter wriggling around on the monitor.

You squeeze his hand and he gasps a tiny bit like he just remembered you’re there. “Isn’t she beautiful?”

“She’s perfect,” he breathes softly. Then he presses his lips to the top of your head and takes a trembling breath. Even his softest whisper trembles. “How could I ever leave you? I can’t believe I let myself miss this. You’re so fucking perfect. So strong. I love you so much.”

Tears thicken your throat as you lean up to press your forehead to his, sniffling out, “Mikey.”

He starts to cry in earnest, then, and you reach up to hold him. Your arms tangle together and your tears stain each other’s shoulders and there’s nothing but future in the places where your bodies touch.

Things get easier between you and Robby after that. You find yourself asking him for more and more trivial things just to see him and hear his voice. Your phone calls turn from a few sentences to a few minutes to an hour or more if you catch each other at a good time. He takes you shopping for baby clothes and even pretends to have an opinion about different fabrics when you ask. He stocks up on diapers, helps with your labor go bag, and does absolutely everything in his power to take the mental load off your shoulders.

From that new closeness, a quiet tension emerges. As you reach week 32 of your pregnancy, the shared knowledge of your needing to move hangs over you both, unspoken but omnipresent. Robby hasn’t pushed the issue yet, but you know it’s going to reach a tipping point.

That day comes during the worst rainstorm of the year one gloomy day in October. It’s your day off, so you’re treating yourself to a shopping spree when the rain starts. The forecast had only been for a light drizzle, so you were comfortable leaving the apartment in something cozy with an umbrella and rain boots. But the light drizzle turned torrential while you were inside a baby boutique on the other side of town.

Meanwhile, the heavy, dark, oppressive thunderstorm has the ED swamped. All the attendings are on staff to handle the onslaught of car accidents, falls, and asthma attacks. As he’s supervising Mohan’s work on an elderly woman’s obliterated tibia, his phone vibrates in his pocket.

While closing another line of sutures, Samira asks over her shoulder, “Is that mama?”

Robby slips his phone out just long enough to check. “Shit, yes, it is. She wouldn’t call me during weather like this if it wasn’t important. Do you mind if I-”

Mohan chuckles, “I think Mrs. Frost and I have this handled. Go save your woman from her aching feet or lack of chocolate bars.”

Robby gives the patient an apologetic smile and excuses himself. He ducks around the nearest quiet-ish corner where the hospital’s chaos lowers to a dull roar and manages to pick up right before it goes to voicemail. “Hey, sweetheart, what’s going on?”

He can hear you crying on the other side, the sound barely coming through the rain. “Can you come pick me up?”

Robby half-jogs toward the locker room, already stripping off his trauma gown and dodging questions from his fellow doctors as he goes. “Where are you?”

“A bus stop in East Liberty,” you sniffle out. “The buses are all delayed because of the weather and I tried to get ahold of Trinity but she didn’t pick up and I’m soaking wet and freezing and I can’t-”

“Breathe for me, honey. It’s okay. I’ve got you.” Robby can hear the shivering and the tears and the panic in your voice and his gut clenches up in pain. He spares a glance outside and sees that the rain is still a deluge, the clouds dark and murky above and the ground shiny and slick with oil leeching out below. Lightning strikes and thunder claps. “Which bus stop?”

As you tell him, he dumps his trauma gown, rummages through his things, and grabs his keys and his gym bag, which at least has a towel and some dry clothes. “I’ll be there in ten minutes, okay? Is there somewhere warm and dry you can wait for me?”

“I- I don’t know. I’m all frazzled,” you admit. He can feel your reluctance to tell him, but you can’t stop it from spilling out through the crackling rain. “There was this guy who wouldn’t leave me alone, asking all these gross questions about my boyfriend or whatever and I just ran to the closest public spot I could find.”

Anger flares in Robby’s chest. He scribbles out a note and hands it to Dana as he passes the nurse’s station, barely pausing to see her reaction – just long enough to see her annoyed but supportive nod – before he shoves out of the door into the rain. “Are you alone now? Are you safe?”

“I’m okay, just- just kinda scared and tired and- and-”

“Breathe, baby, breathe. I’m getting in the car right now.”

A few beats pass with nothing but the rain in Robby’s ears. Then your meek, nervous voice: “Would you stay on the phone with me?”

“Of course.” He guns the engine and peels out of the parking lot, careful but quick. “I’m right here with you. Just keep talking and the time’ll pass. Tell me about what you were doing. Shopping for something fun?”

“Yeah, I was.” You sniffle again and try to smile. “I bought this, um, this handmade baby wrap carrier thing. It’s really soft and, like, this quilted fabric that I think would be really comfy for her.”

“You gonna teach me how to baby wear like all the hip dads are doing?”

“Definitely.” You actually let out a small laugh as you tell him, “The whole ‘big man carrying baby’ thing is very sexy. I’m sure it’ll help you pick up chicks at the grocery store.”

Robby snorts. “You know perfectly well there are only two chicks I’m interested in picking up the rest of my life.

“Rest of your life, huh?”

“If they’ll have me.” He makes a turn and spots you huddling beneath a leaky bus stop shelter. “Alright, I’m only a minute away now, but I might be late because I have to stop and offer the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever seen a ride, okay? She’s soaking wet and very pregnant and dressed inappropriately for the weather.” Robby pulls up to the curb and pushes your door open as he hangs up the phone. “Hey, stranger, can I give you a lift?”

You slide into the car next to him, your eyes puffy from crying and your hair disastrous from the rain. As you buckle in, you pout and observe, “You turned on the seat warmers for me.”

“I also brought you a threadbare towel and a hoodie; I’m a real gentleman,” he replies as he opens up his gym bag in the backseat and hands them off.

Gratefully toweling off your hair and tucking yourself under the hoodie, you smile and nudge him. “Yeah, actually, you are.”

Robby gives your knee a quick squeeze and pulls the car into traffic, heading back toward the highway. You gradually begin to feel like a person instead of a pregnant popsicle.

Teeth still chattering a bit, you manage to get out, “I’m sorry for interrupting you at work; I’m sure things are swamped there.”

Despite the fact that his phone’s been ringing non-stop since he left, Robby replies earnestly, “Nothing’s more important to me than your safety.” He swallows hard and apologizes for himself, “I’m sorry for calling you baby on the phone; I wasn’t thinking. I heard you upset and I just went on autopilot.”

You tell him softly, “It’s okay, Michael.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah, it really is,” you murmur back. “You missed the exit, by the way.”

Robby shakes his head. “I’m taking you back to my place; you need a warm bath and a hot meal and to sleep for twelve hours uninterrupted in a king size bed.”

You avert your eyes and admit, “That sounds really nice, Mikey.”

“I like hearing you call me that again,” he says gently. “Thank you.”

“Thank me by ordering me some orange chicken while I take a bubble bath.”

Robby chuckles, “Yes, ma’am.”

As soon as Robby has you inside, he’s helping you strip your exhausted, pruny body and drawing you a silky bath. As he collects some of his old comfy clothes for you to wear from his closet, you call out from the tub, “Would you actually make that matzo ball soup that you made when you gave me mono?”

“I did not give you mono,” he laughs, “but I will absolutely make you some nourishing comfort food.”

He can hear the teasing eye roll in your voice as you call back, “You had mono. You made out with me. I then had mono. Who the hell do you think I got it from?”

“Alright, whatever.” Robby sets down the clothes on the counter and points at you seriously. “Don’t you dare try to get out of that tub without my help, missy. I’ll be back once I’ve got the soup boiling.”

You smile at him fondly and bat your eyelashes. “Yes, sir.”

“Don’t play dirty with me.”

“I would never.” You sink deeper into the bubbles and sigh contentedly, “I’m more than happy to stay in here and turn myself into a little matzo ball.”

He leans down and kisses the top of your head. “Good girl.”

“Now who’s playing dirty?”

“I would never.”

Robby slips out of the bathroom and you just…relax. While Robby takes care of you. While he waits on you.

God.

God.

Between the bubbles and the bergamot bath oil, the tension and nerves leave. The sound of the storm outside becomes white noise. From downstairs, the smell of rich schmaltzy chicken broth wafts into your nose and you feel settled. Held. By the time Robby returns to the bathroom, you know, deep down in your bones, that you’ve forgiven him.

Robby helps you out of the tub and wraps you up in a fluffy robe he must’ve been warming in the dryer for you. Then he grabs a tube of lotion, sits down on the bed, and gestures for you to join him. While he tends to your feet and legs, he pleads with you, “Move in here, sweetheart, please. I can’t- I can’t function not knowing if you’re okay. Not knowing where the baby’s going to be sleeping and not knowing if I can be there for her and for you and-”

“Michael.” It’s a whisper, a tender one at that. “I don’t want to feel like I’m trying to fit into your life.”

“I don’t want to make you feel that way; I swear.” He kisses your hand a few times and then takes a deep breath. “I’d like to apologize now. If you’d let me.”

You nod slowly and try to ignore the tears that rise to your waterline. “I’m ready. Go ahead.”

“Thank you.” After a deep breath, Robby starts, “Look, I’m not going to apologize for leaving. I needed to leave. I needed to-” He gestures wide and begging as he searches for the right words. “I needed to grow up. I know I’m a little old for that, but I think it’s the closest thing to true. I’m sorry I told you instead of talking it through. I’m sorry I went radio silent. But honestly?” 

Suddenly he reaches out and cups your cheek in his large hand. His palm is warm and so familiar that you can hardly breathe. With his thumb stroking your skin, he finishes, “What I’m the most sorry for is that I didn’t ask you to come with me. Every sunset, every motel mattress, every wide open highway would’ve been so much better if I shared them with you.”

He presses his forehead to yours and murmurs, “I swear I’ll spend every single one with you from now on. I’ll be there for every birthday, every Chrismukkah, every fucking thing you want me at. Nothing has ever or will ever matter to me more than being your husband. The father of our children. So tell me what you want. Tell me every single thing you want for you and for me and for the baby and you’ll have it. Because I love you more than my stupid bike and more than my career and more than everything I’ve ever had. You are everything now.”

The air sparks like the lightning outside. For a full minute, it’s you and it’s Robby and it’s the storm.

Then you lean forward. You hold Robby’s face with both hands and search his golden brown eyes. His heart pounds in his ears. His lungs are tight and screaming.

And you kiss him.

It’s slow, so gentle, and he’s holding his breath. Then reality seems to settle softly on his shoulders and he smiles against your lips, slides his hands onto your waist, thumbs affectionate on your bump, and kisses you back. When you pull away only slightly, you inform him, “I want a house with a yard. One that I get a say in. Further from the city. I want a safe, sensible family car for myself. No black interior. Light brown. I want a big fat diamond ring. Four carats minimum. I want sex at least three times a week. Six orgasms for me as a baseline. And I want a husband who works at most 50 hours.”

Robby gazes at you with watery eyes. “Okay.”

You smack him on the chest and laugh, “‘Okay’? I was trying to be unreasonable, Michael!”

“Well I’m being serious. Let’s move to the suburbs and have a huge wedding and fuck whenever you want. I’ve got savings to get us through as long as we need. I’ll start my own practice, slow down, buy a grill, join the PTA, the whole nine yards.”

You roll your eyes and scoff, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m not,” he assures seriously. “If you’re taking me back and making me a dad, you can be a hell of a lot more unreasonable than asking me to put my family first.”

“Fine.” You cross your arms over your chest and try not to grin. “I want a puppy.”

Robby grips his heart like you’ve stabbed him. “If you really want one – when the baby’s old enough that I won’t have a panic attack having a dog around her.”

“Deal.” You rest your forearms on his shoulders, playing with the hair at the back of his neck. “I want you to mow the lawn shirtless on Saturday mornings.”

He melts under your touch and smiles. “Okay.”

You lean in closer, a smile of your own breaking out. “And I want my own craft room in the house.”

Glancing down at your lips, he promises once again, “Okay.”

“I want a hot tub.”

“Okay.”

“And a soaking tub.”

“Okay.”

“Manicures every other week. A tropical vacation every summer. Two more babies in the next ten years.”

“Okay, okay-” he kisses you again, soft and warm and unhurried “-very okay.”

Your hand slides down his chest and toys with the hem of his tee. You watch his stomach twitch and his chest gasp upwards as you purr, “And I want you to fuck me. Right now.”

Robby’s lips return to yours. Urgent now. He pulls you into his lap and drags kisses up your neck, tasting your clean skin and your pulse beneath him. His breath is hot and his every touch – slipping the robe from your shoulders, lazing his fingers along your arms, kissing the shell of your ear – is an act of worship. At last, he murmurs against your lips, “Okay.”

The words don’t feel like yours.

That’s the first thing. They don’t feel like something you decided to say. They feel like something that fell out of you, dislodged by exhaustion, the thing holding it in place quietly giving up. Your voice doesn’t even sound right. It’s flat, toneless, the weight of someone who genuinely, completely meant it.

The room changes.

It’s not silence- the monitors are still going, the ventilator still pushing rhythmic air through tubing, the IV pump clicking through its programmed drip rate. But the human layer of the room, the subtle living soundscape of people breathing and shifting and existing in proximity to each other... that just stops.

You feel it before you understand it. A stillness that presses against the outer edges of your awareness like a change in barometric pressure.

Then your brain catches up.

First, the echo of your own voice playing back to you on a half second delay, the consonants sharper than you expected, the fuck landing with a hard, percussive weight that seems to bounce off the tile and come back louder. Then the context: the room, the hierarchy, the badge clipped to Park’s scrubs with ATTENDING PHYSICIAN printed beneath his name. Then the realization. The simple, devastating realization of what you just did.

You are an intern.

Twenty six years old. Four months into your emergency medicine residency. You do not yet have the authority to order a meal from the cafeteria without someone double checking it. You have told a senior attending- the senior attending, the one the other attendings don’t even argue with- to shut the fuck up.

In front of people.

Your peripheral vision starts feeding you information you don’t want. Robby, to your left, has shifted his weight backward. Not a full step. Just a transfer of gravity from the balls of his feet to his heels, a subtle rocking away from you that his body chose before his conscious mind caught up. Whitaker has dropped his gaze to his hands, looking at his own fingers like he’s never seen them before, studying them with the rapt, deliberate focus. Behind you Princess has stopped writing. The pen isn’t moving. The soft scratch of ballpoint on paper that’s been a constant background noise for the last hour is just gone.

Nobody is going to save you.

The thought arrives with a nauseating clarity. There is no version of the next thirty seconds in which one of your co-interns steps forward and makes a joke to cut the tension or offers some plausible reinterpretation of what just happened. You are alone in this like a dream where you’ve shown up somewhere without clothes, exposed and and suddenly aware that every exit is very, very far away.

Your pulse is doing something it shouldn’t. You can feel it in your throat, your wrists, the soft dip behind your ears. A rapid, threadlike fluttering that you’d flag as tachycardic if it belonged to someone else. Your mouth has gone dry, tongue too thick, too present, a useless slab of muscle sitting behind your teeth with nothing helpful to contribute.

Apologize.

The word surfaces like an air bubble, wobbly and urgent.

Apologize right now. Open your mouth. Say Dr. Park, I’m so sorry, I don’t know what- say something, say literally anything, you have a medical degree, you passed boards, you are a person who is capable of organizing words into sentences that-

Your eyes lift.

You don’t decide to look at him. It’s closer to compulsion, the same instinct that makes you look toward a sound you didn’t expect, your body orienting itself toward the source of the danger before your higher brain can intervene.

Park hasn’t moved.

He’s in the same position he was in thirty seconds ago, shoulder against the supply cabinet, arms folded across his chest, one ankle crossed over the other. The posture of a man who was mid-lecture and simply… stopped. His mouth is closed. The steady, unbroken stream of correction that’s been filling this room for the better part of ten minutes has ceased completely, and in its absence his jaw is set, his lips pressed together tight, like he’s keeping something behind it.

His eyes pin you to the floor.

They’re on you. They’re only on you. Not scanning the room for the reactions of the other interns, not cutting toward the door, not doing any of the things you’d expect from a man whose authority was just challenged in front of others. He is looking at you with a fixed, undivided attention that feels less like being seen and more like being ripped apart from the inside, read down to the last molecule.

His expression is... you don’t have a word for it. His brows are level, not raised in surprise or drawn together in anger. There is no visible tension in his forehead, no flare to his nostrils, no whitening around the corners of his mouth. The set of his face is almost neutral, would pass for neutral, except for something happening in the space between his eyes and his mouth that doesn’t match. Something you keep trying to categorize and failing because it doesn’t fit any of the reactions you braced for. Not fury. Not cold professional disapproval. Not the performative disappointment of a superior preparing to make an example of you.

He looks like someone just set something down in front of him that he didn’t order but has every intention of keeping.

Your stomach drops about six inches.

It drops because you recognize that look. Not from Park, not from this context, but from somewhere older and less clinical, somewhere your hindbrain catalogued and filed away under a category you absolutely cannot be accessing right now, standing in an exam room in your scrubs with your career in a shallow grave at your feet.

The air conditioning kicks on overhead, a low mechanical shudder that moves through the vents and stirs the hem of the curtain partition to your right. Someone’s pager goes off down the hall, muffled through the closed door, two short bursts and then nothing.

Park still hasn’t said a word.

He’s watching you the way you’ve seen him watch a complicated case- that particular narrowing of focus, that quality of stillness that means the gears are turning somewhere behind his expression, that means he’s already three steps ahead and you just became the most interesting problem in the room.

His chin dips. Just barely. A fractional tilt downward that changes the angle of his gaze, sends it through his lashes instead of over them, and the difference that makes is something you feel in the backs of your knees.

Your mouth is still open. You haven’t apologized. You haven’t said anything at all. The silence has gone on long enough now to calcify into something that feels almost agreed upon, a held breath between two people who both know what just shifted and neither one has decided what to do about it yet.

Somewhere behind you, Robby clears his throat and murmurs something about checking on a patient in Bay 4. Whitaker rushes to join him. The door opens. The door closes.

Park’s mouth changes.

It’s not a smile. It’s barely even movement. Just the faintest asymmetric pull at one corner, a shift in his expression so subtle that if you weren’t staring directly at it- and you are, god help you, you absolutely are- you would have missed it entirely.

Your brain is still trying to apologize. You can feel the words piled up somewhere behind your soft palate, a traffic jam of I’m so sorry and I didn’t mean and please don’t report this, but none of them are making it to your mouth because your mouth is busy doing nothing. Your lips are parted about a centimeter. You’re breathing through them because at some point in the last forty five seconds your nose stopped being sufficient, your body rerouting to the faster intake the way it does when you’re afraid, when your hindbrain has identified a threat and started allocating resources accordingly.

The problem is that your hindbrain and your forebrain are in violent disagreement about the nature of the threat.

Your forebrain says: career. You’re thinking about your career. The program director. The evaluation that Park files at the end of this rotation. The letter in your file that will follow you to every fellowship application, every attending position, every hospital that ever Googles your name.

Your hindbrain says something much less articulable and significantly more inconvenient.

Park takes a step forward.

Not toward the door. Not toward the computer, or the supply cabinet, or any of the dozen professional destinations that would make this a normal post lecture movement of a senior physician continuing with his day.

Toward you.

It’s one step. A single, unhurried shift of weight that puts him maybe three feet closer than he was, which means he’s now close enough that you can see the specific weave of his scrub top, the way the fabric pulls differently across his shoulders than it does across the plane of his chest, the slow and even rise of his breathing. He’s not winded. He’s not tense. His respiratory rate hasn’t changed at all, and you hate yourself for noticing that, hate yourself for the clinical part of your brain that’s catches that like he’s a patient instead of the man who holds your professional future in his hands and is currently standing close enough that you can see the flecks of amber in his irises that the fluorescents keep catching.

The room feels like it’s shrinking. Not metaphorically; you know it’s not actually shrinking, you’re not psychotic, you haven’t lost your grip on the material dimensions of an eight-by-twelve exam room, but something about the air quality has changed. It feels thicker. Closer. Like the ventilation system decided to shut down at the exact worst moment, leaving you to breathe the same recycled air that he’s breathing, the same molecules passing back and forth between you in a loop that feels more intimate than it has any right to.

Princess leaves.

You don’t see her go, but you hear it, the soft lick of the door latch, the brief rush of hallway noise that floods in through the gap and then seals shut again, the retreating squeak of shoes on linoleum fading into the mid distance. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t make an excuse. She just left, which means she either read the room and decided she wanted no part of it, or she read the room and decided you needed no audience for whatever is about to happen to you.

You’re alone with him.

The realization seeps in, cold and slow, like water filling a basement. It rises around your ankles first, the awareness that the door is closed, that the hallway noise is gone, that the only breathing you can hear besides your own is his. Then it’s at your knees, your waist, your chest, and by the time it reaches your throat you understand with a complete, full body certainty that whatever is happening right now is not what you thought was happening thirty seconds ago.

Park tilts his head.

It’s a small movement. The kind a dog makes when it hears a frequency it can’t quite identify: curious, alert, the whole body orienting around a single point of interest. But there’s nothing canine about the way he’s looking at you. Dogs tilt their heads because they’re confused. Park tilts his head because he’s decided something and he wants to see you from a slightly different angle while he enjoys it.

“Fourteen hours,” he says.

His voice is different. You can’t identify what changed. The pitch is the same, the register is the same, the vowels still carry that particular unhurried precision that makes everything he says sound like a bastard. But there’s a texture to it that wasn’t there during the lecture. Something underneath the words, packed into the consonants, something that makes the back of your neck prickle the way it does when you walk into your apartment and feel certain someone else was just in it.

You swallow. You feel your throat click with the effort. “What?”

“Fourteen hours on your feet. Four months into the hardest rotation of your first year. Running on what, coffee and adrenaline? Maybe some spite.” He pauses. His gaze moves down your face in increments. Your forehead. The bridge of your nose. Your mouth. He stays on your mouth for a beat that lasts about a half second longer than clinical assessment would require. “And that’s what comes out.”

You can’t tell if it’s a question.

Your hands are shaking again. You gave up pressing them against your thighs sometime in the last minute and now they’re just hanging at your sides, trembling faintly in a way that you’re desperately hoping he can’t see but almost certainly can because Park doesn’t miss things. That’s the whole problem with him. That’s always been the whole problem with him. He catches the suture tension that’s off by a degree, the half second hesitation, the pulse that’s running eight beats faster than it should. He is a man who is professionally trained to notice the things your body does before you’re aware of them, and right now your body is doing several things you’d prefer to remain unaware of.

“Dr. Park-” you start, and his expression shifts.

Shifts. Not changes. There’s a difference. A change would be readable. A change would give you something to work with, anger you could apologize to, disappointment you could grovel through, cold professionalism you could match with your own until the moment passed and you could go have a cardiac event in the supply closet like a normal person with dignity. But this isn’t a change. It’s a shift, tectonic and internal, something rearranging behind the surface that you can only detect by its effects on the landscape of his face.

His eyes narrow, lids dropping maybe a millimeter, just enough to change the structure of his gaze, and the look that comes through that narrower aperture is... focused isn’t the right word. Focused implies effort. This is something past focus. Something that has settled into its attention the way a thing settles into still water, disturbing nothing, displacing everything.

He looks at you like he’s already taken you apart and is now considering the order in which he’d like to do it again.

His tongue touches the inside of his lower lip. You see the movement through the skin, a brief, subtle pressure that reshapes his mouth for less than a second before it’s gone. It’s nothing. It’s a unconscious gesture, a self soothing tic, the kind of thing people do a hundred times a day without thinking.

It doesn’t look unconscious.

“Dr. Park, I’m- ”

“Don’t.”

One word. Quiet. Not sharp, not cutting, not delivered with the clipped authority he uses on the floor when a resident is about to make a mistake. This is softer than that. Lower. It comes from somewhere deeper in his chest, and the sound of it lands at the base of your spine and sits there, warm and heavy and refusing to move.

“Don’t apologize,” he says, and then he smiles.

It’s barely a smile. It wouldn’t register as one in a photograph, wouldn’t survive the flattening of a two dimensional image. You’d need to be standing exactly where you’re standing, this close, in this light, in this airless little room to catch the way the corner of his mouth lifts. To see the way it pulls something taut across the planes of his face, reshapes the hollows beneath his cheekbones, turns the set of his jaw from something authoritative into something predatory.

It is, you realize with a clarity that goes all the way to the marrow, the expression of a man who has been waiting for something he’s very much looking forward to ruining.

The smile doesn’t reach his eyes.

It doesn’t need to. His eyes are doing something far worse- they’re warm. Not kind warm. Not reassuring warm. Warm the way a hand on the back of your neck is warm right before the fingers tighten. Warm the way a voice goes warm when it drops into the register it only uses behind closed doors. There is a heat in the way he’s looking at you that has nothing to do with anger and everything to do with appetite, and it is so profoundly, catastrophically different from anything you prepared for when you walked into this hospital fourteen hours ago that your brain simply stops trying to process it and hands the reins to something older and less rational.

Your body knows what this is.

Your body has known since his chin dipped, since the first pull of his mouth, since he hasn't stopped looking at you. Your body has been screaming the answer at your prefrontal cortex for the better part of two minutes and your prefrontal cortex has been politely declining the call because accepting it would require you to reconcile the clinical reality of your attending physician with the man who is currently looking at you like he intends to take his time.

Park reaches past you.

His arm extends to your right, his hand landing flat on the counter behind you, and for one vertiginous, blood loud second you think he’s reaching for you, caging you in, and every nerve ending you have lights up simultaneously. But he’s not. His fingers close around the chart Princess was writing in before all of this happened: your chart, your patient, the one with the sutures he was critiquing when you decided to set fire to your entire professional trajectory.

He picks it up. He looks at it. He looks back at you.

“Fix your tension,” he says. Same low register. Same impossible warmth. “Then come find me.”

He holds the chart out between you.

You take it. Your fingers brush his. The contact lasts less than a second, barely qualifies as touch, just the drag of his knuckle against the pad of your index finger as the chart changes hands. He doesn’t pull away quickly. He lets the contact happen, lets it register, lets you feel exactly how steady his hands are compared to yours.

Then he turns and walks to the door, and you watch him go because you can’t do anything else, because every voluntary muscle in your body has been temporarily requisitioned by the part of your brain that’s still processing the afterimage of his smile.

He pauses with his hand on the door. Half turns. Looks back at you over his shoulder with an expression you’ll be replaying at two in the morning for reasons you refuse to examine.

“And intern?”

You can’t speak. You manage something- a breath, a sound, a squeak, something that exists in the neighborhood of acknowledgment.

The warmth in his eyes sharpens into something with an edge, something that gleams.

“Get some sleep,” he says. “You’re going to need it.”

The door closes behind him.

You stand there, chart in your hands, pulse in your teeth, the ghost of his knuckle still burning along the length of your finger.

The ventilator cycles. The IV pump clicks. Down the hall, someone pages radiology.