#labbot

No time for that now. No time for emotion, no time for questioning, no time for thoughts and theories. Time for action. A man is dying, his man– But he can’t let himself remember that. Has to push that– all of that, all of that history, the love and the friendship, the pride and the pain, the trust and the betrayal, the highs and the fall. None of that can be here in this room with him now, because if he lets it close to him, it will break him, he knows it. 

He must briefly remove his bloody, beating hard from beneath his ribs and set it off to the side in a kidney dish to wait. He cannot fall prey to its emotions and its panic. Just the medicine. Processes. Procedures. Don’t think, just do. Let muscle memory take over. Let instinct guide him, steady him, trust himself to his training, to Adamson’s teaching which has helped him save so many lives. Please, god, don’t let it fail him now, please. Not now. Not Frank.

A casual observer might mistake their work for play. Every person in that room moved with effortless, practiced, intuitive perfection. As if this were a stage production they’d trained all their lives for, rehearsed a thousand hours, each person in their role, their lines and movements so practiced and coordinated they could have done them in their sleep. All for this moment. All for this man.

When the surgeons descend like vultures, seeking stability only, speaking of safe passage, his team snap back. 

No. 

He is theirs. Theirs. This is where he belongs, with them, here, in Robby’s ER. They will not surrender him. The dice will be rolled, the fates will decide, and he will live or die in this place he has given everything to call his home. As he would wish. Garcia understands. Agrees. Scrubs up and steps in without hesitation. He is hers, too, her entrance to the stage as scripted and seamless as all the others. So far, his team have won their battle – Garcia’s war now begins.

Artistry comes in many forms. Adamnson had told him that once, and Robby had agreed, up to a point. But he’d always believed that what they did – that was science. It was logic. It was applying method and mathematics to madness and making miracles. There was a beauty in that, he allowed. What he witnesses in that room finally makes him see what Adamson had tried to tell him.

Yolanda Garcia is an artist in every way it is possible to be. 

Crimson conductor of the bloody symphony they call life, her scalpel seems to sculpt masterpieces from once raw hunks of hewn flesh and torn skin. The Fates themselves have never woven anything so well as she sutures broken bodies, making them believe their sundered forms can be made whole once more. The monitor’s sinus rhythm obediently keeps time, captivated by her skill, and for a while his whole ER dances to her beat, until–

His heart stops.

Jack Abbot moves for the first time in hours. A single step out of his place. Towards the point where time has briefly come to a halt. The world is not ignorant of this shift. It shudders upon its axis. Realises its mistake. Sets it all to rights. Frank Langdon lives again. Jack returns to his place, and the vice-like grip that seemed to briefly hold time still, releases. The storm rages around them once more.

When, at last, it is done, Garcia sets down her conductor’s baton. The scalpel that has saved her friend consigned to the sharps waste to be forgotten, its part in this play done. Letting her shoulders sink and her heart feel the weight of the burden this room and all its eyes had placed upon her for the first time. She slumps in place. Exhausted but triumphant. Final orders given for Frank to be moved somewhere (somewhere in the ER, it goes without saying) so he can rest. Once he does, she will let herself join him in that rest, more than well earned.

Before she leaves to take it, she turns to Abbot, the first of them brave enough to acknowledge the force of calm, so intense at times it borders upon the violent, who has presided over this like a judge over a courtroom. 

A soft smile, tired and wan, but genuine, graces Garcia’s lips for him. A rare thing, which makes it all the more valuable. She confirms aloud for him something that, with all his skill and experience he must know, but evidently still needs to hear: Frank is going to make it. He’s going to be okay. 

For the first time in hours, Robby is sure, Jack lets himself breathe again.

Frank is moved by his team, who gather him up as if they were clouds, then set him down, gentle as a fresh blanket of snow falling to the earth. Once settled, they leave him. A moment of hesitation grips them, as they wonder who among them should stay, for one of their own will not be left long alone within these walls. Yet as one they, like him, feel Jack Abbot’s presence as he steps into the room, and as one they yield to it. None knowing or understanding what tether, hidden from them all in spite of their proximity to both men, exists between them, but feeling in their blood and bones that this vigil is his right, not theirs.

While all the rest depart, in the quiet of this hallowed space, set aside, separate from the chaos as it can be while still upon its fringes, Robby lingers. Drawn by something stronger than he can name or know, he stands on the outside of this hospital room, and watches these two men, the closest Robby has in this hospital, and in his world, and realises he knows neither of them as well as he thinks he did.

The look on Jack’s face, how every line softens into utmost tenderness, with which he beholds Frank, tells Robby so clearly that he had held Jack Abbot’s heart and world in his hands without knowing it at the time. When, and how, and why Frank somehow became Jack’s everything, he is not let in on. Then, nor now. He only knows it to be so, not how it came to be, or how he could have missed it when he’d thought himself so close to them. But then that was before– Before that night where everything changed, when everything true was made false, and everything right became wrong, and everything real became ash in his mouth as love soured to hate within his veins

Fractured and broken, Robby had ripped himself from Frank’s orbit, in gory imitation of the way he had ripped out his heart. But, of course, a man with Frank’s singular gravity would not long be left without some sort of celestial shepherd. Robby, so long his bright, intense burning sun, had finally burned out and left him. Only to be replaced by the quiet, gentle moon that was Jack.

With that circling and swirling in his mind, the intimacy with which Jack now bends down and touches his forehead to Frank’s makes Robby’s bruised, battered heart briefly shudder back to life within his chest. 

He watches Jack hold there for a moment, sinking into that point of contact and letting the comfort of it cradle him. Watches him soaking in the warmth that still remains, thanks to Robby, the soft rhythm of his sleeping beloved's breathing. The moment suspends, as if for a fraction of a second, all the world contains is them. Only them. Allowed to have this moment of utmost humanity, and love, and life.

Then Jack withdraws, first pressing a soft kiss to Frank’s temple. Fingers trail through his hair as he pull back. Feather light, so casual, but so intent, carrying more words than any library could ever hold, unspoken but unnecessary. All felt in that simple touch. The weight of it, the familiarity of it, the ritual of it–