#ongoing series

Sometimes, it was easy for doctors to forget about the patient's minds until a CT came back with something worrisome. They could forget that outside of the body, it was the place where the chokehold of fear and worry took root and gripped patients the moment they came inside these walls. They didn’t need their doctor to be their friend, but they did need comfort of a different sort. 

Robby was good at that - being both doctor and caregiver. 

These patients needed you, and you could be what they needed, an unmovable force to read test results, fix broken bones, and treat life-threatening wounds. All of it was easy because it relies on science and medicine to get you through the day. Of course, it was never just science and medicine that people needed, and you were never able to be that clinical. Robotic or detached. You wanted to give them all the comfort and care that you could muster because when it was you, not so long ago, what saved you wasn’t robotic tones and clinical explanations that felt cold and sterile. You’d been given compassion and empathy. 

The delivery doctor, sitting in a chair beside the bed, her hand clutched with yours, as she explained in soft tones what happened and how they tried to resuscitate him, did all they could - and it wasn’t enough. 

How none of it was your fault. 

“Would you like to hold him?”

Pushing the memory away, you moved to press your back against the prickly texture of the Pittsburgh Trauma Center, applying more and more pressure until you felt the sharp edges begin to puncture the soft fabric of your scrubs. 

You thought over your options, as if you truly had so many, where you could go back inside and play the role of a well-adjusted doctor, because you were a doctor, a fucking good one, but inevitably human. Full of flaws, hopes, and shattered dreams: so painfully human in this moment and broken and right now…right now you couldn’t even help yourself. 

Your eyes closed at the next onslaught of intrusive thoughts that clamored into your head. Each one taking its time in demanding your attention, just so you knew they were there. 

You shouldn’t be doing this - allowing your insecurities and their friends to create a chaotic house party in your mind. You had a patient literally waiting for you back in a room, frightened and on the verge of running, and a mother who was on her way, praying for a miracle. A miracle that you and the team had been unable to perform. 

It was now your turn to prepare to sit beside a grieving mother. To rest your hand on top of hers and explain that none of this was her fault, and how you did everything you could.

“We’ve done everything we can. I’m sorry. Would you like to hold him?”

Blindly, your face fell into the palms of your hands. You were still debating whether you were going to shout into them in hopes of muffling your growing frustration at the haunting memory. Or maybe just scrub at your skin in hopes it would flake off the fresh set of bags under your eyes from all this fresh hell of mental trauma, The Pitt was bringing you. 

Deep breath in. Deep breath out. 

“You doing alright out here?”

It didn’t surprise you when you dropped your hands from your face, eyes now wide open, to find Robby standing a few inches from you. His shoulder was leaning against the small space of the wall you’d left open. The ray of sunlight that escaped through the trees leaves casting a halo effect in his hair. 

It wasn’t surprising to find Robby checking on you. He was the shift attending. It was his duty to make sure all of his staff were okay after events, and sent to Kiara if they weren’t. Robby was also a good man with a big heart. 

“Yeah. Yeah. I’m great.”

You tried to muster a convincing smile. It failed right at takeoff since it couldn’t successfully raise your lips from the sullen frown they were stuck in. Because of this, it earned you a reprimanding head tilt to match the disbelief in his eyes. 

“You’ve never been a good liar.”

“That’s because lying’s for—“

“For assholes. I know,” he smirked as he finished the sentence with you. 

Silence wedged itself between the two of you. It wasn’t claustrophobic or demanded to be filled with aimless small talk. Small talk could never be a simple thing between either of you, anyway. There was too much history, too much knowing, held captive between you. Both of you are unable to tear your eyes away from the other, although a part of you wishes one of you would break. 

It was Robby who tore his gaze away first. His vision fell briefly to the space between you before his attention was fully back on you. His shoulder still pressed against the wall with his hands now tucked inside his hoodie.

“Did you want me to talk to the mom when she gets here?”

Of course, Robby would offer to do it - to take the responsibility of being the bearer of the worst news imaginable. You gave the briefest shake of your head. Enough to help turn your head towards the alcove of the ambulance bay and its subdued colors as you cleared your throat. 

“No. You have enough on your plate. I don’t want to add to it.”

“Come on. My plate will always be full here, but there will always be room for you – to help you,” Robby stammered over the last words.

It was a rush to correct. A rush to pretend that he hadn’t meant exactly what he said. Robby would make time for you even against his better judgment, even when he should hate you. 

You were sure the gesture was meant to be professional, simple. Attendings usually took over for their residents, doctors, and nurses working under them; if a patient asked a question they didn’t feel comfortable answering. If a major life-altering event left them unable to process the event - shock, adrenaline crash, or just plain grief – it made them not able to speak coherent sentences. 

But your stupid pride didn’t take it as Robby giving a simple, kind gesture. Instead, you took it as an inability to do your job and the glaringly fucking loud observation that you couldn’t talk to the mother because you’d been a mother for a life-shattering day. As a doctor, you were supposed to be able to put aside personal thoughts, feelings, or whatever baggage you carried around outside these trauma doors. 

It’s what you should’ve been able to do, no matter who the patient was or could be. You should be able to suppress any emotional instabilities of the sorrow that now rested in the marrow of your bones. A grief so easily reignited, it burned down every carefully reconstructed fragment of who you were trying to be. 

Robby saw it inside trauma one, clocking the shift in mood and movement. Who knew you better than him? The question was easily answered, looking up into eyes that roamed the edges of your face, calculating every shift and change because he knew you. 

Because deep down, you know he still loves you. 

And you didn’t understand why that thought angered you as much as it did. Realistically, you knew there wasn’t any reason you should lash out. Robby wanted to be there to help. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be out here. You need to be civil, grateful – he could notice you had to get out of that room before you broke down all over again. 

“Huh, imagine that,” the words ground out through your teeth. “Quite a change of tone from the hostility earlier.”

You swore you were trying to tease him – the words were meant to be light, something to ease the mood and the tension that was always below the damn surface between you two. Instead of softness, you’d trampled through his attempt at mending the fractured space between you. Each of you yelling from atop your hill, just like before, demanding to be heard without being seen. His kindness was met with a bleak air that sent his head shaking and a hand shooting up to grip the back of his neck in irritation.

You were close to asking him if the migraines still made his neck stiff, but stopped cold as his gaze homed in on you.

“I’m trying to give you an olive branch here.”

‘I’m trying to help,’ the unsaid words lingering under the surface. The irritation began to etch into the crease of his eyes, the indent between his brow. His guard drew back up in a matter of seconds, all because you were ashamed to admit you did want him to talk to the baby’s mother. 

You didn’t want him to think less of you for agreeing to give the responsibility over. It felt too much like pawning off a discomfort that was yours to bear - that you weren’t capable of doing it. 

You shook the thought away because it was a damn idiotic thought. You knew Robby didn’t think that – wouldn’t think that. You inhaled deeply and replied in the same breath as your exhale, “I know.” 

You tore your gaze away, pressing your back against the wall just to feel the small sting of the jagged texture. 

“I know,” you repeated, softer this time, allowing your guard to crack in small amounts. “You’re already dealing with grieving parents and children saying goodbye to their father, Robby. Who knows what else might come through these doors today? You don’t need to add another one to the load you’re already carrying. Not when I’m here.”

The funny thing about dealing with other people in the throes of your own grief – it had a way of clawing it out of the grave it’d been buried in. It happened already outside Mr. Spencer’s room, where his children sat diligently by his side. It was a mixture of that room that held the echo of Adamson and his final moments, which no doubt triggered Robby’s own avalanche of unresolved grief.

The funny thing about grief, it could play the long game. Its patience was limitless, while it allowed you to run around putting up blockades to keep it out. You could never keep it out for long, no matter how hard anyone tried, and when it finally collapsed, it left you floundering for solid ground. 

It’s what happened to Robby in the bathroom. You weren’t sure what broke him, but when you’d come barreling through the door, it wasn’t because Robby missed you that he’d anchored himself to you. He’d simply been a man drowning in all he’d tried to suppress, and you’d been the safest place for him to find harbor in the storm. 

“You’re right. It can be a lot on days like today. I can handle it. What I saw in there with you—”

You hated the soft hush in his tone. The caution on whether or not it was safe to mention him. Your eyes closed in a weak attempt to shut the world out around you as your heart slammed against your ribs. A part of you wanted to hear him say his name – to acknowledge him and his importance over Adamson. You’d loved Adamson just as much as Robby. Without question, you loved your son more. 

It wasn’t fair. 

“It caught me off guard, Robby, that's all.”

“A lot of things are going to catch you off guard down here. It’s our job to be able to deal with it because if we can’t, it’s going to crush you and just keep going.”

“Is that what you call having a panic attack in the bathroom, Robby? Dealing with it?”

Fuck. 

It irritated you that he talked to you like one of his med students. As if he forgot you’d spent years down in this pit with him. The words came out molten and unforgiving. Say his name! You were looking back at him now and hated the way your eyes stung. The way old wounds opened up and corroded the present just like it was two years ago, with nothing resolved, because it wasn’t. 

A dry laugh rushed past his lips. This time, it was his turn to look away from you. His whole body ejecting away from you, the few feet of closeness he dared since the bathroom fiasco. You both couldn’t be civil when you stood in a cemetery of unresolved issues. 

It’s what happens when you bury grief. It poisons everything you love and turns it bitter. 

“Wow.”

He muttered the word softly enough that you strained to hear it. At first, you weren’t sure you had heard anything before he turned to face you, and all the delicate good faith that’d sent him out here to check on you was gone. The old feeling of fight or flight sent your adrenaline into overdrive, your back going rigged to prepare for a carousel of a battle you’d long removed yourself from.

“When did we get like this?” 

The question stunned you and left you blinking stupidly at him. The lead up of adrenaline for a possible fight screeching to a halt. 

“What?”

Queen of witty comebacks. That was you. 

Robby came to stand beside you. His back against the wall, but his gaze trained forward. 

“We used to talk about anything – everything. We didn’t hold back details; if it was about your day, mine, or just shit that happened. We didn’t have arguments - we called them discussions. Remember that? We had this life together, and it was crazy and beautiful, and it was ours. We used to fucking talk. When did we replace it with silence-with hostility?”

Robby looked at you then. His eyes hopelessly watching for any sign that you held the answer to the downfall of your relationship. Or maybe, just maybe, he was hoping you magically held the answer on a way to salvage something from the wreckage. 

You wanted to tell him he already knew the moments, small and big, that had accumulated since the pandemic. One loss that shut him off to the world, followed by a shared experience of overwhelming sorrow neither of you saw coming. Robby was right. You both used to talk; if a disagreement occurred, the two of you discussed the issue. It wasn’t until after the pandemic, a year in a half later, the loss of Noah, that discussions became arguments. 

The two of you talking, but never listening; saying everything and nothing all at once. If either of you had been honest instead of denying the loss, things might’ve been different. 

"Truthfully?” You replied, voice apprehensive. “I think we knew once we spoke the truth out loud, it could never be taken back. It’s different if we see and know the saddest, deepest parts of ourselves, but...saying it out loud? That's different. We become vulnerable when telling another living soul. It makes it real, and we can't hide from it anymore. We kept those things from each other at the end, Robby – the sadness, all the loss gave us. We just kept trying to package it all down, and look where that got us.”

Silence crept between you as Robby considered your words. His arms moved to cross against his stomach, chin tucked down at his chest, and body slouched beside you. 

It was stupid to be having this conversation at work. In the damn ambulance bay of all places. It didn’t offer the illusion of privacy, which felt like this conversation needed. You shouldn’t be worried; you wanted to remind yourself. Either one or both of you would end it before it got too deep. Always too afraid to ask the lingering questions, leaving everything unresolved. 

The sounds of the city rushed back to swallow up the silence. It swelled around in motor exhaust, car horns, and muffled sounds of shouting. It should’ve felt closer, but with Robby standing close beside you, it all began to fade into the background of the bubble Robby and you were creating. 

“I haven’t changed anything.” 

The timber of his voice jolted you out of your thoughts and forced you to look at him. Your confusion tightening up your brow to form the question you couldn’t say. 

“Noah’s room. All the furniture and clothes are still in there. I can’t bring myself to step inside his room and remove him even after all this time.” Robby looked at you, and your heart plummeted into your stomach. Your mouth forming around a singular word: Don’t, but unable to speak. “I know you left, but – but I tell myself if I clean out his room, then the life we had, everything about it will just be gone.”

“Robby—” you tried to cut him off, but he spoke over you. Robby was determined to say what he needed and nothing, not even tears or a helpless breath of please would stop him. 

“I realized I’m not ready to let go just yet.”

Your eyes shifted around his face, trying to read and decipher every angle of it for a chance of deception. This felt like a sick joke from the universe that now, fucking now, of all times of waiting for him to open up about practically anything, Robby chose to do it now. Now, at the beginning of a shift you never wanted and were practically strong-armed into taking. 

If you were both supposed to begin sharing truths so freely, what did he expect you to start sharing? It was too personal; none of it felt acceptable to say in an ambulance bay outside the automatic doors of a trauma center. 

Yet, you wanted to tell him everything and nothing all at the same time. All those years spent missing him and trying to replace him, but how do you move on from someone who felt like your heart in human form? The answer was simple. You didn’t. 

Hearing Robby say Noah’s name out loud for the first time in almost three years was a huge step. For so long, he wouldn’t acknowledge Noah or Adamson in conversations. If anyone asked him, he shut down with either deflection or anger to the point that people were scared to bring it up. Except Dana, she wasn’t scared, and Jack was respectful enough not to push. 

Today. Right now, at this very moment, Robby was facing you and for the first time spoke your son’s name. Noah’s room and the crib his father built him still occupied the space that the two of you spent months building for him. 

No. You didn’t know what to say. You could only feel your heart swell with love before grief came to burst it into a thousand pieces. Robby carefully considered you while he took a cautious step towards you. His body converged into your space until it forced your eyes to train on him, with nowhere to run. 

“I have one more truth I’m willing to share, and one you’re not ready to hear but…” Robby turned away from you. The split second of broken connection was enough to give him the strength to say whatever truth lay buried in his chest. 

When he looked back at you, you felt every bit of the crushing weight of the depth of his sadness those brown eyes held. Your mind etched into memory the way his shoulders slowly moved inward, guarded and broken. His hands were tucked into the pockets of his hoodie, only making the collapse glaringly loud. 

But Robby and you never used to hide anything from one another. You didn’t, until you did, and now you weren’t sure if there would ever be a way back from all the secrets you’d both kept, or if you were ready for the honesty that awaited either of you. 

“It took a long time to admit this after you left. I wanted to hate you. It would’ve been easier; made this realization easier to swallow, but…I will love you for the rest of my life.” The sincerity in his words – the break that clipped in the way he spoke your name with what felt like a lifetime of emotion reflected in his eyes that used to look at you with such warmth. Now, all you could see was a man standing in front of you. The weight of losing everything he cared for was crushing down on him. “And sometimes, I think, what an odd thing to feel when I know you wouldn’t be here for any of it.”

A breath of a moment stretched into an infinite loop as your breath became trapped and screaming in your lungs. While your heart constricted against your ribs, your hands shaking from the strain, struggling against the urge to reach out and touch his face in comfort like you used to. You could feel the phantom weight of his cheek resting in the safety of your palm. The tip of his nose grazed across your wrist before he turned to plant a kiss there.

“I can’t unlove you, and the truth is I don’t want to.” He shrugged into the words, his body caving further inwards with his hands tugging inside his hoodie’s pockets. “The truth is, I miss you every moment of every day. I wake up and, I don’t know if it’s because you’re it, you’re my person,  that I’m always searching for you in everyone else I meet. Or if I’m scared, I’ll wake up and realize I’m starting to forget what your favorite flower was or how you specifically needed the towels to be folded. I love and miss you in equal measure, and I know…I know we broke one another, but I have to believe that we can come back from this, because I can’t imagine living the rest of this life without knowing you’re in it.”

There wasn’t a way to hide the shaking your body produced, even though you attempted to stifle it. Your arms crossed, uncrossed, or fidgeting with your hands, and placing them inside the pockets of your scrubs. Nothing kept out the urge to rush over to him and throw yourself against him. 

“Robby,” you cautioned, “It’s not that simple.”

It wasn’t. Ignoring the cracks in the foundation didn’t stop them from getting any bigger. Pretty words could never be enough to keep it from collapsing, leaving every weak attempt at patching it up exposed. Words were easiest to say when they weren’t having to be followed by action. 

His teeth drew his lip into his mouth, while his eyes darted away from you for the first time since he spoke. 

“I know. I know,” he replied sadly. 

A part of you wondered if spilling your own confession would make the situation worse. You couldn’t leave him out here to wonder if you loved him less - if you moved on completely. You hadn’t. You couldn’t, but maybe telling him that would only make things worse. 

What are we pretending to be here?

It was the real question that ached to be asked, sitting at the back of your throat. It scratched like a cough and begged to be released. It felt honest - an important question that deserved an equally honest answer because, what the fuck was happening? He should hate you. Robby had every right to hate you, and you should’ve both moved on with your lives instead of being here, burning in the purgatory of longing, but…he didn’t. You didn’t. 

So, you did the awkward thing and tried to lighten the mood with all the grace of a car crash. 

“You know,” you began numbly, feeling the wrongness of the words as they formed in your mouth, “I came out here to escape from the trauma inside, not to have more trauma dumped on me.”

You attempted to drown the words in laughter. A quiet huff was all you could muster past your lips; past arms that constricted around your body in a protective layer to stop you from reaching out to him. By the soft smile that upturned his lips and the sorrow that hollowed out his eyes, you knew the mirth you’d tried to build was extinguished the minute it passed through your lips. 

At some point, as you listened to his confession, you felt yours rising in your throat. How many nights have you spent curled in bed facing what used to be Robby’s side of the bed?. Everything inside your house is still foreign, and the missing pieces of him are scattered throughout the home - his glasses sitting on the bathroom or kitchen counters or resting between his fingers in a hand that rested on the soft rise of his sleeping chest. 

It had taken the full two years for you to relearn how to comfortably sleep alone, and yet, you could still feel the ghost of an ache to feel the warmth of his hand snaking around your middle to pull you close. The graze of his lips that trailed butterfly kisses along your shoulder. 

Movies made it seem so easy to start again – pick up right where you left off with the one you love as if no time had passed. As if all the reasons that made you leave, the distance, the avoidance, and the pent-up anger in the first place, magically became a nightmare you’d woken up from. 

No. Unless you could both heal properly, be honest for once about the last few months outside of small confessions in offer of complacency, old demons would always open new wounds. 

It was that realization that left your eyes stinging; losing a battle to keep it all locked up, keep it locked up tight so no one sees you breaking, when the first tear escaped through your lashes and exposed what you couldn’t say. You didn’t need to tell Robby this - the denial of his request was written plainly in your silence, in the way you shattered. He’d seen you broken so many different times, in different ways, that he could read what you struggled to say, mouth gaping like a water-starved fish, and angry hands wiping furiously at your face. 

You didn’t want to watch him break - his own hand scrubbing at his face – but you couldn’t look away. If you were honest, you could’ve told him the silent “No” wasn’t absolute. Shit, it barely held any weight at all because every fiber of your being screamed for you to open your fucking mouth and just tell him  - TELL HIM that this wasn’t no. It was never again. It was a plea to fix things because you knew if you couldn’t do that, the second time around, when you broke one another, no one would survive. 

You opened your mouth to tell him – to stop being such a fucking coward – when the sudden smack of a palm on concrete left you jumping half way out of your skin. 

“Robby, we need you back inside.”

Langdon. Of course, it was always Langdon with his shitty timing. 

Robby didn’t respond right away. He watched you, waited for you, allowing you a few more minutes to attempt to say the words that were left lodged like a traffic jam inside your airway. When nothing came, he hung his head for a brief second before he looked back up. Robby gave one last glance in your direction before his eyes shifted over his shoulder to a waiting Langdon. 

“Yeah. I’ll be right there.”

He didn’t look at you again as he passed you to head back inside. You gave yourself a few extra minutes to clean yourself up before heading behind the pair and back inside the madness that was The Pitt. 

Robby followed blindly behind Langdon into the room, which was in the midst of chaos. The nurses moved in a synchronized frenzy around the room to start an IV to allow Santos to push in what appeared to be another four of lorazepam, which, from what Robby could catch, was opening up the debate of whether to press Keppra or intubate. 

It was mechanical the way he moved around the room with his body drifting out of the way and back in with the frantic tide that crashed around the island of the gurney. The way Robby found himself asking questions about the length of the seizure, his ears straining to register the response from Santos as she broke down the time and medication given. It was a dance Robby knew all the steps to. For that, he was grateful, because his body was here in this trauma room, but his mind was still outside with you. 

Stupid. Stupid, stupid, fucking stupid! 

The word pinballed around his head with a frenzied velocity. In a brief moment of madness, of weakness (it’s all he could call it), Robby caved into the wild thought that if he exposed just enough of the sorrow his demons fed on, it would be enough. He allowed himself to hope that maybe the kiss inside that bathroom rekindled something for you, too; Robby knew he could be crazy, but he wasn’t delusional. 

You’d kissed him back. 

Or fuck, maybe he was fucking delusional. Maybe he’d been too honest not just with you, but with himself. For a long time, Robby told himself he did hate you. He hated you for coming home to a house so devoid of your presence; he wondered if he’d made you up. A coma patient locked inside a fog-induced dream where his life was good, whole, and burst into a constellation of moments that filled that life with purpose. 

A life scattered with moments of you. 

He hated you because after he frantically searched every room in the house - every room except that one, because Robby knew he’d never find you there, never there - he’d shattered. His knees hinging forward to make contact with the hardwood at the top of the staircase, and he tried to remember how his lungs were supposed to work. 

Robby could say he hated you for everything that came after, but what he hated most was how he didn’t hate you. Not even a little bit. What tore at him - this hatred he built - was born from the grief of loss. First, Adamson, then his son, and now you. 

What had he done in life to earn so much loss? Was he a bad son? Had he not been enough? Did he fail too many people in his life - fail his patients? Did he not care enough? Give enough? What had he done to make everything - everyone - he ever fucking cared about decide he wasn’t enough to fight for?

No, Robby couldn’t hate you. It might’ve been easier, simpler to do it, but it wouldn’t be fair. He hated himself the most because with every waking hour since he’d come home to an empty life, Robby wondered what he could’ve done differently so that you would’ve stayed. 

Robby came back to the present with his hand firmly placed on the patient's forehead. His pen light flashed back and forth into his eyes to catch any hint of a reaction. Robby was aware Santos was informing him about her desire to prep to give Keppra, while simultaneously making it known she disagreed with Langdon’s desire to weigh and press the last two milligrams of lorazepam.

“Dr. Langdon’s patient, Dr. Langdon’s call.”

He hoped the tension he sensed brimming between the two of them was something he could conclude to a shitty projection to go along with a shitty day. At least, that’s what Robby hoped it was because he wasn’t sure he could take any more bad news today. 

You watched from a distance as Robby converged inside trauma one without so much as a glance behind him. You weren’t sure why you expected it or, more truthfully, you hated the fact you had expected something. 

After what transpired outside with his words with that fucking look in his eyes haunting you with every step you took, you almost felt compelled to run back outside, but this time, instead of stopping, you would keep running. Run until lactic acid builds up inside fatigued muscles; until your lungs burn with each new breath and you finally collapse. 

It was a tempting thought until your brain finally clicked on and-

“Fuck!” You muttered under your breath. 

Your patient. The one you’d left with Princess and Javadi was in the room waiting for you to return. You’d left to take in the baby but never returned. Your feet were already bounding you forward, while your hands secured around your stethoscope to keep it from falling. You weaved your way through gurneys, patients, and staff until you came to the doorway of her room and found it…empty. 

Empty was okay. It didn’t mean a damn thing. She did have orders for CT, and it was possible that one of the radiology team came down to get her. Your hands still grasping your stethoscope, your eyes scanned central for any sign of Javadi or Princess. It was more likely that once you’d left, Javadi would go back to find McKay, which left Princess as your best bet for information. 

You moved to circle around central with your eyes scanning inside rooms and down hallways. Eventually, you knew you would see Princess or get lucky enough to see Kat being wheeled back to the room. 

It wasn’t until you were halfway down the south hallway that you finally spotted Princess behind a curtain. Her gloved hands carefully wrapped a patient's ankle with bright blue cling gauze. You could hear your shoes make a good awful screech as you came to a halt to backtrack into the room. 

“Good afternoon,” you smiled tightly at the patient before you directed your attention to Princess. “Patient in 2 North: she in CT?”

“Nope,” Princess replied, being especially sassy by popping the P. “She’s gone.”

“What do you mean gone?”

“I mean, Dr. Fullerton, after we distributed the mifepristone, she dipped.”

“Why didn’t you wait to give it to her until after I had my CT results?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, am I supposed to be a mind reader?” Princess directed back at you. Her hands never stopped the procession work in front of her as she looked at you. “You asked me to check in with Javadi and to stay with her until you returned. You’d put in the order for mifepristone, which we administered while we waited for Her Highness to return, which, by the way, was almost a full fifteen minutes.”

“Anything else you’d like to get off your chest, Princess, before I go?”

You didn’t have room to be snappy with her. Princess’s play-by-play of what took place in the last twenty or so minutes went down exactly like that. It was your fault for putting in orders without directly giving directions on how and when you wanted it released. You hadn’t told Javadi or Princess you wanted Kat to have to wait for it - the CT results were more important. 

But you’d told neither of them your game plan because your attention was ripped away from one patient to the next, and it wasn’t anyone’s fault. This was an emergency department, and shit like this happened all day, but you having a mini breakdown wasn’t in the cards and had cost valuable time with not only Kat, but other patients. You’d planned on involving Kiara for assistance, and now every plan you’d tried to capitalize on to help that young girl evaporated just like her presence. 

Princess shot you a look that would’ve left Medusa impressed, and you held your hands up in surrender. 

“You’re right, Princess. I didn’t communicate what I wanted to be done,” you relented. “I guess I’m still getting my bearings back from being thrust down into hell,” then to the patient who looked a tad concerned, “No offense.”

You caught the smirk Princess tried to hide by ducking her chin to her chest. Her hands swiftly finished up the angled wrap before securing it and taking a step back from the patient. 

“It’s alright,” she hummed. “I should’ve tried to stop her before she left. She didn’t seem in any shape to be leaving anyway.”

“No,” you agreed. “No, she wasn’t.” 

You moved back behind the curtain as Princess removed her gloves and threw them in the nearest waste bin. You both started moving down the hallway back towards central, with her stopping to get a few pumps from the sanitizer dispenser on the wall.

“Do you think she’ll come back?”

“I’m not all too sure. She seemed worried even while she was in here, and the incident with Langdon didn’t really help matters.”

“Yeah, I’m not surprised there. She and Langdon got into it the last time she was here a few months back. Surprised she even came back.”

You stopped just outside the entrance to the central nursing station and looked up at the screen. Princess went inside to find a computer, and you found your feet carrying over to where she’d parked herself. 

“Oh, I forgot to ask: Javadi. How did she do?”

Princess gave a small shrug while she grimaced as if the right words were either hard to find or unpleasant. 

“She seems okay, but she’s really nervous and jittery. Stammers a lot.”

“I meant with the patient, Princess. How was she with the patient?”

“Oh, she was okay. Still jittery and awkward, though.”

It was normal for staff to give the new kids a hard time, clocking every awkward gesture or wrong move in the name of medicine. While some staff would make bets about who would show up again for their next shift or who wouldn’t, it was always clear that it was done with the best of intentions. It was a dysfunctional family down here after all, and a family wasn’t complete without a few odd ducks. 

You drummed a set of knuckles against the counter. Your eyes roamed the board up and down multiple times because absolutely none of it was inspiring you to turn around and get back on the floor. You blew a raspberry as you considered the buffet of options one last time before Princess caught your attention. The gleam in her eyes was the first tell-tale sign she was up to no good. 

“You and Robby were outside for quite a long time,” she observed before giving you a wink. 

“And on that note, I think I just found an ingrown toenail with my name on it.”

“Oh, come on!” Princess quipped behind you. “We just want to know when Mom and Dad are going to make up.”

You gave her an absent-minded wave and didn’t bother to look back. There was a strong chance her accusing gaze was following you, or worse, with the beginning hint of a smirk that she might have caught the blush slowly burning up your cheeks like wildfire. 

As always, thank you so much for reading! Reblogs and comments are always appreciated! Much Love.