#rel. robby

The rooftop. They had to stop meeting here and like this, but he supposed the alternative could be far worse. Better up here than the ground below.

Jack stepped closer, hands shoved into his pockets as he approached the edge, then withdrew them to rest along the railing. Just close enough to grasp Robby if needed, but far enough to give his friend some space. That was the important part, the offer of autonomy to someone on the edge. They needed to make their own decision; that was how he saw it. Robby had done the same for him once. It was only fair he returned the gesture.

"I guess you could call it a hunch," he replied with a nonchalant shrug. His eyes drifted away from Robby and out over the city before them; a sky that should have been full of stars, obscured instead by the wash of streetlights. The joys of city life, he supposed.

Her eyes darted to the clock on the wall, it was already past nine PM. God, how she hated that clock some evenings. The ticking was impossible to hear over the chaos of the ward, but just looking at it, watching the seconds tick by, she could imagine the sound well enough.

But then Robby's words pierced through the noise and rendered the world around her silent. Over the past while, he had said more and more things that only hammered her worries home. She had tried prodding, pushing, even cornering him, but nothing seemed to work. The worry was eating her alive, and she was running low on nicotine to stay sane. In fact, there wasn't enough of it in the world to calm her nerves about whatever Robby was planning in that brilliant but complex mind of his.

So when he said that, it gave her hope and broke her heart in the same breath. The question seemed to her like a cry for help, and Dana would be a terrible nurse if she didn't answer it.