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Taking the stairs up to the roof on his way to passively contemplate killing himself was an important part of his self-flagellation routine. Jack still hadn’t successfully figured out a way to manage a 12-hour shift without his prosthetic chafing – the answer probably lay somewhere in taking more breaks but who was he kidding, that was never going to happen – so it took forever and hurt like a bitch.
Realistically, it was probably a good thing that he had more time to process his thoughts between leaving the Pitt and sliding under the railing.
He tried to limit his roof trips to at least once a week, for Robby, Dana and his therapist’s sakes. Most of the time, they weren’t acutely dangerous. Often, he just needed a breath of fresh air by himself, at least 100 feet above the relentless din of Pittsburgh traffic, and to be reminded of his insignificance in the face of the city stretched out before him.
Today probably fell within the mid-range on the Jack Abbot suicidal scale. The shift wasn’t the worst, they had miraculously only lost one patient despite receiving three GSWs, two MVCs, and an overdose. But there had been a nasty domestic violence case with children involved, the delivery of a terminal cancer diagnosis which would always be triggering, and to top it all off, one of the MVC victims was going to require an amputation – at the elbow, but still.
Perhaps the ghosts of his past were having an early Halloween celebration.
So, after handing off to Robby – things weren’t dire enough that he needed to line up the timing of his roof trip as a cry for help – he began trudging his way up the 11 flights of stairs.
At 06:57, the upper floors of PTMC were usually reasonably quiet, which was excellent for the days where Jack was radiating vibes hostile to small-talk and “Good Mornings”. It was to his great surprise then that as he reached the fifth floor, he heard a door slam shut and the sound of footsteps hurrying towards him. He assumed it must be a rogue patient, most staff members weren’t in the habit of running down the stairs – that’s what the elevator was for.
He paused, peering up the spiral to assess whether he could be of some assistance to whatever poor nurse was probably chasing behind.
It was to his great shock then, that he came face-to-face with Dennis Whitaker.
Whitaker froze upon laying eyes on Jack, and then promptly started backing up the stairs again in such a tentative way that Jack couldn’t help but laugh.
“Dr Abbot,” he squeaked, voice at least an octave higher than usual.
“Hey kid, whatcha doing up here?” Now this was a distraction worthy of taking his mind off of his pending suicidal thoughts.
Whitaker had only done two night shifts since he started his rotation, now three weeks ago. He was good for a MS4, clearly had a strong base level medical knowledge, was observant on intake and squeezed an impressive amount of empathy into his bedside manner. He and Robby seemed to have bonded, but out of the new kids, Jack had been struggling to connect with him the most.
Santos had stood out instantly with her ballsy moves, he and Mel had bonded over chats about the VA, and even Javadi successfully disguised her lack of enthusiasm for emergency medicine enough for Jack to impart some wisdom. But Whitaker seemed to be struggling with Jack’s tendency for bluntness, and often hesitated to follow instructions, seemingly out of a fear that Jack was constantly being sarcastic. To be fair, he often was, but usually not while talking through a chest tube.
And, as he was in the habit of forgetting, he was an attending which tended to scare at least the med students away from talking to him.
Still, the kid had been there for Pittfest, so they were trauma bonded for life.
Whitaker seemed to be incapable of stringing together a reply to Jack, his eyes darting back and forth instead, likely trying to plan his escape.
Jack tried again.
“You’re seven minutes late. Robby won’t be pleased.” Whitaker took this as an opportunity to attempt moving past him.
“I’m so sorry Dr Abbot, I slept through my alarm, it won’t happen again I swear. I’ll just be heading now.”
Ironically, alarm bells began ringing in Jack’s head, and he placed a hand on Whitaker’s shoulder to stop him from slipping past.
“Hold up… weren’t you coming from an appointment upstairs or something?” He knew that Whitaker generally gave off anxious vibes, but something was definitely off about this story.
“Oh, uh, yeah, right, of course. I, uh, slept through my alarm, and then was late to my, uh, appointment on Level 9?”
That shouldn’t have been a question. Jeez he was a terrible liar, Jack made a mental note for guiding him on future patient interactions.
“Endocrinology takes appointments before 7am?” Jack knew he shouldn’t push, after all, if Whitaker was telling the truth, he was being unnecessarily invasive towards someone under his supervision. But his gut told him that he’d stumbled across something here, something begging to be uncovered.
“Look, Dr Abbot, I’m too half-asleep to think of a better lie right now, and I’m really running late so can we agree that you don’t, or at least shouldn’t, care about my personal life and let me go get told off by Robby?”
Huh, so the kid did have some snark deep down. He looked forward to teasing that out the next time he was on night shift.
“Don’t worry, I’ll text Robby for you, say you were helping me out with something.” Whitaker shifted uncomfortably, but thankfully didn’t make any suggestion of moving. He didn’t seem interested in commenting any further though.
Now, Jack was as anti-enhanced interrogation as the next guy who had treated wounds resulting from the practice, but he wasn’t beyond a little emotional manipulation.
“Aw, come on kid, spill the beans. I had a shitty shift and was about to go contemplate my mortality on the top of the roof. I could use the distraction.”
Whitaker’s expression morphed into something horrified, and for a second Jack was worried he’d gone too far and the kid was going to 302 him, or worse, report him to Robby.
“Relax, I’m joking. Mostly.” Clearly, Whitaker needed to spend more time on night shifts.
“Fine, I finished late yesterday and decided to crash for the night on Level 8. Happy?” The plot thickened.
“The abandoned one?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t have any sleeping stuff on you,” he pointed out. “Did you literally just sleep on the floor? That can’t have been comfortable.” He was getting closer to the answer, he could feel it.
“I left it up there, in case I needed to come back tonight.” Ah. There it was. For as much as Jack had enjoyed puzzling out the strange behaviour of his med student, he couldn’t say it was satisfying to have landed upon the reason. Time for him to go back to being a responsible attending.
“Whitaker, you know I was in the Army, right?”
“Uhhhh, yes sir!” Whitaker snapped up and gave the most half-assed salute that would have instantly seen him running laps if Corporal Jack Abbot had been on duty. Jack pinched his nose.
“Please never do that again.” Whitaker relaxed a bit, still understandably on edge.
“So, I was lucky I got my leg blown off not too long in, not only do I get disability payments from the VA but I was able to enter the workforce earlier and less traumatised than most.”
“Lucky,” Whitaker echoed faintly.
“Anyway, point I’m making is a lot of my mates weren’t so lucky. In fact, several of them, for a variety of reasons, ended up living on the streets.”
“I’m not homeless.” Jack raised his eyebrow.
“Sorry I mean, I’m not unhoused.” Jesus this kid was going to be the death of him.
“Whitaker, I’m couldn’t give less of a fuck about what language you use to describe your living situation. What I do care about is making sure that you’re not spending all 24 hours of your day in this repulsive building.” No wonder the kid was so pale.
Whitaker looked sheepish and Jack started to worry he had been too harsh.
“Ok fine, I may sort of be, between houses right now.”
Sometimes, Jack’s brain had a habit of working faster than his mouth, which is how the first thing he blurted out in response to Whitaker’s heartbreaking revelation ended up being, “That’s perfect!”
Understandably, Whitaker seemed a little miffed by this. “I mean, I wouldn’t call it perfect, but yeah it’s definitely better than what I was doing before. Please don’t report me to Gloria, I really don’t want to have to go back to –”
“Sorry, my bad, I should have clarified. You coming to live with me is perfect. Oh, just wait until Pip finds out about this, she’s going to be thrilled.”
“Who?” Whitaker looked completely lost, and ok maybe he was coming on too strong, but once Jack Abbot had put his mind to something, there was no stopping him.
“My daughter. She just moved out of home last month to go off to college and has been scheming to try to get me out of living in an empty house. It’s not compatible with my suicidal tendencies.”
“You have a daughter?” At least he stuck onto that point, rather than the suicidal tendencies.
“Do I not give off enough girl-dad energy to you Whitaker?”
The fact that Jack, admittedly through his daughter, was up to date on internet terminology only seemed to make him gawk more.
“More importantly, Whitaker, I have a spare room. Two, in fact, if you include my daughter’s – though I’m not sure anyone else could sleep in a room with that many Doctor Who posters. Even I am too chicken to close my eyes with a weeping angel staring down on me.”
“Uhhhhh.” Right, of course, he recalled the kid mentioning he was from rural Nebraska, the likelihood of him getting a Doctor Who reference was low. He pressed on.
“And I think that a mutually beneficial solution to both our problems would be you coming to live in that spare room.”
There, that was explicit enough, wasn’t it? Jack couldn’t believe his luck, Pip had been trying to bully him into considering posting on the PTMC noticeboard that he was looking for a roommate, but he’d been highly sceptical about advertising his personal circumstances to all his colleagues.
He could easily see himself living with this kid though, and more importantly, he cared enough to not just pawn him off to social services which, whilst they played an important role, would no doubt be insufficient in the face of the crippling debt forced onto med students who weren’t funded by the Bank of Mom and Dad.
Whitaker had the same expression on his face as when Jack threw a procedure at him that he’d never done before.
“I appreciate the offer Dr Abbot, truly, that’s more than generous but I really can’t afford to pay you rent right now.”
“Kid, I earn a mid-range six figure salary. I paid off the mortgage on my house a while ago. It would be a crime for me to charge you rent. Plus, you’ll be doing me a favour by giving me one more reason to feel guilty about killing myself.”
Judging by the expression on Whitaker’s face again, maybe he needed to reign in the suicide jokes around the med students.
“Most of the time we’re on different shifts, we’ll barely see each other,” he continued. Whitaker looked less paralysed by now and more like he was slowly warming to the idea.
“Seriously, you’d be doing me a huge favour. Don’t feel pressured, but come and try it out at least, if it doesn’t work out, I will personally make sure you find a home somewhere else. But you can’t keep living in this hospital kid, I won’t report you but there’s all sorts of HR nightmares awaiting if someone else finds out.”
That seemed to do the trick, he could only imagine the stress involved with sleeping in a room that, however abandoned, made him liable to discovery by any of the thousands of people who worked in the building.
“Ok,” Whitaker said in a small voice, and Jack couldn’t believe it, had he actually managed to be persuasive enough?
“I’ve got the night off. I’ll pick you up at 7 this evening. But I’ll expect you to be late.” He winked and Whitaker gave him a small smile, clearly still shaken by their conversation.
“And don’t worry, I’ll shoot Robby that text now.”
(07:13) Jack: Stole Whitaker for a bit, don’t go too hard on him for being late.
(07:13) Robby: K.
He flipped his phone screen to show Whitaker, who seemed apprehensive at the brevity of Robby’s response.
“It’s almost a guarantee that Robby won’t reply with anything longer than one-letter responses when he’s mid-shift, but an instantaneous reply means that you probably haven’t missed any major traumas,” he reassured him.
Whitaker nodded gratefully.
“Thank you, Dr Abbot, truly, you have no idea what this means.”
“Like I said, I’ve had friends in a similar boat before. They didn’t always let me help them, and let’s just say, they’re not doing too well right now. Letting someone help you can be one of the bravest things a person can do.”
Whitaker shifted his feet again, still looking uncomfortable.
“If that’s the case Dr Abbot, I don’t mean to overstep, but do you want to talk about your shift? Or do you want me to let Robby know?”
Oh he’d walked right into that one.
“I appreciate it Whitaker, but don’t you go worrying about my mental stability. That’s what my therapist is for. Also, this,” he pointed between the two of them, “has made my whole day.”
Thankfully, Whitaker just nodded, and he made a mental note to look into free therapy services to recommend, he couldn’t imagine that housing insecurity on top of this godforsaken job was conducive to good mental health.
“I’d better let you go before Robby has my ass, but one last thing – I refuse to be Dr Abbot when I’m off-shift, and especially in my house, so please call me Jack.”
“Thank you. Jack.” Whitaker smiled before scurrying off, inevitably to still be scolded by Robby.
Jack stayed in the stairwell until he could no longer hear the echo of footsteps, before pushing open the closest door. He was already calculating exactly how much time he needed to clean and set up the house, call his daughter to tell her the good news and then beg for interior design recommendations for the spare bedroom, and to actually go back to cooking dinner tonight, for two.
It was probably best he took the elevator.