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Jack walked into the Pitt at 8pm. Late, if he had been on shift, but today he walked in wearing his best jeans, a charcoal shirt and his leather jacket, and looking for his wayward … whatever they were.
Lena looked up from central. “Hot date?”
“Well, that was the plan,” he muttered half to himself. “Have you seen El Jefe?”
Lena pointed up.
Jack swore. He figured it had to have been a bad shift when Robby didn’t show at the bar. He was usually on time, and for him to not even message he was running late was unusual.
“Yeah, they had a rough last couple of hours. Dana had to leave to pick up her daughter, but told me to message you if I didn’t see him come back down in the next five minutes, and to send someone up to the roof.”
Bless Dana Evans.
“Thanks, Lena.” He made straight for the elevator.
-
When he got to the roof Robby was thankfully standing on the right side of the rail, leaning against it with his back to the door, staring out into the Pittsburgh night. It was a mild spring night, but Robby was wearing a thick hoodie. Jack was a bit hot in his jacket to be honest but there had been other reasons for that choice.
If Robby heard his footsteps he showed no sign of it. Jack settled in beside him, leaning on the rail too.
Robby finally raised his head and looked at Jack. Big sad brown eyes in full effect. Jack’s stomach fell, but Robby looked him up and down purposefully and slowly. “You look good.” Robby’s voice was rougher than usual.
Jack decided to start light. “Hmm well someone did suggest I might get lucky tonight if I played my cards right, so I thought I’d make an effort.”
“I hear he’s a dick and stands people up.”
“He is, but he has his compensations.” Jack resisted the urge to make a dirty joke about Robby’s dick being one of those compensations. Probably veering away from light straight into horny with that one. He swallowed. “Rough one?”
Robby drew the silence out but eventually answered. “Yeah. MVC. Three members of the same family. I had to break it to the son when he came in.” He put his head down on the rail.
“I’m sure you did all you could, brother.”
Robby said nothing to that and raised his head to look out over the city again. He did edge slightly closer to Jack’s arm, so they were lightly touching. Jack pressed back.
“Don’t think I’m great company right now. You dressed up for nothing.”
“Not for nothing. You at least checked me out.”
Robby’s smile was small and brief, but Jack would take any sort of positive emotional response from Robby right now.
“I don’t wanna leave you by yourself right now, Robby.”
Robby didn’t reply but also didn’t argue he was fine. Baby steps.
Jack took his phone out of his jacket pocket.“ Well, if we’re not going to Allie’s, I guess I can bring the pizza and beer to you. Pepperoni fine?”
Robby nodded.
Jack squinted and opened the phone app. Better to go directly to the source in this case than via the delivery app. Marco usually worked Friday nights.
He could feel Robby look over this shoulder.
“Marco is in your Favourites?”
“Below you, honey.”
He just knew Robby had rolled his eyes, but Jack was wearing him down with the nicknames.
They stood quietly waiting for Marco. Robby was not being particularly forthcoming about whatever else was on his mind, but Jack filled the silence with the stupidest stories from night shift, his Mom’s story about her book group and his serious theories on who was most likely to play the Penguins in the next round of the playoffs. Within twenty minutes Marco appeared with the best pepperoni pizza in the surrounding area and a six-pack of acceptable beer. Jack tipped generously.
At some point in the last couple of months old chairs from the cafeteria and a table had appeared at the back of the roof area. Clearly this wasn’t just their spot, or news had gotten out. They weren’t especially comfortable but they survived the Pittsburgh weather and it sure was better than sitting on concrete for two men over fifty.
They both sat down and Jack opened the beers with the opener on his key chain. He opened the pizza box and pushed it towards Robby. Jack wanted to watch Robby eat something. Robby was notorious for surviving on next to nothing during a shift and eating relatively poorly outside of it. Ironically, he was a good cook; Jack had tasted his jambalaya. He just never bothered to do it for himself.
Robby ate two slices. Jack would take it.
Robby sipped his beer. “You know part of me is still angry at him. That he left me this job.”
Jack figured something was rattling around Robby’s head. He hadn’t quite picked it was about Adamson but really he was just happy Robby was sharing out loud at all. He supposed it made sense. Robby often shouldered the job of telling people their loved ones had died, especially the tough cases. Something Adamson had also done. And of course he’d feel like shit for being angry at him.
“I get that, but you had to know you were next in line. We all knew. The Board would have accepted his recommendation of you in a heartbeat.”
“Sure, I’m not that dense. I just thought I had more time. To get used to the idea. For him to tell me how best to do it. But I was just thrown into it … in the middle of a pandemic …”
While grieving someone who was basically a father went unsaid. Jack reached out his good foot and nudged Robby’s and left it sitting alongside.
“You did well, Mike. No one else could have done it as well as you did.” The “Mike” always slipped out when Jack was especially trying to get something through Robby’s stubborn skull.
Robby snorted.
“I mean it. A new person would have never gotten up to speed as well, and would have taken ages to learn what was needed. Fuck, the rest of us attendings would have been a disaster.”
Robby stuck his chin out and looked like he wanted to argue but said nothing.
“You’re not perfect, but hell no boss is. You could lighten up on Mohan, you play favourites, you are a giant hypocrite about self care …”
“Any other complaints, Doctor Abbot? Things Gloria needs to know for my next evaluation.”
Jack barrelled on; had expected him to bite; “but you care, Robby; about those people down there and your patients. You’re a good teacher and a fucking good doctor.”
“Not good enough tonight.”
Jack didn’t even know what he could say to that, so he changed tack a little bit, but not to safer water. “And Adamson. I know you loved that man dearly, and I learned so much from him but he wasn’t perfect either, and he was Chief for twelve years. Stop measuring yourself up to him.”
Jack had sat next to Robby watching the livestream of Adamson’s funeral; had listened to him cry. It was a futile thing to say and Jack knew it, but he had to say it anyway. Even if there was a small chance Robby would listen.
Robby drained what was left of his beer. “I almost said no when they offered me the Chief role permanently.”
Jack didn’t know that, but he wasn’t surprised to hear it given their current conversation.
“Could you really have handled anyone else running Monty Adamson’s ER?”
“I knew fucking Harrison from Presby was their second choice.”
“Well, thank you for saving us from that horror show.”
Adam Harrison was objectively a decent doctor but Jack knew Robby hated him for something he’d done years ago and he would have been all wrong for The Pitt.
“Never would have picked it in high school.”
Jack himself had a fairly anonymous time in high school. He couldn’t quite imagine what Robby would have been like. Different images laid over each other. Nerd. Loner. Punk. Stoner. Or something in between.
Jack laughed. “I’d love to have met you in high school.”
“Fuck no you would not. I was a … handful, after …” Robby’s face got more serious and somber.
Robby still gracefully avoided talking about his family and what happened, even with Jack who already knew. Jack only knew because Robby had gotten messily drunk one night and told him. Robby was a bit of a flirty drunk: touchy, more accepting of compliments, but he always kept some things back. That night in a bar not far from here he hadn’t. Jack wasn’t sure why. And then they’d barely talked about it again. Robby didn’t have to talk to him to work through all that, in addition to Adamson and the pandemic of it all, but fuck he needed to talk to someone.
Jack would always keep showing up for Robby. Robby had been there for Jack at the worst time in his life and he’d always remember that. Robby shrugged it off like it was nothing but at the time it had meant everything to Jack. But Jack’s biggest fear was not being able to show up for someone who wasn’t there anymore.
Robby kept going, picking at the label on his beer bottle. “I chilled out a little in college and even more in med school where I didn’t have time to be a fuck up, but I had some uh issues with authority.”
“You? Never.”
A small smile from Robby.
“Worse than my fights with Gloria about the budget, and that time I told that Board Member where to stick it at the cancer gala.”
That really had been a night but Hoity Toity McFuckface had deserved it. There was a reason the hospital's communications team had Robby (and Jack for that matter) on their no-fly list for media; even if Gloria sometimes tried to push it. He was surprised they still got gala invites after that, but money made the hospital go round.
“Hey man, I joined the US Army to pay for medical school, you don’t need to tell me about boys with attitude problems. I was surrounded by them. You punch anyone?”
Jack was so curious. He’d seen Robby break up fights plenty of times (professional hazard) and he could yell a house down, but he'd never seen him actually throw a punch. Robby’s anger always tended to run colder.
“A couple of times.”
“Got arrested?”
Robby’s silence was answer enough. Jack whistled. “And people think I’m the bad boy. Kinda hot though.”
Robby’s eyebrow raised. “Noted, and no one thinks that you’re the bad boy,” he laughed, taking it in the spirit it had been offered. He quietened down after a second and exhaled pointedly. “A small part of me wonders when I became The Man.”
“You run a Pittsburgh ER, not the Department of Defence, you dick, but admittedly that’s a bad example, Whitaker could do a better job running it than the current occupants.”
“Be nice. A six year old could.”
Robby looked out into the night. “It’s late.” He shivered and rubbed his arms. “And getting colder.”
“You always feel the cold.”
“A man can’t help his upbringing.”
If only Robby really accepted that, and other things he couldn’t change.
They stood up and gathered the bottles and pizza box.
Just before they reached the elevator to go down, Robby reached out for Jack’s hand and squeezed. “Thank you.”
“Any time.”
“Sorry I ruined our night.”
“Hey we ate, drank, talked.”
“Still on hospital grounds.”
“Only one of us was wearing scrubs. I’ll take it.”
He stood closer to Jack. “You do look really hot in this.” He took Jack’s shirt between his fingers and plucked at it, before running his big hand down Jack’s chest. “I’m not up for anything tonight but wear it for me some other time?”
“You bet. I can still come over. Stay.” Jack knew he was taking a risk, and wouldn’t push it if he got a no, but he didn’t want to let Robby out of his sight quite yet.
Robby looked like he was going to say no right up to when, to Jack’s surprise, he said. “Yeah. Please.”
They stood side by side in the elevator going down. Very close even though they were the only ones in it. Jack’s hand resting lightly on Robby’s back. Robby turned ever so slightly into his space.