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“Mama, I’m hungry.”
The little girl had been sitting pretty in West 10 for hours. She’d been waiting on radiology since before Dennis clocked on, and he was six hours into his shift now with not an x-ray in sight. The little girl, Ruby, had her arm sitting limply in her lap, kept perfectly still with splints. She’d received a constant stream of pain medication since arriving to alleviate discomfort, pain, and hunger. But little girls had to eat, and radiology was apparently ghosting the ED, and Dennis’s patient was starving.
“Are you sure there aren’t any patient meals she could have? A sandwich, or anything?” her frazzled mother pleaded. Her pin-straight black hair was pulled back into a frazzled braid at the base of her skull, and purple eye bags sank deep into her olive skin. Dennis felt a quick tug of guilt and remorse – his bleeding heart, always calling – and gave her his best attempt at a reassuring smile.
“I’ll check the hall again. Maybe the cafeteria refilled our cart.” Dennis doubted it, because he’d checked the cart for sandwiches three times already, and it had remained stubbornly empty. Earl had blown through in the early morning and cleaned out the last of the sandwiches on their cart, and now this little girl was starving and was intent on letting her poor mother know every five minutes, and Dennis didn’t see the cafeteria coming down for refills anytime soon.
Dennis scurried out into the busy E.R., artfully darting around harried nurses and fellow residents.
The sandwich cart was, of course, exactly where he had left it. Stubbornly empty, not a soggy ham sandwich in sight.
He glared at the contraption like willpower alone would summon the presence of ham or turkey.
Absolutely nothing.
There was cutlery, a heavily bruised apple that would not pique the interest of his pediatric patient, and two packets of mustard. Nothing he could take back to the poor mother and daughter in West 10.
His stomach gave a quiet, hollow twist. Right. He was about due for a lunch stop too. It was one in the afternoon now, and his blood sugars were going to start dipping soon if he didn’t take a second to refuel.
He grimaced, rubbing the heel of his hand into his stomach, an age-old trick he’d learned back in Nebraska to stave off hunger. He thought, distantly, of the meal prep he’d deposited in the staff-room fridge that morning, his green bento-style container right next to Trinity’s purple one. The cold chicken tenders, french fries, and small side salad he’d made fresh the night before, with flour and egg and seasonings and the works. He thought, again, of the small Hostess Cupcake that Robby had snuck into the pocket of his scrubs; for emergencies, he’d sneakily murmured into Dennis’s ear, the brush of his facial hair against Dennis’s skin making something molten and hot rise from the soles of his feet to the tips of his ears.
He ducked back into the patient’s room.
“Anything?” the mother asked.
“No, I’m sorry,” Dennis replied mournfully. “You could always make a trip to the cafeteria, and I could stay and watch your daughter –” the little girl’s eyes widened fearfully, and her lip began to tremble, and something about seeing her there, splinted up and so obviously miserable, made some hollow, rotten thing in Dennis’s heart crack, “but it looks like she’d prefer to stay with you,” he finished lamely.
The little girl’s bottom lip wobbled harder. “Mama, please don’t leave.”
The mother looked torn. “It would only be for twenty minutes, baby girl. I’d be right back.” The daughter shook her head, sweaty hair flopping wildly around her head.
Dennis considered, again, the chicken tenders in the staff lounge, the cupcake in his pocket, and then again his slowly dipping blood sugar.
Surely, if I fall too low, the cupcake will boost me until I clock out, right?
He was pretty well-practiced in stretching resources to make things work. He’d gone without food before, without insulin before, without the disgusting chewable glucose tablets that Robby insisted on keeping in his locker just in case, even though Dennis hated everything about them, but especially how chalky they felt on his tongue.
He did the math quickly. He usually came into work a little high to balance for his irregular schedule and the fact that, while Robby and his coworkers always made sure he had a second to stop and correct his sugars, the E.R. didn’t provide the stable schedule he always needed to regulate his diabetes, and some lunches were later than others. Or, in the case of today, likely non-existent. He’d done a finger stick in the bathroom an hour ago, and he’d been sitting nicely at 82 mg/dL – normal, if a bit on the low side. He was halfway through his shift now – if he waited until five o’clock to eat the cupcake Robby had snuck into his pocket, he could, realistically, make it through the last two hours of his shift. Maybe a bit disorganized, but not uncomfortably so. Certainly nothing outside of what he was used to, scrounging insulin and food during med school, constantly at risk of DKA or hypoglycemia because he just couldn’t get his diabetes under control.
This was fine. He’d be okay, and this little girl – this miserable, hungry, clearly in pain little girl – definitely needed a hot meal more than he did. He wasn’t the one with the broken arm, after all.
He crouched in front of the little girl. “Hey. How about I grab you something better than a yucky sandwich?” The little girl perked up slightly.
“Can I pick?” she asked hopefully. Dennis grinned.
“Dealer’s choice, I’m afraid. But I know for a fact that I have excellent taste.” The little girl smiled tremulously, small and barely there. “I’ll be right back,” he told the mother, “I just have to stop at the staff lounge.” The woman frowned, stress lines creasing her face.
“Doctor, you really don’t have to–”
“I insist. I’ll be right back with something for you to gnaw on, Ruby.”
He stopped by his locker first, tugging out his testing kit. A quick prick of his ring finger revealed a blood glucose of 73 mg/dL. Still within normal range, just a bit low. He shoved the testing kit back into his locker, wiping his hand off on a spare tissue to stem the bead of blood.
- Okay. He could definitely work with that.
His bento box was waiting exactly where he had left it, stashed at the bottom of the fridge right next to Trinity’s, now partially hidden by a half-full container of Caesar salad and a tall bottle of Coke Zero.
Within five minutes, his lunch was hot and steaming and ready for his tiniest patient in West 10.
“Whitaker,” a deep voice calls out, just as he is attempting to maneuver his way around the hub. His shoulders stiffen, a flush crawling up into the apples of his cheeks as he sees the way both Dana and Robby are looking at him questionably. “Taking lunch in the bathroom?” Robby asks somewhat teasingly, and Dennis can see Dana physically bite back a grin. She slaps Robby’s shoulder, and his — boss mentor lover – attending wipes off the touch with a crooked smile, eyes never leaving Dennis’s.
“Oh, no, sir,” Dennis smiles shakily, trying his best to sound natural. He was always a shitty liar, and if he wanted to help this hungry little girl, he was going to have to lie – Robby would have never approved of him skipping lunch otherwise, not with how unstable and borderline catastrophic his blood sugars could be. “Just, um – taking lunch in the ambulance bay. I wanted the fresh air, y’know. The lounge was feeling a little, um. Claustrophobic.” Robby raised a brow, politely excusing himself from Dana and steering Dennis toward the ambulance bay with a broad hand on the back of the intern’s neck (Dennis could feel the touch like crackling electricity popping under his skin, and he had to grip his lunch box tight to keep from dropping it, and God, he was pathetic).
“You okay, Denny?” he asked, voice low and barely there. His hand on the back of Dennis’s neck was squeezing gently, almost massaging the tense muscles there, and Dennis felt as if he was capable of melting straight through the tiled floor.
“Um, yeah,” Dennis nodded, curly strands of hair flopping against his pale forehead. “Just, y’know. Hungry.” He gnawed on his lip, skin crawling at the assessing look Robby was giving him. “I, um. Skipped breakfast,” he breathed out like a confession, knowing that the minor admission would throw Robby off the even bigger secret he was hiding.
“Dennis,” Robby sighed, dragging a hand through his own dark hair. “What are your sugars at?”
“Um, 73. As of a few minutes ago.”
“73,” Robby repeats, chewing on the number like it left a bad taste in his mouth.
Dennis rushes to fill the silence. “And that’s normal. Um, technically. I mean, on the lower side, but you know I’ve been lower, and I was fine–” Robby’s eyes sharpened, and no, Dennis did not intend to open that particular can of worms, “not fine, sorry, let’s just – um – let’s just not talk about that, but I–”
They were outside now, the ambulance bay relatively empty other than themselves and the blissfully open air, and Robby grips his shoulders on either side, thumbs tracking soothing circles into the skin above his clavicles.
“Kid,” Robby says. “Breathe. Slow down.” Dennis does, purposefully drawing in a slow, deep breath, and Robby nods approvingly. “Atta boy.”
Dennis is going to die. He’s going to burn into a pile of ash and blow away, and no one is ever going to see him again because he will be dead.
“You’re about to eat lunch,” Robby continues, and Dennis nods. “And you have your insulin to correct afterward.” Dennis does not, in fact, have his insulin – it’s sitting in an insulated fanny pack in his locker, and very much not hooked up to his waist like it’s supposed to be, but Robby doesn’t need to know that, does he? He nods again.
“Okay,” the older man finally says. “Go eat. Sit for fifteen minutes until you’re regulated. Then come back in. We need you.” Dennis nods. Robby glances around and, seeing that they are still alone in the ambulance bay, dips his head down to press a quick kiss to Dennis’s brow, facial hair prickly against Dennis’s skin. “Come home with me after your shift, okay?”
“Yeah,” Dennis breathes. “Yeah, okay.” Robby disappears back into the E.R., and Dennis shakily leans back against the brick outer wall of the hospital, tugging his phone out of his pocket to text Trinity.
hey. won’t be home tonight, crashing at amy’s again :P needs help with her dish disposal
He receives a text back from Trinity within a minute, despite the fact that they’re both on the clock. The first message is a simple thumbs-up emoji, followed by:
Use protection!!! XD
Dennis groans disgustedly, rolling his eyes heavenward and shoving his phone back into the pocket of his scrubs. He pushes off the wall to head back into the hospital, intent on sneaking past Robby so he can deliver his bento box to Ruby, only for his vision to swim slightly without the support. He exhales shakily, blinking to clear the dark spots from his vision.
Okay. Maybe I need some water. And then I’ll be fine.
He nods determinedly, mind made as he ducks back into the hospital.
Ruby first. Then water. Or one of the sugar free Red Bulls he and Mohan kept stashed in their lockers.
It was going to be a long back half of his shift.
~-~
The rush picks up at around four, an hour after Ruby – now with a full belly and a satisfied smile on her face – is wheeled up to radiology for imaging. Dennis is doing compressions on a 24-year-old overdose patient when the first wave of – of wrong hits, the trickle of anxiety leaking out of his bleeding heart, the sweat beginning to dot his brow, the random flashes of cold up and down his body.
But he was doing compressions. Everyone got tired of doing compressions. And the 24-year-old OD, whom he did manage to save, thankyouverymuch, was the start of a chain reaction of emergency cases – two lacs, a double suicide attempt, a cheerleader with a broken nose, and two sex injuries that had even Robby pinking up.
The low isn’t rushed. It’s a mutated conglomeration of Dennis trying desperately to ignore the symptoms so he can practice medicine, and wishing desperately for a moment of reprieve so he could correct in private before Robby, or Dana, or any of the other medical professionals he was inappropriately close with noticed that he was dipping and insisted he do something stupid, like go home to recover.
As if that was going to happen.
By five o’clock, he’s forgotten all about the cupcake in his pocket in the wake of a fifteen-car pileup, and he’s been doing chest compressions for four minutes. Best practice was to swap out compressions with someone else every two minutes, but everyone was busy with their own patients – the senior residents were running two codes apiece, and Dennis could hear Robby running himself ragged trying to keep everything in order, and Dennis was trying desperately to follow CPR protocol – two inches deep, at least one hundred beats per minute, what’s the song Santos had shown him? By the Bee Gees? – and blinking stinging sweat out of his eyes.
“Whitaker!” Abbot calls from a bed over, called in early by Dana in the wake of the sudden influx of patients. “Push another of the epi and call it, we have another trauma enroute.” Dennis nods, gut twisting slightly in frustration that he can’t fully feel through the tightness in his chest, the light feeling fuzzing his head.
(They do end up calling time of death, unable to bring the man back from an asystole heart rhythm, and Dennis would probably feel the failure burn like acid at the back of his throat tomorrow, but there’s no time for that when one mangled body is being replaced by another one and Dennis has another code to run, and God, his mouth is really dry, isn’t it?)
The next code is worse.
The patient is younger, a young female and has a student lanyard that they have to snip away with a pair of scissors before they can begin reviving her.
Dennis is at the head of the bed this time, managing the patient’s airway while a nurse bags her, the patient’s chest rising and falling faintly with each push of oxygen, and it’s all Dennis can focus on, honestly, even as he calls out orders in an absent-minded sort of way, more muscle memory than anything else.
“Two minutes. Switch compressors,” he calls out, noticing that his code team had one more person than before – Mel, pressing down on the girl’s sternum rhythmically and efficiently. He thinks, distantly, of how much he appreciates Mel as he watches the girl’s airway.
“-taker? Dr. Whitaker! Do we need to push another epi?” Perlah demands, and Dennis blinks sluggishly.
“Yes. Yes, absolutely.” His mouth feels like he has been chewing on cotton, and the sweat was slicking his hands beneath his latex gloves, and God he was hungry. Had he had lunch? Breakfast? There was something important about lunch, but he couldn’t remember now, the E.R. was so loud –
Loud and bright and wrong.
He panted slightly, glancing around despairingly as that feeling, the scared feeling, squeezed in a vice grip around his heart again, throttling the muscle. He licked his lips. His mouth really was so dry.
“Switch compressors,” he calls again, and his voice does not sound like his own. It’s too steady. Surely it was too steady. He should not sound so put together, not when he was so overwhelmingly uncomfortable. “Dr. King,” he continues when she stands ready at his side. “Mel, I need you to take over this code, please.” Mel blinks rapidly, confusion drawing her dark brows into a tight line across her forehead. “I need you to take over the airway, because I think I’m about to collapse, and I need to make sure I am out of everyone’s way.”
Mel doesn’t argue.
That’s what Dennis will remember later.
No argument. No panic. Just immediate, efficient movement.
She steps in, hands steady on the mask. “I’ve got airway.”
Perlah’s head snaps up from the opposite side of the bed.
“What?”
Dennis keeps his eyes on the patient because if he looks anyone in the eye, he might falter.
“I’m hypoglycemic,” he says, clinically. Detached. Like he’s presenting a case. “Symptomatic. I need to step out before I compromise care.” And then he peels off his gloves, shuddering slightly at the layer of sweat that had been collecting inside the latex.
He makes it two steps out of the trauma room before his knees start trembling, rattling him like a house of cards in front of a box fan, one of those big units they’d had back at the farmhouse that had been strong enough to fly a jet plane.
There’s a buzz in his ears now. Like a bug had flown in, or he had a beehive nestled right between his ears. He sways slightly in the general direction of the break room, hand already fumbling with the pocket of his scrubs, stiff fingers trying to find the cupcake in his pocket.
Robby’s on him in an instant.
He thinks he hears his name – he definitely feels hands back on his shoulders, just like before, in the ambulance bay, but they’re gripping harder now, Dennis can feel the sting of them digging into him.
There’s a gloved hand slapping at his face, and the voices around him come into sudden, sharp, albeit momentary clarity.
“Dennis. Dennis, Dennis.” Robby is chanting his name. “Don’t take another step. Just hold still, honey.” The syrupy feeling is back, only this time it’s melting through Dennis; he can feel it pooling in his body, hot and sweet. He sighs gratefully as his face is suddenly smushed into Robby’s shoulder, the hands around him suddenly supporting him from under his armpits. Robby always smelled good, like sandalwood. Dennis thought he could happily drown in his cologne. “Jack!” Dennis hears Robby call, but Dennis can’t see Jack, which is weird, because he was just here, wasn’t he? He really was so hungry, but maybe Robby is asking Jack to get Dennis his lunch from the lounge. Robby is good at reading Dennis’s tells. Always has been. “Get me a bed and a glucometer! We have possible DKA!”
But that’s not right, was it? Dennis was hungry; he didn’t have high blood sugar. Robby was wrong. He tried to communicate this, pawing weakly at his attending’s face, but his lips wouldn’t move, and his tongue felt like a dead fish in his mouth. Robby petted his hair absently before Jack was on them, and then they were dragging Dennis into a room, and Dana was there, and more people, flashes of faces that Dennis knew but couldn’t quite place, and was that Trinity?
There was a brief sting in his finger, followed by a low beeping noise, but Dennis didn’t really care, because he couldn’t bring himself to look away from Robby’s face. He could get lost in the lines of his skin, the crow’s feet that had landed on the corners of his eyes, the sprinkling of silver in his beard.
He’s surely falling.
“42 mg/dL, brother,” he hears a voice murmur just before his vision goes dark.
~-~
Things fade back in at a snail’s pace.
The beep of monitors is familiar. So is the low hum of an oxygen machine buzzing in his ear. But the clip on his forefinger isn’t, and neither is the cannula shoved up his nose, flowing air directly into his face. He bats at both contraptions blindly, face wrinkling in distaste at the Sahara-like state of his mouth and the ache that had settled into his bone marrow.
The clip slides off his finger and out of reach, and the beeping on the monitor stalls, long and drawn and damning, and Dennis thinks, briefly, foolishly, oh, I’ve died.
Then he realizes he must have knocked off his heart monitor, and that thought floats away like everything else.
“Jesus–” a familiar voice snaps, and there are hands on him again, on his wrists and then the pulse point on the crux of his neck.
“He just knocked off the pulse ox, brother,” another voice says, and yeah, that was definitely Dr. Abbot. “He’s got a pulse.”
“Yeah, no shit,” the first voice says, the voice that must be Robby, no doubt about it now. “Can you grab Santos for me, please? She’s been waiting for hours.” Dennis can hear Abbot leave, but he still can’t see anything, and he’s not sure why. “Denny. Den, baby, open your eyes for me, please.” And oh, that makes more sense.
Opening his eyes feels like dragging himself through mud.
“Hi, honey,” Robby says, sitting on a stool at his side. His large hand is stroking through Dennis’s hair, tugging slightly at the root in the way Dennis likes. “How are you feeling?”
“Thirsty,” Dennis croaks. He sounds a bit like one of the toads he and his brothers would chase around the creek beds back in Nebraska. There’s a cup of ice water and a straw in front of his face in a second, and he drinks deeply, gratefully, before Robby is tugging the cup back.
“Ah-ah,” he says, “slowly, Dennis. Don’t make yourself sick, okay?” Dennis nods, taking slower, more shallow drinks.
Robby watches him like he’s tracking a particularly volatile lab number, dark eyes sharp and focused.
“Good,” he murmurs when Dennis pauses for breath on his own. “You’re doing such a good job. Feel better?” Dennis nods, licking his chapped lips. He leans his head back against the hospital bed, taking stock of his own body – his skin, which feels like it has been turned inside out. His mouth, which is significantly less dry. His hands feel like they are bound to mortar bricks as he shifts in the hospital bed. “Then you can tell me why you would do something so unbelievably fucking stupid.”
The praise dissolves mid-air, like a sugar cube in water.
“... what?”
“You were at 42, Dennis. And dropping.”
Dennis swallows, and it feels like he’s forcing broken glass down his throat.
“I caught it, though.”
“You ‘caught it’,” Robby scoffs. “What you did was stagger off mid-code. You gave substandard patient care, and you put your own health in danger in the process. I’m disappointed in you, Dennis.” That squeezing chest feeling is back, and the backs of his eyes are burning, and his throat is thick, and he absolutely cannot cry because his boyfriend is upset with him. He just won’t do it. He’s gone through enough today, honestly.
“I collapsed.”
“Yes,” Robby snaps. “You did. And you scared the shit out of me.”
The words hang between them.
“I didn’t mean to,” he whispers, wringing his hands. There’s an IV in his arm. IV dextrose and saline, probably, to stabilize the low sugar and the dehydration.
“You never do,” Robby says. “That’s the problem. I need you to understand how irresponsible this was, Dennis.”
“I’ve been worse,” Dennis weakly protests.
“But you don’t have to live like that anymore!” His hand grips Dennis’s wringing ones. “You have food now, insulin, and shelter. This shouldn’t have happened. You skipped lunch, right?” Dennis gnawed on his lip, glancing away. Robby grips the point of his chin, dragging his gaze back. “Right?”
“There weren’t any sandwiches on the food cart,” Dennis protests weakly. “And she didn’t want her mother to leave. She needed the food, Robby.”
“So did you.” Robby huffed, tossing his eyes heavenward. “I need you to think about yourself.”
“My patients come first.”
“Not like this.” He shakes his head. “You must have felt it coming. There are vending machines everywhere. You could have corrected, even if you gave away your damn lunch. I know you could have corrected.”
“The E.R. was drowning in cases,” Dennis tries.
“That does not mean you get to drown, too.” He leans forward, elbows resting against the mattress by Dennis’s hip, caging him in without meaning to. “You scared me to death,” he continues. “Feeling you go limp like that? It was terrifying, Dennis. I don’t want to see you like that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“That’s not what I want.”
“I don’t know what you want,” Dennis says, voice taking on a whining edge.
“I want you healthy,” Robby explains. “I want you upright. I want you at your best. Especially when you’re running a code in my E.R.. I want you to eat on your damn lunch break, instead of martyring yourself for no reason. That little girl would have been fine skipping lunch. You?” Robby waves a hand that seems to say clearly not. “Not to mention that I gave you a cupcake this morning, and you clearly didn’t eat that, either. Don’t bother checking your pockets for it. We had to throw it away because you crushed it when you fainted in my arms.”
Dennis stills at that.
“You threw it away?” he asks faintly.
Robby stares at him.
“That,” he says slowly, “is what you took from that sentence?”
Dennis’s cheeks flush, pink creeping high across his cheekbones despite the pallor that still hasn’t fully left him.
“I was going to eat it,” he mutters.
“When?” Robby demands. “At shift change, when you finally remembered you have a pancreas that doesn’t cooperate?”
Dennis opens his mouth.
Closes it.
Robby scrubs a hand down his face, exhaustion seeping into the sharp lines of his anger. The adrenaline has long since worn off; what’s left is bone-deep fear wrapped in irritation.
“You could have seized.”
“I stopped before that happened.”
“You did,” Robby acknowledged. “You made the right call. You just made it three hours too late. See the issue here?”
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” Dennis whispers mournfully. “I really am sorry. I’m sorry, Robby.”
“I know, baby,” Robby murmurs, voice cracking slightly. That was almost worse than the yelling had been.
“I didn’t wanna be the weak link,” Dennis tries again.
“Taking care of yourself does not make you the weak link. Having a chronic medical condition does not make you the weak link.” He stands, and for a moment, Dennis is afraid Robby is going to walk out, going to leave him alone in this too-bright hospital room with a beeping monitor and his thoughts, and Dennis really can’t handle that right now.
Instead, Robby sits on the edge of his bed. His hands cup either side of Dennis’s face. The warmth feels good, really good against his cold skin. He forces him, once again, to look up.
“You are one of the strongest doctors in my E.R.. You did effective chest compressions while hypoglycemic, and then you collapsed. That does not make you weak.” Robby pauses, as if in thought. “Stupid, maybe, but not weak.”
A broken little laugh falls out of his mouth.
“You’re strong, Whit. And you mean something. Especially to me, okay?” His thumbs swipe under Dennis’s eyes, brushing away tears before they can fall. “You don’t need to hurt yourself to earn that. You already have tenfold. Okay?” Dennis nods, chin trembling slightly. “You may have been able to manage this behavior in med school, but you don’t get to do this now. Not while I’m around. I need you to take care of yourself. I need you to put yourself first sometimes.”
“I, um…” He blinks, hard, more tears squeezing out, but Robby just wipes them away again with all the patience of a saint. “I don’t think I know how to do that.”
“You don’t have to know yet,” Robby says. “I’ll take care of it for you, for as long as you need. That’s my job.”
Dennis grins tremulously. “Your job?”
“Yep,” Robby responds, popping the ‘p’. His grin is crooked. “I’m pretty bossy. Kind of my thing. You would know better than anyone.”
A watery huff of laughter escapes Dennis before he can stop it.
“I’m serious,” Robby continues. “You don’t have to be the adult all the time. I can get you lunch, or check your sugars for you, or push your insulin bolus, but you have to let me know first. You have to let me know when you need help. I try my best, but I’m not a mindreader, sweetheart.”
“Okay,” Dennis says. “Okay. I’ll tell you. I’ll try to. I promise.” Robby nods.
“For the record,” Robby continues. “You’re being kept overnight for observation. And I’ve already taken you off the schedule for tomorrow. You’re not stepping foot back into my emergency room until I am one hundred percent sure you’re okay.” Dennis’s eyes widened dramatically.
“But, Robby–”
“No.” Firm, but not cruel. “You scared me. I’m keeping you.” The possessiveness in his tone makes Dennis’s skin buzz.
He inhales. Exhales.
“Okay,” he surrenders.
“Okay?”
“Okay,” Dennis confirms. “You can keep me.”
Robby grins, and then he’s kissing Dennis chastely, lips soft. His beard prickles against Dennis’s skin. He pulls away, but his forehead is still leaning against Dennis’s own, breaths intermingling, and even though Dennis would never say it out loud, he thinks he would go through a thousand hypoglycemic episodes just to keep having moments like these ones. Moments with Robby.
“Good,” Robby whispers. “Because I don’t plan on letting you go.” Robby glances at Dennis’s IV. Frowns. Hangs another liter of saline. Hands Dennis a pack of graham crackers and a small bottle of water. Pricks his finger, checks the sugar. “You’re at 95. Have some water and a few of those crackers. Eat slow. Small sips, okay?” Dennis nods, biting off a corner of a cracker pointedly, and the small amount of food settles something in his stomach that he hadn’t known was upset. “Atta boy.”
The embarrassment doesn’t burn Dennis up this time. Rather, he leans into the words, finishing off his cracker and water.
“I can’t believe you threw my cupcake away.”
Robby huffs.
“It was structurally unsalvageable.”
“That’s tragic.”
“You collapsing was tragic.”
“…Fair.”
Robby shakes his head, but he’s smiling now. Really smiling. He takes the empty packet of crackers away from Dennis when he finishes it off, and throws the empty bottle of water away.
“You’ll want to rest your eyes for a bit. Santos is on her way, and I’ll bet money she’s going to be on the warpath with you.” Dennis groans, but he snuggles back in the hospital bed, tucking his blanket snugly around his shoulders, turning his face into his pillow. Robby kisses him again, on his cheek, inches from his lips, close enough for his skin to burn. “Get some sleep, okay?” Dennis nods.
“Okay.” He squirms. “I love you.” Robby smiles, and seeing the warmth of his expression is like slipping into a hot bath.
“I love you too. Don’t scare me like this again. Please.”
Dennis nods, eyes finally closing, like slipping away on a cloud, and it doesn’t feel like falling; it feels like floating away.
He still has to deal with Santos, and Dana, and the rest of the E.R., but for now, he’s content, warm and blessedly full, and safe in the knowledge that he’s kept, and that Robby isn’t going to leave.