Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Another full board, another hellish night shift judging by the silent goodbye Abbot gave him when he’d been walking out as Robby had been walking in that morning. But he’d seen worse. There could always be worse, he reminded himself, forcing a deep breath in through his nose and out through his mouth as he tugged his earbuds out and stored them back in their case, Once Upon A Time disappearing and the chaos of the Pitt taking its place.

“I’ve got a present for you.”

“What’s this?” Robby’s eyes briefly scanned the file that was all but dropped into his hands, and Dana glanced at him over the rim of her glasses before turning her attention back to the computer.

“Transfer from UCSF. Third-year resident,” she said, and he arched a brow.

“What is a third year resident doing transferring across the country in the middle of January? And why am I just now finding out about it?” he questioned, and she shrugged.

“Beats the hell out of me. But she’s picking up her scrubs now and she’ll be ready to meet the boss man.” The blonde straightened, tucking her glasses into her pocket. “Seems like a sweet kid from what little I gathered.”

“A sweet kid who’s been dropped into this circus with no notice,” he muttered, scrubbing his hand over his jaw. He didn’t want to think about how a whole resident had somehow slipped through the cracks, especially a third-year. 

He’d heard of first-year residents transferring out of their programs, even an occasional second-year. Hell, he’d seen it in the Pitt a time or two when someone was falling behind in their training or needed to move to be with family or when a spouse got a better job offer elsewhere, but it always happened before the program started in July, never smack dab in the middle of the current cycle and never without him knowing about it…

“Think of it as an adventure,” Dana grinned, before she turned and started calling out instructions to the other nurses on who was ready to discharge from what room.

“Ah. Just what I need, Magellan,” Robby said, but he could feel his lips pulling up into a smile at the corners. His eyes drifted across the room, bustling as ever at seven in the morning on a Wednesday…and stopped.

An unfamiliar face was moving towards the nurse’s station, though perhaps striding was a better word for it, each step sure and steady as if she’d made the walk a hundred times before. Light eyes flickered around the room, taking in the organized chaos and he could see the ease settling over her, sinking into her bones and stealing the tension away. It was the look of someone who thrived in the madness, someone who found comfort in the mayhem.

“Here she is now,” Dana said, her voice warm and welcoming, that easy way about her that disarmed even the most nervous of medical students. How had they survived without her? Robby remembered the way he’d nearly dropped to his knees when she walked back into the ED the day of her return.

He straightened, tucking his hands into the pockets of his hoodie. This close, it was easy to get a better look at her. Her chocolate hair was cut neatly into a bob that hit her chin, her eyes a crystal blue so sharp and bright it was like he was looking through a window pane on a clear winter’s day. She was thin too, all long, willowy limbs that looked like she would fall right over at the first strong breeze that blew in through the doors. But there was something underneath it all, an edge to her almost, a little too hard for someone who looked as young as she did.

“You must be our transfer. I’m Dr. Michael Robinavitch but everyone around here calls me Robby. I’m your ER Chief, but I assume Dana filled you in. Hopefully all good things,” he said, glancing over at the blonde, catching her winking at the resident standing in front of him.

“I’m Alexandra Bennett, but everyone calls me Alex. Really happy to be here.” Her smile was soft. Tired at the edges, but her eyes were bright and hopeful. Eager. 

“You’ve met Dana already, our charge nurse, you’ll meet the rest of the team throughout the day. Obviously, this isn’t the first day of the residency program so we’ve not got a new class starting which means I’m not doing my usual round of introductions but trust me, you will meet everyone you need to meet. You came from the ER I’m assuming?”

“I did, yeah,” she answered back, and he nodded.

“Good, so we’ll throw you to the wolves.” He smiled a little. “Kidding. Mostly. But I do trust that you know what you’re doing, especially with UCSF’s reputation. Still, you’ll work alongside me for the first couple of days so I can get a feel for how you operate, your skillset… Sound good?”

“Yeah, sounds great.” She tucked her hair behind her ear and his eyes caught on a tattoo on her forearm, something floral and dainty that stretched from the crease of her elbow nearly all the way to her wrist. “Listen, I know this is really strange, coming in during the middle of the year but I just wanted to say thank you. I uh…just…thank you.”

Robby pursed his lips and gave a slow nod, reaching up to lightly grip the stethoscope hanging around his neck. “Save the thank yous for after your first day. Okay?”

She nodded, her eyes flickering to the doors that led out to the ambulance bay. Voices rang out, loud and insistent, and he immediately took off, feeling her presence close behind him. “What do we got?” he asked the paramedics, eyes scanning the man on the gurney.

“Unrestrained driver versus telephone pole. Intubated en route, BP’s 70 over 40 and dropping rapidly.”

“Trauma two, trauma two, let’s go!”

The creak of the gurney wheels, the snap of gloves against wrists as they were joined by more bodies, the echo of conversation and the crinkle of trauma gowns—it was like music, a song that they all knew how to dance to. The way they hooked up the IVs, the way everyone knew how to navigate the space they stood in, the way tools and blood bags and saline were traded between gloved hands with care and precision. 

It wasn’t always easy, certainly, but there was a familiarity to it that was comforting in a strange, fucked up sort of way.

“Whitaker, Perlah, meet Dr. Alex Bennett, Dr. Bennett, Dennis Whitaker, intern, and Perlah Alawi, one of our nurses. Now, Dr. Bennett, what do you see?” A little baptism by fire never killed anyone.

“Bruising on the chest between the ninth and tenth ribs and–” Her hands pressed against the patient’s stomach after his shirt was cut away. “–rigid abdomen. Maybe a broken rib perfed the spleen? I’d say send him to CT to confirm but with his BP dropping the way it is…” He watched as an ultrasound was pressed into her hands and she ran the doppler over the left upper quadrant, her eyes scanning the screen.

Quick, good instincts—he was curious to see how she handled the day ahead. But he was hopeful, as dumb as a thing as that was to be sometimes.

“Yep. That is a belly full of blood. ” Robby nodded, looking at the imaging. “Alert surgery we’ve got one on the way–”

“Someone said surgery?” Garcia stepped into the room as if the word surgery was her damn calling card, eyeing the patient on the gurney, flanked by residents in the same navy scrubs. “Come on, we’re heading upstairs. Now.”

“Have fun,” Robby called out as the group took the patient out of the room, stripping off his gown in the process, shoving it into the bin in the corner. “We always keep an OR ready at all times. Helps in cases like this one, means our most critical don’t have to wait down here for very long for something up there to open.”

“Makes sense.” Alex untied her own gown, tossing it into the bin with his.

“And now we can actually round. Give you a chance to meet some more of the team and see how we operate around here. Come on.” Robby stepped out of the trauma bay, stopping by one of the hand sanitizer dispensers for a hit before he stopped by the first room where King and Santos were gathered around Mohan, along with two of their med-students.

“I want you all to meet Dr. Alex Bennett, third-year resident joining us from UCSF. Bennett, this is Dr. Samira Mohan, your senior resident, Dr. Mel King, also a third-year resident, Dr. Trinity Santos, second-year, and med students Will Martin and Christina Hayes. Now that we are all acquainted, Mohan, want to take the lead?”

“Happy to. And welcome onboard,” Samira said, smiling at Alex before she stepped into north one. 

Robby pulled his glasses out of his pocket, looking at the chart as Samira rattled off the case details. “Mrs. Chen, are you ready to get out of here?” he asked once Mohan confirmed her new labs were not just stable but damn near perfect.

“Ready to go home? Absolutely. Ready to go back to my kindergarteners…well, that’s another story,” she said, and Robby grinned.

“That’s a whole other circus than the one we deal with here, I do not pity you one bit,” he said. “We’ll get you on your way in a bit, all right?” They stepped out of the room and moved on to the next patient, and on and on until another trauma came rolling through the doors and then it was all hands on deck, some incident at a bridal store with a sample sale and crush injuries from women trampling each other.

“This is fucking nuts,” Santos muttered as they lifted one of the women onto a bed in the trauma bay; the patient was white as a sheet, her gaze unsteady as she looked up at the ceiling—Robby imagined the only reason she was able to hold her head up at all was because of the neck brace. “I haven’t seen injuries like this since–”

Trinity stopped suddenly and it was like all the air was sucked out of the room for a moment. Just a moment. But it was enough to make that pressure in his chest, the one that never seemed to disappear, bear down a little harder.

It slipped out sometimes with the newer ones, never on purpose and certainly never maliciously. Everyone coped with their trauma in different ways, especially those of them whose first shift in the ED had been dealing with the aftermath of that event. But still, it always caught Robby off guard, always sent him hurtling towards a place he didn’t need to be.

Jake and the blood and Leah and that fucking peds room.

In through the nose, out through the mouth. He forced himself to breathe and then the memory was– Well, it wasn’t gone, but it was pushed to the back of his mind where he could forget about it for a little while. Just a little while.

He glanced over at Alex and saw that look on her face, the questions dancing behind her eyes, but she simply bowed her head and focused on the patient, running her stethoscope over the woman’s chest after her shirt and bra were cut away. “Decreased breath sounds on the left side.”

“What might we be looking at here? Hayes?” Robby asked, looking at the student standing by the bed.

“Uh, pneumothorax?”

“And if not, how might you rule one out? Martin?”

“Well, lung sonography is incredibly reliable, so I’d go with an ultrasound. She’s tachycardic so I wouldn’t wait for an xray,” he answered, and Robby nodded.

“Good call. Santos, get in there.”

She grabbed the ultrasound and ran it over the woman’s chest after Princess deposited a bit of gel onto her skin. “No lung sliding on the left side,” Santos confirmed, and Robby nodded, turning to Alex.

“You feel comfortable doing a chest tube?” Robby asked her, and she nodded.

“Not my first one by a long shot.”

“You heard her, let’s prep for a chest tube,” Robby called out, and he watched as everything fell into place. 

Sheet. Scalpel. Anesthetic. Incision. Clamp. Insertion. Every step was meticulous but quick. Bennett moved with a sort of ease that he didn’t always see in his residents. Too many of them had that fear in them still, like one wrong move and the entire world would collapse. It was a heavy weight and it was one he knew well, but she didn’t wear it. It didn’t bear down on her shoulders, or slow her movements, or make her second guess herself. 

“Chest tube’s in.” She looked to Martin. “Want to suture it in place?”

“Yes please!” he said, a little too eagerly, and Robby smiled a little before he started to move towards the exit. “Bennett, come find me when you’re done.”

“Heard,” she called out, her eyes fixed on the insertion site as she walked Martin through the right stitch to use. “Perfect,” he heard her say as the door shut behind him and he moved into the next room to check on one of the other traumas, but between McKay and Mohan they had it covered.

After he stripped off his trauma gown, he slid his hand underneath the sanitizer dispenser, rubbing it in as he crossed over to the nurse’s station. “Mrs. Chen get discharged?”

“Just left with her husband,” Dana confirmed, scribbling something on a sheet of paper before she set it aside. “How’s your new resident?”

He cast a quick glance back at the trauma bay, finding it had calmed down significantly. “Seems to know what she’s doing so far. Quick. Efficient. Already making an effort to include the med students and teach them.” He shrugged. “Good signs, I guess.”

“So why do you still sound unsure?” she asked, folding her arms over her chest as she leaned her hip against her desk. 

“You are too perceptive for your own good, Dana, that I did not miss,” he said, and she smirked. When he realized she wasn’t going to let it go because of course she wasn’t going to let it go, he sighed and gripped his stethoscope. “I don’t know. I don’t.”

“Wanna know what I think?” 

“I have a feeling you’re gonna tell me anyways,” Robby said, and Dana’s smirk turned into a much softer smile, something in her eyes giving way to that look, the one she wore when she was being serious.

“I think that she reminds you of Langdon. First thing I thought of when I saw her. Those eyes, that hair—she’s got that edge to her, too.”

“O-kay,” Robby said, pushing himself off of the desk. “That is…” His voice trailed off and he blew out a breath.

“Am I wrong?”

“Yes,” he said, a bit too quickly, that same tightness returning to his chest. It was bad enough that Langdon still haunted this place like a fucking ghost. Hell, he was haunting Robby’s apartment, the stack of letters on his kitchen counter growing by the week. He didn’t need to think of him every time he looked at this new resident, too. “Langdon’s got nothing to do with it.”

Dana’s eyes flickered to something behind him and he turned, finding the resident in question standing behind him. “Dr. Robby, Ms. Jackson is stable. Martin did a great job securing the chest tube.” 

“Glad to hear it,” he said, ignoring Dana’s eyes burning a hole into the back of his head. “Feeling good so far?”

“Feeling really good.” She smiled, sliding her hands into the pockets of her scrubs.

Robby nodded his head towards south twenty. “Let’s go then. We’ve got plenty more patients to see,” he said, hoping she didn’t catch the way he had to look just past her shoulder when he spoke to her.

“I’m just saying, it’s kinda fucking weird to be a third-year resident and show up out of nowhere, that’s all.”

“Residents can often match to different residency programs if they’re struggling in their current one.”

“Struggling? Please, she’s like another Mohan. She performed a goddamn pericardiocentesis like it was nothing. Seriously, she had the needle out before Robby could even say ‘Bennett.’”

Alex bit her lip, lingering there at the entrance of the locker room, hidden just out of sight of the others. She knew it was strange coming into a new program smack dab in the middle of the year, but a small, naive part of her had hoped that maybe no one would think twice about it. 

Oh, how wrong she’d been.

Her fingers went to sweep the hair off of her shoulder but came up empty, brushing the air instead. She still wasn’t used to her new haircut. Or the color. Every time she looked in the mirror, it felt like looking at a complete and total stranger, like she wasn’t even staring at a mirror but through a window instead. 

Deep breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth.

She waited a beat before she rounded the corner, putting a small smile on her face and hoping and praying it didn’t look fake even though it certainly felt like it. Then again, most smiles felt a little fake these days. King and Santos both looked up when she appeared but neither said anything. Dr. King smiled after a beat, hers quite a bit more genuine than Alex’s surely was.

“How was your first day?” she asked, shrugging her jacket onto her shoulders.

“Uh, it was good. Yeah, really good,” Alex said, moving to grab her own coat out of her locker. It was the first purchase she made after her transfer to Pittsburgh was approved; there hadn’t really been a need for a heavy duty winter coat back in San Francisco. A decent jacket, sure, but not anything that needed to withstand temps like these. She was sure she almost lost her nose just walking from the bus stop to the hospital entrance that morning.

“Big plans tonight?” Santos asked as she tied a scarf around her neck, and Alex shook her head.

“Not really. Still unpacking and getting settled so I kind of had a date with a suitcase full of sweaters and my third FRIENDS rewatch.” Alex pulled her backpack out, tugging the strap over her shoulder; she’d made sure to loosen it so it could fit over the thick material of her coat.

“Well, a handful of us go to this bar down the street, Rippy’s. You can join, if you want. Nice way to decompress after a shift.”

Alex didn’t miss the undertone in Santos’ voice. Even nicer way to pick the brain of the newbie.

Then again, what else did she really have to do? She wasn’t telling the truth when she said she had unpacking still to do. She literally flew to Pennsylvania with a single suitcase; it hadn’t taken more than an hour for her to shove everything into the two dresser drawers she had. Would answering questions from her coworkers over shitty, cheap beer be such a bad thing?

“Um… Yeah. You know what, sure. Sounds like fun,” she said, and Santos grinned.

“Sweet. It’s a quick walk, not more than a block.”

Alex nodded and shut her locker, sliding on her gloves and pulling up her hood before she followed Santos out of the room, waving goodbye to King as she went. “Dr. King doesn’t normally come?” she asked as they headed out through the exit doors.

“No. She picks her sister up every day,” Santos answered with ease though she didn’t elaborate any further, her words slightly muffled from the scarf wrapped around the lower half of her face. “Right here,” she said, pointing up at the sign in the window, a flickering thing that was missing half its letters so it just said RI  ’S.

As soon as they ducked inside, the blast of the heater washed over them, helping to chase away the harsh chill that had accumulated on the short walk over. Alex snatched her beanie off her head and tucked it into the pocket of her jacket, dragging her fingers through her hair. She recognized a few faces tucked into the corner of the bar, sitting with a few she didn’t.

“What are you drinking?” Santos asked, and when Alex blinked at her the other girl sighed as if the whole thing was an inconvenience. She was starting to realize that was kind of Trinity’s thing, just masking behind a wall of perpetual frustration. She kind of liked her in a weird way. “We always pick up first round for the newbies.”

“Um, light beer is fine. Whatever’s cheap,” she said, and Santos nodded before gesturing towards the table in the corner.

“I’ll meet you over there.”

Alex headed that way, spying Martin, Hayes, and Whitaker sitting there with a dark-haired girl she hadn’t met yet. “Hey,” she said as she draped her coat and backpack over the back of her barstool before she settled into it.

“Bennett!” Martin grinned at her, all teeth and messy red curls. “Dude, you’re a bad-ass.”

“Why are you calling her ‘dude’?” Hayes elbowed him, her dark eyes narrowed, and Martin flushed, his pale, freckled cheeks going pink. “Ignore him. Well, not the badass part. You were really great today. It was cool getting to learn from someone new.”

“I’m Victoria, by the way,” the girl in the corner said, sipping from a can of soda. “Javadi.”
“Alex,” she said. “Bennett.”

“Ah, so you met Crash finally,” Santos said, grinning as she approached the table with two bottles of beer, offering one up to Alex. Victoria rolled her eyes but Alex saw the faintest of smiles tugging at her lips. “You know everyone else. Unfortunately,” she added with a smirk as she lifted the bottle to her lips.

“Thanks for the invite,” she said, taking a small drink from her own bottle. “Everyone’s honestly been really nice so far. Helps make it easier, for sure.”

“I heard that you transferred from UCSF? That’s a really big move,” Whitaker said, and Alex nodded slowly, reaching for the bowl of mixed nuts sitting in the middle of the table.

“Yeah. Yeah, big move for sure,” she echoed, snacking on a few of the salty peanuts if only so she didn’t have to talk for a second. Then again, she’d expected this, hadn’t she? So much so that she’d practiced her reply in the mirror more times than she could count.

Santos tilted her head, eyeing her curiously. “Just didn’t like it over there or..?”

“Actually, I’ve got family on the East Coast. Got really, really homesick and Pittsburgh was the only place that accepted my match transfer on such short notice. My grandma basically raised me and she’s not doing that well, so I wanted to be closer to her.” No one liked talking about sick grandparents, not even doctors, so everyone just gave a solemn nod and let the conversation drop.

Perfect.

It was quiet around the table for a moment, a little awkward. Somewhere in the small, crowded bar, someone shouted about a darts game and Alex nearly flinched. Nearly.

“So, anything I need to know? I mean, about the department?” she finally asked, glancing around at the table, and Santos shrugged.

“I don’t think so. It’s pretty lowkey for the most part. Anyone you’re curious about in particular?” she asked, and Alex started to shake her head but stopped.

“Actually, yeah. I uh, overheard Dana mention someone. Langdon, I think? I was just curious what the deal was there?” she asked, and almost as soon as she said the name, everyone seemed to tense. It was the same thing that happened in the trauma bay when Trinity started to bring up whatever it was she was going to bring up before she stopped herself, like it was some secret thing they were forbidden from mentioning.

“Martin, your turn to get the next round,” Santos said, nodding her head towards the bar. The redhead groaned and hopped off his stool but he didn’t get very far. “Buddy system,” Trinity reminded him, and he threw his hands up as Hayes jumped off her own stool and followed close behind, mumbles of “You screw up a drink order one time,” floating back to the table.

Santos turned her attention to Alex, her expression a little more serious than Alex expected. Jesus, had the guy died or something?
“Langdon was one of the senior residents on our,” she started, gesturing between herself, Whitaker, and Victoria, “first day in the ED. He uh, got sent home midway through his shift. Turns out he was stealing drugs from the hospital.”

“Holy shit,” Alex breathed out, turning her gaze to the bottle in her hands for a moment, picking at the damp label starting to peel off the glass. “That’s… Wow. Brutal.”

“Yep,” was all Trinity said, and somehow Alex knew the conversation was over. Simple as that. 

But it just raised more questions than answers. Why had Langdon come up in a conversation about her? Did they think she was some kind of crashout case like him? Did they think she was trouble? Anxiety swelled in her chest at the thought.

Alex couldn’t lose this opportunity, no way in hell. She needed this. She needed to be here. She was just going to have to bust her ass to prove that she belonged. That she was capable and smart and wasn’t going to let anyone down. 

She finished off the rest of her beer just as Martin and Hayes returned with the next round, placing the drinks on the tabletop. She took the bottle with a soft thank you, simply listening in to the conversation that floated around the table, not really saying anything, just taking it all in. No one seemed to care that she was quiet; they didn’t press her to join in or ask her a ton of questions. They just let her be. After a while, it was sort of like she wasn’t there at all.

She liked it that way.

After finishing her drink, Alex decided to call it a night, placing some cash on the table to cover the last round before she said her goodbyes and bundled back up to brace the winter weather awaiting her outside. “I’ll see you all tomorrow,” she said, and everyone offered up a quick goodbye before turning back to their conversation, something about Mohan and an attending though she didn’t stick around long enough to hear anymore.

Alex tugged the sheet of paper out of her coat pocket that had the bus schedule on it, grateful that she wouldn’t have to wait long. It only took a few minutes before it appeared when she got to the stop, settling into one of the seats towards the middle so she wasn’t quite as close to the doors and the rush of cold air that came in every time they opened.

It was a long ride, somehow even longer after her shift, her feet aching and her limbs tired. It was a good kind of tired though. Comforting. She’d always liked the way she felt after a shift, her body too tired to give her mind much to focus on. She was the second to last stop, and then it was another ten minutes to walk to the two story building tucked away at the end of the street next to the gas station and the little diner that was always open but never seemed to have anyone in it except for the bored waitress standing behind the counter.

The metal stairs groaned as she climbed them, as if they were one good gust of wind away from collapsing. Honestly, judging by the look of them, she was afraid they might be. She walked down the little balcony, heading towards the door with the 17 on it, although the one had fallen off at some point, leaving nothing more than a faint imprint behind. Her fingers trembled slightly from the cold as she stuck her key into the lock and it took her a few tries to get the door open but it finally gave, opening up into the small, dingy room she’d been calling home since she arrived in Pittsburgh 72 hours ago.

As soon as she was inside, she slid the chain into the bolt and then wedged the chair with the broken arm underneath the door handle once she’d flipped the little lock on that knob into place. Only then did she take off her heavy winter coat, laying it over the wobbly table in the corner of the room, the rest of her clothes following. 

She found a pair of thermal leggings in the top drawer of the dresser, the one that she had to jiggle exactly six times because it always got stuck, and she slid those on with a thick sweater before diving under the thin covers, turning the TV on once she was as snug as one could be in a bed that she was sure somebody either died in or made a baby in. Maybe both. Probably both. 

The clock on the nightstand read a little after ten and she leaned over, checking that the alarm was set for 4:30 the next morning so she could catch the bus downtown. It’d give her plenty of time to get ready in the locker room, grab a shitty cup of coffee from the break room, and clock in. Hell, maybe she’d have time to make a friend, even though that was probably wishful thinking…

She fell asleep to QVC blaring on the TV and the feel of something cold and metallic under her pillow.

Chapter Text

“So you’re behind my new resident,” Robby said, eyes fixed on Abbot and Abbot alone as he approached the nurse’s station.

The other attending was typing something into the computer, not even bothering to spare Robby a glance. “What’s the problem? I heard she kicked ass yesterday. Makes a great replacement for that Justin kid,” he said, and Robby hated that he had a point, thinking back to the resident who’d left to chase his pregnant wife down to Miami so she could be closer to her parents. Probably didn’t hurt that the weather was less miserable, especially this time of year.

“Besides, you lost two of your best, you need a win.”

Robby closed his eyes for a moment, tilting his head up towards the blinding fluorescents. Losing Collins and Langdon in the span of a month had been a swift kick to the gut, but it didn’t mean he wanted someone dropped into his lap with no notice. Especially not someone he didn’t know a damn thing about.

He hated to admit that Dana was right but, in a strange way, she had been. It wasn’t necessarily that Bennett reminded him of Langdon, it was more so the fact that he was realizing he couldn’t trust people as easily as he once had because of everything that had happened with Langdon. And he hated that. He despised it, actually. He didn’t want to be someone who was wary, someone who was anxious about whether or not someone new would betray him eventually, but he was.

He was that person now and he wasn’t sure he trusted Alexandra Bennett.

“And you found her how?” Robby asked, bracing himself against the counter. “I mean, how does someone go from UCSF to PTMC?” And he knew Abbot understood exactly what he meant: How does someone go from one of the most well-funded ER-training programs in the state of California to a department where they’re reusing coffee filters in the break room and stretching their nurses so thin he’s not surprised more of them don’t quit mid-shift?

“Old buddy’s daughter said she had a friend of a friend who needed to move out East to be with family pretty urgently. Stellar recommendations, good standing, one of the best performance evaluations I’ve ever seen—and you had a hole to fill with Reid gone.” Abbot shrugged and closed out of whatever he was working on, straightening up. “I could put her on nights with me, but you’ve seen the girl. One of our crazies would snap her in half like a toothpick.”

Robby started to say something—something colorful, probably—but then a head of dark hair stepped into the ER, making a beeline towards the staff lounge. Abbot’s eyes went to his watch, amusement dancing all over his smug face. “And she’s here an hour early? Anything else to complain about?”

“How about no more surprises, hm?” Robby said, arching a brow at him before he headed in the direction Bennett had gone, mug in hand. “Hey.” He stepped into the lounge, finding her pouring herself a cup of watered down coffee. 

He watched her take a sip, fully expecting her to spit it into the sink but she didn’t flinch, wrapping both hands around a chipped pink mug he didn’t recognize. It had a bunch of flowers painted on it, like one of those mugs you made at Color Me Mine or something; he remembered dragging Jake to a place like that to make something for Janey on Mother’s Day one year. “I really hope you didn’t already clock in because you are early early.”

“Oh no, no. I just uh, I take the bus? And I didn’t want to be late so I figured being early would be better so…” Her voice trailed off and she gave a sort of half shrug, taking another sip of coffee. “Is it okay to just hang out here? Stay out of the way until my shift starts? I mean, if you need me I can–”

“Nope. No, you’re fine. In the meantime though, we need to get a phone number on file for you. I tried calling last night about your schedule for the rest of the week and it said the number you gave us was disconnected?” he asked, moving over to pour a bit more coffee into his travel mug.

She was quiet and he thought for a second maybe she’d slipped out of the room. But when he looked back at her over his shoulder she was still standing there, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth.

“Bennett?”

“Huh? Oh. Right, yeah, sorry. Um, I’m still trying to get some things sorted out but I will get that taken care of as soon as possible,” she said before she moved to settle down at the table, opening up a book of Sudoku puzzles he hadn’t even seen sitting there. He wasn’t sure he knew anyone under the age of sixty who did those puzzles.

“Okay then. Come find me at seven, all right?”

And she did. Actually she found him at 6:57, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. “Morning,” she said, as if she hadn’t just seen him 57 minutes ago. 

“Morning. We have a patient in south fifteen, so we’ll head that way now. Whitaker’s already done the initial assessment, so we’re going to follow up and see if he needs any support.”

“Great.”

They stepped into the room where Whitaker and Mateo were taking the patient’s vitals, Robby dropping into the stool next to her bed. She was awake and alert, all good signs. “Hi Maria, I’m Dr. Robby, this is Dr. Bennett. What brings you in today?”

She shifted her gaze down to her lap, shaking her head. In the light, Robby caught deep bruising around her left eye, spreading from her temple down to her cheekbone. A bit of blood had matted her black curls down, nearly flattening them. “So, so stupid,” she mumbled. “I was carrying my laundry downstairs and I tripped over our stupid cat—caught my eye on the banister and hit my head on the floor. Tried to catch myself when I fell and…” Her voice trailed off and Robby looked down where her arm was resting, noticing what looked to be a break in her wrist, the skin already swelling.

“Look up at me real quick,” he said, pulling out the light he kept in his pocket. “Who brought you in?” he asked as he flashed it over her eyes, finding her pupils equal and reactive.

“My husband dropped me off on his way to the airport but he called my sister to come wait with me. She’s on her way; should be here any minute.” He glanced between Whitaker and Mateo, and she shook her head, her eyes widening slightly. “I know that sounds bad, he waited as long as he could, I promise. He just had a flight to catch for this big meeting in Dallas and–”

“Maria, you do not need to explain yourself. We’re just glad you’re here. We are going to get you up to CT though, make sure that head injury isn’t too serious. Then we’ll get someone from ortho down here to take a look at that wrist, all right?”

“Okay,” she said, and he offered her a soft smile before he stood back up, walking with Bennett out of the room so Mato and Whitaker could finish up.

“You don’t actually believe that, do you?” Alex asked as soon as they were outside the room, and he turned around, a little surprised to see her eyes had gone cold, practically narrowed into slits as she looked at him. He didn’t say anything, simply folded his arms over his chest and waited to see what else she might say because he had a feeling there was quite a bit more she wanted to say.

But she didn’t. She just looked up at him with those window-pane eyes, her hands planted firmly on her hips, her full lips pursed. It was a look he’d been on the receiving end of a handful of times, namely from Collins before she up and left and took a fellowship somewhere else without so much as a goodbye. He tried not to think about that now.

“I believe that jumping to conclusions doesn’t do anyone any good. In fact, I’d argue that goes against the very core of what we do here.” He raised his brows slightly, challenging her to push harder.

This time, she did. “How is that jumping to conclusions? That’s the oldest excuse in the book. I mean, seriously, her husband didn’t even bother staying to make sure she was okay–”

He put his hand on her shoulder and guided her away from the patient’s room as the doors opened and Mateo wheeled her out, heading in the direction of the elevators so she could go to CT. It was no small miracle that the machine wasn’t already backed up this time of day. “Dr. Bennett,” he said quietly, “we can stand here all day and speculate but until we get her CT results back, there is no point in us doing so. Okay?”

Alex pressed her tongue against her cheek as if she were physically trapping the words in her mouth. She looked tense, like a rubber band pulled taut, just one measly centimeter away from snapping, but finally she nodded though it looked like it took every ounce of effort for her to do it. “Okay.”

“Robby, MVC incoming,” Dana called from the nurse’s station and he shouted back an acknowledgement before striding towards the doors to the ambulance bay, strapping on one of the trauma gowns as he went.

Thirteen people came into the ER in the span of fifteen minutes. 

Five cars crashed in a busy intersection downtown, hitting a patch of ice. One of the vehicles slid out of control and struck two pedestrians walking on the sidewalk. The driver walked away with nothing more than a few cuts and bruises, but both pedestrians died despite their best efforts, two teens who were literally just walking to school. She could still see the blood puddling on the floor, pouring out of them faster than they could even figure out where the hell it was coming from.

A family of four where they’d had to put the father on a ventilator and the little girl, not much older than three, had both her legs shattered. 

A twenty-five-year-old with a life-altering spinal injury.

Two brothers had been on their way to try on tuxedos for their big brother’s wedding and one of them was going to probably lose his leg from where it had been pinned against the crushed passenger door of his SUV.

On and on it went, a seemingly endless parade of misery as family members arrived and news was delivered. Sobs and screams echoed like the cruelest song you’d ever heard, an orchestra of pain that she honestly thought she would have been used to after so many years but she wasn’t. 

And she didn’t think she ever would be.

There wasn’t time to breathe and decompress because of course there wasn't. There never was. There were more patients to see, more people to save. All she could do was strip off her bloody gloves and the blood-splattered trauma gown and work. 

At some point Mateo and Whitaker flagged her down to a nearby computer, Maria’s CT results on the screen.

Robby came by, already looking tired around the eyes despite the fact that they were barely three hours into their shift. Then again, he was the one who had delivered much of the bad news, holding hands and offering comfort when he could, bracing against the yelling and the denial. She wondered if the grey that streaked through his hair and beard was a result of age or the stress of the job. Probably both, though the latter was more likely.

Her eyes focused back on the screen, finding exactly what she’d expected to find because of course she fucking did. “Is this the part where I say I told you so?” The words slipped out before she could stop them and she wasn’t looking at Robby though she certainly felt his dark eyes burning into her temple like two little flames.

“What is it?” Whitaker asked, and Robby sighed as he withdrew his glasses from his pocket, sliding them on. They hardly fit his face, she noticed when she finally looked his way, and she wondered if they were sentimental.

“See these spots on her bones? On her arms, legs, and ribs?” He waited for Whitaker’s nod before continuing. “These are places where the bones have been broken and healed again and again. We see it mostly in domestic violence and child abuse cases.” 

“Oh,” Whitaker said, his voice small, and Alex straightened, turning to face Robby fully.

“So, should I go and grab Kiara now, or are we still not jumping to conclusions?” It was a bitchy thing to say and she knew it was, but the morning had already been long and exhausting and she was pissed that Robby hadn’t just listened to her to begin with because he looked at her like he couldn’t trust her and she knew it had something to do with that Langdon guy and it wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t fair that her own attending—the person who was supposed to be teaching and mentoring her—was holding something against her that wasn’t even her fucking problem. And he could deny it all he wanted but she was perceptive as hell. It was why she thrived in the ED, why when she did her rotations as a med student she’d had to fight the urge to beg to stay longer because nothing had felt as right as being in the emergency room had. She liked seeing the things other people didn’t, like talking to the people that everyone else ignored. 

But in moments like this, it fucking sucked because it meant she noticed when people didn’t like her. Or didn’t trust her, in Robby’s case.

She saw it in the way his eyes lingered a little longer on her than anyone else when she was performing a standard procedure, or the way he stuck closer to her side when she was talking to a patient as if to make sure she didn’t miss any information. She was a goddamn third-year resident, it wasn’t like she’d never seen the inside of a hospital before. But to Robby, she was someone who needed supervision.

He’d told her she would work alongside him her first few days, but this was more than that. Fuck, even Hayes and Martin had more leeway than she did and they were still in the classroom.

Was he looking for reasons for her to fail? For something he could pinpoint and say she wouldn’t fit in there at PTMC?

She felt Whitaker and Mateo’s eyes bouncing between her and her attending, clearly sensing something, but she didn’t look away from the older doctor, just held his gaze and waited. She honestly thought Robby was going to pull her aside and give her a talking to—maybe even chew her out right then and there—but he just nodded. “I’ll go get her myself. You just focus on getting caught up on charting,” and it was all he said before he walked away.

Someone exhaled. Maybe it was her, maybe it was Whitaker. She didn’t know, all she knew was that Robby hadn’t torn her apart for backtalking him and that was good enough for her. So, she went to find the nearest computer, sat down, and started working on her charts because Jesus Christ was there a lot to get caught up on after the morning’s events.

It was a little hard to focus—she hadn’t eaten anything in she didn’t know how long, nothing but cheap coffee swirling around in her stomach, and her eyes kept drifting to south fifteen to see how things were progressing with Kiara and Maria—but she eventually got to a place where she wasn’t just absolutely buried.

A sandwich was tossed onto her keyboard and she flinched before blinking up at wherever the hell it had come from, assuming it had fallen off of a cart or someone had dropped it by accident. But no, Santos was standing there, arms braced against the counter. “You look like you’re five seconds away from falling over so. Don’t worry, it’s not egg salad.”

“I don’t mind egg salad,” Alex said, peeling back the plastic wrap, and Trinity shook her head.

“Trust me, you don’t want this egg salad.” She glanced around for a minute before turning back to Alex. “Heard you and Dr. Robby got into it.” 

Ah. There it was. “Should have known this came with a catch,” Alex said, waving the sandwich around before she took a bite, fighting the urge to moan. Christ, how long had it really been? There were donuts in the lounge yesterday, so she’d at least had breakfast, but nothing since then. Maybe she could take a few of these home with her if she remembered to grab them at the end of her shift. “And we didn’t ‘get into it,’” she mumbled around her mouthful of food.

“Not what Huckleberry said,” Santos said, and Alex’s eyes narrowed.

“Who?”

“Whitaker,” Trinity answered back, as if that made any goddamn sense, but Alex just nodded and took another bite. “Anyways, he said it was awkward as hell.”

“Whitaker’s being a little dramatic,” she said, finishing off the rest of the sandwich before she crumbled up the plastic and tossed it into the closest trashcan. But she knew that Whitaker wasn’t lying; he’d felt the tension simmering between her and Robby. Tension that shouldn’t be there on her second damn day but tension that was there anyways. 

“Speak of the devil,” Santos mumbled, pushing herself off of the counter, and then Robby was there, looking down at her, something about his expression she couldn’t quite pinpoint which only served to worsen her anxiety.

“Do you have a moment?” he asked, and she hesitated before she nodded.

“Yeah. Of course.” She got to her feet and followed him into an empty room, the hum of the ED softening somewhat behind them. “Look, if this is about earlier–”

“Just–” He lifted his hand, stopping her, and she felt her stomach knot, that sandwich she’d scarfed down sitting funny all of a sudden. “What happened in front of Whitaker and Mateo? That can not and will not happen again. Do you understand?”

“Dr. Robby–”

“I need to trust my residents, and I cannot trust my residents if they try and fight me at every turn,” he said, lightly tapping his fists together as if to demonstrate his point. “When it comes to sensitive matters like these, we do not jump headfirst into assuming the worst case scenario. We have to wait until we have evidence or we wait until the patients themselves tell us because these are people’s lives we’re dealing with here.”

“But you don’t trust me,” she said, folding her arms over her chest. “I pressed you once about a patient. And did you consider that it’s maybe because I’ve worked with DV victims? That maybe, just maybe, I recognize the signs? Would you have ignored Kiara if she’d raised the same concerns?”

“Kiara has been doing this for a long time,” Robby said, and anger flared in her chest.

“You don’t know a damn thing about me.”

He shoved his hands in the pockets of his hoodie, rocking back on the balls of his feet, and gave a shrug. “You’re right, I don’t. I didn’t interview you. Hell, I didn’t even hire you. So forgive me if I’m not eager to put all my trust in you right away. It takes time, Bennett, and arguing with me isn’t going to help things.”

Alex felt her nails bite into the smooth skin of her palm as she clenched her hand into a fist by her side, so harsh and sharp she thought she was going to break the skin. She didn’t, but she got pretty damn close.

So this was how it was going to be? She was going to have to prove herself to someone who was hellbent on seeing the worst in her because of a mistake someone else had made before she even got there?

“Clear?” he asked after she didn’t say anything for a moment, and she clenched her jaw.

“Crystal.”

Everything in Melanie Harris’s office was about comfort, from the dim lights to the plush couch to the snacks she kept out and available on the coffee table directly in front of where her patients sat. It was one of the things that had helped to disarm Robby during his first appointment, when he’d been such a bundle of nerves he hadn’t even taken his jacket or backpack off until halfway through the session.

“Robby, it’s good to see you.”

Her smile was warm, her eyes soft. The lights in her office were low, the bulbs in each lamp dimmed down, casting a gentle, golden glow over the small space; it was a nice reprieve from the blinding fluorescents of the ED. A variety of plants lined the windowsill, a few more scattered throughout the room. He’d joked that he thought he’d wandered into a jungle on his first visit.

“You too,” he said, resting his foot over his knee as he settled back into the overstuffed sofa. 

He’d started seeing her about a month and a half after PittFest. It had taken having another panic attack in the middle of a shift for him to realize he needed to do something to help himself. So, he got the number for the office where Jack’s therapist also worked and searched through the directory until he found someone who seemed like they might be a good fit. It took a few weeks for him to actually work up the nerve to make the appointment once he did, but… 

“How are you doing?” she asked, her tone even and measured the way it always was when she asked that question.

“Good,” he said, maybe a bit too quickly, and he saw that slight quirk of her brow, the one she often gave when he answered that question initially.

It was the song and dance they always did. She asked how he was, he gave the fake answer, she gave him a look, he gave the real answer, and then they spent the rest of the session discussing it. He wondered if they would ever get to a point where he skipped the fake answer entirely.

He doubted it.

“I have a new resident at work,” he said, shifting his gaze to his hands. “She’s…incredibly intelligent. And capable. Very, very good at her job. She reminds me a bit of Mohan in that sense.” It had been a week of working alongside her and she’d continued to impress him. She was good with the patients, quick on her feet—he felt like they’d reached a point where he could let her work on her own without worrying about her. And yet…

He traced his finger over his right thumbnail, a bit jagged from where he’d accidentally clipped it against something. He didn’t know what. 

“I’m sensing a ‘But,’ coming,” Dr. Harris said, and he forced his head up to meet her gaze. He’d been trying to be better about it since she pointed out that it was part of his avoidance tendencies. Apparently, his were quite severe.

“I’m having trouble trusting her,” he admitted. “Dana thinks it’s because she reminds me of Langdon.”

“And what do you think?”

He gave a heavy exhale, rubbing his hands over the worn fabric of his jeans. His palms felt sweaty, but they always did whenever he was in there; it didn’t matter if it was the middle of summer and she had the AC running or the dead of winter and she had two heaters going. 

“I think she’s right, in a way. This girl showed up out of nowhere. She left one of the best ED programs in the country to transfer to an understaffed, underfunded program on the opposite side of the country. I don’t know anything about her. I’ve not spent time with her the way I have Santos, or Whitaker, or Mohan, or anyone else that I’ve mentored and taught for a significant amount of time. Who I’ve been able to build a relationship with. Build trust with.”

Dr. Harris gave a soft nod. “You’re uneasy. That makes sense. Especially given everything that happened with Frank, I think it’s understandable.”

“Now it’s my turn to say I sense a ‘But,’ coming,” Robby said, and she smiled.

“You knew Frank for several years and your trust was still betrayed,” she said gently, and he bit the inside of his cheek, her words landing a little harder than he would have liked them to. “Maybe it has less to do with the length of time, and more so to do with something else. Is there something else that’s bothering you about her?” she asked, and he shook his head.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, because he honestly didn’t. He knew he had trust issues because of what happened with Langdon. He knew he didn’t trust this girl who had shown up in his department out of nowhere. And that was all he knew.

“Just think on it,” she encouraged him, and that was that.

The conversation veered elsewhere. They talked about Jake and how the two of them were doing. Better. They talked about if he was dating anyone. He wasn’t. She asked if he had considered it. He had. She asked if he had opened any of Frank’s letters. He still hadn’t.

They talked about work, about how to deal with the panic attacks, more breathing exercises he could utilize, a new book she recommended he check out. He scheduled another appointment and grabbed a little bag of goldfish out of the basket on the coffee table and said his goodbyes. And when he left, he felt a little lighter than he had when he walked in.

He didn’t feel quite ready to go home after leaving the building that housed Dr. Harris’s office. Besides, it was only a little after six and he had the day off tomorrow so he decided to do one of his homework assignments (spend time with a friend) and shot off a text to Abbot to ask him to grab a drink at Rippy’s. The other attending answered back almost immediately, which didn’t come as much of a surprise considering Robby knew for a fact he hardly ever slept, even on his days off.

He walked into the bar about a half hour later, his limbs stiff from the cold, and found Abbot was already sitting at a table in the corner of the room, two beers sitting on the table. “Hey brother,” Jack greeted him, sliding the bottle across the table. “Long day?”

“Therapy,” Robby said, and Jack whistled, the sound barely audible over the usual noise that filled the tiny dive bar.

“Ah. That’ll do it.” He took a swig of his beer and Robby did the same. “Good session though?”

“Yeah. It was,” Robby answered him, and he honestly meant it. Maybe he didn’t get all the answers he was looking for, but he left feeling a little bit better than when he’d walked in. And that was the goal for every session. Just get better, bit by bit. One step at a time.

“That’s all that matters, then.”

He started to ask Jack how his own shit was going, but then his eyes caught on a head of dark hair on the opposite side of the bar and he felt like he’d been blindsided, like a semi-truck had plowed into the side of his motorcycle and sent him flying. Just his fucking luck that the topic of his therapy session was sitting not even twenty feet away from him.

Abbot’s eyes followed his gaze and he could practically hear the other attending smirk when he spoke. “I heard through the grapevine that you and Bennett got into it the other day?”

“By ‘the grapevine’ I’m assuming you mean Perlah and Princess?” Robby asked, dropping his gaze to the tabletop as he took a much longer drink from his bottle. “Just had to lay down some ground rules. Nothing crazy.” Still, he found his eyes drifting over to her once more, almost as if he couldn’t help himself. 

It was because of his therapy session, that’s all it was. He’d spent the majority of his days this week with her, then spent his limited free time after work talking about her—of course she was on his mind. It was logical.

She was sitting with Santos, Whitaker, Hayes, and Martin; he was honestly surprised to see her and Santos clicking as well as they had been. Then again, Trinity had softened somewhat since the first day he met her, though he wondered if that had anything to do with a distinct lack of a certain senior resident’s presence. 

He realized he hadn’t seen Alex out of her scrubs yet and she looked even smaller somehow, the henley she wore hanging loosely off of her. It wasn’t uncommon for residents to lose weight with all the running around they did—stress took its toll too, certainly—but in the dim light of Rippy’s, it was evident that it was more than that. Had he seen her eat during any of her shifts? He honestly wasn’t sure he had.

She looked quite a bit softer, too, none of that fire he’d seen when she’d gone toe-to-toe with him evident now. She just sat there, nursing what he knew was the cheapest beer Rippy’s kept in stock, never once saying anything as the others only got rowdier and rowdier. Well, everyone except for Whitaker who just looked happy to be there. But she didn’t look uncomfortable at all, not like someone who felt like they were being left out in any way, just someone who seemed grateful to not be alone.

Was it possible that he really was assuming the worst? Abbot himself said she had stellar recommendations, a great performance evaluation—her superiors and coworkers at UCSF clearly thought highly of her. 

So what the hell was this feeling in his gut?

Alex could feel him watching her.

It was hard not to notice Dr. Robby. He just sort of took up space. Not in an obnoxious way, just in a way that made it to where you kind of had to acknowledge him whenever he was near. And she’d noticed him the second he stepped into Rippy’s, though it had taken him a minute to notice her.

But now that he had, it was like he couldn’t look away.

Even now as she stood at the bar, trying to get someone’s attention so she could order her next drink, she could feel his eyes on her back like two lasers burning into her skin through the thin fabric of the henley she wore. She rolled her shoulders as if she could physically shrug his gaze off of her, grateful that the bartender finally showed up and gave her something to focus on for just a second.

“Could I get another please?” she asked, sliding her empty bottle across the bar, along with her cash, and the guy nodded before turning to grab it out of one of the fridges.

“Hey there.”

Alex turned her head and saw some guy standing there, leaning against the bar and grinning at her. He didn’t look much older than she was, hazel eyes set into an angular face framed with tousled, sandy blonde hair. He was handsome in the kind of way that said he knew he was handsome, loud and in your face. Flashy. The kind of handsome that made the hair on the back of her neck prickle and her stomach knot because she’d known that kind of handsome before. Had fallen into bed with that kind of handsome more times than she cared to admit.

“Hi,” she said, turning back to the bartender as he placed her beer and her change on the counter. She left a tip for him and tucked the rest of the cash into her pocket, turning to walk away though she didn’t make it very far, Hazel Eyes stepping directly in front of her. He was several inches taller than her she realized now that he wasn’t leaning, all muscle underneath a sweater that looked way too nice for a place like this. 

“Oh, come on. Let me buy you a drink, gorgeous.”

“I have a drink,” she said, moving to step around him but he was right there, blocking her again. And with how crowded the bar was, there was no way for her to get around him without causing a spectacle. Hell, she couldn’t even see around him to where Santos and the others were sitting and the realization had her anxiety starting to spike, but she didn’t let it show on her face. She knew better than that. “My friends are kind of waiting for me so…”

“You and I both know there’s no friends waiting for you, sweetheart. Listen, I promise I don’t bite. I’ll buy you something nicer than this–” He plucked the bottle out of her hand before she even knew what was happening, turning it around so he could see the label. “–shit. Come on. It’s just one drink, it won’t kill you.”

Her lips parted—this time to tell him to fuck off—but then his hand closed around her arm and Alex froze, the words quite literally dying in her throat. The anxiety in her belly turned to pure panic, sliding through her veins and turning her blood to ice as it crept through her body like a sickness. There were people on every side of her, pressing in and stealing all of the air out of the room, out of her lungs, and she didn’t know what to do. 

Actually, she did know what to do but she couldn’t do it because she couldn’t move for some stupid fucking reason.

His hand slid down her arm as if in slow motion, fingers circling around her wrist like a handcuff, and still she couldn’t find it in her to do anything. Her feet felt like two cement blocks, her mouth like it was full of cotton, and she still couldn’t fucking breathe—

She felt the harsh scrape of a fingernail across the thin skin of her wrist as his hand was yanked away, heard voices yelling back and forth although they sounded muddy in her ear, almost like she was stuck underwater, felt the breath start to come back to her lungs a little bit at a time.

And then Doctor fucking Robinavitch was standing there in front of her.

Chapter Text

Robby didn’t know why he jumped in to help her. Alex Bennett seemed like someone who was more than capable of taking care of herself. But when he looked over and saw her standing as still as a statue, that…jackass holding her the way he was, he couldn’t just sit there and do nothing. 

He crossed the room before Abbot could even ask him where he was going, although it took all of five seconds for Jack to take off after him. It took another fifteen seconds for Robby to gather that asshole’s stupid sweater in his fist and drag him off of Bennett without a second thought, shoving him aside with probably a bit more force than was necessary.

For a split second, he saw Langdon in the hall by the lockers, clutching his stuff and looking at him like he was fucking terrified and he had to banish the memory to the back of his mind, ignoring the knot in his stomach as best as he could.

“What the fuck is your problem?” the kid asked, stumbling backwards.

“I think I should be asking you that,” Robby said. “Must be your first time here, because there is a very strict no touching policy here at Rippy’s. So I suggest you walk your ass out that door before someone throws you out.”

A few of the guys around them had taken notice of the situation, turning their attention to the kid, and he flushed red but didn’t say anything before making a beeline towards the exit, muttering something under his breath that Robby didn’t even bother trying to decipher. Abbot clapped him on the shoulder and headed back to their table and then he was alone with Bennett, her crystal eyes burning into him.

“Are you okay?” he asked after a moment, and she gave a stiff nod though she didn’t look all right in the slightest, her face even paler than usual.

“‘M fine,” she said, reaching up to brush her hair out of her face. As soon as she did so, his eyes caught on a bit of blood beading up on her wrist and his brow furrowed, something ugly flaring in his chest when he realized the guy had actually injured her. 

“That doesn’t look fine,” he said, nodding towards the scrape, and she tugged her sleeve down over it. 

“It’s nothing. Doesn’t even hurt.”

“ED’s a block away. We can run inside and clean it up real quick. Won’t take more than ten, twenty minutes. Tops.”

“Are you going to let this go?” she asked, and he just gave her a look that clearly said ‘Definitely not,’ because she sighed and brushed past him, disappearing in the crowd. When she came back, she was bundled up in her coat, her backpack strapped onto her shoulders. “All right. Let’s go.”

“One second,” he told her, heading back to his table to grab his stuff. “Gonna run Bennett to the ED. She’s got a scrape, nothing major, but I want to get it cleaned up before I send her home,” he told Abbot as he shrugged his jacket on.

“Hm.”

Robby paused. “Hm?” he echoed, sliding the strap of his backpack onto one shoulder.

“Just…hm,” Jack said, looking a little too amused for Robby’s liking. “I’ll see you Monday, brother.”

Robby narrowed his eyes at the other man but didn’t say anything, just turned and headed towards where he’d left Alex. She was fiddling with the sleeve of her jacket, her eyes a little distant. Unfocused. It was like she was a million miles away from the bar and it left him feeling uneasy.

“Ready?” he asked, and she just gave a vague nod of acknowledgement, following him outside into the bitter evening cold.

Neither of them said anything during the short walk back to PTMC, even though Robby’s head was running a million miles a minute. It didn’t make sense how he’d gone from thinking he couldn’t trust this girl to rushing into being her knight in shining armor. But that was just who he was, wasn’t it? If he saw someone in trouble, didn’t he help them? It didn’t matter whether he liked them or not, he was a doctor. He abided by one, singular rule: Do no harm. 

There weren’t exceptions to that rule, as much as a small, fucked up part of him sometimes wished there could be.

When they walked through the doors, Ellis immediately spotted them and arched a brow. “Back so soon?” she asked, and Robby smiled.

“Just taking care of something. Any rooms open?”

“Central ten,” she said without question even though he could see about a million of them dancing around in her dark eyes, and he nodded before heading that way, opening the door for Alex when they got there. 

“This is stupid,” she muttered, dropping her coat and backpack on a chair in the corner before she sat down on the exam table. 

Robby didn’t say anything to that as he dropped his own coat and bag, putting some hand sanitizer on before he grabbed clean gloves and the supplies he needed. “Can you roll your sleeve up?”

She reluctantly did so, exposing a bony wrist with a scratch across it that had clearly broken the skin, though it was purely superficial; it wasn’t like it would need stitches. “Just gonna clean this and wrap it, all right?” he said, and she didn’t respond, her gaze fixed on the wound. “I’m sorry that happened,” he said after a moment.

“What?” Alex asked, wincing a little when he swiped the antiseptic over her cut skin. “That guy?” When he nodded she scoffed, but the noise came out a little forced. It was the sound of someone who had dealt with that kind of person more than just a time or two before. “It was nothing. Just…” He thought he heard her voice waver, but maybe he imagined it. “It was nothing,” she said again, keeping her gaze on her wrist.

“It didn’t look like nothing,” he said as he tossed the wipe into the trash, reaching for a bandage.

Alex didn’t say anything and when he looked up, he found her biting down hard on her lower lip, hard enough that he honestly thought she was going to break the skin. He almost wanted to reach up and tug it away, the thought so sudden and surprising it made his ears burn. He cleared his throat as he tossed the wipe into the trash and grabbed a bandage, carefully placing it over the cut. “There. All done.”

She practically leapt off of the table as soon as he gave the all clear, tugging her sleeve down as she did so. He watched as she gathered her things, tugging her jacket and backpack on once more. “Great.”

“Alex,” he started but she was already out the door, disappearing like a ghost in the night…

“You ran off in a hurry on Friday,” Santos said, saddling up next to her when they finally had a second to breathe.

It was her first shift working with Dr. Robby where he wasn’t hanging over her shoulder watching her every move. At least, that was supposed to be the intent now that he knew what she was capable of. All day long she’d been able to feel him tracking her whenever he had a free moment (of which, today, he seemed to have far too many) and it was getting on her last goddamn nerve.

She knew it had everything to do with the incident at the bar last Friday. The guy and the dumb little scrape and him being her knight in shining armor or whatever the hell he’d been. She didn’t like thinking about him worrying over her, or thinking that she wasn’t capable of doing her job. It was bad enough that he could barely trust her, she didn’t need him thinking she was too fragile to handle working on top of that even though she knew she’d been doing just fine. Hell, she’d even had a few shifts without him and those had gone spectacularly. But no, he’d waltzed in that Wednesday morning with the sole intent of making her feel like she had to triple check every damn thing she did.

“Yeah, I thought I was gonna miss my bus,” she told Trinity, and it wasn’t a total lie; she’d had to sprint to her stop to catch the last one to get back to the motel after Robby dragged her to PTMC to patch up her wrist, and even then she’d barely made it.

She really didn’t want to think about how she spent the rest of her weekend, holed up in her little motel room, bundled up in her jacket because her heater went out, trying not to have a panic attack every time she heard so much as a footstep outside her door, living off of the two sandwiches she’d taken from work and the water from the sink in her room that tasted just a little bit off.

But this week was going to be better. She’d decided it as soon as she woke up Monday morning to the sound of her heater finally kicking back on, chasing away the dread that had manifested itself as the chill in the air. As soon as she strolled into PTMC to find that Dr. Robby had the day off which meant she didn’t have to deal with him interrogating her about Friday night. 

She had friends now. Or, rather she had coworkers who seemed to like her and invited her out places. She had a routine that she could sink comfortably into. A job that kept her busy, oftentimes too tired to let her mind wander to places it didn’t need to be wandering to. She had everything she’d wanted when she left California. Everything she knew she needed to have when it came to starting all over in a new city.

It would be better. 

It had to be.

“I need hands over here!”

Alex took off towards the sliding doors as a gurney was wheeled in, her steps faltering when she saw a familiar head of curly hair lying there, a paramedic straddling the woman’s waist, pressing gauze to her chest, the fabric already soaked crimson. “Female, thirty-two years old, GSW to the chest. Lost her once on the way over, one shock brought her back. We already gave her one unit in the field but her pulse is thready.”

The words hit her like a slap to the face, her hands shaking as she fumbled for a trauma gown and gloves, slipping both on though it took a little too much effort.

“Trauma one,” came a voice from someone, somewhere, but Alex didn’t know who it was. All she could do was follow the gurney into the trauma bay and watch as the dance began. 

The paramedic waited until someone took her place before she slid off the gurney, clearing the room a moment later. Fluids were hung. The smell of latex and blood mingled in the air. And her eyes kept going to the woman’s face. 

No, not “the woman.” Maria. 

Maria who she sent home just a few days prior with her sister, hopeful and optimistic. 

Maria who, at least according to Kiara, seemed to understand that she was living a life she didn’t need to be living and had every intention of walking away.

Maria who was now laying on a gurney in their trauma bay with a bullet in her chest.

“Hang another unit!” Robby shouted, and somewhere a heart monitor flatlined.

Not here. Not in this room. Not this woman. Not Maria.

But it was here. But it was in this room. But it was this woman. But it was Maria.

Alex’s hands were on her chest, pressing down in that familiar rhythm they learned early on in their careers. It was practically second-nature at this point, ingrained into her as much as breathing and blinking were. “Come on,” she whispered to no one in particular. God, maybe, though she’d stopped thinking he gave a shit about what she had to say a long fucking time ago.

“Hold compressions,” Robby called and she reluctantly withdrew her hands, eyes flickering to the monitor. 

Nothing.

“Push one of epi, resume compressions. Bennett, do you need to swap–”

“I got it,” she snapped, at who she didn’t know, before stepping back into position. 

She could feel the sweat already forming on the back of her neck; the stupid trauma gowns always made her hot, especially with the thermal shirt she was wearing under her scrub top. But she ignored it even though her hair was sticking to her skin, itchy and uncomfortable. 

“She’s back!” someone shouted, a steady, sure beeping filling the air, and Alex allowed herself to take a step away and take a deep breath for just a split second before she fell back into it.

“There’s a lot of blood here, she’s gonna need a chest tube.”

“Bennett–”

She was already moving, her hands almost working on autopilot to perform the procedure she’d done countless times before. It was muscle memory, really. The incision once she knew where the impacted area was. Inserting the tube. Clips to hold it in place. It was a checklist she ran through in her head, ticking the boxes off one by one until each and every one was satisfied.

But almost as soon as she’d finished and the blood had started to drain out of Maria’s chest, that goddamn heart monitor flatlined again.

“What the hell?” she heard Santos say, and everyone started scrambling.

“Push another round of epi and Santos, take over compressions!”

“Where is she? Where’s my sister?” came a voice from behind them, and Alex looked over her shoulder to see Maria’s sister standing there, tears streaking down her cheeks, panic written all over her face. “I left the house for twenty minutes. I-I told her I’d be right back. He fucking did this to her. He–” Her voice broke off in a sob and then someone was there, escorting her out of the room.

Alex couldn’t shake it off though, no matter how badly she wished she could. He fucking did this to her. Her stomach twisted into a knot and she knew if there was anything in it, she would have gotten sick.

Fucking focus, Alex, she told herself, turning her attention to her patient. The person she needed to save. The person whose sister was out there waiting to see if she was going to make it off of this table. The person Alex had sent home to this mess in the first place.

She tried. She tried so fucking hard. 

She took over compressions when Trinity needed to swap out and she kept going even when that voice in the back of her head told her that it was hopeless. That Maria had lost too much blood. That the second she came in here, she wasn’t going to make it out. But she still tried because she knew deep down that all of this was her fault.

The room was almost eerily quiet, nothing but the sound of the heart monitor flatlining and her hands pressing repeatedly against Maria’s chest. It felt like everyone around her was holding their breath, waiting for Robby to step in and say something.

“Hold compressions,” he finally said, and Alex drew her hands back–

And nothing.

Just that stupid fucking ringing.

“We’re gonna call it,” Dr. Robby said, but she didn’t hear anything else he said after that. She just tore her bloody gloves off and that stupid fucking trauma gown off, shoving everything into the trash before she stumbled out of the room, her chest so goddamn tight she thought it was going to collapse and take her heart and lungs right with it.

Alex could feel eyes on her as she made her way through the ED, desperate for refuge. Somewhere behind her, someone wailed, a horrific, heartbroken sound that she made the knot in her stomach go impossibly tighter. 

She didn’t even know where the hell she was going. She hadn’t spent nearly enough time in this hospital to know where she could hide and catch her breath and just be by herself for two fucking seconds. But she eventually stumbled onto a door that led into one of the stairwells, quiet and unoccupied, and she practically fell through it, unable to get the door shut behind her quick enough.

Alex leaned against the wall and slid down to the floor, just out of sight of the little window that peered into the space in case anyone came looking for her. 

She hoped and fucking prayed no one would.

That tightness didn’t leave her chest. If anything it only got worse as the realization sank in that Maria was dead because of her. Because she had gotten involved. Because she couldn’t keep her fucking mouth shut. 

She dug the heels of her hands into her eyes and tried to breathe but it was like her lungs couldn’t get enough air in, like they were trapped in a cage of her own making, a prison of panic and shame and guilt because she should have done better by this woman but she hadn’t.

He won.

They always won.

She didn’t know how long she sat there in that stairwell. It could have been hours but it was probably only a few minutes before the door slowly pushed open, just a crack big enough for someone to slip through. She had her face pressed into her knees so she didn’t see who it was, and whoever it was didn’t say anything either. Not for a few moments, at least.

“You did everything you could, Bennett.”

Fucking Robby.

She forced her head up despite the fact that it felt like it weighed a thousand pounds, her stomach twisting at the look on his face. Something akin to pity, but not quite. Worse, somehow. Maybe because he knew as well as she did that this was her fault, and as long as he’d been doing this he knew what it was like to be the reason why a patient died; he could recognize it.

“If you mean I did everything I could to kill her then yeah, I guess I did.” The words were quiet, barely a whisper, and yet she felt as if she’d screamed them, like they’d scraped their way out of her throat like a thousand little razor blades. 

“You can’t do that to yourself,” Robby said and she bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to draw blood, copper coating her tongue.

“What is this, Robby?” she asked, her voice sharp as if she were slinging those very razor blades right at him. “Why are you here?”

“I’m just checking in on one of my doctors. It seemed like that hit you a little harder than the others.” He was quiet, letting the words hang in the air between them. “There’s food in the staff lounge. Some cold drinks in the fridge. How about you take a breather, huh?”

“I don’t need to be handled with kid gloves,” she said, forcing herself to stand.

But a morning of running around on an empty stomach and her adrenaline finally crashing had her swaying on her feet as soon as she did so. 

Just her fucking luck.

Hands were there, soft and careful against her arms, keeping her steady until the dizziness subsided which didn’t take very long. His fingers were hot through the layers of her clothes, warm against skin that always seemed to be freezing no matter what she wore. “Easy,” Robby said, but she just shrugged his hands off of her and stepped out of the stairwell without so much as a glance back at him.

She wished he would just make up his mind. 

Did he not want to trust her, or did he want to keep doing…this? This showing up exactly when he thought she needed someone? A part of her thought it was easier when he didn’t trust her; at least then she knew where she stood with him, as frustrating a position as it was to be in. But when he looked at her like that? The way he had in the bar? The way he had when he’d patched up her wrist?

She didn’t know where the hell she stood with him then, and she didn’t like that one damn bit.

Alex was so busy spiraling over her stupid fucking attending that she ran right into Dana, the nurse’s hands coming up to gently grab her by the arms. “Whoah there. Where’s the fire?” she joked, her eyes warm. 

“Sorry,” Alex said, shaking her head. And something about being back in the ED, antiseptic and blood and the frigid air had her mouth going dry when she was reminded of why she’d had to make her escape to begin with. “I uh… Sorry.”

Dana gave her a once over and nodded her head in the general direction of the staff lounge. “Let’s get you something to eat, hm? And don’t tell me you’re not hungry, I haven’t seen you take a breath all morning.”

Alex had learned very quickly not to argue with Dana of all people—if she said to do something, you did it. So, she simply nodded her head and let the nurse lead her back to the lounge, settling into one of the chairs around the small table there in the room. “Here,” Dana said, handing her a plate that looked like it had come straight out of someone’s kitchen, some kind of pasta dish, a piece of garlic bread, and a side of mixed vegetables. 

Her stomach growled but she couldn’t even find it in herself to be embarrassed as she ate, nearly moaning at the taste of something other than a shitty sandwich or bar peanuts or whatever else she’d been scraping together over the course of the last week.

Dana took the chair across from her at some point, sipping on a cup of coffee she’d just poured for herself.  “You doing all right?”

“Mhm,” Alex mumbled around a mouthful of spaghetti, grateful for the fact that she was eating so she didn’t have to worry about needing to elaborate. When she finally took a breath to take a drink of water, Dana was looking at her in a way that had her stomach twisting uncomfortably. 

“Kiara’s talking to Maria’s sister right now. Just thought you’d like to know,” Dana said gently, and she felt the food on her tongue sour like rotten milk.

No, she didn’t want to know. In fact, she wanted to forget the morning ever happened. She wanted to forget about Maria and her sister. She wanted to forget about the hole in her chest and the neverending stream of blood pouring out of it. She wanted to forget about the fact that she hadn’t been able to save her.

But the worst part of this job was that you couldn’t forget. It got easier to deal with these things, but you never forgot unless you just didn’t give a shit. And Alex, unfortunately, gave way too much of a shit.

“There’s a patient in south twenty, should be pretty cut and dry if you want something to ease back into it.”

Alex shook her head and pushed the plate away as she got to her feet, taking another long sip of water that felt like drinking down jagged rocks. “I’m fine. But thank you,” she said, tossing what little was left of the food in the trash before she all but ran from the room.

She dove headfirst back into work, picking up the easy cases, the challenging cases, and everything in between. Anything that would keep her busy and keep her mind off of that morning. And all the while, she was overwhelmingly aware of a set of dark eyes tracking her wherever she went.

“How was she?” Robby asked, glancing up from his computer for a brief moment.

He’d barely had a second to breathe all morning, it felt like. The police had come in, needing to speak to someone about Maria Jackson, which had taken up more of his time than he would have liked. More traumas, more patients—just another day where it felt as if he could barely keep his head above water.

And then there was Alex.

He’d seen residents take losses badly. It was just part of the process, learning how to deal with those moments of which there would be many during their careers. But there was something about this loss in particular. He’d seen Alex handle loss well since her arrival, had seen her compartmentalize better than most while still holding on to the empathy that made a good doctor great. But today was different. It was personal, and that worried him because when things got personal, mistakes were made. Patients suffered. The doctor suffered.

“She was all right,” Dana said, running through the paperwork of which patients could move where before night shift came in. “I think she’s a bit tougher than you give her credit for,” she added, peering at him over the top of her glasses. 

Robby’s eyes found Alex sitting with a mother and her son in one of the rooms, smiling as she carefully wrapped the boy’s ankle in a bit of gauze. The kid was giggling at something Alex was saying, the mother looking incredibly at ease. But if he looked a little closer, he could see the strained edges of Alex’s smile, the tightness around her eyes; it was a mask he’d worn too many times in this damn place.

Or maybe she’s just really good at pretending, he thought.

“Why you so worried about this one, hm?” Dana asked, moving to stand a little closer, leaning against the desk next to his workstation. “If anything, I thought you’d be thrilled not to have a resident you’d have to babysit.” 

They both knew she was referring to Reid who, God bless him, had been incredibly nice but couldn’t be left alone for longer than five minutes without them worrying they would have to either fill out a worker’s comp report or fix something he’d done to a patient. His escape to Florida had been a relief, and that was putting it lightly.

Having a competent resident was a blessing, sure, but it still didn’t put him at ease. Not when he didn’t know anything about her or where she’d come from or why she was always on edge, like she was looking over her shoulder for someone to come out of the shadows and grab her. 

Was he borderline obsessive looking for signs of other people struggling? Maybe. But he didn’t want to risk losing another one of his doctors to something that could be easily avoided.

All he could fucking think of was Frank. 

Frank who’d been getting his fix straight from Robby’s own home, practically.

Frank who’d been risking everything he’d worked for—everything Robby helped him earn—for a cheap high.

Frank who’d been drowning for so goddamn long and Robby hadn’t seen it because he’d been too deep in his own bullshit. 

“You’ve seen her, haven’t you?” Robby finally said, turning his attention back to his computer. “I’m not sure that she’s taking care of herself, that’s all. And look, I get it. These residents have a habit of working themselves to the bone, but I don’t need one keeling over in the middle of the ED. I just want to keep an eye on her.”

A throat cleared just behind him and his stomach flipped, snatching his glasses off his face as he turned to see Alex standing there, her mouth settled into a thin line. Her blue eyes found his, watching him for what felt like ages before they moved to Dana, softening significantly. “Central fourteen is clear,” she told the nurse, handing her the paperwork. “Just a minor sprain. I’m going to go check on my patient in central eight. Mateo said his labs just came back in.” She turned to Robby, her eyes chilling like a lake in the middle of winter, daring him to tell her not to continue working.

He didn’t say anything.

“Right,” he thought he heard her mutter as she turned on her heel and headed in the direction of the room, a certain something in her step he couldn’t quite pinpoint. Frustration with him, more than likely.

It was the one constant that had been there since the second day when they went toe-to-toe regarding Maria’s initial assessment, when he’d told her she couldn’t argue with him in front of the other doctors. 

When he told her that he didn’t trust her.

Since then, things between them had been…well, tense was putting it lightly. And he wasn’t stupid. He knew he was partially to blame for it, for making her feel like she had to be on the defense around him, but he also didn’t know what to do about it. What was there to do? When someone he didn’t know just showed up in his ED without notice, clearly carrying something… Well, what the hell was he supposed to do? Blindly put his faith in her?

He felt Dana’s eyes on him and he turned in his chair to face the blonde, scrubbing a hand over his beard. “What?” he asked, already dreading the answer.

“She’s a good kid,” she said gently. “I think whatever she’s got going on…well, that’s between her and God. But it’s not keeping her from doing her job,” she said, and Robby blew out a breath, dropping his head back.

Frank’s addiction didn’t keep him from being a damn good doctor, he wanted to say, but he didn’t because it wasn’t helpful. It only served as a harsh reminder of his own shortcomings. How he had failed. How he had let Frank down. How he’d let this entire hospital down by not being more aware of what was going on right underneath his nose.

And he trusted Dana. Of course he trusted Dana. But when it came to Alex, he just had a feeling that something wasn’t right…

He stayed a little late that night after the day shift clocked out for the evening. He went into the office he never used, a room that had surely seen better days, stuffed to the brim with boxes of paperwork and plants that were barely clinging to life. He found the filing cabinet that contained all of the paperwork on their residents and rifled through it until he found the manila folder labeled A.B., withdrawing it and tucking it into his backpack before he left the ED and slipped out into the icy, Pittsburgh evening.

“So, how are your classes going this semester?” Robby asked, fumbling with his chopsticks as he tried to pick up a piece of whatever was on his plate. Short rib, maybe? He hadn’t really been paying attention when their waiter came around and he was very quickly realizing he should have been.

Jake had been asking him to go to something called “hot pot” for about a week now and tonight was the first night Robby was off at a reasonable time and Jake didn’t have anything else going on, so it worked out. Cooking his own food wasn’t exactly his idea of a relaxing dinner, but when it came to spending time with Jake, he would take any crumbs he could get.

It had been better since PittFest. It took time, of course. Janey had to convince Jake to start therapy which was a whole battle in itself. It was part of the reason why Robby finally went, if only so Jake could see that it wasn’t something to be scared of. And then there was the other battle of actually getting them in the same room again. 

There were still moments when it wasn’t easy. Moments when Robby was reminded of the fact that he was the reason Leah wasn’t there anymore. Moments when he was reminded that he was the person who had brought Jake so much pain. But they were trying to work through them. Slow, but surely, they were working through them.

“Fine,” Jake shrugged. “Calculus is kicking my ass, but I’m really liking my Dual English class a lot through CCAC.”

“That’s good,” Robby said, smiling a little. This was safe territory. Friendly. Easy. “Reading anything interesting?”

“We’re doing a whole gothic literature section. Frankenstein, Dracula, all that stuff,” Jake answered, tossing a few more veggies into the broth. “It’s been kind of cool. My therapist thinks the darker stuff is kind of cathartic for me, in a way.”

“That makes sense.” He nodded, a little surprised to hear Jake mention therapy so casually. It wasn’t normally something Jake ever brought up unless Robby dragged it out of him, and even then it was usually a one-word response. Then again, they were coming on the year mark. Maybe it was getting a little easier for him to deal with it all?

“How’s work?” Jake asked, and Robby exhaled.

“It’s…work. Same as ever,” he answered, the file in his backpack like a weight.

“Yeah?” Jake asked, raising his eyebrows at him from across the little table they were sitting at. “Sounds like something’s going on.”

“Nothing’s going on,” Robby said, laughing a little even though he swore his ears were burning. How was Jake so damn perceptive sometimes? Actually, he knew the answer to that and it was Janey. She’d always been good at picking up on when he wasn’t being entirely truthful, usually when he was trying to spare her from how bad the bad days in the Pitt really were. The work was heavy and he hadn’t always liked bringing it home with him, not to Janey and Jake.

“Is it a girl?” Jake asked, smiling a little, and Robby was quick to shake his head.

“No. No girl,” he said, even though that wasn’t entirely truthful either. “Just a new coworker. Trying to… I don’t know. Figure out how to work with them, I guess.”

“‘Them,’” Jake echoed before he took a bite of his food. “So, it is a girl? Because if it was a guy, you would’ve just said ‘him.’”

“How about you just eat your food, huh?” Robby grinned, poking his chopsticks in Jake’s direction, though he couldn’t chase away that nagging in the back of his head.

Sure, Alex Bennett was pretty. He’d have to be blind not to notice that. Much in the same way Samira was pretty. Much in the way that Heather was pretty. But it didn’t mean he wanted to do anything about it. Because, much like Samira and Heather, Alex was his student. And even more than that, he didn’t know her. He didn’t know why she was at PTMC save for some vague “family thing,” according to Abbot, and he honestly wasn’t entirely sure that was true.

No, he got the distinct feeling that Alexandra Bennett was running from something and there was a small part of him that was terrified whatever it was, it was going to end up in his ED somehow…

He and Jake finished their food, and by that he meant they ate as much as they could handle before they finally had to tap out. Robby paid and drove him back to Janey’s place, the weather way too cold to even consider walking. 

“Tell your mom I said hi, okay?” he told Jake when he’d parked and walked him down to the stoop of Janey’s little townhome.

“Will do,” Jake said, lingering there for a moment. 

The kid hesitated before he reached up, giving Robby a quick hug. “Thanks,” he said quietly, the single word barely audible over the wind, but Robby heard it all the same. 

Jake turned and jogged up the steps before Robby could say anything, but he honestly wasn’t sure he would have been able to. He just watched Jake’s retreating form until he was safely behind the front door.

Maybe things really were getting back to normal between them. Well, as normal as normal could be. Regardless, it helped to put his mind at ease despite all the other shit happening and gave him something else to focus on for just a few minutes. At least until he got home.

He showered and changed into sweats and a hoodie before padding into his living room where he’d left his backpack, and then the sight of it was like a damn trigger. A part of him didn’t even know if he wanted to delve into that tonight. He’d had such a good night with Jake—did he really want to potentially ruin it with whatever was in that folder?

If there was even anything at all.

What if there was nothing in the folder but exactly what Abbot had told him was in there? Recommendations and evaluations and all the boring paperwork you needed to file to switch residency programs. What if he was making this all up in his head?

He turned on his heels, shutting off the living room light as he went and closing his bedroom door behind himself, leaving the backpack and folder in the dark where they belonged. 

And probably where Alex Bennett wanted them to stay…

Chapter Text

“How’s it going?”

Alex glanced up briefly from her charting to see who was talking to her, finding Mohan standing there. She managed a small smile before looking back down at the computer screen, her eyes already aching. Maybe she’d invest in some blue light glasses when she finally had money to spare. 

“It’s going.” She cast a glance around the room before she straightened somewhat, partially to give her back a break from where she’d been hunched over her computer for far too long, and partially so she could get a better look at the other woman. “Hey, could I ask you something?”

“Absolutely,” Samira said, and Alex folded her arms over her chest as she turned, leaning back against the desk she’d been working at.

She liked Samira. They hadn’t spent a ton of time together since she’d started at PTMC, but the senior resident’s reputation preceded her. She was beyond intelligent, she was great with her patients, she was an amazing teacher—it was clear that the ED was lucky to have her there.

She’d also heard that Samira and Robby had butted heads over the years. Maybe not as much as he and Alex were, but they’d had their issues, certainly. At least from what little she’d been able to piece together based on the gossip that floated through the halls and during those rare moments of quiet when they had nothing else to do but talk about each other.

“I was just wondering if Robby was…” Her voice trailed off, searching for the kindest way to say it but coming up short every time. “I don’t know. It just feels like he’s been on my case since I got here and I don’t really know what to do about it.”

Samira nodded, a look of genuine understanding crossing her soft features. “Truthfully? You just do your job to the best of your ability. You’re here for a reason. And from what I’ve seen, you’re amazing at what you do.” She looked around before turning back to Alex. “Robby’s been on my case since I started here,” she said, her voice a little softer, almost as if she were afraid the attending in question was looming over their shoulders. “I’ve just learned to shut it out and not let it get to me. As much as I can, at least.”

“Yeah…” Her eyes drifted across the ED, finding Robby standing with Whitaker, talking to the intern about something. 

He looked a little bit lighter today, like the weight that seemed to perpetually rest on his shoulders wasn’t there any longer. Or rather, had taken a slight reprieve. It changed everything about him, made him seem less…Robby-like. Even his face seemed a little softer, not quite as tired as it had been over the past week and a half, his dark brown eyes a little brighter behind the glasses he wore.

Almost as if he felt her watching him, he lifted his head and met her gaze, forcing her to turn back to her work, heat blossoming across her cheeks. Luckily (or maybe not so luckily) a trauma came rolling in and gave her something else to focus on aside from her attending and whatever this weird feeling was in her stomach…

It was a busy morning, not overwhelming but still busy enough to keep her from having much time to think about anything other than her work, and her work alone. But that was exactly what she needed. 

When she finally had a second to catch her breath, Dana was there, protein bar and bottle of water in hand. Alex arched an eyebrow when the charge nurse offered them to her. “What’s this?”

“Just figured you could use something to eat. You’ve been pretty nonstop all morning,” she said, and Alex pursed her lips, Robby’s words ringing in the back of her mind.

You’ve seen her, haven’t you?I’m not sure that she’s taking care of herself. I just want to keep an eye on her.

“Let me guess: Robby’s orders?” she asked, reluctantly taking the bar and tucking it into her pocket. “I know he thinks that I need to be babysat, but I promise I’m fine.”

“I know you are,” Dana said, not unkindly, setting the water bottle down on the desk within reach. “He just gets a little protective, that’s all. He doesn’t mean any harm by it.”

Is that what it is? Alex wanted to ask, but she bit her tongue. It wasn’t Dana’s fault Robby thought she was made of glass, but it didn’t make it any less frustrating. She wasn’t some delicate piece of China that needed to be handled with care and she didn’t know why Robby thought she needed to be. Was it because of what happened yesterday? 

Surely, he’d seen other people fall apart far worse than that. 

She started to say something but then goddamn Dr. Robby was there, saddling up next to her as if his ears had been burning. “Everything okay?” he asked, and she forced a smile that she was almost positive he could see right through.

“Perfect. Thanks.” She started to push herself off of the counter but he stopped her with a hand on her shoulder, every muscle in her body going tense like a coiled spring. She turned to face him, fighting the urge to clench her jaw. “Everything okay?” she asked, echoing his words back at him.

“Kiara wants to talk with you about what happened yesterday. Just to check in. Make sure you’re all right,” he said as his hand fell away, and she bit the inside of her cheek if only to keep from screaming.

“Seriously?” she asked, and he arched a brow.

“Is that a problem?”

Is that a problem? 

Had he forced anyone else into a therapy session in the time that she’d been there? Or walked around telling people he was afraid they were going to drop dead in the middle of his ED? No, that honor was bestowed just for her because not only did Robby not trust her, he didn’t seem to think she was even stable enough to handle this job even though she hadn’t done anything that anyone else hadn’t done.

It was fucking humiliating and the fact that he couldn’t see that only made her angrier. It was bad enough that she’d walked in here not knowing anyone—that she had to prove herself to an entirely new staff of people—but to have the person who ran the damn department not even believe in her? To have him treat her like she was some bomb seconds away from detonating all because he had some shit he couldn’t work through? 

It was complete and utter bullshit and she didn’t know how he couldn’t see that.

“I don’t need to talk to Kiara. But thanks for your concern, Dr. Robinavitch.” She could hear the venom in her voice when she said his name, and judging by the look on his face, he heard it too. She turned on her heels and headed towards her next patient room, ignoring the eyes burning into the back of her head as she went.

Just gotta get through today, she told herself as she moved from room to room, keeping herself too busy to allow Robby even a second to pull her aside. It was a maneuver she’d seen him pull a time or two when he was avoiding Gloria, busying himself with patients so she didn’t have an opportunity to try and take him aside to discuss whatever the hell it was that they talked about.

“There you go,” she told Hayes, walking her through an intubation on a patient from a car accident. She quickly realized that the icy conditions on the roads meant they saw more and more of these kinds of traumas than anything else; it felt like one a day, at minimum, if not more. She’d lost count of how many ortho consults she’d requested since she started. “Yep, just sweep the tongue to the left… You see the epiglottis?” 

“Bennett?”

Robby’s voice sounded from the entrance of the trauma bay and she pursed her lips before focusing her attention back on Hayes, handing her the tube that Princess had passed her. He was just going to have to wait. “Here, now you’ll place the tube. You’re gonna stop when you see the cuff completely pass the cords. Okay?”

Hayes did exactly as she was instructed, watching the screen as she carefully slid the tube in, her smile bright when she realized she’d actually done it. 

“Perfect,” Alex said, and she barely got the words out before Robby spoke again.

“McKay, you guys good in here?” he asked, and Alex heard the other third-year hesitate a second before responding.

“Yeah. Yeah, we’re good.”

“Good. Bennett, got a second?”

Not for you, she wanted to say but she couldn’t in front of a room full of her coworkers so she settled for silence instead, reluctantly tugging her gown and gloves off and tossing both away as she stepped out of the room, snagging some hand sanitizer out of the dispenser on the wall as she went. “Let me guess: mandatory psych eval?” she asked when they were outside, the doors having slid shut behind them. 

Robby didn’t look amused. “I’m glad you think this is funny, Bennett.”

“I don’t think it’s funny at all, actually,” she said, folding her arms over her chest. “What I do think is that it’s really fucking weird you seem to believe I’m too fragile to handle this job to the point where you’ve tasked Dana with babysitting me and apparently are going behind my back to sign me up for therapy sessions with Kiara.”

Robby didn’t say anything, just looking down at her with those dark eyes, that lightness she’d seen earlier in the day noticeably gone.

“I think we should talk about this privately,” he finally said, and Alex glanced around, catching a few sets of eyes watching them though everyone was quick to look away. Still, her cheeks burned, shame and embarrassment swirling in her belly until the shitty coffee she’d had before her shift threatened to make a reappearance.

She let Robby lead her into a room, chewing on her lower lip as she stepped inside, the door shutting behind them. She kept her back turned to him for a second, just needing one moment to herself to try and gather her thoughts.

“I’m trying to help,” he said, and she couldn’t help but scoff.

“Right.” She finally turned to face him then. He was leaning against the door, his arms folded over his broad chest, the worn fabric of his hoodie stretched even thinner. She forced her eyes away from his arms to meet his gaze, something flickering in his eyes that she couldn’t pinpoint. She wasn’t sure she even wanted to try and figure it out. 

“At the bar? Fine. Sure. We’ll call that helping. You telling Dana I don’t take care of myself and you think I’m gonna keel over in the middle of the ED? That’s not helping.”

“What was I supposed to do? Come to you directly? Would you have even listened? Because I’m sorry, Alex, but even after yesterday when I checked on you in the stairwell, you were on the defense,” he said, and she reached up to rub her temples, her head already aching.

A groan of frustration tumbled past her lips. “God, Robby!” She let her hands fall away from her face but she jammed one finger in his direction. “Are you even listening to yourself right now? You say you haven’t known me long enough to trust me, and yet you’ve known me long enough to make all these assumptions about me and how I take care of myself and my life and whatever the hell else you’re fine with commenting on behind my back?”

“You almost passed out yesterday, Bennett. I think it’s a safe assumption to make, actually.”

“So? No one out there’s had a long day? No one else has been exhausted or-or maybe worked themselves too hard? I just don’t get why you’re picking on me, Robby. It’s like you want me to break, like you want this to not work out and for me to go back to California.” 

She tried her best to ignore the hot poker of panic, sudden and sharp, that struck her chest at the thought.

“I’m not ‘picking’ on you,” he said, and the way he said it pissed her off as if it were the most ridiculous thing in the world for her to suggest. “It’s my job to make sure my doctors are okay–”

“And do you always do that by going behind their backs to have Dana and Kiara run recon for you?” she interrupted him, and this time it was Robby who let out the frustrated groan, running his hand over his face.

“Christ,” he muttered, dropping his head back against the door for a brief moment. “Bennett, I figured you’d listen to either of them before you’d listen to me,” he said, forcing his eyes up to look at her. The exhaustion was back, lining his eyes and hanging over his head like some kind of a stormcloud. 

“And whose fault is that? Huh?”

She gave him a look before she pushed past him out of the room, ignoring the knot in her stomach as she went.

“You okay?” Dana asked when he finally left the room, and he exhaled slowly.

“I guess so,” he admitted, reaching for one of the little mints they kept stocked there at the nurse’s station. He tossed one into his mouth, if only to give him something to focus on for just a moment. His only saving grace was that the day was nearly over; he’d be able to go home and have a drink and just fucking breathe for a bit.

He grabbed one of the tablets and started scanning through the patients they currently had in the ED, wondering if there was anyone they could move or anything pressing he’d need to update Abbot on. “Did surgery ever come down and check on that patient in south fifteen?” he asked, and Dana shook her head.

“Still waiting. But north three’s been discharged and central seven’s on hour three of four hours of cardiac monitoring, so she should be good to go by the time night shift rolls in,” she said, and he nodded before glancing around, rubbing at the back of his neck. 

His eyes found Bennett in central thirteen, Whitaker with her, listening intently as she spoke to the patient. The other residents and med students seemed to like her a lot; they gravitated towards her. He overheard them say she was easy to work with. A good teacher. Patient.

It just made him feel even more conflicted about this whole thing. A part of him knew that she was more than capable of doing this job; he hadn’t been lying to Dr. Harris when he said she reminded him of how Mohan had been as a third-year (minus the issues with working too slowly). 

But he knew he wasn’t imagining things. He’d seen it in the way she nearly collapsed in his arms in the stairwell, the way her scrubs hung off of her like she was wearing a sheet instead of clothing. She could deny it all she wanted, but she wasn’t doing well and he had a feeling it had to do with whatever was behind her transfer to PTMC.

He slid his glasses on and settled down at his workstation, pulling up the schedule for the residents for the rest of the week. He scanned down the list until he found A. Bennett, and then he unchecked the box for tomorrow. 

A little forced R&R hadn’t ever killed anyone. Besides, who would complain about a three-day weekend?

He heard the phone rang and Dana snagged it, the words not really registering until she swatted his arm. “Can you handle this? Some guy’s asking for a resident, told him we don’t have anyone who works here with that name. Even if we did, we don’t share that info. But he keeps pressing me about it,” she said, and he sighed before he took the landline from her, leaning back in his chair.

“This is Dr. Robinavitch, Chief ER Attending,” he said, scrubbing his hand over his jaw, his beard scraping against his palm. 

“Look man, I’m just trying to find Lilah Williams and I know she’s there, so the sooner you cut the crap, the better,” the guy said, and Robby felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up, everything in him going on high alert. He knew they didn’t have anyone by that name in the ED—no nurses, no residents, no cleaning crew, nobody—but it didn’t make him any less nervous; not when the guy on the line sounded the way he did, like he was on some kind of fucking mission to find whoever this girl was.

He exhaled, eyes flickering to the side as Bennett and Whitaker stepped out of the patient room, moving towards the nurse’s station, probably to work on their charting. “I think my colleague already informed you that we don’t have a Lilah Williams who works at this hospital. Even if we did, we’re not in the habit of sharing information on our employees over the phone. All right?”

“Dr. Bennett?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Robby saw Bennett’s steps falter, Whitaker nearly stumbling into her. The voice on the other end of the phone was still talking but he’d mostly tuned him out at that point; it was clear that whoever it was had a wrong number anyways.

“Yep. Okay sir, thank you so very much for calling, goodbye now,” he interrupted him, reaching past Dana to hang up. “Jeeeeesus,” he groaned, reaching up to run a hand through his hair. God, if he could have just one day where he didn’t have to deal with something insane, he’d be thrilled.

He glanced over at Bennett, finding her still just standing there, what little color was normally in her face having drained out of it. “Bennett? You okay?”

“Mhm.” She finally settled down in front of one of the computers, rolling her shoulders back. She sat there typing away for a few moments before she spoke again, her voice a little quieter than usual. “Dr. Robby, do you mind if I clock out early today?” she asked, glancing over at him, and he couldn’t help the way his eyebrows practically flew up into his hairline.

Was this really the same girl who had nearly bitten his head off for having Dana and Kiara check in on her? The same one who insisted nothing was wrong?

“Uh, no. No, not at all.” He rapped his knuckles against the desk. “There’s less than an hour left and Ellis is on the schedule—she’ll be in early, I’m sure. Go ahead and head out.”

“Okay. Uh, central thirteen is just waiting on ortho and south nineteen should be up next for the ICU as soon as a bed opens up but he’s stable,” she said, rising to her feet, and Dana nodded.

“Sounds good, kid. We got it from here. You have a good night, all right?”

Alex offered a weak smile and headed towards the locker room, Robby watching her go. As soon as she was out of sight, he turned in his chair to look at Dana and she just narrowed her eyes, almost as if she were daring him to say something.

“Fine,” he said, lifting his hands in mock surrender. “This is me letting it go, all right?” Besides, it wasn’t like there was anything else to talk about. He was thrilled that she was leaving early; that coupled with her long weekend might genuinely help whatever was going on with her. Not completely, she still needed to take better care of herself, but it was still a start and that was all he could ask for.

But of course, he couldn’t help but wonder: why now? 

The rest of the hour passed by pretty uneventfully, strangely enough. It was an easy handoff when the night shift came in, letting them know which patients were waiting on what consultations and what beds should be good for discharge soon. For the most part though, everything was smooth sailing and day shift was able to head out without issue, everyone parting ways once they were outside the hospital.

He started towards his apartment building, hands dug low into the warm, worn pockets of his winter coat, but stopped short when he passed the bus stop and saw a familiar head of brown hair sitting there, breath puffing out in icy clouds.

He pulled his phone out, eyeing the little temperature widget up in the corner of his screen. Fifteen degrees and still dropping. That lovely end-of-January cold was really something. His feet started moving before he could even consider how bad of an idea it surely was to approach her, stopping just a few feet short of where she sat. “Bennett,” he said gently, but she still startled as if he’d shouted her name.

“Dr. Robby,” she breathed, and he could see the redness spread across her nose and cheeks from the cold.

“Waiting for your bus?” he asked, and she gave a slow, reluctant nod.

“Missed it by a few minutes. Next one won’t be around for an hour and a half,” she said, mumbling the last few words, almost as if she didn’t want him to know that she’d be waiting in the cold for that long.

“Jesus,” he muttered, bouncing on the balls of his feet in some vain attempt to keep himself warm. “You know, there’s a diner close by. Great coffee, even better soup. How about I buy you a cup so you don’t have to wait out here the whole time? My treat?”

Her brow furrowed, those light blue eyes narrowing slightly.

“Consider it an apology for earlier,” he added and she bit her lower lip, his eyes flickering down to track the movement of their own accord. He forced his gaze back up to meet her own, and he could practically see the wheels turning in her head, probably wondering why the hell he’d want to spend time with her after telling her for two weeks now he couldn’t trust her. But then he watched as she dragged her lithe body off of the bench, wrapping her arms around herself as she did so.

“Lead the way then.”

Chapter Text

The diner was warm, almost stiflingly so. But Alex welcomed it, even as sweat gathered on the nape of her neck and stuck the thin fabric of her sweater to her lower back. It was busy too, full of people at a little after 7 P.M. on a Thursday. 

Robby waved to someone behind the counter and moved to settle into a booth in the back corner, the red vinyl cracked with age and wear, but still comfortable, especially after being on her feet for most of the day. “You must come here a lot,” she said, arching a brow at him as he handed her a menu.

“On the weekends, mostly. Sometimes after a long shift if I know I’m too tired to cook at home but want to eat something other than cereal or a protein bar,” he said, grabbing a menu for himself out of the little cubby situated there at the head of the table. 

“So a lot,” she said again, and he cracked a smile, the sight making the corners of her lips quirk up ever-so-slightly.

Slightly.

“Robby, how are you, honey?” An older woman came by their table, her dark hair streaked with grey and piled on top of her head in a messy bun of sorts, her plump cheeks dusted heavily with blush. She was carrying a pot of coffee and two mugs and she set both of them down on the table. “Coffee for you and your gorgeous friend?” 

She swore she saw the tips of his ears turn pink, but she chalked that up to the cold. “I’d love some, Lisa, thank you,” he said, and when the waitress turned her big brown eyes on Alex, she gave a soft nod.

“Yes, please, that’d be great. Thank you.”

“Of course, hun. I’ll be right back to get your orders in, all right?” She reached down and gave Robby’s shoulder a squeeze before she was off to her next table, a round of raucous laughter echoing in the diner mere moments later.

Alex closed both hands around the mug, just grateful to have something warm to chase away the chill that had settled deep into her bones in the short time that she’d spent outside. She lifted it to her lips and took a small sip, unable to help her sigh of content. “Mm… You were right, this is great coffee. Much, much better than the staff lounge, I have to say.”

“Well, that is a very, very low bar,” Robby countered, taking a sip of his own coffee. 

They sat in a…she wouldn’t really call it a comfortable silence, really. It was just a sort of silence. And while she sat there with him, it was hard not to think about that morning’s events, of him going behind her back to Dana and Kiara. She knew exactly why he’d done it, too; it didn’t take a fucking genius to know it had something to do with that Langdon guy.

But it still wasn’t fair for him to hold something against her that had happened long before she even got there.

Lisa came back and Robby ordered a burger and fries. She stuck with coffee.

“You really don’t want anything?” he asked, sitting back in the booth, and she shook her head.

“I’m fine.” 

“You sure, hun?” Lisa asked, looking down at her. “Arnie back there makes a mean grilled cheese.”

God, that sounded good. She was almost certain Robby would have been able to hear her stomach growling if it weren’t for how noisy the diner was. “Um, sure. That sounds great. Thanks,” she said, and Lisa made a pleased sound before she topped off their coffees and went to greet her next table. She could feel Robby’s eyes on her and she turned to face him, finding him watching her curiously though he didn’t say anything, just simply lifted his mug to his lips, taking another drink.

“I honestly did want to apologize,” he said after a moment, and the words caught her by surprise. She hadn’t thought he was being serious when he said it at the bus stop. She genuinely thought it was just a ploy for him to get her out of the cold, nothing more nothing less. “If I had concerns, I should have brought them to you. Not Dana, not Kiara. Not anyone but you.”

“Well… Thank you for saying that,” Alex said, looking down at her hands. The last fucking thing she’d expected when she woke up that morning was to get an apology from Michael Robivanitch of all people. 

She hesitated before she spoke again. “It’s about Langdon, isn’t it? Why you’re so…concerned about me? Because you don’t want what happened to him to happen to someone else?” She looked up at him after that and he looked almost as if she’d slapped him, his expression slightly startled. It was like he’d seen a ghost.

“How do you…”

“A senior resident stealing drugs from the hospital isn’t exactly something that gets swept under the rug.” He rubbed his jaw, and she could vaguely hear the scrape of his salt and pepper beard against the skin of his palm, even over the chatter of the diner. 

“I know you don’t want to trust me. I get it, as much as I hate it. I came out of nowhere—no warning, no nothing. But Robby, I’m not the enemy here as much as I’m sure you wish I was. I just want to do this job and do it well. I didn’t plan on PTMC when I started my career, but I want to make a life for myself here, same as anyone else.”

He watched her carefully, dragging his finger around the rim of his coffee mug. His expression was unreadable, a million different emotions and thoughts passing through those dark brown eyes, far too many for her to keep track of or take note of.

“It was a really hard move for me, okay? Like I said, it wasn’t exactly in my plans to pick up and move across the country, but I’m here now and I’m trying my best to make it work. It would be a lot easier if I had you in my corner instead of fighting me at every turn,” she added, echoing his sentiment from that day they went toe-to-toe.

She couldn’t believe she was being so fucking honest with him, but she was tired. She was tired of pretending like she could handle feeling like her teacher and mentor was working against her. As humiliating as it was to admit, she wanted his approval. She wanted him to trust her. She wanted Michael fucking Robinavitch to look at her the way he did Mohan or McKay or even fucking Whitaker. 

Like he had faith in her.

Lisa came back with their food, placing their plates in front of them before she was gone again. Robby didn’t say anything for a moment, reaching for the ketchup in the cubby, putting some on his plate to dip his fries in before tucking it back into its spot. But he didn’t move to eat, neither of them did.

“I’m protective of the Pitt and the people in it,” he finally said. “Overly so, I guess. Langdon has a lot to do with it, probably.” He took another sip of his coffee, his fingers lingering around the handle of the mug when he set it down. His eyes were downcast and she allowed herself to look at his face, at the soft smattering of freckles that lingered just under his eyes, the deep set crow’s feet that spread to his temples, the slope of his nose. She hadn't really looked at him before. Not like this, never just to look. 

“I’m not him, you know,” she said quietly. “I think it’d be a hell of a lot easier for you if I was, but I’m not, and it’s not fair to hold what he did against me.” 

And there it was, the thing that she’d been holding onto ever since Santos told her about Langdon, ever since she saw that look in Robby’s eyes and realized what exactly it was he was clinging to so fiercely, the idea that she was in danger of breaking apart or crumbling or whatever it was that had happened. 

She saw her words land against him, maybe a little harsher than she’d intended, but they landed all the same. 

“You’re right,” he said, nodding his head. “You’re not him. You remind me of him, though, in a lot of ways.” He reached for a fry and tossed it into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. His eyes raked over her, studying her in that way he often studied a patient. Careful. Steady. Intense. It had her shifting in her seat, as if his gaze were a physical weight bearing down on her. “I don’t want to overstep here, Bennett.”

“Then don’t.”

He smiled though it didn’t quite reach his eyes, eyes that flickered to the untouched food on her plate. “What’s going on with this?” he asked, and she narrowed her eyes at him before she picked the sandwich up, tearing it into two pieces and taking a bite out of one of them.

It was good. Of fucking course it was good, it was cheese and bread and butter, how could it not be good? But she had to fight the urge to spit it out with the way he was watching her, her mind conjuring up images of emerald eyes narrowed at her over the dinner table, slender hands portioning her food off into little containers that she tucked away into her work bag.

She swallowed even though it took a little too much effort to do so, reaching for her coffee a second later. “Not sure what you mean,” she said, before her eyes flickered to the clock hanging on the wall at the front of the room, the pressure she hadn’t even realized was building in her chest loosening significantly when she saw the time and realized she could make her escape from this…whatever the hell it was. “My bus will be here in a few minutes.” She reached into her jacket pocket to grab some cash so she could cover her check, but Robby stopped her.

“Don’t worry about it. My treat, remember?” he said, and she nodded.

“Right. Well…thanks.”

“Of course.” He watched her gather her things and she felt his eyes on her all the way to the diner’s front door. 

And when she stepped outside into the crisp evening air, she genuinely didn’t know if the sudden chill that ran through her was because of the cold weather or because she could no longer feel the heat of his gaze on her skin…

“You seem in better spirits today,” Dana commented, and Robby had to fight the urge to roll his eyes as he took a sip of his coffee.

Truthfully, he was in a better mood. He hadn’t thought that was possible after the conversation he had with Bennett at the diner. If anything, a conversation like that should have sent him spiraling. Maybe it was a sign that therapy was actually working. Who would have thought? He still didn’t feel 100 percent about her, but he felt better. He felt like they could be in a room together without her wanting to bite his head off, at least, and that was a start.

“Maybe I’m just happy it’s almost the weekend, hm?” he said, glancing over at her before turning his attention back to the board. Night shift hadn’t had such a bad evening which meant that morning wouldn’t be as terrible as he’d been expecting. Well, maybe not at first. There was no telling what the hell would happen…

He did a double-take, eyes finding a head of brown hair leaning in close to Santos, the two talking about something—he didn’t know and he didn’t care. He set his coffee down and crossed the room to where Bennett stood, eyebrows raised. Santos scattered, mumbling something about going to see a patient in north four.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, and she arched a brow.

“Well, good morning to you too, sunshine,” she said, folding her arms over her chest the way she always did when she was around him, almost like she was trying to shield herself from him somehow. Still on the defense, he noted, though it wasn’t exactly surprising. “In case you forgot, I’m on the schedule.”

“And it seems like you forgot one of the very important rules which is to check your schedule daily in case it updates. In this case, it did. I took you off of today.”

Her blue eyes flashed. “Are you serious, Robby?” she asked, and she must have seen the look on his face because she sighed, reaching up to pinch the bridge of her nose. “You know what? Fine. I’ll go home.” He nearly reached up to clean his ears out because surely he hadn’t heard her correctly. Surely she wasn’t actually going to do something he was asking her to do. “But I’m going to wait in the staff lounge until my bus gets here, all right?”

Or maybe she was.

“Fine. But if I see you anywhere near a patient–”

“Yeah, yeah,” she muttered, already heading towards the lounge.

He turned and headed back towards the nurse’s station, picking his coffee back up. “All right, I’m going to go check on Whitaker in central eleven and then I’ll– What?” he questioned, noticing Dana just looking at him, amusement shining in her eyes.

“What’s going on with you two?” she asked, and Robby briefly glanced back over his shoulder at the staff lounge door.

“What are you talking about?”

“Just that that’s the first time Bennett’s not looked like she wanted to throttle you.” Dana smirked, and Robby just shook his head, already heading towards the room Whitaker was working in.

“Whitaker?”

The intern straightened when Robby entered the room. He’d grown a lot just in the last year and a half, though he still had a ways to go. But he was learning, and honestly that was all Robby could ask for. “Um, Mr. Daniel Jackson. Forty-five. Complaining of headache and nausea. No fever, no abdominal tenderness. Urine and blood tests both came back negative.”

“Hello Mr. Jackson,” Robby said, grabbing a pair of gloves from one of the boxes on the wall. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” the man on the table said. “If I’m being honest, I actually feel great.”

Robby glanced at Whitaker, the intern looking just as confused as he felt. “You do?”

“I’m looking for someone,” he said, and immediately Robby thought of the phone call they’d gotten yesterday. Look man, I’m just trying to find Lilah Williams. Since when had his ED become the goddamn lost and found? “More specifically, I’m trying to serve papers to someone and I was told that she works here. Now, you can’t exactly waltz into an emergency room, can you?” Mr. Jackson said, and Robby gave a slow nod.

“Right. So, let me get this straight. You wasted hospital resources, my doctor’s time, the lab’s time, and took a room from an actual sick patient so you could try and serve papers to someone?” He rubbed his jaw, grinning even though it wasn’t the least bit fucking funny. “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to leave before I call security.”

“Oh come on! Look just–” The man fumbled in his pocket for his cellphone and withdrew it, unlocking it before he unceremoniously shoved it into Robby’s face. “I just need to serve this girl some papers. That’s it. My PI said she’s working here. It’ll take five seconds, okay? That’s it, and then I’m out of your hair.”

Robby reluctantly drew his glasses from his pocket and slid them on, taking the phone from the man. The girl in the image was young, a little too young to be a doctor. A med student, maybe, and that was being generous. Long, honey-blonde hair, full, round cheeks, and tanned skin. There was something vaguely familiar about her he couldn’t quite put his finger on, not until he got a good look at her eyes and realized they were a similar shade to Bennett’s, that icy, light blue, but that was quite literally the only thing they had in common.

“I hate to tell you this sir, but that girl does not work in my emergency room. Now, if you’re done wasting mine and my doctor’s time, you’re free to leave,” he said, offering Mr. Jackson’s phone back to him.

“That was weird, right?” Whitaker asked him when the “patient” had left the ER and the two of them were heading towards the nurse’s station to update Dana. 

“Really weird,” Robby agreed, and Dana arched her brow at them as they approached.

“What’s weird?”

“Some guy faked being sick just so he could come back here and try and serve someone who doesn’t even work here. It’s like that call we got yesterday. You know, I don’t know who the hell is telling people that this place is some sort of catch all for their lost and missing, but it’s getting real old real quick. Makes me want to gently yet firmly press Gloria about additional security,” he muttered, reaching for one of the tablets. “Whitaker, will you go help Mohan in north six?”

“On it,” Dennis said, before he was gone.

“Bennett leave yet?” Robby asked Dana, and she nodded just as the phone rang.

“Couple of minutes ago. Don’t know why you didn’t just let her stay, I’m sure she would’ve been happy to help out,” she said before she picked up the phone. 

Robby watched as her expression shifted right before his eyes, dread settling over him as those soft eyes turned serious in a split second. “Mhm… All right, we’ll be standing by.” She turned to Robby. “A restaurant downtown collapsed, said there were about forty-five people inside. They aren’t sure on how many survivors yet but they said we should be expecting crush injuries, amputations—whole lot.”

Robby felt his stomach twist but he just nodded and fell into action, organizing and delegating the way he knew how. It was going to be an all-hands-on-deck situation and a part of him did regret sending Bennett home early, but he couldn’t exactly call her back now. No, they’d have to be just fine without her.

They got as many ORs cleared as they could and alerted ortho that they would need them readily available to deal with the crush injuries and amputations. They had plenty of blood on standby and they cleared all the rooms in the ED that they were able to. They’d barely had a chance to move patients before the ambulances started rolling in, one after the other.

Triage started sending patients into the designated zones. Reds and pinks and yellows and greens. Though, there were far more of the first two than the last two…

For a moment, he was back in that hellish day of PittFest, feeling so fucking out of control. Heather and the baby and Dana getting attacked and the kid who was Jake’s age dying of an overdose and the girl who drowned saving her sister and Leah and all of it and–

“Robby!”

He rushed over to where Mohan was working on a patient, shaking off the memories like they were snowflakes that had gathered on his winter coat. Instead, he lost himself in this. In the work. In saving lives and doing what was in his power to do. 

He moved from patient to patient, helping his residents and students as best he could. In the end, it wasn’t nearly as many patients as they saw during PittFest but they lost far more than they had that day. It was almost funny how they’d been able to save more victims from bullets and blood loss than they’d been able to from concrete and crush injuries…

Robby hadn’t meant to go to the roof. Honestly. He just sort of found his way up there when his shift was finally over, bracing his arms against the railing and taking in the black sky spread out before him. He didn’t know how long he’d been out there, only that his face was numb from the cold by the time the metal door hit the brick they used to prop it open, the sound shattering the silence that had settled around him like a shield of sorts.

“Is this the spot to go after every major trauma?” Abbot asked as he moved to join Robby at the railing. 

He wasn’t standing on the other side of it this time, not at the building’s edge the way he had that night of PittFest. That night when everything felt so fucking hopeless and miserable and like there was no damn point in it at all.

“Maybe,” he said after a beat, sliding his hands into the pockets of his cargo pants, fingers flexing, still aching from gripping scalpels and closing around chest tubes and blood bags. “Just needed a breather,” he added, clearing his throat.

That was putting it lightly. 

What he needed was to go home and stand under the scalding hot water of his shower until it burned away the feeling of the blood and the sweat and the memories of today. The kids crushed under rubble, their chests nearly flattened. Limbs hanging on by literal threads. The screaming and the way it had echoed in the Pitt until he was certain he hadn’t been able to hear anything else, not even his own thoughts.

It was one of those days he knew would linger.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, clapping Abbot’s shoulder for a brief moment when he passed before he slipped through the door and down the stairs, already looking forward to heading home and falling into bed even though he knew sleep wouldn’t come easy.