Chapter Text
The Edge of the World, California
This was it. This had to be it- right?
The wind picked up, a helping hand pushing him closer to the edge. It was a newly familiar feeling, one that had become a balm in the first violent weeks and then endless months of COVID. The safety railing of the roof wasn’t here right now and the strange California scrub land felt like a different planet.
Robby killed him. He killed him. With his incompetence and back already cracking under the weight of a hospital that Adamson had carried effortlessly. It was stupid, how long had Adamson told him that it was time to step up? Time to get ready for the next big step into his senior attending’s shoes? Robby hadn’t wanted to hear it, hadn’t wanted to move past the comfort of having someone senior to hold his fucking hand. Now look at him, no hand to hold in the fucking world.
The cold was biting on Robby’s cheeks, the smell of the sea muted. His trusty old F150 (G-d, could he let nothing go?) was parked back down the two-lane highway. All the roads felt empty now but here he might as well be the last man on Earth. He could-
He could jump.
No one would know, not for a while at least. Maybe he could be a mystery to liven up the security team’s betting pool. He used to love shit like that. He used to love a lot of things. It was a good thing that Heather had moved on, that Janey had gotten rid of him, that he wasn’t something worth keeping.
Was it stupid to jump thinking of Adamson? He was a mentor, a friend, a father figure that had grown to rival the mythic status of his Bubbe. Someone who was, by all rights, at peace. Someone who had done the impossible and managed to leave his baggage at the door, to be worth being loving inside and outside of the ER.
Robby’s beat to shit tennis shoes, still bloody from some forgotten day before the full body PPE had left him feeling like his skin wasn’t real, inched closer to this anonymous cliff face. No famous overlook, no incriminating searches on his phone, just him and a good long drop. His stomach feels light for the first time in forever, maybe this was the first good thing he’s done in a long time. For the first time since he stepped on the gas and didn’t stop, not till he passed the Pennsylvania state line, not till he just kept going, he feels like he’s arrived.
A toe closer to the edge, Robby takes a deep breath.
Bzzt. Bzzt.
The sound shakes him, he jumps back before he can remember to jump forward, stumbling ass over teakettle with palms in the dirt. Suddenly, it’s not the grey sea, it’s the blue, blue sky overhead that he’s looking at and- he’s crying.
Who the fuck is that? God, if he looks and sees a message from Gloria he’s going to do it. He’s going to just roll himself over the edge like a sad sack fucking log. He pulls his cellphone from his rank Carhartt pocket- Jack Abbot. Huh, Robby scoffs, now there is a name he hasn’t seen in years, two missed calls somehow. He’s operating on impulse, his body a puppet that’s gone rouge. The call back button is pressed, and the cold face of his phone is against his wind bitten cheek.
“Hey brother! Been trying to get ahold of you,” Jack sounds like a stranger.
“Hey brother, yeah, sorry. Been a bit busy,” he says, a laugh choked out of him. What was even happening.
“I bet, I bet, listen- I don’t have much time. You remember when we met up before my last tour?”
“Yeah, yeah, Freddy’s. A good time. What’s the plan, you’ve got another two years right?”
Jack scoffed, his smile clear through the line, “You’d think! I had a little accident, left a little too much on the field this time. Thought I’d come give civilian life a try and would you believe who’s hiring?”
Like an electric shock Robby was pushing himself up, “A little too much- Jack what does that mean?”
“You can imagine, they took a little off the bottom. BTK, one leg.”
“One leg!”
“Robby, don’t wuss out on me now. That’s not the important thing; the important thing is that I’m coming to slum it in your Pitt! Just like residency man, help you ride out this COVID shit.” The ambient noise of an airport hummed in the background. Robby wonders if Jack can hear the whistle of the wind. If he knows just what a fucked-up situation he’s walking into.
“Yeah, brother of course we could use you. Guess they are hiring anyone nowadays,” another laugh trickles out of him. Hopefully a laugh, he wasn't feeling confident.
“Nance is stoked, don’t know if she should be. I think she might prefer me overseas; we got a sweet spot in Shadyside under contract. Where are you living at nowadays?”
“Saying the hospital is probably more honest,” Robby sighs.
“Haha, yeah man that’s what they all say.”
“Truer now than it usually is. You’re walking into a storm, you sure about this?
“Sure as I’ll ever be.”
“Sure, sure. I’ll be waiting for you man…” Robby trails off, sat Indian style like he hasn’t since his twenties. Fuck.
“I’ll hold you to that brother, be seeing you!”
The click of the line felt a shot to the head. The cloak of responsibility settled on his shoulders like it had never left, perhaps a hair lighter knowing that he has something waiting at home. Jack isn’t Adamson, is a different puzzle piece entirely- but he’s one that Robby isn’t able to disappoint, not really. They are too similar for that, too messed up in the head.
Robby stands, cracks his back, and gets back in the car. He’s going to need a night’s sleep and a call to Gloria before he heads back.
Bumfuck Nowhere, Nebraska
This was it- this had to be it.
Dennis couldn’t take it anymore, didn’t know how he could have thought that this parable would end well for him. He can feel his castle of sand, carefully built in his five years of undergrad, crumbling between his fingers in the prison of his childhood room. Four pink walls, closing in by the second. He was never able to campaign hard enough to change it- to be honest, he didn’t really try. He was always on the back foot with his family, never quite what they wanted.
Five years, five years of slowly turning the nuts and bolts inside himself until he finally, finally felt like a person. Now he was Alice in Wonderland. Alex in wonderland? He sometimes felt clever, it was disorienting how no one else agreed.
His hands skimmed the cotton of his boxy collared shirt, skating over where his- chest was further out than it had been since sophomore year. A paltry attempt at disguising a process that was, by some definitions, complete. His voice was undeniably different now, beyond the flimsy excuses of colds and Omaha smog. His face was still soft but it now had boyish angles to it, his dark circles looking more correct to him. A little hair on his chin, shaved away, the rest of him still woefully bare. The growth downstairs that he sometimes, late at night when the hall was fast asleep, would skim a hand over with a tentative awe.
John had almost not stopped for him when he showed up to UNO, his voice tentative, “Denise?”
He hadn’t replied, jumping into the car before his non-existent friends could hear. He hadn't put on a mask, maybe it would have helped. Dennis was trying to pick his battles, hard as it is to silence the voice in the back of his head screaming about the risk, now so far from the start of the pandemic.
“Hey, yeah. Good to see you.” Dennis kept his face forward and tried not to think about the chokehold of that name. It’s almost the same, that was the trick of it.
Deh-nees. Deh-nis.
“You look… it’s been a while,” John started. His skin was more weathered than five years ago.
“Yeah.”
“Ma and Pop know?”
“Nothing for them to know.”
“Seems like.” John was staring ahead. It had been five years with as few visits home as possible, thanks to one fake boyfriend, a summer supposedly spent interviewing at a convent, and the frankly acrobatic moves he pulled to stay on campus during the COVID lockdowns.
“Do you think I’d be going back if I had another option?” Dennis tried his best to sound calm. He was calm, totally calm. As calm as anyone short a foot of hair and down six octaves could be. John took his eye off the quickly emptying roads, took one good look. Dennis wondered what he saw, if he could stomach another brother. If their curly hair and matching smiles made more sense now.
“Mmmh, sure,” John hummed.
Silence reigned till they hit Broken Bow, no music even. He supposed that the Christian rock channel on 91.1 wouldn’t hit the same with him in the car. Just one year, finish the last classes he’d need for his pre-med track at the local community college and study for the MCAT- he would write his ticket out of this place for good. A year, he could do this for a year.
Now, in the semi-darkness of his room a year felt stupid, an absolute pipe dream. One driven by the steadily building student loans, the end of his eligibility for RA duties, and the increasingly fragile ruse he’d built. He felt like a bandit, stealing years away when it took an act of God to get him permission to leave for college in the first place.
Knock, knock- Dennis leapt to his feet as if stung.
“Denise? Lunch is ready, come set the table,” his mother’s voice had the sweet evangelical cadence that grated now.
“Ugh- coming!” His voice couldn’t decide if it wanted to affect a similar tone or stick to his carefully developed tenor. It came out as a squeak.
He popped through the door before he could think, everything moving in hyper speed. His parents had been at Sunday service, staying late to chit chat with the other farmer’s wives about who was looking a little tarty and who hadn’t been to Wednesday’s reading group. He took in his mother’s eyes widening, her hand made its way over her mouth as a gasp broke through. God, why did he ever think this would work?
Sarah Whitaker had been his look-a-like for his whole life, maybe she still was. It was like looking into a mirror, both wracked with mutual horror. “What happened to your beautiful hair, Denise? What has that school done to you?”
“Nothing, nothing,” before he could get anything out, he saw his father round the corner. John Whitaker Senior looked like a memory, faded more by sun and hard work than Dennis had been prepared for.
“Who is this?”
“Denise! Oh Lord in Heaven, I knew we should never have let her go to that school, oh look what they have done to my baby!”
“Denise?” He was so fucked. His hands grabbed his ratty army surplus duffle, still leaned by his old bookshelf and mercifully undisturbed. He backed up, edging down the hall. His mother’s growing hysteria and the red rapidly rising up his father’s neck made a fool of him. Solomon’s baby indeed and they were both going to be holding a side when this was done.
The chipped white paint of the front door was under his hands faster than he could think, the sounds of his parent’s a rising tide at his back. Words jumped out, a confusing mix of slurs and protestations.
“Don’t you dare, girl! Did that school make you queer? They got you messing with yourself, messing up your head?” The knob turned and he was out, already running.
“Get back here Denise Elizabeth! You feeling big? You want to play big city faggot?” Pop’s voice was an echo of every nightmare he had leading up to today. Every word a premonition coming true.
He didn’t reply. There was no need. He was the fool for coming back, thinking that somehow, he could make himself small enough to fit back into his family home. His legs carried him further away, it was ten minutes to the main road, the highway an hour walk from there.
The tears don’t start till he is past the mailbox.