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The pain started small at the tail end of Robby’s last shift before three days off. It was dull and diffuse in a way that made it hard to pinpoint a start to it or even that he was having it at all—what was one more ache after a day spent lifting patients and contorting to hold himself in weird positions to make it possible for someone else to perform a procedure? In fact, it was Jack who noticed at handoff.
“Whatchadoin’ there?” he asked, nodding at the way Robby was stretching. He had twisted his torso as though to crack his back, but was also leaning off to the side while pressing on his ribs.
“Hm? Oh, nothing.”
“D’you tweak something?”
“No, just got a little stitch,” Robby said. “I need to hydrate and have a banana or something.”
Jack made a flat little sound as he flicked his eyes over Robby’s body. Robby shied from the attention and slid past him to get to the locker room.
“Don’t forget the electrolytes, brother!” Jack called at his back. Robby flapped a hand at him.
He swung by for a reuben from Primanti’s because his stomach was screaming at him, but when he got home the fries turned his stomach. Annoyed with himself, he put the sandwich in the fridge for later, when it would be trash and he’d have to choke it down anyway.
He wanted to slam a Gatorade and banana because the stitch wasn’t going away, but he had to settle for sipping and nibbling because his stomach wasn’t cooperating. He tried to do a little deep breathing but that just made the stitch worse. He stripped down to his underwear and socks and tried to do some slow stretching in front of the TV. That at least felt good, even if it didn’t cure his stitch.
Robby wondered if he had any diazepam left over from the last time he threw out his back. He rifled through his medicine cabinet, but only found his current slate of medications plus some ancient steroids for the time he got full body hives and dusty bottle of saw palmetto he should be using and wasn’t. He closed the mirror, caught sight of his own heavy eyes, and beat it out of the bathroom before he could do something silly like stand there fractured and dissociating into the million lives he didn’t get to live.
Back on the couch, he pulled up his text thread with Jack.
Could you
Do you have any
Do you mind putting in a script for some
Robby swore under his breath and tossed the phone onto the other end of the couch. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. Jack was still at the beginning of his shift, probably neck deep in some firefight. He didn’t need Robby bothering him about a stitch in his side.
Nothing good was on any of the streaming services he subscribed to. He kept starting things only to find himself playing with his phone. He should probably get rid of some, especially since he often only had them for one show that was inevitably canceled. He opened up Grindr just to see what was on offer, but even the profiles that might usually hold appeal—over forty with functional muscle, ungroomed body hair, and intact sanity—left him cold. Not even a twitch in the undercarriage. He tried a book, a few journal articles, a podcast, and a handful of albums he considered perfect, but nothing kept his attention.
Meanwhile, his stomach was growling but trying to eat nauseated him and every deep breath sent pain ricocheting through his body. The hurt had gathered to focus, dull and hot, right under the bottom of the ribs on his right side. Palpating it had no effect; pressure neither intensified nor alleviated the pain.
All right, Robinavitch, he thought. Time for a differential.
The pain was localized to the right upper quadrant. First up was the gut.
• Blockage
⁃ cancer
⁃ paralytic ileus
⁃ impaction
• Infection
⁃ ulcer
⁃ diverticulitis
⁃ appendicitis
⁃ gastroenteritis
For the gallbladder:
• choledocholithiasis
• cholecystitis
• cancer
For the liver:
• Acute failure
⁃ Wilson’s
⁃ hepatitis
⁃ alcohol/acetaminophen
For other nearby organs:
• nephritis
• pancreatitis
• splenomegaly
⁃ mononucleosis
⁃ other viruses
Moving upward because of lung involvement:
• Spontaneous pneumothorax
• hemothorax
• pneumonia
• diaphragmatic injury
• cancer
Cardiovascular because why not get everyone in on this party:
• aortic dissection
• hepatic artery
• portal vein
• cardiac ischemia
• mesenteric ischemia
• pulmonary embolism
• pericarditis
Subjective: No palpitations or sense of doom, no trouble catching breath, no confusion or stroke symptoms, no (some?) severe pain, local or otherwise—if it’s an infection it’s early stages yet, still urinating (always!).
If it were any other patient, he’d check first for choledocholithiasis. Gallstones. But the center of his abdomen didn’t hurt, nor his back, nor his right shoulder. The big thing that pointed away from his gallbladder was that while he was uncomfortable, the pain wasn’t sudden or intense. It was the same for any possible bile duct obstruction: the pain just didn’t seem as bad as it was reported to be, as he’d seen it in his patients, plus it only flared with deep breaths. It really felt like a stitch that wouldn’t let up. Whatever this was, it wasn’t an emergency.
He choked down a few bites of apple so he could slam 1000mg of ibuprofen and call it a night. He avoided his reflection as he brushed his teeth and washed his face. He crawled under the covers and curled up on his left side. He winced when he tried to take some meditative breaths.
“Fucking no man’s land,” he grumbled.
Robby woke up sweating in the stillest hours, stomach roiling, body tense. He made it to the toilet just in time to yak up some globs of fruit amid the neon yellow Gatorade. It was hot and sour and vile. He hated vomiting; it was always so violent that it left him sore for a week.
He had very little to puke up, but his body kept trying anyway, until he was spitting pale foam and panting shallowly with his face pressed against the porcelain. He tried to drag in air, but every inhale felt like a knife twisting under his ribcage. He was one massive muscle, locked in a spasm. Fire in his throat, a knife in his side, hugging the toilet like a lost child upon finding his mother.
Save me, toilet, he thought, and giggled uncontrollably. Until he dry heaved again.
During a lull, he hefted himself to his feet and got his phone. Vomiting was the great leveler: one had no dignity and no pride in the throes of a purge. He typed and deleted several descriptions of his suffering that Jack really didn’t need before landing on something dry, polite, unembellished.
Could you put in a script for ondansetron and swing by with it after your shift?
Maybe some diazepam too
It was 5:39am. He could wait the hour or two it would take for Jack to finish out his shift and get over here. All he could hope was that he’d see the message soon so there wouldn’t be a delay in his leaving the hospital.
He was slumped against his bathroom wall again twenty minutes later when the call came in. He swiped to answer it.
“Jack,” he croaked.
“What’s happening, brother?”
“I threw up.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“I don’t know, a couple hours?”
“It’s not stopping?”
“I guess it’s let up a little, but I’m puking bile, man.”
“Can you have a piece of toast so you at least have something to throw up?”
“No, God no.”
“Okay,” Jack said, and Robby could see him suppressing a sigh. “And the diazepam?”
“Muscle spasms.”
“Your back?”
“My side. No CVA.”
“Right side?”
“Upper quadrant, not lower.”
“Hm. What else, Robby?”
“Hurts to breathe.”
“What? Okay, I’m coming over.”
“Jack—”
“It’s fine, Shen and Ellis are both here, day shift’ll be here soon and it’s a frequent flyer and DOA kind of night anyway.”
“It’s not my chest,” Robby said. “It’s not that bad, I can wait.”
“Brother, you sound like you’ve gargled broken glass. What did you even eat?”
“Nothing, some fruit.”
“You ate fruit for dinner?”
“I couldn’t stomach anything else.”
“What did you eat yesterday? The day before?”
“I don’t fucking know, Jack, Jesus.”
“All right, I’m coming, just sit tight. Try to eat some toast.”
With that, Jack hung up the phone. Robby sat there and drifted for a while before he hefted his carcass up. He meant to go to the kitchen and get some toast, he really did, but the couch was so inviting, and he was so sore and tired and cold. He put a hoodie on and wrapped himself in a throw blanket. He pulled the hood up and tightened the drawstring until only his nose stuck out. He shivered and shook, teeth clacking together. His thoughts came in a jumble: frogs and onions and fluorescent lights and that rock monster from Star Trek and everything dark and red and Jack holding Isaac’s hand which was funny because of course they’d never met so Robby laughed but it hurt, it hurt, it hurt.
Jack took one look at Robby burning up in a nest of blankets and hauled Robby’s ass back to his truck with a Zofran dissolving on his tongue. The real fuck of it was that Robby didn’t even put up a fight. He didn’t exactly help, so Jack was on his own for moving an unwieldy fleshbag full of bones and jam, but the point was: Robby was assenting to go to the hospital, which filled Jack with equal amounts of relief and dread.
Jack trundled him into the passenger seat, which took some doing since the guy had like five inches on him and was doing his best jellyfish impression, but Jack kept fit for a reason. By the time he rounded the truck and got into the driver’s seat, Robby had turned the heat up all the way despite the fact that it was not cold out and Jack could still hear his teeth chattering.
“Come on, man, you’ve got a fever,” Jack said, turning the heat back down.
“’m fucking cold, Jack,” Robby said.
“And I know you know the mechanism here, which is that your body is doing everything to run up its temp to drive the infection out, but we can’t have you frying your brain right now, I’m sorry.”
“Are you not fucking freezing?”
“It’s 70 degrees before 7am so no I’m not fucking freezing, Rob, and I’m also not having the heat blow in my face the whole drive. Buckle up. Do you need help?”
“No!”
That was a lie, so Jack twisted in place to help him click the buckle in. If he broke a few traffic laws, it would only take ten minutes to get to the Pitt.
“Tell me about this muscle spasm,” Jack said as he pulled out into the road.
Robby only grunted. His shivering was violent.
“Come on, man, talk to me,” Jack said. “You seemed okay at hand-off, what changed?”
“I couldn’t finish my sandwich.”
“Robby.”
“My skin hurts. Jack, my skin.”
“Christ,” Jack muttered. He should have known better than to hope for cogent conversation while Robby was like this. He checked the rearview and pushed harder on the gas pedal.
“Do you remember Star Trek?”
“Not really my thing, brother.”
“There is a rock. It has feelings.”
“That sounds good,” Jack said.
“You were playing with Isaac, but you were an adult and he was still a kid. It was so funny.”
Jack glanced at him. His head lolled on the headrest, and he was blinking bleary eyes at Jack, mouth curved into a smile that made Jack want to cry. He swallowed past the lump in his throat.
“He’d be about my age, wouldn’t he,” Jack said.
“You ever seen a volcano?”
“No, I haven’t, Robby.”
“There’s that Volcano National Park in Hawai’i. Do you want to go to Hawai’i with me?”
“Yeah, man.”
“Okay, we’ll go, okay?”
“Yeah.”
Robby shuddered under the delusion of cold. He didn’t seem to have anything more to say. His eyes had drifted shut and his breath came quick. Jack put his phone into the mount on his dashboard and poked it until it called the charge station. Lena answered.
“I got Robby here, fever, vomiting, muscle spasms, difficulty breathing, RUQ pain, ETA eight minutes, have a gurney ready for me in the ambulance bay and keep the med students out of the way. Pull in Langdon and Mohan, Shen if he’s still there.”
He heard Lena barking out orders before the phone hung up. Robby was shaking. Jack reached over the console to squeeze his knee. The touch seemed to settle him, so he left his hand where it was.
When they got into a room, Perlah made quick work of tapping a vein for the IV while Jesse cut Robby’s shirt off and Dana took his vitals.
“Jesus Mary and Joseph, 103.6°,” she said. “Pulse is mildly tachy, oxygen at 92. What the hell, Abbot? He was fine last night.”
“Who fucking knows, he coulda been feeling like shit for a week for all he tells anyone about it,” Jack said. “Full blood panel and push fluids, ondansetron, and oxygen, get swabs for flu and COVID, fuck it, prep for spinal tap too, why not?”
“You think it’s meningitis?” Mohan asked.
Perlah placed an oxygen mask over Robby’s face.
“We lose nothing by checking for it,” Jack said. “Get him in line for CT and roll an ultrasound in here.”
“Has he been coughing?” Langdon asked, pressing his stethoscope to Robby’s chest. Robby tried to bat it away. “Hey, Robby, it’s just me, you need to let me listen.”
“You aren’t running this, Abbot,” Dana said. She grasped his wrist and pulled him away from Robby’s bedside to give Mohan room.
“I am the goddamn senior attending!”
“You’re off shift and it’s too close,” Dana said. “Come on, babe. Get off that leg.”
“No!” Robby cried, knocking the mask away. He kicked at Langdon. “Get off me, get off me!”
Langdon jolted backward despite the kick not landing.
“Robby, it’s me,” he said.
“Fuck outta here! Go away Frank! Fuck off!”
Langdon’s mouth hung open and he went white even as the apples of his cheeks blazed. He looked up at Jack with huge eyes. Jack jerked his head toward the curtain. Langdon clenched his teeth and stepped away.
“Breath sounds clear,” he said, and then he was gone. Mohan’s eyes had grown to take up the whole of her face.
Jack pulled out of Dana’s grip and moved up to the head of the bed. He put the oxygen mask back in place. He set a hand on Robby’s shoulder and squeezed.
“Hey, Rob,” he said. “Hey, it’s all right, Frank’s gone. It’s just me and Mohan here with Dana, Jesse, and Perlah. Dana’s pulling rank on me so I’m just here for moral support. Santos, McKay, King, and Whitaker are also available if you want any of them.”
Robby tried to twist around to see him. Dana kicked out a stool and Jack sat on it to Robby’s left. Robby flailed until he caught Jack’s hand.
“Jack it hurts,” he said.
“15mg morphine,” Jack said to the room at large, eyes trained on Robby. “Robby I need you to concentrate and tell me what hurts and how, okay? What hurts right now?”
Robby put his hand on his right upper quadrant near his floating ribs.
“When I inhale,” he said. “Can’t breathe deep.”
“Is it sharp or dull?”
“I don’t know,” Robby said, sounding young and bewildered. “Both? Hot.”
“Hot?” Mohan asked. She was moving her stethoscope around his chest. “Robby, I’m gonna touch your abdomen, okay?”
Robby’s glassy eyes never left Jack. Jack nodded at her. He squeezed Robby’s hand. Mohan touched Robby where he hurt, and there was no reaction. She palpated down his torso until she landed where his appendix should be. She pressed and released.
Nothing.
“I think I’d know if it were appendicitis,” Robby said. He sounded out of breath and his eyelids seemed lazy, out of synch. Under Jack’s hand, he went lax as the morphine hit.
“His lungs are clear, but he can’t breathe,” Mohan said, shaking her head.
“Oxygen up to 94,” Perlah said.
“Where are we on CT?” Mohan asked. “It might be an obstruction.”
“I’ll call ’em, light a fire under their ass,” Dana said. She was gone with a swoosh of the curtain.
“Do you know when he last ate?” Mohan asked.
“He said he only had a little fruit for dinner,” Jack said. “He threw it all up anyway.”
“Jesse,” Mohan said, but Jesse was already lifting the phone receiver.
“Calling surgery,” he said.
“Tell them it needs to be Shamsi,” Jack said.
“Garcia’s very good, Dr. Abbot,” Mohan said.
“Sure, but Shamsi can get off her ass and do her fucking job for the chief of the ED,” Jack said.
“Don’t tell Javadi,” Robby said faintly.
“Don’t tell Javadi what, Dr. Robby?” Mohan asked. She was listening to his chest again, brow pinched like a genius before an unsolvable puzzle.
“Went to med school with Eileen,” Robby said, breath labored. “She was supposed to be engaged, but—”
“Okay!” Jack clapped his hands and startled Robby into shutting up. Mohan tucked her lips behind her teeth. She was holding on for dear life. “Robby, did anything hurt when Mohan palpated your abdomen?”
“It only hurts to breathe,” Robby said.
“Oh, only that,” Jack said. “Can you tell me when that started?”
“Last night,” Robby said. “Hey Jack?”
“Yeah, brother.”
“If I die—”
“No,” Jack said.
“But if—”
“Not happening, Michael.”
“Do you think you’ll see her again?”
“Who?”
“Megan.”
Jack’s stomach swooped. Megan had been gone now for as many years as he’d known her. She was a hollow ache he had learned to live with, same as the missing foot. Sometimes it hurt like burning, sometimes the unfairness of it made him scream, and sometimes it was like he forgot he’d ever had a right foot, a spitfire wife, at all. He did hate himself for that.
But Robby wasn’t really asking about Megan.
“Robby, even if we do meet our loved ones again after this life, then it’s a given that they can wait a bit longer.”
“But do you believe?”
Jack let out a lungful of air, slow and measured.
“No,” he said. “But you knew that.”
“I always envied Christians their afterlife,” Robby said. His voice, already a gravely mess, went even rougher. “I always thought, wouldn’t that be the thing? To be together again after so long.” He let out a weird laugh. “But I suppose my dad would be there too.”
“Man, I don’t know about heaven, but I do know that motherfucker is burning in hell.”
Robby flashed him a curly smile.
“Jews don’t have hell,” he said.
“Well my people made a special dispensation for him, and you know how we roll.”
Robby laughed for real, but flinched against the pain. Tears leaked out of one of his eyes and dripped off the bridge of his nose, but Jack didn’t know if it was the pain or the sadness or just the position. Robby was looking at him with fond, glassy eyes.
“He left me behind, Jack,” he said.
Jack bent to press his forehead into Robby’s sweaty hair and curled a hand around Robby’s cheek. He trusted everyone in the room to be too occupied to pay attention.
“Listen to me, listen,” Jack said in a harsh whisper. “I don’t even believe in God but I thank his ass every day that your piece of shit dad did what he did while you were at school.”
“Every day?”
“Every fucking day, brother.”
Robby pushed his head harder against Jack’s.
“Sounds like you do believe.”
“Yeah well. You can take the boy out of the church, et cetera.”
“Jack, I don’t feel good,” Robby said.
“I know, brother,” Jack said. “But we’re not letting you off so easy, you got that? You gotta stay here. You gotta stay with me.”
“Something bad’s gonna happen. Something bad is happening.”
Jack lifted his head and found Mohan looking pointedly away, jaw clenched, Jesse fussing with a machine that needed no attention, and Perlah watching him with the kind of compassion that hurt to bear.
“Let’s get an EKG,” he said. “Jesus, I must not be thinking straight if I didn’t order that first thing.”
“It’s my case, I should have thought of it,” Mohan said.
“I’ll get it,” Perlah said.
“Hold on, Robby,” Jack said, petting through his hair. “I got you, man. I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”
Dana rolled in with the EKG, which showed nothing concerning. Soon enough Robby’s oxygen was at 95 and he was swept away to CT, Mohan and Jesse to other cases. Alone in the room, Dana eyed Jack and made him drink a juice box.
“Really?” he asked.
“You need it,” she said. “How you doin’, Jack?”
“I’m fine.”
“Lord, don’t you start. I can’t handle two of you pulling this shit. How are you, Jack?”
Jack took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He rolled his neck, which crackled like popcorn.
“Fucking terrified?” he said. “I don’t know what the fuck is happening and I don’t like that. I’ve seen everything under the sun, Dana.”
“You think you’ve seen everything under the sun.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“You don’t think it’s gallstones?” she asked.
“I mean, it’s probably gallstones. Weird presentation though.”
She patted him on the shoulder.
“Buck up, cowboy,” she said. “The cap’s right where he needs to be; it’s gonna be okay.”
“Maybe I shoulda gone with him.”
“To do what, pace outside the room for all fifteen seconds? He’ll be right back.”
“What if he decompensates?”
“He’s in a hospital with many medical professionals.”
“What if he—”
“Abbot. Jack.” Dana smoothed her hands over his shoulders and ducked to meet his eyes. “He’s not gonna keel over if your eyes aren’t on him. You being hypervigilant is just an exercise in torture. For you and everyone around you, yeah?”
“Sorry.”
“This isn’t like with Megan.”
Jack felt himself flushing at the reminder. He shook his head, unable to speak. Dana pressed her lips together, chagrinned.
“Sorry, babe,” she said. “Sometimes I don’t know when to walk on eggshells or bulldoze ’em.”
“I don’t mind,” Jack said. “Sometimes I need a kick in the ass.”
“C’mere.”
She gathered him in for a hug. Dana gave serious hugs—tight and secure, for a good long time, nothing shy about them. The kind of hugs that regulated the nervous system. Jack let himself take a bunch of steadying breaths. At least she still smelled like her morning shower instead of antiseptic and bodily fluids. Some of the tension he’d been carrying bled away.
When Dana pulled back, she was still giving him the hairy eyeball.
“What?” he said.
“You ever thought about telling him how you feel?”
“Jesus, Dana.” He looked away, scrubbing a hand through his hair. He’d been rumbled. He supposed there was no use denying it; Dana saw all. Clearly. “Why would I do a stupid thing like that?”
“I don’t know, companionship, love, happiness, regular sex?”
“We both know that’s not how it would go,” he said. “He’s not like that anyway.”
“How do you know?”
“Uh, because he’s never mentioned a man even once in the fifteen years I’ve known him?”
“Eh.”
Jack scoffed.
“‘Eh,’ she says. She thinks I should blow up my life on the power of ‘eh.’”
“Babe, you’re on all his paperwork. You’re the one he called in the middle of the night. You’re the one he let calm him down in here. You’re the one whose hand he wouldn’t let go. And you’re the one who knows about his family. Even if he isn’t down for pound town, a little truth-telling’s not gonna blow up your life. He loves you too much.”
Jack stared at her. She squeezed his shoulder and stepped back.
“I better get back to it,” she said. “Call me if you need me.”
Jack nodded and forced a smile. When she left, he let his knee bounce the way it wanted to. He inspected his nails, gnawed every rough edge away. He did a few breathing exercises. Jesse and Perlah rolled Robby back before Jack could chew his nails clean off. He was in a hospital gown now, and he had purple nonslip socks on his feet, which stuck out of his blanket at the end of the bed. Jack smiled at Robby, who smiled back like it was hurting him.
“They took one of the chest and one of the abdomen,” Perlah said. “It won’t be long.”
“Shout if you need anything,” Jesse said. The curtain fluttered with their departure.
“How’s the pain?” Jack asked.
“I could use some more of the good stuff,” Robby said.
Jack raised his eyebrows. He rounded the hospital bed and got the remote for the morphine. He put it in Robby’s hand and sat back down. Robby pressed the button with a little too much zeal.
“Let me know if you need more,” he said. “Don’t be a hero.”
“What do you think is happening?” Robby asked.
“Can’t say without your scans back,” Jack said.
“But what do you think?”
Jack spread his hands.
“It’s probably an obstruction of the bile duct, most likely from gallstones.”
“They’re gonna wanna take the gallbladder,” Robby said, and grimaced. “Low-fat diet.”
Jack laughed and thumped his shoulder.
“Only if the damn thing’s full of stones,” he said. “Have a little faith.”
“You don’t have to stay,” Robby said.
“What was that?”
“You can go home if you want. You must be exhausted.”
“Sorry, I didn’t hear you.”
“Jack.”
“Shut the fuck up, Robby,” Jack said. He pulled up the Libby app on his phone. “Pick a book, I’ll read to you.”
Twenty minutes later, the curtain snapped open to reveal Shamsi looking both severe and alarmed, plus offended as if Robby were being ill at her, alongside Garcia who seemed on the verge of busting out of her skin and salivating at the same time. Mohan trailed behind them with a determined tilt to her chin and headed straight for the computer.
“Your appendix is in the wrong place,” Shamsi said. Accusingly.
Robby squinted up at her.
“Huh?”
“You’re a unicorn, Rabbit-bitch,” Garcia said, grinning. Jack was pretty sure she had fangs and they glinted.
“Dr. Garcia!” Shamsi snapped.
“Sorry.”
“Mohan, report,” Jack said.
Mohan slid in beside Jack and rolled the computer over to show him the CT images.
“Wait!” Shamsi said. “We should get the med students and residents in here to observe. This may be a once in a lifetime opportunity for them.”
“That’s a fucking no, Dr. Shamsi.” Her eyes flashed, but he stared her down. Without taking his eyes off Shamsi, he said, “Mohan, report.”
Mohan pointed at the images.
“Acute appendicitis complicated by right upper quadrant location. Prep for OR.”
“Well I’ll be damned, Robinavitch,” Jack said. He marveled at the viciously inflamed pouch of his appendix, tucked not where it should be, out of the way in the right lower quadrant, but up higher, nestled between the liver and the gallbladder. Each inhale must have pressed the diaphragm into the surrounding organs, including Robby’s little misplaced friend. His cecum was pointed in entirely the wrong direction.
“What,” Robby said faintly.
Jack felt giddy. All this was going to be cleared up so quickly, so easily. His head might pop off and float away.
“Don’t mind him, he’s high,” Jack said. “So we getting this show on the road or what?”
“As soon as anesthesia gets here,” Shamsi said, peering at Robby like a bug she was studying. Christ, these scalpel jockeys. Bloodthirstier than a pack of vampires.
Dr. Gladden arrived in due time and shot Robby full of the stuff. As they wheeled Robby away, he wouldn’t let go of Jack’s finger. Jack followed the surgical team to the elevators.
“You gotta let go, brother,” he said. “I’ll be right beside you when you wake up.”
“I’m still awake,” Robby said. “Why am I still awake?”
“It can take a minute,” Dr. Gladden said.
“Oh, there it is,” Robby said. “Okay, bye.”
His hand went limp. Jack gave it a jiggle before dropping it.
“Bye, Rob,” Jack said.
“You can scrub in and observe if you want,” Shamsi said. “Though I expect you to stay well out of my way.”
Jack’s stump was screaming at him. He needed off his leg and out of his prosthesis.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’d like that, but I better not.” If they had to do an open appendectomy instead of laparoscopic on account of Robby’s special anatomy—if they did it just so Shamsi and Garcia could see—Jack might never sleep again.
Shamsi sent him a flat-mouthed look of disapproval. Jack barely restrained himself from telling her gifts weren’t gifts if they came with the expectation of groveling in the face of her magnanimity. The elevator pinged and off they went, leaving Jack alone in the hallway.
Jack was wondering if he should buy Javadi a coffee, or maybe a lifetime supply of therapy, when he heard the Grindr notification go off. Shit, shit, shit, he muttered under his breath as he patted himself down for his phone. He hadn’t even peeked at it in months and suddenly it was active in his workplace? What the fuck?
He found his phone, but it was clear. He didn’t even have the app on it anymore. He frowned.
The notification went off again. He looked around, but he was alone in front of the elevators. He patted himself down again and found Robby’s wallet, necklace, and phone in one of his cargo pockets.
Robby had two messages. From Grindr. Jack’s heart and stomach switched places. He knew Robby’s passcode; he could open the phone up and take a gander at what kind of messages he was getting in the middle of the goddamn ED. Hell, he could check out Robby’s profile. Change it to fuck with him.
He pressed the power button until the phone shut off.
The surgery took longer than it should have at an hour and twenty minutes. Jack may have fallen a tiny bit asleep, but he woke up to Robby being wheeled into the recovery room they’d stashed Jack in, still unconscious. Garcia followed, brusque but professional. For once.
“We had to do a combined open and laparoscopic,” she said. “Midline, not right-sided.”
“Fuck,” Jack said.
“The location was problematic, and so was the progression of the infection. By the time we got eyes on it, it was clear we needed to move faster, so we did what we had to do.”
“Like you didn’t love it,” he said, flapping a hand at her. She rolled her eyes.
“The goddamn thing burst as soon as we set it on the tray. He’s fucking lucky.”
“I’m not about to let him forget it.”
“We’ll keep him for a few hours, but he should be good to go before the end of the shift. He crashing with you?
“Yeah,” he said. It would actually be Jack crashing at Robby’s for the duration of his recovery, but tomato/tomahto.
“Good,” Garcia said, moving toward the door. “He’s gonna have a hard time the first few days, and Gloria’s already working out coverage for two weeks for him, five days for you. Hydrocodone every six hours, no lifting anything over ten pounds.” She paused in the doorjamb. “I assume he doesn’t actually need post-op instructions.”
“I think we got it, Dr. Garcia, thank you.”
“Did that hurt?”
“Don’t you have some other poor sad sack to cut open?”
“Tell your boy I can’t wait to publish about his funhouse guts.”
The door shut before Jack could respond. He shook his head and pulled his chair up to Robby’s bedside. Robby’s crows feet had softened in sleep, but he looked no less troubled. Life had carved its way through him without mercy, and it showed. Jack let himself pet light fingertips through his hair.
“What are we gonna do with you, Mikey?” he murmured.
Robby woke not long after, and Jack was treated to Robby saying his name in a dreamy, vague voice Jack’s granny would have called “off with the fairies.” Jack sat up and reached for his arm.
“Hey, brother, welcome back.”
Robby’s eyes blinked unevenly up at him. The smile that overtook his face was slow and syrupy but wide. All-encompassing.
“Jack,” he said again, sighing with all the feeling of a twelve-year-old girl.
“Hey, Rob, I’m here,” Jack said. He patted Robby’s hand.
“Did you do my surgery?”
“No, man, you don’t want ol’ Sausage Fingers McGee rummaging around in there.”
“It would have been better.”
“I guarantee you it wouldn’t be,” Jack said. “How are you feeling? You up for eating something?”
“I feel great.”
“Yeah, you’ve still got anesthesia running through your veins. What do you think, you want a sandwich? Turkey dinner? I bet you’re hungry.”
“Hospital food?”
“We gotta stick around here for a few more hours before you’re sprung.”
“You stayed with me.”
“Yeah, brother, you know I got your back.”
“You’re my favorite,” Robby said.
Jack smiled.
“Yeah, you’re mine too, Rob.”
Robby’s eyelids drooped.
“I wish I could wake up like this every day,” he mumbled. “Seeing your face.”
Jack’s heart kicked. He’s high. It doesn’t mean anything.
“Well for the next few weeks, your wish is gonna come true,” he said. “You’re gonna be so sick of me in your business you’ll be ducking me at handoff when you go back to work.”
“You’re staying with me?”
“Just to help out for a while, yeah.”
“No one stays with me.”
Jack had the urge to climb into the bed with him and gather him into his chest. He settled for budging up even closer to his bedside and slinging his arm over him.
“You know me, like a bad penny. Couldn’t lose me if you tried.”
“Why would I try?” Robby asked, voice soft and bewildered. “Why do you keep acting like I don’t want you around? Who wouldn’t want you around?”
“What a pair we make,” Jack said. “Sorry, man, you know I can’t take a compliment.”
“Everyone has a crush on you, you know.”
Jack snorted.
“Oh yeah? Like who?”
“Mohan.”
“Oh, Mohan, huh?”
“Please wait til she’s done with residency.”
“Robby, I’m not gonna date Mohan.”
“Why not?”
“The list of reasons is longer than my remaining leg. She’ll get over it; they all do.”
“No.”
“No? No what?” Jack asked.
“Not all.”
Jack’s fucking rabbit heart was at it again.
“Most, then,” he said, and cleared his throat.
“She would be lucky to have you. You would have the cutest babies.”
“Jesus, Rob, I don’t want babies with Mohan. You realize I’m old enough to be her father?”
“I don’t think she minds.”
“You’re very stuck on this.”
“You should be happy,” Robby said. “I want you to be happy.”
“Robby.”
“Hm.”
“I’m as happy as a one-legged vet with PTSD can be, I promise.”
“But—”
“No buts. You make me happy, man. Watching a game, seeing a show, shooting the shit. I could do that forever with you, and it would be enough.”
“You’ll find someone,” Robby said, shaking his head. His eyes were hazy but imploring, his hand tight on Jack’s. “You’ll find someone beautiful and funny and smart and cool and you’ll be with her. I’ll be happy for you, Jack. I would, I promise.”
Jack stretched his neck back and muttered a curse under his breath. When he opened his eyes, he pinned them on Robby exactly the way he knew Robby couldn’t hide from.
“Robby, I’m telling you I already have those things. I am set. Strap in, man, ’cause you’re never getting rid of me.”
“What?”
“God, I hope you forget all this,” Jack said. “I’m gonna put in a call to food services. The chicken pot pie is surprisingly delicious. I’m ordering you a salad too, don’t complain.”
“If I forget you have to tell me again.”
“Robby...”
“Promise me. Jack, promise me.”
Now it was Jack who was pinned with no hope for escape. Robby, split down the middle and too high to engage in his habitual avoidance, should be laid low, too vulnerable to put Jack on the back foot, but here he was. Here they were.
For a moment, Jack considered lying. But in hazy brown eyes, Jack could see the future.
“I promise,” he said.
Robby woke up hurting.
He was in his own bed, and it was light out. When he tried to move, his body threatened to rend itself in two.
“Oh fuck,” he said, choked. He slumped back into the bedding.
He’d had the world’s weirdest appendicitis. He’d had an open appendectomy in the wrong place. Jack had wrangled him into his house and put him to bed. He’d fallen asleep, and now it was morning.
He was due for a painkiller.
He took a deep breath and tried to roll himself out of bed without engaging his core. He ended up gasping for breath, but upright. He turned his bedside lamp on and lifted up his t-shirt.
His stomach and the center of his chest had been shaved. There were three small horizontal incisions for the laparoscopy, and one vertical incision about five centimeters down the center of him. It was a clean red line held together by surgical glue. He wouldn’t call himself vain, especially about this part of his body that was rather more substantial than he would have liked, but the sight of the scar was dismaying nonetheless. He looked like spare parts stitched together. The hair where he’d been cut wouldn’t even be growing back to hide it.
“Some bullshit,” he muttered, and hefted himself up to his feet. Pain, dull but huge, reverberated through him. “Fuck,” he gasped.
He shuffled into the bathroom to do his business, then set out for the kitchen. He needed to put food in his stomach to cushion the hydrocodone, and coffee to fortify this thread he was hanging on by. But when he came out of his bedroom, he could already smell coffee and something sweet.
Jack was here. Jack was puttering around the kitchen in the early morning light, wearing nothing but a t-shirt and boxers, overgrown curls sticking up every which way. Robby’s heart gave a pang.
“Good morning, sunshine,” Jack said, throwing a smile over his shoulder. He opened the oven and pulled out a platter of pancakes. “We got blueberry and plain. We got OJ and yogurt. I was waiting for you to wake up before I whipped up some eggs. Here.” He moved like a dancer around Robby’s kitchen, pulling a mug and pouring the coffee, setting one pancake on a plate, plonking them both on the table and and guiding Robby to sit. “How’s the pain right now?”
“Uh. Six?”
“So a solid eight, and the anesthesia’s not even fully out of your system yet.” Jack produced a bottle of hydrocodone and set that in front of him, too. “Eat this, take that, and the rest is coming right up.”
Jack fired up the stove and set a frying pan on the nicest burner. He cracked a bunch of eggs into a bowl and starting whipping them. Robby had the perfect view of his muscular back, ass, and thighs.
“Jack.”
“Don’t even start.”
“You don’t know what I was gonna say.”
Jack waved his hands around his head.
“Call me psychic, call me intuitive, just don’t call me stupid,” he said.
“I was gonna say ‘thank you.’”
Jack slanted another smile at him, eyes sparkling. Oh, it was so wildly unfair. Robby’s hands itched to run through Jack’s hair, trace over the muscles of his shoulders, his arms. He should force himself to look away, but he was pathetic and in pain, so he let himself have the indulgence of looking his fill while Jack couldn’t see him.
Jack chucked a pat of butter into the frying pan and the eggs followed, sending up a sizzle. Robby ate his pancake and popped a pill.
“When did you get all this?” he asked. “I know all I had in my fridge was a dusty mustard from 1997.”
“After dinner you were dead to the world and I had no hope of sleeping, so I went to Giant Eagle. Also swung by my place to get some of my stuff.”
“Jesus, Jack, did you sleep at all?”
“Well, seeing as you slept basically all day and all night so you were the world’s easiest patient, I caught some Zs in in the afternoon as usual.”
“Oh. Well. Good.”
“Trust me to take care of me, brother,” Jack said.
“I just don’t want you to put yourself out.”
“There it is.”
“I’m serious, Jack. You don’t have to do this. I’m grateful and glad you’re here, but I know you’ve got better shit to do.”
Jack turned around and jabbed his own rubber spatula at him.
“And what would you be doing, if it were me flayed open with the violent internal organ extraction right now?”
Robby opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. He shook his head.
“Yeah, I thought so.” Jack leaned over him to grab his empty plate. “How about you sit there looking pretty and let me handle the rest, okay?”
Robby’s face flamed. Jack turned back to the eggs and bullied them around the pan. He took a moment to split the pancakes between two plates and spoon some yogurt into little bowls.
Out of habit, Robby groped for his phone. He looked around for it. He tried to get up, but the burst of pain through his gut had him landing right back in his chair with a hiss. A plate landed on his placemat, a bowl, and then a glass of water and a glass of orange juice.
“What are you trying to do?” Jack asked.
“I was just looking for my phone.”
Jack made a ‘hmph’ sound and left the kitchen.
“And my glasses!” Robby called.
A few seconds later, Jack handed him his glasses and his phone, which was off. Robby frowned and held the power button down.
“That’s weird,” he said.
“Shit was popping off where it shouldn’t, so you’re welcome,” Jack said.
Robby raised his head, brow furrowed.
“What was popping off? Everyone who even texts me would have been at work.”
He put in his passcode and the little Grindr icon blazed up at him, boasting three messages.
“Oh fuck,” he said. He could feel his face going up in flames again. He swiped through frantically to delete the whole fucking thing. He didn’t dare look up at Jack.
“Taking a walk on the wild side?” Jack asked lightly. When Robby ventured a glance across the table, he saw Jack sitting there before his plate, fork and knife in hand, stiller than a sniper and staring at him with a glint in his eye.
“I must have left the app open in my delirium.”
“So what are you into?” Jack asked. He started cutting up his stack of pancakes. “Leather daddies? Hairless twinks?” He fed himself a forkful of food and never took his eyes off Robby.
“What are you, pissed at me?”
“No, man, just wondering why a bunch of very specific chimes during a medical emergency is the first I’m hearing you might not be straight enough to measure with.”
“It’s just private, man, what do you want from me?”
“I’m not mad at you.”
“Well you’re doing a great impression of someone who’s mad at me.”
“What I’m upset about, Michael, is that you’re the closest friend I’ve ever had and we’re both still too fucked up to be honest with each other.”
Robby raised his head.
“Both,” he echoed.
Jack sighed and shifted in his seat.
“I always liked girls. Women. And, you know, it’s easy not to look any further than that. Regular guy likes the ladies, news at seven. By the time I twigged to the fact that the way I felt about some of my friends was, perhaps, not regular straight guy shit, I was married, an officer in the fucking army, and it was moot. And then suddenly I wasn’t married anymore, those feelings didn’t have to stay theoretical, and I realized I’d deprived the person I’d loved most in the world from knowing all of me, because, what? I was afraid she’d be grossed out? Hate me, divorce me? That wasn’t who she was, man. And despite all that, despite knowing I don’t choose shitheads, I just… did the same fucking thing all over again. Until yesterday.”
“Yesterday.”
“Are you glitching out, man?”
“Did I say something under anesthesia?” Robby asked.
“No, dude, it’s still just me out on this fucking limb by myself, so put me out of my misery already.”
“I must have said something or you wouldn’t be acting like this.”
“There’s obviously something to say, so you should just say it,” Jack said.
“Jesus, Jack.”
“Be as brave as I know you are, Robby.”
Robby’s heart quailed. He swallowed and exhaled a shuddery breath, but then he sat up straight and looked Jack in the eye.
“I’ve been in love with you since you popped your leg off to scare that guy being an asshole on our first shift together.”
Jack blinked.
“Oh.”
“Is that not what I was supposed to say?”
“No, that sounds. Good.”
“Jack.”
“I just thought you might cop to some ‘fuck men but only date women’ bullshit before admitting to anything else, so.” He cleared his throat. “Thanks.”
“Thanks?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
Before Robby could throw a fit, Jack stood up, rounded the table, cupped his jaw and kissed him. It was soft and warm and Jack’s face smelled perfect and electricity was lighting up Robby’s brain. He felt dazed when Jack sat back down and started eating. He was distantly aware that his mouth was hanging open.
“I love you too,” Jack said, shoveling eggs into his mouth. “I’m moving in, by the way.”
“What did I say under anesthesia? Or was it the fever?”
“So much, and so little, you make me fucking crazy, Rob.”
“This declaration is going really well.”
Jack planted his elbows on the table and laced his hands together to rest his chin on.
“Oh you want a declaration?” he said. “When I met you I couldn’t stop staring at you even though I was married because you’re so fucking beautiful I couldn’t believe what was happening, and that’s only gotten worse since the grey started coming in. And then I get to find out that you’re funny, and strong, and kind, and competent, and you like stupid music and are a film snob even though you don’t know shit about film. And then I realized I could spend every day with you and not get tired of it, even though you don’t rinse your plates right away and have the wrong opinions about prog rock and an uncanny ability to sabotage every relationship in your life but this one, so I set out to see how much time you’d actually let me get away with, and so far the only limit is your own belief that I’ll get sick of you, which hasn’t happened yet, so let me fucking love you, Robinavitch.”
Jack bent his head over his plate and ate with gusto. After a few mouthfuls, he flicked his eyes up at Robby and waved his fork around.
“Eat, eat, do you think I made all this so you could let it get cold while you gape at me?”
Robby speared a piece of pancake and chewed without tasting.
“What if the sex is bad?” he asked.
“We’ll work on it til it’s good.”
“What if we can’t sleep with someone in the same bed?”
“We’ll rehab our sleep habits.”
“What if we’re too stuck in our ways to try something new and the whole thing blows up in our faces and then we don’t even have what we used to anymore?”
“And what if it works out, Robby?” Jack said, setting his utensils down. “What if we can have everything we want from each other and more if we put a little work in? What if we could both have a home and a family again, what then?”
An awful yearning filled Robby’s chest. The old urge to rein in it, to smother it under layer upon layer of not for you surged on its heels, but Jack was looking at him with such fondness, such tenderness, such naked joy in his company. He was lovelier than he was the day Robby met him, lovelier for the lines on his face and the gray in his hair and the way Robby knew him down to his bones. Lovelier for all the love that was banked in his eyes.
Robby reached his hand over the table and let himself have something good.
End