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"You should cry," Langdon told her. "You'll feel better."
Which, of course, was exactly the kind of well-meaning advice that made Cassie want to laugh instead.
"I wish I could," Cassie said, as she finished packaging up the blanket to return to the Hamlers. Maybe they wouldn't want it, but that was their decision to make, not hers. Those poor boys. Not that Cassie knew how to get the blanket to them, but Lena surely would. "No, I don't even remember the last time I cried. I'm not even sure I can anymore. Is that what this place does to you?"
Cassie told Langdon that she couldn't remember the last time she'd cried, which was true. She knew she'd cried when she'd finally made it home after the PittFest shooting, sobbing in the shower until the water started to run cold and she'd felt like she'd purged as much of that fucking day out of her system as she could. After that, it was a blur. Two months ago? Four?
But she remembered, vividly, the last time she'd actually cried at work. It had been the day after the judge had made his ruling, and Cassie had asked to speak to Dr Robby in his office in private, and laid the whole sorry mess out for him.
"I'm happy to answer any other questions you have, and of course I'll understand if I'm required to withdraw from the programme," Cassie had said, fighting to keep her voice level. She'd worn her one good suit to meet with him—it had seen her through med school interviews and yesterday's courtroom shit show, and she hoped it could do the same today. Her younger self would have laughed herself sick at the thoughts of wearing something from the sales rack of Ann Taylor. But her younger self hadn't had a kid, or clawed herself back from the brink, or white-knuckled her way through med school, or landed a coveted residency. She'd curled her fingers around the cuffs of her jacket, taken a deep breath. If she was going to lose this now, please let her at least keep some last tattered remnants of her dignity.
Robby had looked steadily at her across his desk and said, "Is anyone else involved in this a recent or current employee of PTMC?"
Cassie shook her head.
"Do you anticipate the requirements of the restraining order will impede your ability to treat patients or otherwise do your job?"
"No," Cassie had said firmly. Neither Chad nor Chloe would ever dream of coming here, and Chad's parents lived in New Jersey. And it had all been so stupid and impulsive and humiliating anyway, Cassie exhausted and Harrison running a fever and her screaming in the driveway and Chad's neighbour calling the cops.
"Well," Robby had said, "I appreciate you sharing this with me. I'll place a temporary note in your file, so that if there's ever any question about it, we can prove that you were upfront about it all. And then in—you said six months, right?"
The lump in Cassie's throat had made it difficult to speak, so she'd just nodded.
"In six months, the monitor comes off, I delete the note, everything's good."
Cassie had blinked at him. "That's it?"
"That's it. You have the makings of an excellent physician, and selfishly I don't want to lose that." Robby had shrugged, the lines around his eyes deepening as he smiled at her. "But I've also seen you with patients, with colleagues—you're calm, you're understanding, you're empathetic. I'm going to trust that that's not just the best you, it's the real you."
Cassie had broken down at that, messy sobs that had resulted in her working her way through a good two-thirds of the box of Kleenex that sat on Robby's desk. She wasn't going to be fired. Her parents had looked at her yesterday with such disappointment in their eyes, but she hadn't lost everything. Robby had sat quietly with her until the worst of the storm was over, passed her more tissues and fetched her a glass of water, even though Cassie had known that he had a bunch of other meetings on his schedule for the day.
"I had a friend back when I was doing my residency. I was R3, he was R1." Robby's mouth quirked. "Back when dinosaurs still walked the earth. Anyway. He once hauled off and punched a patient in triage. Clean right hook, laid the guy out. Do I recommend that as a patient management technique? No, no, I do not. But I know what that patient's tattoos said. I know the kinds of things he'd been saying to staff. I understand how someone can reach their breaking point."
Cassie had huffed out a sad, watery laugh. "I promise I'm not going to punch out a patient."
"Yeah, I get that," Robby said, leaning back in his chair. "And as far as I know, neither did that guy, ever again, and now he's an attending at a hospital in Milwaukee. He golfs too much for my liking, but if I was ever in the Greater Milwaukee area and something happened to me, would I have a problem with him treating me? No. He faced some consequences back then, sure, and I think they were reasonable ones. But he was more than his worst decision. We're all more than our worst days, Cassie. I promise you that."
Cassie thought back to that day now as she worked: got the sunburned woman set up with IV fluids and pain relief and had Olive start to apply hydrocortisone cream to the burns; got called over by Dana to check in on the jerk who'd attacked Emma.
"You sure this shouldn't be handled by someone more senior?" Cassie asked. This seemed like it had the potential to get very messy very quickly, and Cassie had had enough interactions with the law already to last her the rest of her life. "Wouldn't Robby be—"
"Dr Robinavitch is busy," Dana said, sorting through a stack of clipboards and not meeting Cassie's eyes. Her voice was thick, and Cassie realised that Dana wasn't just angry—she was furious, and on the verge of tears. Cassie had seen Dana and Robby bicker a lot over the past few years, even snap at one another when the exhaustion got too much and the caffeine wasn't enough. But she'd never heard Dana mention Robby in this particular tone. "So if you could just please—"
"It's okay," Cassie said, reaching out and covering Dana's hand with hers, just for a moment. It was cold and a faint tremor ran through it. "I've got this, don't worry."
Cassie spoke with Curtis Larson, who was exactly the kind of charmer you'd expect him to be. Expensive haircut, preppy golf clothes, high-flying job in finance, but at his core a frat boy who'd gone to Penn and had at least once told a service worker that his dad was rich and would sue them. Cassie didn't like him. Even once the lab results were back, and she knew that some of his demeanour could well be due to the lingering effects of the cocaethylene in his system, she didn't like him. She didn't feel particularly sorry for him, either. She'd known a lot of guys like him. True, he hadn't taken his stupid "birdie bumps" with the plan to assault anyone, but she didn't think that even now he cared about having hurt someone so much as he was worried about the possible legal consequences.
Everyone was more than their worst day, but sometimes it was fair to ask how much more.
She left him with leaflets for rehab—some day programmes, some in-patient care—knowing that that was what he needed, but also knowing that he was nowhere near ready for any of it. Maybe six weeks from now, six months from now, six years from now, it'd be different. Today, she left the leaflets for herself—for her past self—not for Curtis Larson.
Cassie filled Kim in on what to do with Larson on her way to the hub, knowing that she should get started on checking over her patient charts, prepping for the 7pm handover, but stopped when she saw Robby. The man looked as exhausted as Cassie felt, and the idea of him getting on a motorcycle in a few minutes, even if it was just to go five blocks, sent a sudden pang of anxiety through her.
"Hey, so, uh, this is it, huh?" she asked him.
"Uh, yeah," Robby said, looking down at his feet. "Don't let the place burn down." His voice was reedy, lacking any of his usual gravelly command; it sounded like he'd either been crying too much lately, or not enough.
"You know..." Cassie looked away across the ED for a moment, tried to think how best to phrase this; what she could offer him. "In a previous life, I had a lot of friends who liked to see how close the edge was... As if it was a challenge they were called to meet. Trouble is, they all inevitably found it."
Jenny and Chris, Aaron and Freddy and Tyrone. Cassie had been to so many funerals by the time she turned thirty. She'd been to one while pregnant with Harrison, one hand clutching the order of service and the other resting on the swell of her belly while Aaron's mother wept loudly in the front pew. Cassie knew how just quickly the ground could drop out from beneath you when you were standing on the cliff's edge.
Robby shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, as if he didn't know what she was talking about. "Okay?"
There were so many things that Cassie could have said in response. She settled on, "I'm just picking up on a weird vibe from you today, is all."
Robby started to turn away from her. "Yeah, well, it's been a weird day." He was trying to smile, but his breathing made it sound like he was sobbing.
Cassie thought about following him; thought about saying, You should cry, you'll feel better. You should cry, you're a great doctor and a great teacher and I'm selfish and I don't want to lose the chance to learn from you. You should cry, because you're more than your worst days, and you know this because you told me that.
But she didn't. She couldn't. She knew that Robby wouldn't take her offered hand, any more than Curtis Larson had. Cassie walked off to the hub, and wiped the tears from her cheeks.