Jack Abbot

Jack had a routine when he finished a shift, which all shift workers did, probably.  He went home, he stripped his scrubs off, he showered, and then he slept.   If he was handing off to Robby, he'd grab a quick hug or maybe a kiss in the locker room and then go home to start the routine.

If he wasn't, he'd just go home.  Sometimes he'd make coffee and bring it to Robby in bed after his shower if Robby didn't have an early appointment or plans to surf.  Sometimes he'd just climb into bed with him all warm and clean and damp.  And then sometimes one or both of them would get off or sometimes they wouldn't.   

Occasionally, though, the routine got disrupted, and this was one of those mornings because it had been a bad shift.   A halfway house that was operated by some charitable organization on a shoestring had turned out to have a large carbon monoxide leak in their heater and no working detectors because someone had forgotten to change the batteries. They'd gotten twelve patients in all at once and they'd done their best, but two hadn't made it and a few more were marginal.   He hadn't been able to leave DGH until two hours after his shift ended between handling all that and then trying to chart for the other patients.  

He'd gotten back to their little house on their quiet little street and immediately gone into the bedroom.  He would normally not go into their bedroom with scrubs on, much less get on the bed, but he needed Robby close before he showered today.  He did make sure to lay on top of the blanket, though, and he pulled Robby in to be little spoon so he could just feel him breathe for a few minutes.   

His friendship with Neil was something that Jack really valued, but it was also something he would not mention valuing, or at least not to the man in question because he didn't want to be flipped off for the next five years solid.  Most of their text exchanges were profane enough that George Carlin would have been proud.   

They sometimes met for a beer or coffee, too, mostly to be profane in person as they talked about whatever the fuck was happening in their lives (and sometimes to just shoot the shit in general).  Jack had handed over to Robby this morning and then promptly gone home and collapsed.  When he woke up, his phone reminded him that he and Neil had casually agreed that maybe they'd meet up today, if Neil wasn't busy with other things and Jack wasn't in need of extra sleep post shift.  

He pulled up the text thread with Neil and sent a new message:

Still on for coffee or a beer today or are you bailing on me?

Most of the time, Jack felt like his mental health was in pretty good shape, all things considered.  He went to therapy, he worked out, he took his SSRIs, and he touched Robby.   All of that helped most of the time.   Some days, though, it didn’t help.    It almost always started with nightmares, which of course meant he couldn’t sleep well.  He refused to take his sleeping pills if he had a shift the next day because he didn’t want to be impaired and he’d been working extra shifts recently due to some summer vacations and medical leave on the part of the other night shift attendings.   

So that meant he wasn’t sleeping well and he wasn’t eating as well and he was just generally feeling down and depressed. Spending time in the gym or the hot tub or with Pan didn’t help right now either.   He didn’t want to snap at Robby, so he was limiting his awake time around Robby, which probably wasn’t helping but he didn’t have a better option.

He was in the backyard this afternoon in the hammock they’d set up and was trying to read, but he couldn’t concentrate on that either because the bottom of his right foot itched.  He sighed and put the book down on his chest and closed his eyes.   His mental symptoms were turning into physical symptoms now.  

Go to the desert, come back bonkers.  What a deal.  

Fridays were Date Nights.   They'd established that almost immediately after they'd gotten their shit together and it made a lot of sense.  They saw each other throughout the week, obviously, but they still had opposite schedules and even when they were both home at the same time, one or the other might be sleeping or focused on all the everyday shit like laundry and groceries and making sure the dishes in the sink weren't about to become some kind of modern art installation.    With all that, it made sense to reserve one night a week just for time with each other.  Sometimes they went out to dinner or saw a movie, but sometimes they just ordered in and spent it reading and talking about whatever the fuck they felt like talking about.   

Tonight was Friday the 13th, and although he didn't consider himself particularly superstitious, he still wasn't about to go out on that particular night.  Robby hadn't argued, because he wasn't about to do that either.  They'd ordered from the Thai place instead, which had been delicious as usual, and now they were on the couch with beers on the coffee table in front of them.  Robby had gently tugged Jack until he was laying on Robby's thigh as they looked at possible real estate listings on his tablet.  

Their dates usually involved sex, so Jack had taken a sildenafil with dinner where Robby could see it.   It had taken him a little while to get in to see Dr. Nguyen since he didn't need to see her urgently and her office had had to reschedule a lot of people because of the blizzard.  When he did see her earlier that week, the appointment had mostly involved him being scolded for not coming to have this treated sooner and reminders that he should know his comorbidities made this much more common.  He really liked Dr. Nguyen.  She didn't take any shit and she gave him plenty if he needed it.    After that it was just waiting for the prescription to be filled and then waiting for date night to take it for the first time.  

He glanced up at Robby when they saw one particularly awful listing picture.  It was listed as accessible, which was maybe true if he only wanted to be able to get to half of his own house if he happened to be in his chair.  

"Can we really call it a half-bath if the toilet and sink are just at the top of the stairs out in the open like that?"

His therapist in Pittsburgh had told him once that he thought Jack preferred nights because the darkness was a source of comfort for him, and Jack didn't think he was wrong.  He usually wasn't, which was the annoying part about therapy.  A lot of people were scared of or disliked the dark, which he understood, but he’d never found it scary, even before he'd started working nights all the time.  Jack thought it was a lot worse to see all the shit that was coming his way in the light, in a lot of ways, whether that was mortars or MVAs. All of that meant that this polar night thing Darrow suddenly had going on was just fine with Jack in terms of what he was doing and how he was doing it, but he knew that wasn’t true for most people.

Robby, in particular, had been getting incredibly fucking grumpy. He’d come over to Jack’s apartment after he finished another shift of caring for people who had been injured “running into shit because no one remembers to carry a goddamn flashlight or even just use the flashlight function on their fucking phone”. Jack had fed him huevos rancheros, given him a beer, and let him complain, then sent him off to shower and go to bed. Jack’s own body clock wouldn’t let him sleep for a few hours yet, so he read a book on the couch until he thought he could sleep.

When he went to his bed, he fell asleep easily in the new sheets Robby had given him, but he was also almost immediately dropped into a nightmare. He was back in Afghanistan but it was Sarajevo but it was Iraq. There were IEDs but there were missiles but there was friendly fire from tanks. He smelled burning cloth and hot metal and gasoline. He tasted sand and blood and sweat as he tried to tourniquet everyone and everything. He didn’t have enough supplies, enough time, enough skill. Soldiers were dying and Robby was dying and Diane was dying and neither of them should have been there. No one should ever have been there. He called out for suppressing fire, for more supplies, for anything that would slow the blood and death.

Jack hadn’t been sure about his ability to get a job here until he’d started looking. There were a surprising number of potential jobs, though, even in a relatively small town like this. There was an urgent care facility that wanted another staff doctor and there was an opening for a clinical diagnosis professor at the med school that specifically stated it wanted someone with ER experience. He’d never taught a structured class, but he did teach. He did it every single day with the med students, interns, and residents. He was pretty good at it, if you asked him, although he knew he could always be better.   The hospital was where he really wanted to work, though, and fortunately Robby let him know that one of their night shift ER attendings had just moved away. Jack wasn’t sure how anyone moved away from a town that couldn’t be left, but some things weren’t worth trying to understand and he also wasn’t going to look any gift horses in any mouths.

He applied online just like anyone else and put Robby down as a reference. There wasn’t anyone else to put down, actually but Robby was probably enough of a reference. He’d gotten a call from the hiring manager about an hour after he finished with all the various application details, which had involved uploading a hastily recreated resume and then entering most of the same information again in all the little fields of the online application. Whoever built these online application portals was a sadist and he meant that in the most literal sense.

They’d asked him to come in for an interview the next day, so they were definitely looking to fill this position quickly. He understood, though. Being down an attending made shift scheduling even more like herding cats than usual.

He put on the suit he’d just bought for this purpose and presented himself as ordered at the appointed time. After that, the interview had gone well. They’d thrown the usual kind of questions about standard of care and diagnostic procedures at him, but it wasn’t ever any worse than being put on the spot in med school. He’d also detected a little bit of prejudice at his path to med school from one of the doctors on the panel, but he’d heard that before and didn’t give a shit. He’d gotten here and he was a damn good doctor.

Dr. Shah had definitely been skeptical that Jack could have known Dr. Michael Robinavitch for thirty years and had joked that Jack and Robby must have met when they were in high school. It hadn’t actually been that far off, but Jack had politely chuckled and confirmed that the timeline was correct. Dr. Shah had also read from Robby’s email recommending Jack, which noted that Robby considered Jack one of the finest doctors he’d ever met and that Robby would and had trusted Jack to handle any injury, situation, or diagnosis he might come across. Jack had known that was how Robby felt about his skills, but it was still nice to hear it.

The same interviewer who had questioned how he’d gotten from the Army to med school and fucking smirked when Jack mentioned the GI Bill had also questioned why Jack wasn’t a Chief Attending. Jack thought he might hear a little bit of a suggestion that Jack wasn’t good enough for a Chief position or maybe an attempt to see if Jack would say something about why he’d left the Army other than his bland statement that he’d been medically retired, but either way, that was more bullshit and he said so. He used more polite words, but he made sure Dr. Evenson knew that Jack knew he was capable of being a Chief Attending in every possible way and just did not want to be. He was also pretty clear that he wasn’t going to be sharing any details beyond what he’d already said. He knew he would be disclosing his disability if and when he was hired, but only to HR. His mostly-polite refusal to take Evenson’s bait had made the other interviewers smile, so he had a feeling Dr. Evenson was not well-liked. There was always one.

In the end, they all smiled and shook his hand and said he’d hear from them in the next week or two. Almost as soon as the panel of doctors filed out of the room, though, the hiring manager informed him that he was hired and that they’d like him to come in on Thursday September 25 for all the paperwork with his first actual shift on Friday September 26 from 1900 to 0700.

So that was that. He had a job, and he had the job he wanted.  He shook the hiring manager's hand one more time and got in the elevator to go down to the lobby.   If he was lucky, Robby might not be too busy and Jack could tell him the good news in person.  If he had his hands full, literally or figuratively, Jack would just text him. 

Leave mail here and he might look at it eventually.  

Jack and Robby had seen each other as much as possible over the past year or so. Mostly that had involved Robby coming to see Jack since he had more flexibility and, more importantly, more disposable income. Jack was doing alright with his GI Bill stipend and his disability payments, but they still didn’t allow for a lot of optional plane trips.

This time it was Jack’s turn to travel, though. He’d applied for an out of state EM sub-internship at Presby months ago but had been put on the wait list. Forty-eight hours ago, though, he’d gotten a call that someone had dropped out and he could have the spot if he could get himself to Pittsburgh immediately. They couldn’t assist with housing or travel costs, but he wasn’t worried about that. Hotels existed and so did sublets.

He’d let UTSA know he was going and packed his old green duffel, then gotten on a plane and headed to Pittsburgh. He had decided not to tell Robby he was coming, partially because it was all so fast, and partially because he wondered if Presby was going to rescind the offer. But here he was, standing in front of Robby’s building just as a delivery kid pushed the button for Robby’s condo and been buzzed in.

“I’ll take that,” he offered. “Heading up to that floor myself.”

The kid was happy to give the food over, especially once Jack tipped him, and Jack got in the elevator with his duffel, his backpack, and a plastic bag that smelled like Chinese food. It made the whole elevator smell like Chinese food, which reminded him that the last thing he’d eaten had been some pretzels on the airplane.

The elevator dinged on Robby’s floor and Jack walked down the hall, then stopped in front of Robby’s condo and put his duffel down before he knocked on the door.

Attending the ACEP annual assembly was overwhelming but in a good way. There were so many people, the conversations were so loud, and Jack was enjoying every moment of it. Well, every moment except the ones where he had to find a bathroom so he could take care of his leg or sit down to give himself a break, but that was just his life now. It didn’t stop him from being in his third year of medical school with a plan to go into EM and it didn’t stop him from accepting his mentor’s suggestion that he go to the assembly and present a poster for her. Most MS3s didn’t present posters, but he wasn’t a traditional MS3 and she’d known he could more than handle the pressure. The poster was tomorrow, though, and he’d gone over what he wanted to say and how he wanted to say it about fifteen times, so today was for presentations.

He looked in the program book and noticed that Dr. Michael Robinavitch of Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center would be presenting shortly in room 7. What were the odds of that? Probably not that low, honestly, but Jack was still somehow surprised and happy to see Robby’s name in the conference program. Robby had ended up at PTMC after all, just like he’d wanted. Jack was glad there had been a position open so Robby could go home and take care of the people in his community. Jack didn’t plan to do that, but Jack didn’t have the same kind of ties to his community that Robby did.

He and Robby had exchanged carefully written emails and had as many crackly phone calls as possible after he’d been deployed in 2001. It’d been one of the few bright spots in a world of utter suck, although he'd tried not to let Robby know how much those emails and phone calls were keeping him going. He’d accidentally lost touch with Robby along with almost everyone else in his life after he’d been injured in 2002, though, and then deliberately not reached out even after his life wasn't completely consumed by recovery. He’d told his Army-assigned therapist it was so he could focus on healing and not get distracted by everyone’s reactions to his injury, but she’d called him on that shit immediately and made him admit that it was also because he’d needed to come to terms with his new reality himself. He was a lower-leg amputee. He was medically retired from the Army. His family pitied him and talked to him like he had lost his mind along with his foot. On the other hand, he was well on the way to becoming a physician and wasn’t going to have any student loan debt when he finished med school thanks to GI benefits, so he was making a new life. There were still more days than not that he’d give this new life back just to be able to stand up easily in his own fucking shower, though.

He went to room 7 and slipped into the back just as the session moderator was introducing Robby as the last speaker of the session. Robby immediately requested that no one actually call him Dr. Michael Robinavitch, of course, and Jack managed not to smile at his notebook. Robby looked fucking good in a suit coat and open collared shirt while he spoke calmly and confidently about airway management in four complex cases. Jack made sure to take notes. The man had always had a knack for airways, all the way back to Sarajevo. When Robby was done with the formal presentation, he answered the audience questions easily, including parrying an arrogant “more of a comment than a question” with a precise viciousness that actually did make Jack smile down at his notebook. The applause at the end of the talk was genuine, but Jack got up and slipped out of the room while it was still going. He stopped outside room 9 to check the location of the next talk he wanted to see, but looked up when he heard quick footsteps approaching. Almost three years out and quick footsteps still made him alert. Maybe they always would.