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It had been just like any other shift. Dr. Robby was busy, but not terribly. There was a screaming baby with a rash in chairs, a couple lacerations from a fall in trauma 3 that Whittaker was sewing up. A stomach ache turned food poisoning, which led Robby in the scrubs room, peeling off his brand new pair of scrubs covered in vomit and getting ones out of the hospital’s machine.
He hated these. The tag on them made his already sensitive skin even more itchy, and he knew he’d get off and find a giant rash on his neck. He should really get it checked out, but the guys at derm make him so furious, “they all have such sticks up their behinds” He once told Abbott when he ordered him upstairs after Robby complained about the rash on his arm to him as they were switching off. He’d rather stop at the drug store and buy some cream for it.
Speaking of Abbott, he should be here soon. There were just a few hours left in Robby’s shift, and he was really looking forward to cracking a beer, taking a few sips and passing out on the couch.
Robby’s shift ended at 7, and most days, he could manage to be out of the hospital by 7:30. Abbott came in at 7, but was usually there a few hours early. When asked, he’d say he liked having developed relationships with the patients he’s taking over. But if you ask Robby, who probably knew the closest version to the truth possible, Abbott hated being alone.
They used to live together, many years ago. Sometime before the military, during med school. Then they were deployed, same unit, and once again same barracks. Unintentionally, they had spent the first 5 years of their careers attached at the hip. Jack lost his leg during year 6, and that changed a lot. Robby hates thinking about it, and it only comes to him when he feels like he can’t breathe, but he can remember that entire night like it was yesterday.
When Abbott was honourably discharged, alongside Robby, he decided that he was going to take a few years off medicine. That was a scary, but necessary break. It also meant that Robby had to find a new place to live.
Which he did, landing him at the Pitt.
During Abbott’s so called “break”, he bought a motorcycle. He had been avoiding Robby’s calls for months, but showed up to the Pitt on the bike. Robby hated it. He’d lost so many teenagers, attempting to put together the remaining pieces of their bodies after a terrible motorcycle crash.
He never told Jack it was a terrible idea.
Why? Because he knew Abbott would lie. He knew that when he asked if he was being safe, he’d lie. He’d lie and say he drove with both hands on the bars, wore his helmet and protective gear, and didn’t ride at night.
And Robby didn’t want to live with that, as selfish as it probably was.
But Abbott’s a grown man, he knows he should wear his helmet.
Realizing that he’d zoned out, Robby snaps back into the ED. He can hear Santos chugging her energy drink, and silently wishes that girl would stop. Javadi is silently charting at the computer next to him, and Whittaker is putting in an order for the pharmacy.
The ED is functioning until it doesn’t.
He’d recognise the ring of that phone anywhere. The 911 dispatcher.
“Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, charge nurse Dana.” Dana picks up the phone, as rehearsed as ever. She jots down a few words, before the look on her face changes.
“Okay. We’ll clear a trauma room. Thanks, bye.” She hangs up the phone, and meets Robby’s eyes momentarily. She blinks hard, and looks back at him. “Motorcycle vs. 18 wheeler, male, late 40s. 4 out. Clear trauma 3.”
Before Robby can fully process, he’s up, his legs are moving, and he’s clearing trauma 3. The bell rings moments later, and the familiar sound of an incoming trauma rings through the ED.
“What do you got?” Robby calls out, having pulled Whittaker and Mohan moments before. The EMT doesn’t slow as she pushes the stretcher in. “Male, late 40s, motorcycle versus truck, high-speed ejection. Unresponsive, GCS six. Massive facial trauma, airway was flooding with blood, we intubated on scene. Diminished breath sounds right side. BP seventy-eight systolic, heart rate one-thirty plus. Unequal pupils, probable severe head injury. Pelvis unstable, left femur snapped, abdomen rigid. Two large-bore IVs running. He’s circling the drain.”
Oh God.
There’s no way, right?
“You find any ID on him?” Robby asks, cutting off the man’s already ruined shirt. There’s a prosthetic leg, Robby notices. It’s shattered.
Snap out of it.
It’s not what you think it is.
Many people have prosthetics.
The EMT shakes his head, stripping off his gloves as another nurse moves in. “Negative. No wallet, no phone on him. Pockets were empty. Bike was mangled, plate’s being run by PD. That’s all we’ve got.” He glances back at the stretcher, jaw tight. “He didn’t have anything on him that could tell us who to call.”
Robby nods once, sharply, almost mechanical.
“Alright, let’s work people. Whittaker, I need a chest tube. Dr. Mohan, I need blood. O Pos, massive transfusion protocol, and hands, please! I need hands!” Robby calls out, calmly, but under visible pressure.
Javadi and Santos appear seconds later, “Javadi, call surgery and tell them we’re coming in if he survives the next five minutes.” Robby commands, attempting to evaluate what is left of the man on his exam table.
If he survives.
The man before Robby is barely recognisable. His helmet, if there ever was one, is gone. What’s left of this man’s face is swollen, bleeding around the tube, and not giving Robby even an ounce of hope.
Robby can’t worry about his face yet.
There’s visible bone, and unstable pelvis, and a broken spine.
“Pressure’s dropping!” Santos calls out, stopping her suture.
“I know!” Robby snaps, reaching to hang the blood. Whittaker slides in the chest tube with expertise, and for a moment, things are stable.
“For Christ’s sake.” Robby whispers, watching the monitor.
He hears something metal rattle, but pays it no mind.
Santos reaches down, and brings up a mental chain. On it, covered in blood and brain matter, is a small metal plate. A dog tag. A military dog tag.
Santos reads it once, and freezes.
CAPT. J. ABBOTT.
O POS
“Dr. Robby.” She calls out, frozen.
“Not now!” Robby barks.
“Robby.” Santos exclaims, handing him the dog tag.
He rips his glove off, and grabs it from her hands.
He reads it once. And once more.
“Robby!” Dana’s voice and the sound of V-Fib snaps him out of it.
“V-fib! Charge to 200!” Whittaker calls out, and charges the plates.
Robby watches, squeezing the dog tag in his scrub pocket.
“Clear!”
The body jerks with the charge.
“Clear!”
Another jerk.
The tiny piece of metal is burning Robby’s hand.
Still fibrillating.
Robby resumes compressions. It’s violent, desperate almost. He can feel the ribs cracking under the pressure of his palms. Blood pools around the collarbone, and seeps through the chest tube.
“Switch!” Dr. Mohan calls out, with a sound in her voice that almost sounds like tears. “No, I’ve got it.” Robby responds, not meeting her eyes.
The sternum gives in again. That’s the worst sound of the job.
An epi is in, and the chaos only continues.
The BP is dropping. Robby knows it’s dropping. He’s counting the compressions in his head, fighting off the thought that his best friend is the man’s whose ribs he’s breaking.
The metal of the dog tag makes his pocket even heavier.
J. Abbott. That’s not a rare name, right?
It could be anyone.
“Charge to 200!” Whittaker shouts.
Robby steps back just enough to avoid the arc, but his hand stays braced on the dog tag. “Clear!”
The body jerks violently with the shock. He presses down again, ribs cracking, blood mixing with sweat. He can hear Dana’s calm, clipped instructions somewhere above the din, but he can’t focus on them. He can’t think about them. Only the rhythm. Only keeping him alive.
“Pulse check!” Dana finally calls.
Mohan presses her fingers to the neck. “…Weak. Barely.”
Robby exhales sharply, almost collapsing in relief. “Good. Keep him there.”
He looks down, and his breath drops.
The tattoo.
Jack and him got matching tattoos, sometime in med school, after one too many beers.
It was stupid.
The man’s forearm clearly reads “1994.”
Robby’s does too.
It was the year they graduated medical school.
He swallows, throat tight, and forces himself to speak, not as a friend, not as a man, but as the doctor who has a job to do.
“BP?”
“Sixty, rising,” Santos reports.
“Get pressors. OR prepped. Trauma and neurosurgery on standby. Move him—now.”
The team obeys with practiced precision, but Robby doesn’t let go of the rail.
His eyes scan the injuries: shattered prosthetic, open abdomen, unstable pelvis, massive facial trauma. Every detail is a countdown clock. Every second counts.
As they wheel him toward the elevators, Robby finally allows his gaze to fall fully on the face. Swollen, broken, blood everywhere, but beneath it, unmistakable. The scar over the left eyebrow. The faint line near the collarbone. The jawline.
His chest tightens.
He swallows hard, voice barely a whisper: “Stay with me, Jack…”
The elevator doors open. Bright, sterile light. He keeps one hand on the stretcher, feeling the weight of history and responsibility press down on him. They enter the OR hallway. Surgical team waiting. Monitors beeping, oxygen hissing.
Robby doesn’t move until the surgeons take the patient from him. He steps back, palms pressed to his face, trying to breathe through the metallic taste and the thrum of adrenaline.
The doors close behind Abbott.
And for the first time, the world outside Trauma 3 feels impossibly loud, impossibly bright, impossibly empty.
The dog tag still burns in his pocket, reminding him: he’s not just the doctor. He’s the only one who can see this through.
He turns to Dana, who ran after him.
“It’s…” Robby starts, and feels a hand on his back. “I know. I knew by the prosthetic.” Dana responds, rubbing Robby’s back. “Let them do their jobs, okay? But you have to focus on yours for right now. You’ve got a family in 4 waiting for an update.”
Robby breathes out, shakes his head, and turns around. Without a word, he goes back out in the ED.
And blacks out.
He doesn’t remember helping any other patients, just Jack.
He waits by the department phone, ignoring Dana’s requests.
The fluorescents are burning his eyes, as he stares at the phone. All he can think about is how he had dinner with Jack yesterday. They had finally gotten their schedules to match up, and were off on the same days.
Jack asked him to come watch the game.
Robby said no, stupidly. He was too tired.
The phone rings, and Robby rips it off the wall. “Emergency department, Dr. Robby. Talk to me.” It’s Garcia on the other end. She exhales, “Hey, Robby. Your John Doe didn’t make it, I’m sorry. He bled out on the table, we did everything we could. Time of death, nineteen forty-two.”
No.
No.
No.
He can’t.
Robby drops the phone, and freezes his gaze on the floor.
He swallows once, and the feeling catches in his throat like a knife. His chest feels tight, lungs constricted, and the world tilts around him. The fluorescent lights above blur into harsh streaks of white, the ED noise fading into a distant, meaningless hum.
The dog tag in his pocket presses into his palm, burning through the fabric, grounding him to a reality he doesn’t want to accept.
He swallows again, harder. The metallic taste of blood, Jack’s blood, fills his mouth, mingling with the copper tang of fear and disbelief. His hands twitch inside the gloves, still sticky from the trauma table, trembling as if they have their own memory of what they just did—or failed to do.
“Jack…” His whisper is ragged, breaking apart mid-word.
Dana kneels beside him, voice low but firm. “Robby… you can’t do this alone. You need to step away. Let them handle the rest.”
He doesn’t respond. He can’t. His gaze is fixed on the linoleum beneath his feet, tracing cracks like they might tell him a way to undo what just happened.
—
The viewing room is awful. Plastic surgery was able to clean him up, but he doesn’t look like himself.
Robby thinks he’s going to vomit.
“Robby?” Dana asks, gently.
“Mhm?” Robby responds, a voice barely above a whisper as he keeps his eyes on Jack.
“We have to notify next of kin.”
Next of kin? There’s no next of kin.
Jack didn’t have kids, a spouse, siblings or any family really. Mom and dad died, a wife he never had the time for, and his brother died a few years ago in combat.
Robby was his emergency contact.
“It’s me.” Robby responds, and thankfully Dana understands.
“Oh, Robby.” Her hand squeezes his shoulder, and Robby wants to die.
He wishes he was laying on this cot.
Not the only man who ever felt like family.
“I’ll call the social worker, and the VA…” Dana keeps talking, but Robby can’t hear her.
A week later, Robby finds himself on the roof of the hospital, the city sprawled beneath him in a haze of gray and steel. The wind whips at his scrubs, but he barely feels if.
He’s numb, hollowed out from a week of procedures, charts, calls to the VA, funeral arrangements, and endless paperwork that should have felt like routine, but nothing in the world feels routine anymore.
Jack is dead.
The words hit him every second, like a pulse he can’t escape. Nineteen forty-two. That moment is etched into him, a scar no suture could ever heal. He can still feel the ribs cracking under his palms, the metal of the dog tag burning through his hand, the smell of blood in the trauma bay, the V-fib screaming over the monitors. He sees it all when he closes his eyes, and when he opens them, the city doesn’t look like home. It looks empty.
He leans on the ledge, gripping it like it’s the only thing keeping him tethered to this world. His hands shake, slick with sweat and the ghost of old blood, and he can taste the metallic tang in his mouth, still lingering from the trauma bay.
“Jack…” he whispers to the wind. The city answers with indifferent echoes. “You weren’t supposed to die. Not like this. Not now. Not alone.”
He remembers the dog tag in his pocket, still cold, still heavy, still burning through everything it touches. CAPT. J. ABBOTT. O POS.
He can’t stop seeing Jack’s face, clean now, almost serene, yet still broken in ways that haunt him. The prosthetic twisted, the blood dried on his gloves, the life that was slipping away even as Robby fought with every fiber of himself to hold it there.
The wind bites at his cheeks, but he doesn’t care. He presses his forehead against the cold ledge, letting the tears come this time, unrestrained, and for the first time since that code, he allows himself to feel the weight of it all. The grief, the guilt, the helplessness, the anger.
Robby had held him in the trauma bay, yes. But he couldn’t save him. Not really. Not the way he wanted to, not the way he needed to.
He closes his eyes and takes a shaky breath, the city roaring below like the world doesn’t care that his best friend, the only man who ever felt like family, is gone.
“I should be there,” he whispers. “I should be with you. I should have—”
He chokes on the thought, the memory, the impossibility of it all.
The ledge feels cold beneath his hands, grounding him, yet so fragile. The wind wants to pull him, wants to carry away the grief he can’t hold inside, and for a moment he imagines letting go. Letting the sky take him. Letting the world stop. Letting the pain end.
But he doesn’t.
He can’t.
Because Jack is gone, yes, but he had fought to hold him while he could, and now someone has to carry the memory. Someone has to live. Someone has to survive with the pieces of him that remain.
Robby slides to his knees on the roof, hands gripping the ledge, forehead pressed to the cold metal, and lets himself weep openly. The tears mix with sweat, the wind, the exhaustion, and something else—something that feels like a vow.
He will survive. Somehow. He will carry Jack with him. The dog tag, the memory, the scar over his eyebrow, the laugh he’ll never hear again.
And he will not forget.
The city continues below, indifferent, chaotic, alive. But up here, on the roof, Robby allows himself to mourn. Fully. Completely. And finally, when the storm inside him doesn’t feel quite as jagged, he sits there a little longer, letting the wind blow through him, letting the grief exist, knowing that Jack is gone, but that the world still turns. And he has to turn with it.