you know what we all moved on from too soon? the emotional implications of dana being fully aware the only person robby really listens to is jack and that the truly hard, painful truths āØhaveāØ to come from jack to even have any chance of making it through to robby.
dana, who loves and respects robby, who robby clearly loves and respects right back, who robby can't fathom running the hospital without, but even through all that mutual adoration and affection there is still a final mile between them, a wall dana simply canāt breakthrough, one that robby is stubborn and steadfast about maintaining. whether thatās because of some kind of internalized bias or some misguided sense of responsibility or just sheer stubborness on robbyās end, who knows, but the cracks dana sees in robby are in spite of his effort, things robby is trying and failing to hide, rather than because robby lets her in to see him. robby trusts dana so much, but clearly still needs her to see him a certain way, to be the fearless leader, her partner in crime, someone whoās strong, the carer and never the one who needs care. if i had to guess i'd say at least toward the end of s2 heās self aware enough to know dana has seen past that smokescreen, but even still at no point does robby ever let himself open up to her. he resists up until the very end and what he does reveals is reactive, almost out of his control, never meant to be shared except the veil is too thin and he is too tired to hide behind it.
with jack, robby still gnashes his teeth, but heās doesnāt lie to him. it almost feels like he canāt, that he doesn't want to. oh he'll try to distract him, try to deflect so he doesn't have to give in, or he'll avoid him so he doesn't have to confront it, but when jack really really steps up to the plate and confronts robby directly it's almost like it's the secret code for robby's brain to shut up and listen. when jack point blank asks, robby answers. he hears him, even if he doesn't always believe him, even if he can't, and as far as we've seen on screen, it works. jack knows robby doesn't like to to listen because this is a song and a dance they've done before. when no one else can make robby even begin to listen, they look to jack to cross that line because it's a line he's been able to cross before.
and dana knows this, has clearly witnessed this enough times that she is fully aware that robby will defer to jack and listen to jack, especially when he will not listen to her. when jack can not read robby, he goes to dana, and when dana can not reach robby she goes to jack. dana is the sentinel, the watchful eyes and jack is the cavalry, the big guns, the hail mary when it comes to robby. dana is the brains and jack is the muscle and robby is the heart, and right now the heart is broken. the history that must exist between the three of them for both dana and jack to know this between them, to depend on one another to keep robby afloat. i imagine COVID pushed that to it's limit, and adamson's death pushed it right over that. years, maybe decades, of an unspoken rule that while robby tries keeps the hospital upright, dana and jack will try to keep robby upright and in the past year they've had to acknowledge it out loud twice now. dana knows that if robby is beyond her (and i imagine it doesn't happen that often), he is not beyond jack, and maybe up til now that has never ever been the case, but at the end of s2 it was so clear to me that dana was terrified they were there. jack spent that last hour watching robby, but dana spent that last hour watching jack, because dana knew that if robby was truly beyond them both, that was a robby they would lose forever.
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