what if your eyes looked up and met mine one more time?
warning! this blog is nsfw (+ 18) and not spoiler free—I implore everyone to please read the rules before proceeding...
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What if your eyes looked up and met mine one more time?
description: The shift had been ordinary. Until it wasn't. Until her. She shouldn’t be here. Not in his hospital. Not holding a boy whose face hits him like a slap. In the space of a heartbeat, Michael is no longer a doctor. He’s a ghost in his own body, watching his past rewrite itself in real time.
pairing: dr. michael robinavitch x female ob/gyn attending! reader
genre: hidden pregnancy…maybe? age gap (michael late 40s, reader mid 30s), female reader.
Feel free to #𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐦𝐞 (◕‿◕✿) *:･ﾟ✧ if you have any scenarios in mind! I might not write everything but I’ll respond to everyone.
series masterlist: 𝐢 𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐢𝐧 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞'𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐬
ten years ago…
The city was still asleep when he closed the door behind him.
No one saw him leave—not the landlord, not the neighbor who always smoked on her balcony, not the woman he loved, still asleep down the hall with the bedroom door cracked open just enough for the light to spill in.
Robby stood in that silence for a long minute, the chill from the hallway seeping into his bones like penance. Then he turned the key in the lock and walked away.
The air outside was the kind that burned in your lungs.
Pittsburgh was cold in the fall, but this was the kind of cold that made everything sharper—clearer. Unforgiving.
His bag was slung over his shoulder, his steps steady but slow, like maybe the weight of what he was doing hadn’t settled in yet. Or maybe it had, and he was just trying not to feel it.
He didn’t take a cab. He walked the ten blocks to the station with his hands in his pockets and his jaw clenched tight.
The city was gray and heavy, the sky the color of steel, and every street corner felt like it might shout her name back at him if he let his mind wander too far.
He had written her a note. It was short. Too short.
Something about needing to go. About not being who she thought he was. About not being enough.
He hadn't signed it.
He told himself it was better this way. Cleaner. Less to untangle.
She wouldn’t have to look him in the eye and see the mess of a man too afraid to stay. She wouldn’t have to see him crack apart under the weight of what he couldn’t say: I love you, but I don’t know how to deserve you.
Because that was the truth, wasn’t it?
He loved her. God, he loved her so much it made everything inside him ache. But love wasn’t always enough, and he was already unraveling—already halfway gone in ways that scared him.
She had plans. She had brightness. She talked about future things like they were inevitable—like there was a place in them carved out for him. Like he belonged.
Michael didn’t know how to belong.
And she—she kissed him like she believed he’d always come back.
He left like he knew he never would.
He remembered the way she’d pulled him close the night before, bare legs around his hips, her breath soft and warm against his skin. She kissed him like the world was still safe.
Like it was forever. Like it was just the two of them in that tiny apartment and the future didn’t scare her. She whispered something against his collarbone—something like don’t go far, something like see you in the morning—and he’d shut his eyes so tight it hurt.
She kissed him like she believed in him. And it broke something in him, because he didn’t.
After, she curled up against him and fell asleep fast, trusting him to stay.
He spent the whole night awake beside her.
Watching the ceiling. Watching her chest rise and fall. Memorizing the shape of her hand resting on his chest like she was anchoring him to something good. Something real.
And then, right before the sun came up, he kissed her on the forehead, like that could make up for everything he didn’t have the courage to say. He got up without a sound, packed only what he needed, left the note on the kitchen counter where she’d find it after coffee.
At the station, he stood on the platform with a coffee in one hand and guilt in the other. The train was delayed. Of course it was. The universe was cruel like that.
He didn’t cry. Not really. But his chest hurt in that splintered, hollow way grief lives in.
If she had woken up…
If she had asked him to stay…
He didn’t know what he would’ve done.
But she didn’t. And he left. He let the train carry him away from the only thing that had ever felt like home, trying to convince himself he was doing the right thing.
He never turned around.
And he never saw the light flick on in the apartment just moments after the train pulled away.
He never saw her wake up, heart hammering, reaching for the empty space beside her.
He didn’t see the light flick on in the apartment just minutes after the train pulled away.
Didn’t see her reach across the bed for him, only to find cold sheets and silence.
Didn’t see her walk barefoot into the kitchen, rubbing sleep from her eyes, only to stop short at the note waiting for her like a knife on the counter.
She read it once. Then again. And again, like maybe the words would change if she stared long enough.
They didn’t.
And the life she thought she was building—the one she’d let herself believe in, with the man she’d trusted enough to love without hesitation—cracked down the middle, quiet and sharp.
There was no warning. No fight. No goodbye. Just an empty bed, and a note, and the sound of something breaking that she couldn’t name.
He didn’t know what she looked like in that moment.
Didn’t know the way she slid to the floor, back to the counter, note crumpled in her hand, trying to breathe around the hollowed-out space where he used to be.
He didn’t see her cry.
All he knew was that he had left.
And he hated himself for it.
five years later…
Michael hadn’t meant to come.
He told himself it was just dinner. Just a few familiar faces. Just something to fill the silence that had started to feel like its own kind of punishment.
It wasn’t nostalgia, not exactly. Nostalgia required sweetness, and he’d scraped most of that out of himself years ago.
But the invitation had come anyway—some old friend from undergrad, or med school, or residency, someone he hadn’t seen in years but still had enough of his email to keep him tethered.
“Come by if you’re in town,” it said. “It’s been forever.”
It had been forever.
And Michael—idiot that he was—had found himself driving across the city through the soft December dusk, half hoping the offer had expired by the time he arrived.
Pennsylvania never changed much. It was gray and clumsy in the winter, still bitter enough to make your bones ache if you didn’t move fast enough. The streets were slick with slush. The streetlights glowed gold on the pavement. Somewhere in the distance, carolers sang just off-key.
But the house? The house was warm.
Not just in the literal sense—with its firelight flickering behind windows, the sharp glow of a chandelier, the steam rising from pots in the kitchen—but warm in the way that made your chest hurt.
Laughter spilled from the porch. Music floated through the cracks in the windows. He could see the silhouettes of coats being shrugged off, cheeks kissed, wine poured.
He parked across the street and left the engine running.
He told himself he just needed a minute. Just a minute.
And then—he saw her.
Through the window. Like a movie he had no right to watch.
She was wearing soft pink, not scrubs but something casual and delicate, like the inside of a seashell. Her hair was up. A few strands curled against her neck, the way they used to when she rushed from the shower and didn’t have time to dry it all the way.
She looked older—but in the kind of way that hurt, because it meant time had passed without him. Because it meant she had kept living while he had buried himself alive.
She was talking to someone, laughing. There was a wine glass in her hand. A freckle he remembered just barely visible near her collarbone. When she smiled—God, when she smiled—it twisted something in his ribs.
He should’ve left. Should’ve never come.
But instead, he sat there, drowning in it.
In her.
It had been five years.
Five years since he left.
Five years since she kissed him like she believed he’d come back.
And he had left like he knew he never would.
That last night haunted him. The way she had wrapped herself around him like she was memorizing him. The softness of her lips, trembling just slightly. The way her hands had lingered against his back, as if she could keep him there by sheer will.
She had whispered, “See you in the morning,” into the curve of his neck, her voice barely audible, casual like it meant nothing at all.
And he had kissed her like he believed he could make that true.
But it was like she knew what was coming, on some deeper level. Like her body had braced for it before her mind could catch up.
There was no morning for them. Not after that.
No safety. No stability. No staying.
He had packed too fast. Left without enough. Told himself it was better this way—for her, for them. That she deserved more than someone already half-destroyed.
It hadn’t mattered. It had broken her anyway.
It had broken him.
He looked away from the window, throat tight. A dog barked somewhere nearby. He couldn’t breathe.
Michael reached for the door handle.
Just do it, he told himself. Go in. Say hello. Apologize. Pretend to be someone who deserved to walk through that door.
But then he looked up again—just as she turned, laughed, leaned against the counter like she belonged there—and everything in him stalled.
Because she did belong there.
She looked happy. Or at least… okay. Stable. Surrounded by light and warmth and people who hadn’t vanished when things got hard. What right did he have to walk back in now, five years too late?
None. Absolutely none.
He dropped his hand from the door.
And drove away.
He didn’t see her turn back toward the living room.
Didn’t see the small boy—curly-haired, pajama-clad—pad over and raise his arms.
Didn’t see her scoop him up and nuzzle her nose into his cheek like it was the easiest, most natural thing in the world.
Didn’t see the boy giggle, and press his hand to her face, and whisper something that made her laugh even harder.
He didn’t see any of it.
All he saw was her silhouette, soft and golden, disappearing behind curtains as he turned the corner and left her behind again.
He told himself it was better this way. Cleaner. Safer.
He told himself she had moved on. That she didn’t need him. That he didn’t need her.
But as the city lights blurred past his windshield, as the ache in his chest settled deeper, more permanent—
Michael knew he was still lying.
To her. To himself. And to whatever part of him that still woke up some nights thinking she was there.
present day…
There was a rhythm to emergency.
You breathed in crisis. Bled urgency. Learned to function in the eye of the storm.
And Dr. Robby had made a home in the storm.
That morning had been like any other. Fast. Messy. Loud.
A cardiac arrest. A teen with a bullet in his shoulder. An elderly woman with a stroke mid-grocery run. The ER moved like it always did: fast and fractured.
Until it didn’t.
Until everything stopped.
The moment he heard her voice.
“Move! He’s crashing—give me the crash cart, and get respiratory down here, now!”
He froze mid-step, the trauma form in his hand suddenly weightless.
That voice. Familiar. Unshakable.
He turned toward the chaos at trauma bay two—and there she was.
Pink salmon scrubs stained with something dark. Her hair half pulled back, half falling out. Her hands fluttering between the boy on the gurney and the nurse trying to get a BP cuff on.
And her eyes—God, her eyes. Were wild, terrified.
She wasn’t supposed to be here.
Not in this city. Not in this hospital. Not on this day.
She was yelling something about sats. Chest pain. A fall.
“He got hit—he was riding to school and some jackass blew through the stop sign—he wasn’t moving, he was cyanotic, I couldn’t find a pulse—so I just started compressions, I didn’t wait for the ambulance—”
Her voice cracked. “I was right next to him and I didn’t react fast enough, fuck—I should’ve seen it coming, I should’ve grabbed him—”
Someone—Whittaker, already gowned up—stepped in beside her. “We’ve got him now. You have to step back, let us work.”
“He’s my son.”
The words cracked something in him.
The boy. Robby saw him clearly now. Pale. Unconscious. A small bruise blooming across his temple. Dark lashes stuck together from oxygen tubing, blood, and sweat.
He couldn’t look away.
Because something inside him twisted hard—like recognition, like guilt, like some ancient ache that had been sleeping for ten years and woke up screaming.
The boy looked like her. Same cheekbones. Same curve of the jaw. Even the soft dip in his left cheek, like it had been sculpted by memory. But the eyes—
They were closed now, but when they’d fluttered open briefly under the lights—
Brown.
Not hazel, not green. Not hers.
His.
It was a stupid thing to fixate on, maybe. But in that split-second, his brain flooded with it. The timeline. The math. Ten years since he left. The kid—what, eight? Nine?
The breath Robby took didn’t make it to his lungs. It caught somewhere deep in his chest, behind his ribs, sharp and sudden like broken glass.
He took a step back without realizing it, hand coming up like he might need to steady himself on something, anything. The edge of the trauma board. The counter. The wall.
He felt the air shift beside him before he heard the voice.
Dana.
She didn’t say anything right away. Just appeared at his side like she always did when things went sideways—silent, sharp, steady. Her eyes flicked from the boy to Robby’s face and back again.
“You okay?” she asked quietly, too low for anyone else to hear.
Robby didn’t answer.
Didn’t know how to.
Because his mind was spiraling now. Backward. Forward. In every direction at once.
She hadn’t seen him yet. She didn’t know he was there. But that didn’t stop the crash. The sound of her voice cracked through him like a whip, and now this—this kid, with her face and his eyes—it was too much.
“I think—” he tried, then stopped. Swallowed hard.
Dana gently guided him toward the side wall, just out of the direct chaos. “Just breathe for a second. I’ve got it. I’ve got eyes on the board.”
“I need—” he started again, but his throat closed up.
“Hey,” she said, softer now. “It’s okay.”
But it wasn’t. It was anything but.
Because standing there, watching that boy fight for breath, watching her fight like hell to keep him here, Robby felt everything he had buried start to claw its way to the surface.
The weight of the note he left.
The sound of the train pulling away.
The memory of her asleep, the light spilling into the room, her hand on his chest like she was anchoring him.
He’d thought that version of himself was dead. Buried under work and years and choices he couldn’t take back.
But now—now it was like the past had ripped itself open and demanded he look.
The room blurred for a second. He blinked hard. Tried to focus.
He heard her voice again, still panicked.
“Why the hell aren’t we intubating?! He needs to be intubated!”
Whittaker again, calm and unmoved. “He’s stable enough to scan. You can come with us if you stay out of the way.”
A voice behind his left shoulder now—one of the paramedics.
“She brought him in herself. Collapsed on the street. She didn’t wait for the ambulance—drove like a maniac to get him here. Said she didn’t trust the timing.”
He still hadn’t moved.
The whole world had narrowed to the sound of her breath, the strain in her voice, the way her hand shook as she pushed hair from the boy’s forehead.
Then—quiet. A new voice. Softer. Dana again, back in the room now.
“He’s going to be okay. He’s stable. We’ve got him.”
She exhaled for the first time.
Just once. Then pressed a hand to her chest like she needed to physically hold herself together.
And that’s when someone said her name.
Soft. Familiar.
The sound of it—her name—snapped Robby out of whatever fog he’d been standing in.
That was all it took.
He moved.
Through the flurry of techs and doctors. Past Mohan adjusting the IV, past Whittaker calling out a page to peds. His footsteps were too loud, or maybe the whole room had just gone silent when he stepped in.
She turned at the sound of her name.
And saw him.
For the first time in ten years.
The recognition hit like a punch. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just… undeniable.
Her face went still.
Not surprised. Not angry.
Just raw.
As if she’d been bracing for this moment for years without knowing it.
He opened his mouth. Didn’t even know what he was going to say.
I always forget there are maga people on tumblr, this doesn’t feel like a website you’d find them on, so to keep them away:
Reblog if your blog is a maga free zone because if it wasn’t clear enough fuck ice, fuck maga, fuck Trump, Fuck Rowling, and fuck all the other bigots I missed
Fucking applause to The Pitt for showing that the ICE agent's reaction to being reprimanded by someone he couldn't belittle was to turn around and be violent and aggressive on people he did think were beneath him. What a piece of shit. And what a real and honest portrayal.
People love natives in such a superficial way. People wanna stand with natives when we’re talking about the trees, and the land. People wanna stand with natives when we talk about philosophies of love and togetherness. But as soon as it’s time to talk about political side of being native. About dismantling a system built on the genocide of our people. About how we need a new system that isn’t built upon capital gain and benefitting white bodies. About putting up a fight. About how the colonial state we reside in is a disgusting imperial plague on this land. Suddenly y’all don’t wanna talk native.
"They spent hundreds of years trying to assimilate my ancestors, trying to create indians like me, who could blend in, but now they don’t want me either. They can’t make up their minds.
They want buckskin and face paint, drumming, songs in languages they can’t understand recorded for them but with English subtitles, of course. They want educated, well spoken, but not too smart. Christian, well behaved, never question. They want to learn the history of the people, but not the ones that are here now, waving signs in their faces, asking them for clean drinking water, asking them why their women are going missing, asking them why their land is being ruined.
They want fantastical stories of Indians that used to roam this land. They want my culture behind glass in a museum.
Al-Hashimi: I think this department needs two attendings at all times, it’s too much work for one person alone
What Robby heard: you’re a failure and this ED is a failure and you are terrible at your job and I am personally on a mission to remind you how much you don’t measure up to Adamson
i just found out that supriya said LAST MONTH that she was expecting to be in s3. and they have been writing season 3 for a WHILE. supriya oh supriya. this is fucking heinous HOW are they treating her this badly. how did they not tell her. WHY? it's not even disrespect of her character but her as a person at this point
hellooo hope you're doing well, still waiting for an update of levi x reader ☺️
Hiiii, it will be coming... sometime lol. I don't have a timeline for when I write or what (I also write for a living, so I can't be doing that 24/7) but I do love the story!!
it exists to divide the working class. All labour is skilled labour. Yes including that one. Yes, including that one too.
Do you know what's unskilled labour? Owning capital. There's no labour involved, thus requires no skill. And you can tell because people can be born into owning capital.
What if your eyes looked up and met mine one more time?
description:
pairing: dr. michael robinavitch x female ob/gyn attending! reader
genre: hidden pregnancy…maybe? angsty?
warning: my writing
notes: heyyyyyyyy….how y’all doing? (⚆·̫⚆‧̣̥̇ ). okay so, life was shit for a VERY LONG WHILE. finally done with my thesis and my shitty workplace fuck those ah. Also, i wanted this to be perfect, so i rewrote it like 4 time and am still not satisfied, so yeah. sorry everyone!
Feel free to #𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐦𝐞 (◕‿◕✿) *:･ﾟ✧ if you have any scenarios in mind! I might not write everything but I’ll respond to everyone.
series masterlist: 𝐢 𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐢𝐧 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞'𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐬
Robby almost turns away.
It’s instinctive. A reflex honed by years of bad outcomes and even worse timing.
Though, to be honest, it didn’t really take years of experience to understand that a room containing your ex and the child you didn't know existed, but who looks suspiciously like you, had the potential to change his life forever.
Plus, every seasoned ER worker knows that you should worry most when it’s eerily quiet, with everything still and orderly. No bodies moving fast, no voices snapping commands.
Controlled quiet.
That’s worse.
He forces himself forward anyway—one step, then another.
The curtain is half-drawn. For a split second, all he can see is equipment. Monitors humming softly, IV lines looped with practiced care, the steady rise and fall of a small chest beneath a blanket.
The hard part is already over.
Noah is stable.
For now, at least.
The relief lands hard in his chest, a strange, dizzying relief that feels almost inappropriate considering the way his pulse refuses to slow.
The kid is asleep now, lashes resting against flushed cheeks, one arm curled near his chest. His leg is splinted and carefully elevated. There’s no panic in the room anymore. Just a quiet aftermath.
And then there’s you.
You’re already there.
Standing at the bedside, close enough that you’ve unconsciously blocked half of the rail. One grips the metal, fingers curled tight. The other hovers near Noah’s shoulder, trying not to disturb him but fearing that —if you were to look away for even a second— the world might take him from you.
Robby stops short.
You don’t turn when he enters.
You’re positioned between him and the bed without even realizing it. Not squared off. Not aggressive. Just instinct. Protective in the way only someone who’s had to learned can be.
That’s what guts him.
Not the tension.
Not the history crawling up his spine, settling in his throat like something he swallowed and never digested.
But the fact that you don’t look surprised, maybe you’re not.
Maybe you knew he’d come.
Eventually.
The word sits wrong in his head.
Eventually meant time. Years. Space. A future where running into each other was theoretical —not standing five feet away from a nine-year-old boy who looked exactly like you.
Eventually was supposed to be safe.
It wasn’t supposed to look like this.
You’d been bracing for it.
He can see you tensing up; your posture is rigid. Contained. Controlled even.
Nothing like he remembered.
Or maybe that’s a lie.
Maybe you were always this contained, and he just mistook it for something else.
Was he even allowed to think like that?
To think about you in terms of memory?After all this time?
After everything that happened?
After what he did?
He clears his throat.
“He’s… doing okay?”
It’s stupid. He knows the chart. He knows the vitals. He just doesn’t know what else to say.
“Yes,” you answer calmly. “CT was clean. Fracture’s reduced. Fever’s breaking.”
You glance at him then, barely. Just enough to acknowledge that he exists.
The silence that follows is loud.
It presses against his ears the way a paused trauma does—the moment after vitals stabilize, when no one moves because everyone’s afraid to jinx it.
Robby has lived in those moments. Knows how to breathe through them. Knows how to keep his hands steady.
So he does that now.
Inhales through his nose. Counts to four. Lets the air out slowly, the way he does after a code.
Forces his shoulders down.
Pretends this is adrenaline, not the fact that he’s standing five feet away from a life he probably helped create.
“That’s good,” he says finally, too quickly. Desperately fighting to fill the space before it can swallow him whole. “Kids bounce back better than adults.”
A neutral fact. Something he figures is safe ground.
You don’t respond.
Your eyes remain on Noah, tracking each rise and fall of his chest, and syncing your own breathing to it. As if, as long as you matched him, everything would be okay.
Robby swallows.
This is just another difficult conversation, he tells himself.
He’s had worse.
Rooms where love comes with conditions. Where mistakes are catalogued quietly and brought up later behind closed doors.
He learned how to stay composed. How to apologize without meaning it. How to brace for impact.
He’s good at that.
Pretending.
At least he thinks so.
He’s not sure it’s gonna work here.
“I’m glad he’s okay,” he says, softer this time. “Noah.”
The name feels foreign and intimate in his mouth. Heavy. It carries more weight than it should.
Your jaw tightens.
“Thank you.”
Two words. Polite. Perfectly acceptable.
He watches you for a beat too long.
Takes in the lines beneath your eyes, the way exhaustion has settled into you—not the temporary kind that comes with a bad night, but deep down, marrow-level fatigue of someone who has carried too much alone for too long.
“You don’t look too surprised,” he says before he can stop himself.
There it is. The first misstep.
Your gaze sharpens.
“No,” you answer evenly. “I’m not.”
He exhales, almost relieved. “I figured… eventually. I mean—” He gestures vaguely around them. “It was bound to happen.”
“Was it?”
You turn to face him fully this time.
He falters.
“I didn’t know you worked here,” you continue evenly. “Last I heard you’d disappeared off the face of the earth.”
Something in your tone makes his chest tighten.
There’s no bite to it.
That somehow makes it worse.
Robby shifts. “I didn’t—”
“And I mean, to be fair, I wasn’t really paying attention to where I was going,” you add, almost absently. “So it wouldn’t have had any bearing either way.”
“You’d always end up back in Pittsburgh, though,” you continue, snarkier than before. “Your mother’s here. I guess I should’ve assumed.”
The smallest pause.
“But I didn’t.”
That lands.
Because it clarifies something crucial: you weren’t looking for him.
You just walked into a hospital, and he just happened to be there.
Robby’s composure tightens at the edges. His fingers curl against his palm before he realizes he’s clenching.
“I didn’t think you’d come back either,” he says carefully.
You nod once. “Yeah. Well, it’s not like I ever left.”
His eyes flick to the bed. Then to you. Back again.
“I didn’t expect it to be like this.”
A mistake. He hears it as soon as the words leave his mouth.
“Like what?” you ask.
He hesitates. And like he always seems to do, he chooses wrong.
“With a kid,” he says, and immediately wishes he hadn’t.
The word sounds wrong in his mouth. Smaller than it should be. Reductive.
He drags a hand through his hair, the movement betraying him.
He’s losing control of the rhythm. The calm cadence he relies on. His voice is still level, but there’s an edge creeping in now—the kind that comes right before a surgeon snaps at a resident for breathing too loudly.
“I want you to know,” he says carefully, “that if I had known—”
“No.”
You don’t raise your voice; you don’t have to.
“You don’t get to start sentences like that,” you continue. “Not here. Not now.”
His jaw tightens. He nods once, even though the restraint feels like pressure building up behind his eyes.
Because that’s what controlled men do when they’re about to lose it.
“Okay,” he says. “Then please tell me what I do get to say.”
The air shifts.
There it is.
The first flare of his temper.
Whatever calm he walked in with is starting to slip —not dramatically, not all at once, but the way it does in the ER when you realize the patient isn’t as stable as you thought. When the numbers are technically fine, but your gut is telling you something is off.
He’s a man who feels cornered.
And cornered men don’t stay calm for long.
Your expression hardens.
“This isn’t about what you get,” you say.
His laugh is short. Disbelieving. “Of course it isn’t.”
Your fist tensed beside you.
“You walked away,” you say. “You don’t get to stand here and pretend this is a discussion.”
“I didn’t pretend anything,” he snaps.
“You left.”
“I did not disappear.”
The volume is rising now. Not shouting yet, but close enough that it vibrates in the small room.
A humourless laugh escapes you.
“Oh, you absolutely did.”
“I called you!” he says —and there’s something almost defensive in it. “More than once.”
He doesn’t say when.
Doesn’t say it was 1:17 in the morning the first time.
Doesn’t say he stood in the dark of his new apartment with the phone pressed to his ear long after it stopped ringing, just to hear your voice through the voicemail greeting.
Doesn’t say he called again two nights later, two drinks in, and hung up before it could switch over, because he didn’t trust himself not to beg. Not to promise things he wasn’t sure he knew how to keep.
Doesn’t say he started dialing your number only after the first swallow burned enough to quiet the panic.
Or that by the third, he almost convinced himself he deserved to hear you.
He doesn’t say how much bourbon was involved.
Doesn’t say he hoped you wouldn’t answer.
Because if you had, he would’ve come back.
And he was afraid of how quickly he would’ve folded.
“Yeah, right.”
You were talking over each other now.
“And even if I didn’t,” he pushes, voice rising, “I had a right to know about MY kid.”
“You don’t get to stand here and talk about rights,” you fire back. “You forfeited that.”
“I didn’t forfeit anything,” he shoots back, but the words don’t land with the confidence he wants them to. “I left because I thought it was the right thing.”
Your eyes narrow.
“The right thing?”
He exhales sharply, words rushing now, unpolished.
“I thought you deserved someone who didn’t feel like they were waiting for the other shoe to drop. Someone who wasn’t constantly wondering when they’d ruin it. I thought if I stayed, I’d just—” He gestures helplessly. “Eventually mess it up.”
“You didn’t even give me the choice,” you say.
“I know.”
It’s quiet.
Immediate.
And something inside his chest gives way so fast he has to lock his jaw to keep it from showing. His eyes burn. His throat tightens.
He hasn’t been this close to breaking in a long time, not since… there’s no need to go there.
He thought he’d gotten better at this
“I packed before you woke up,” he continues, voice rougher now. “I kept thinking… if you opened your eyes and asked me to stay, I wouldn’t go. But you didn’t.”
Your face changes, and something in him gives.
He can’t read it. He used to think he could. He used to think he knew every shift in your expression, every breath.
But maybe he only ever knew the versions of you that were simple.
The ones that smiled at him.
The ones that let him take up space.
The ones that …
He always thought your quiet meant strength. That if you weren’t yelling, you weren’t breaking.
He thought that if you let him walk out, dragging him back by the collar, it meant you’d already decided you didn’t need him.
It never crossed his mind that maybe you were stunned.
Or waiting.
Or too proud to beg someone who’d already walked away.
He loved you.
God, how he loved you.
He knew you did, too.
And now, watching your face twist in front of him, he realizes he might have been wrong about everything.
“So I told myself that meant you didn’t need me,” he finishes. “That you’d be better off.”
“So you decided for me,” you say. “You made a unilateral choice about my life and then called it love. ”
His jaw tightens. “I was trying to protect you.”
“From what?” you demand. “From you?”
“Yes.”
The word lands harder than anything else he’s said.
“There’s a part of me that ruins things,” he continues, composure splintering at the seams. “I thought if I left before it happened, it would hurt less.”
This time, when you laugh, it almost sounds genuine. Maybe it is.
It doesn’t sound warm, just tired.
Like something inside you already burned down a long time ago.
“Well,” you say softly, “you were right about one thing.”
He doesn’t like the calm in your voice.
“It would’ve been nice to be protected from you.”
He flinches.
“I thought I was doing you a favor.”
“A favor?” Your laugh is sharp. “Are you kidding me?”
“Yes! I mean, no. I—” he insists, even though it sounds weaker now. “I just— I thought if I made it clean, it would hurt less.”
“For who?”
He doesn’t answer.
Because he knows.
You take a step toward him now, almost touching him.
“For whom, Michael?”
His name in your mouth is almost gentle. That hurts more than the anger.
His jaw flexes.
“I was trying to protect you, sweetheart,” he says —the nickname slipping out before he can stop it “I left before I could make it worse.”
“You made it worse.”
He turns away, running a hand through his hair, pacing once before stopping himself. The room is too small for that.
“I thought you’d move on,” he says, breath uneven now. “I thought you’d be angry, sure —but fine. You’ve always been fine.”
That does it.
He’s never seen you like this.
Furious.
Face flushed, veins on your neck almost bulging, eyes bright with something dangerously close to tears.
“Fine?” you repeat.
He falters, but he’s too far in now.
“You’re strong,” he says defensively. “You always land on your feet.”
If you asked him, he could probably pinpoint the exact moment something inside you snapped.
“I was pregnant!”
The word lands like a gunshot. Harder even. Because this time there’s no build-up. No warning. Just impact.
“I was pregnant,” you repeat, slower. “When you left. When you decided you needed space. When you decided I didn’t need you anymore.”
Robby freezes, and the room feels even smaller.
The air thinner.
And for the first time since he walked in, he has absolutely no idea how to breathe.
“That’s not—” he starts.
The denial rises on instinct.
It slips out before he can stop it.
He hears it and hates it instantly.
He swallows, throat dry, heart racing too fast.
“That’s not possible.”
Your face drains.
“Excuse me?”
“You would have told me.” His voice is shaking now, stripped of every ounce of practiced composure, but there’s no accusation in it yet. Just disbelief. “You wouldn’t have kept something like that from me.”
“I didn’t keep shit from you.”
“You never said a word—”
“I tried”
Your voice cracks through the room, sharp enough that Noah shifts in his sleep.
Both of you freeze.
Instinctively, your hand goes to the bedrail, and his eyes dart to the monitor.
Although the argument drops half a register, it doesn’t stop.
“When?” he asks, quieter now. Not defensive. Dazed.
“The week after you left,” you say. “And the week after that. And the week after that.”
His brow furrows. He shakes his head slowly.
“I never heard from you.”
“Because I was blocked,” you snap. “Every number I used went straight to voicemail. Your email bounced. Your mother’s assistant told me you were unavailable and then stopped answering entirely.”
“That’s not possible.” His voice fractures. “That’s not something I would do.”
“It happened.”
“I would never—”
“You did.”
He drags a hand over his mouth and starts pacing —once, twice— like he’s trying to outrun the memory.
His mind flips violently through that week.
He tries to lay it out in order.
The fight, the packing, the train station, the silence he forced on himself because he thought if he didn’t hear you, he wouldn’t go back.
Did he block you?
Did he say something so careless that it changed the course of his life forever?
He remembers deleting your contact because seeing your name made him want to turn around and go back.
He remembers telling his mother he needed “no interference.” No updates. No loose ends.
He remembers craving the distance.
What he doesn’t remember is thinking about what the distance would do to you.
His pulse is loud in his years now.
He never could get himself to block you, even after everything.
His stomach drops.
“I thought you were done,” he says, voice cracking now. “You didn’t come after me.”
“I was pregnant.”
You stare at him.
“I was throwing up every morning,” you say quietly. “I was working double shifts because I thought maybe if I kept busy, I wouldn’t fall apart again. I went to the first ultrasound alone. I heard his heartbeat alone.”
His breath stutters.
The image hits him before he can defend against it.
A dark room.
A flicker on a screen.
A sound he’s heard hundreds of times in other contexts.
Not for his own child.
He pictures time. Nine years of it.
First steps, he wasn’t there for.
First fever.
First nightmare.
First day of school.
He glances at the monitor behind the bed —the steady rhythm marking seconds he never earned.
He’s listened to thousands of heartbeats in his career.
Measured them. Stabilized them. Lost them.
But this one?
This one had been beating for him, because of him.
And he wasn't there to hear it.
Something inside him splinters.
“I waited for you,” you continue. “I kept thinking you’d show up. That you’d knock on the door and say you panicked. That you’d say you were scared. That you were stupid. But that you were here.”
Your voice trembles now, but you don’t look away.
“But you didn’t.”
He runs a hand through his hair, pacing once, twice —like he’s in a trauma bay trying to regain control of a crashing patient.
But this isn’t a patient.
There’s no protocol for this.
“I would have stayed,” he whispers. “If I had known.”
And there it is.
The wrong thing.
The worst thing.
Your eyes flash.
“And that,” you say, voice shaking with rage, “is what’s going to haunt you.”
His head jerks up.
“Don’t—”
“No,” you cut in. “You don’t get to say things like that. You don’t get to rewrite this into some tragic misunderstanding that just… happened.”
“I didn’t know he existed.”
“Because you chose to leave.”
Silence.
You're both breathing like you’ve run miles, but the room itself was perfectly still.
“I raised him alone,” you say. “I named him alone. I signed the birth certificate alone.”
Each word is surgical. Precise.
“Don’t,” he says weakly, because he can see where this is going, and he doesn’t know how to survive the end of the sentence.
“I waited,” you say, and now your voice finally breaks. “I waited for you to come back. To realize that you’d made a mistake. I waited for you to knock on my door.”
Your eyes are glassy now.
“You didn’t.”
Michael’s breathing turns ragged.
“You never told me,” he says again —except it doesn’t sound angry anymore. It sounds like pleading. A man searching desperately to find one corner of this that wasn’t entirely his fault. “You never told me I had a son.”
“I tried to reach you, you piece of shit!”
This time, you shout it.
He flinches.
Son.
The word doesn’t echo. It doesn’t need to.
It just sits there between you —heavy, irreversible.
It settles into him slowly.
Not abstract. Not theoretical. Concrete.
A son.
He doesn’t move at first. He doesn’t blink.
It’s as if the room has shifted half an inch off its axis and his body hasn’t caught up yet. His gaze drifts —slowly, almost against his will — toward the bed.
He looks at Noah.
Really looks at him this time.
Not the patient, or the what-ifs.
Nine.
Nine years old.
Dark hair.
That curl at the edge of his mouth.
The slope of his nose.
Recognition crawls up his spine, and his knees almost buckle.
“That’s…” His voice breaks before the word forms. He swallows hard. “He’s—”
He can’t finish it.
“Yes,” you say, and there is no mercy left in your tone. “Of course he’s yours.”
Of course.
The words reverberate.
As if it should have been obvious.
As if he should have known.
As if somewhere in his bones he should have felt it.
His son.
Nine years.
Nine birthdays.
Nine summers he missed.
His hand tightens on the rail until his knuckles go white, metal biting into his palm, creaking.
He doesn’t feel it.
His own reflection, reduced and sleeping, and completely unaware of the man standing three feet away.
And the unbearable, irreversible truth that he wasn’t there.
And that it wasn’t for the better.
Then the monitor chirps.
Not a full alarm. Just a sharp, irregular warning.
Noah shifts, breath catching in his sleep. His heart rate jumps. Oxygen dips just enough to keep an eye on.
You’re already moving.
The argument vanishes from your face like it was never there. Your hand comes down to Noah’s shoulder, steady, grounding.
“Hey,” you murmur, voice low and warm in a way that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the hospital. “Easy. You’re okay.”
Michael steps forward on instinct. He doesn’t think about it. He doesn’t ask permission. His body simply reacts.
“What’s he doing?” he asks, but he’s already scanning the monitor, already calculating.
“Pain response,” you answer calmly. “He’s coming out of it a little.”
You adjust the oxygen line with practiced hands. Your fingers don’t shake. Your breathing evens deliberately, like you’re lending him yours.
For a moment, you work beside each other in silence.
No past. No accusations. No history between you.
Just two physicians focused on the same small body.
Noah’s breathing steadies. The numbers smooth out.
The room exhales —but neither of you does.
Your hand remains on your son’s shoulder a beat longer than medically necessary.
Michael notices.
Of course he does.
He notices the way your thumbs keep moving, but you don’t seem to.
Dana sticks her head in before either of you can speak.
“Level One trauma incoming. Twenty-eight-year-old female. MVC. Hypotensive. Approximately thirty-two weeks pregnant. OB was already paged.”
As quickly as she appeared, she disappeared.
The words cut clean through the space.
Michael’s head turns toward the door automatically. Muscle memory. Training. Command voice already loading in his chest.
You don’t move.
But he sees the flicker in your eyes.
Your brain is already running differential diagnoses. Placental abruption. Uterine rupture. Fetal distress. Two patients in one body.
It’s instinct. It’s who you are.
Dana pushes through the curtain once again. “Dr. Robby, they need you now. She’s crashing.”
Of course she is.
He looks at you.
At Noah.
At the space between you that feels charged and unfinished.
There are a thousand things he could say. None of them fit inside the next ten seconds.
Questions, fury, disbelief, something dangerously close to grief —but none of them seem to matter right now.
You’re the one who speaks first.
“He’s stable,” you say quietly. “You can go.”
It isn’t really reassurance, more like permission.
Michael nods once, sharp. His body is already shifting back into motion —shoulders squaring, voice steadying, adrenaline flooding in like it always does.
But this time, it doesn’t feel clean.
He takes two steps toward the door, then stops just long enough to look at Noah again.
“I’ll—” he starts, but the sentence dies before it forms. You’ve already turned back to Noah.
Already brushing hair away from his forehead.
Already lowering your voice into something soft and private again.
He stands there half a second too long, memorizing the picture without meaning to.
Then he leaves.
The hallway outside is chaos — wheels screeching, voices rising, blood already soaking through sheets as the gurney barrels toward Bay Two.
“BP’s tanking!”
“Fetal heart rate dropping!”
Michael snaps into place.
“Move,” he says, gloves already on. “Let’s work.”
But when he reaches the bedside and sees the woman’s hand clutching the curve of her abdomen protectively.
Thirty-two weeks.
His chest tightens in a way that has nothing to do with medicine.
And somewhere, just beneath the precision and muscle memory and practiced authority —It’s something heavier.
“Robby!” someone barks.
He blinks once, and the world slams back into focus.
He moves, but beneath the muscle memory and the practiced authority and the steady cadence of a man who’s done this countless times.
Except there’s something else now.
And for the first time in a long time, he doesn’t just see a patient fighting to stay alive.
Omgg just read all the parts for the angsty brilliance you posted please tell me there is another part in works at least !! :3
yessss there is actually like, ten chapters in the main story (so five to go) and a couple more for extra chapters. Though this isn't really 100%. sometimes i cut parts out of a chapter and just add a new one so idk lol.
