Jack Abbot knows that Robby was once John Carter. It was he and Adamson who helped with the name change and the move. Jack because of love and Adamson because he believed in love and because he saw a damn good doctor who was burned out and needed not a reset but a hospital he could be cherished at. From what both of them have heard through the exhausted tears is a fuck-ton of trauma and not enough support. From a stabbing that cost him the life of his med-student and gave him lifelong back pain and kidney problems and addiction to never being able to tell the first man he loved that he did indeed love him before Peter Benton—his first mentor—left Carter's life and the hospital with a son and a woman he would eventually marry, serving as his first heartbreak. And then to falling in love with Kem and losing their child in utero. And so much more. Trauma after trauma. Pain after pain.
Both Jack and Adamson are going to fix that.
This guy is too kind, too talented, too beautiful of a soul to let waste away.
Where is it that they meet him?
Adamson had gone over with Allíance des Médecins several times over the course of his career, bringing along several residents and attendings; Jack, newly widowed and needing something that is not here, is just the latest to join him. Meeting Carter is like meeting a shell—at first. Carter had come back over because the woman he loved had said she'd be with him—but when push came to shove, she couldn't do it. Still too wrapped in her grief, Kem had ended things once and for all and Carter, brokenhearted, didn't know what to do. He threw himself into the work; it had saved him once before, hadn't it? Jack should have been no more than a rebound fuck but he wasn't. Something was there. A spark that was lacking with Kem. A connection. He felt life bloom within him again, even if it was only yet a fledgling, still learning to fly.
As July came to a close, so did Jack's and Adamson’s time in the Congo; Carter had a choice to make. Stay and continue on the same path, or go with them and forge a new life for himself.
The problem was that being John Carter would follow him everywhere. He could keep certain connections like the Carter Family Foundation—it could honestly be run by his own shadow from afar. As long as he did what was needed, signed whatever dotted lines, and kept the foundation running smoothly, no one would care if they saw his face or not. But he needed a clean break from everything else, especially his family, especially because he was entering into a relationship with a man. If they knew, he'd never have any peace again.
This could be his fresh start. A clean canvas, so to speak.
Adamson and Jack had been working at Big Charity, with Jack starting up his last year of residency and Adamson as the senior attending. They take Carter—now Michael Carter Robinavitch—back with them. It's a month of wonder for the newly renamed Mike, who took the middle name of Carter just in case. He's falling in love with not only the city but with Jack, and Adamson has become not only a mentor but a father figure to him. In the span of only a few weeks, something like hope has reignited within.
When Katrina hits, it's nothing they expect. All three, along with other hospital staff, work endlessly moving patients, records, and bodies. Saving people. Losing people. Volunteering to go out into the floods. It's hot. It's wet. It's death all around them.
Adamson gets offered the position of ED chief in Pittsburgh. With that, he's able to get Jack into the residency program to finish and Mike on as an attending.
Jack finishes his residency. Goes to war. Loses a leg. Comes home.
Years pass. Jack and Robby get married. Covid hits. Adamson dies. Robby becomes the chief. Pittfest happens. And no one knows who Robby once was. Jack, however, often feels guilty that he tried to save Robby from a life of trauma but trauma continued to find him.
And then one day, a new Chief of Surgery is hired and it's a newly divorced Peter Benton. Robby's first mentor and his first love...even if that love was thought to be unrequited.
As much as Jack hates to admit it, there's a chance that bridging both of Robby’s lives is what will save him. He's due to flee on his sabbatical the day before the new surgery chief is to start—which is by design.
Unless Jack can stall him. Unless he can admit that Carter has a place with Peter just as much as Robby has a place with Jack.
Running was never the answer—it's still not the answer. He is both John Carter and Michael Robinavitch now, and accepting that is what will be the ultimate healing.
After all, the heart can hurt infinitely but it can love infinitely too.