hello, my name is nadya - i am twenty, and i am from new zealand! i write fanfictions; which you can find linked below! i write for the pitt, gen v, the boys, akotsk, hotd, dune and more! if you dont see a masterlist it is because i have not made one yet, or do not have any writings for that fandom yet.
Feel free to ask me to write something!
Picture this: Jack Abbot x reader. One night, when he opens up about his late wife, reader finds out she was a housewife. This makes reader insecure because is highly educated and has a big career that she adores. Reader starts to get it in their head that Jack would expect her to quit her job and be a housewife or even a stay at home mom (maybe she doesn’t want kids) and starts panicking. 🩷
DOG WITH A BONE.
maybe it was irrational or self-destruction, but after hearing jack describe the life he once had with rose, you started seeing your future with him as something that would eventually demand pieces of yourself you were unwilling to surrender.
CW: angst, hurt, slight comfort, bittersweet but happy ending, reader is getting her masters. physical attributes for reader are neutral, have given rose abbot blonde hair, blue eyes.
There didn’t need to be a fight for Jack to open up about his late-wife, Rose; He came home after a rough shift, eyes glazed over and he was clearly somewhere distant, somewhere you couldn’t quite reach him.
He threw himself onto the couch, not even bothering to take off his prosthetic – which you knew his knee was probably rubbed awfully raw. You pushed yourself off your seat at the desk that held all of your papers, your thesis that was half-complete, and atleast two cups of cold coffee.
“Hey, honey.” He whispers thickly, there is something thick lining his words – as though his sadness and anger of the day was caught in the back of his throat, lining his words. You huffed, “Hey, baby..” You chirp, leaning down to kiss his forehead; then leaning further downwards to his right leg, shuffling the pant leg high up so you could unbuckle the prosthetic for him.
“Hard day?” You hum gently, knowing that days like this Jack needed soft, gentle quiet; He nods, the brief, bruised morning sun peeking through the curtains to embrace his forlorn face. “Wanna talk about it, or something else?” You pull yourself up, throwing yourself into the empty spot beside him. “S’ fine, honey.” His eyes were placed upon the wall across from him; a shelf full of pictures. You noticed the one he was looking at the most after shifts like this were the ones of his wedding, particularly the one he posed in with his late-wife Rose.
Tight-lipped, you smile at him, “Tell me about her, Jack.” You whisper, nudging him slightly. He turns to you, looking much like a dog with a bone. Eyes shining with a light you hadn’t seen in months, a twitch of a smile on his lips, before he turned to look back at the photos. You had this ability to make him talk, talk about things he rarely mentioned to his therapist. Your very presence was comforting.
“She was..” He breathes in, as though the memory he's thinking back to is within his reach, the flush of Rose's skin, her laugh, the way her hair shone in the sun. “..kind,” He stutters, as though continuing might inflict a physical wound. “She used to leave handwritten grocery lists in my scrub pockets – because she knew I could never remember anything; she loved looking after people, loved building a life around the house, around the future we were supposed to have.”
Your hand travels to his hand, rubbing reassuring circles as his grip tightens around your hand slightly; your heart tries not to ache as he voiced his memories of a woman who was the polar opposite. You smile reassuringly, pushing him to go further whilst something ugly twists beneath your ribs.
Because for all of your independent features; you are not Rose. She was a homemaker, someone you start a life with; and you didn’t even know if you wanted to have children – something you thought Jack was aware of.
You were halfway through your masters’, already buried beneath research, thesis deadlines and countless of intern hours; it isn’t something you could put on the back pedal for a time just to get married and have children – it was delicate work. You had bled for this, picked studying over sleep, over relationships, over anything that could give her something stable countless of times. You liked being busy, good at something, liked that people took you seriously when you walked into a room, respected you.
The idea of motherhood had always been distant for you, an irreversible and suffocating thought. You couldn’t quite picture yourself happy folding laundry in a kitchen somewhere whilst someone else gets to have the important life.
Every facet of Rose feels distinctly different – “She used to wait up for me after night shifts..” He had said it with a sigh, as though he wished for the memory to take physical form right in front of him.
“She used to pack my lunches, with a stupidly sweet note written on top of the box, along with a horribly drawn animal.” He chuckled, meanwhile your heart clenched with envy in your chest. Not envy of her, but of him; to have someone give their life, their dreams and their hunger for life up just to make your life easier, she was clearly a diamond in the rough.
“We wanted to have children together, two boys and two girls, she made our house a home..” His voice trailed off.
It was only hours later, when he lay beside you in your shared bed that you thought back to the conversation, your mind was perhaps sabotaging you when it thought of how every listed difference felt like an unreasonable comparison. How wicked your mind was.
The spiral got worse throughout the week.
Wednesday morning he got home to find you cooking, it wasn’t anything grand or elegant – you were in a large shirt and mismatched socks with messy hair; different from the blonde curls, ocean blue eyes, red lip and sundress that Rose obviously rocked every time he came home.
You were most definitely not cooking for him, well you were; but not in the way were you wanted him to compare you to a ghost. “You look lovely cooking, honey.” He pulls you in by the waist, pecking you on the lips before heading to the shower. You knew he meant nothing by it, perhaps a throwaway comment. But your eye twitched with barely contained anger.
Thursday morning you went on a tangent about a subject brought on by your peers during breakfast; he smiled at you tiredly, “You’d make an amazing mom,” It made you stutter in whatever act you were doing. He hadn’t a clue as to what he said, and that was worse. Because when he got up to take both of your plates to the kitchen, you were still frozen; your stomach tensed with guilt, perhaps even the slightest of anger.
You had to keep reminding yourself that you couldn’t just lash out at your poor boyfriend, who was tired and always so sad after terribly long shifts like that. One night during his weekend off, he fell asleep with his arm wrapped around your waist. You laid awake for half the night, your thoughts loud as they hit each corner of your mind; you were wrong. You were not Rose.
And because you were terrified of sounding cruel toward a lovely, dead woman, you say absolutely nothing. Instead you start to admittedly, shamefully, pull away – bit by bit. Missing dinners for research, staying late on campus even you didn’t need to, you became colder in bed; inching away from any sign of intimacy, every conversation started to sound like a trap to you.
Then came the breaking point; a night out with Jack and his co-workers, a night out that you couldn’t escape this time. You liked his friends, most definitely - but the way that you stuck out like a sore thumb was evident. They spent the entire time speaking of medical things whilst you just sat beside Jack and sipped on your espresso martini; the conversation then switched to a more familial based topic.
Until John Shen spoke up, not meaning any harm in the question; “Do you two want kids one day?” You froze, and Jack's hand tightened around yours slightly. Jack shakes his head slightly; “Maybe, haven’t really thought that far ahead again.”
A piece of you chips away, again - like you were an ice statue and Jack, the hammer. Suddenly, you realize he has already imagined this life before; Marriage, babies, a suburban domestic dream where he drives a dad-van. He already loved a woman who fit perfectly into that picture; unfortunately you felt as though you were standing from the outside of his dream peering in, standing in the outline of someone else's shape.
It became too much when you got home; you had a splitting headache, eyes pulsing as a tear slipped down your cheek. You detonated, something that you had never done – you were usually the most civil out of the two of you, you didn’t scream at him, no, Jack didn’t deserve that. With a heaving sigh and a slight crack in your voice, “You know I’m never going to be her, right?”
Jack genuinely has no idea what you meant at first, which only makes you angrier; weeks of insecurity come pouring out at once, "I'll never quit my job to be a homemaker, Jack, I dont want to spend my life orbiting someone else's ambitions, not when I have my own. I do not even know If i want children, and I feel horrible because it's so clear you do.” You sigh, watching as the realization of everything hits Jack. “I’m sick of feeling like every good memory you want involves me shaping into a version of womanhood I cannot force myself into.”
Jack takes it badly at first – because Rose is dead and grief makes him defensive; He thinks you are insulting her, but he is proving your point when he deepens the argument further. The fight between you two becomes vicious quickly, and ironically you two aren't even arguing about the same thing.
And underneath all of it is the real horror of the situation: You love him enough that you are genuinely afraid you would ruin yourself trying to become whatever he needed. Jack eventually realizes the problem is not jealousy or anger; it is fear, you are terrified that loving him means disappearing.
That realization wrecks him a little; you were two people circling each other, both realizing love does not erase incompatibility, and both too attached now to walk away whole.
aerion targ x reader where reader has a crush on him but is lowkey terrified of him. (they're married.)
THAT BOY IS CORRUPT.
apparently every young lady in the realm dreams to marry a targaryen prince; though. aerion targaryen is an exception to all those dreams - until you.
CW: MDNI, 18+ slight sexual references, aerion himself is a warning, fluff ig, mean!aerion, he loves you i promise, freaky ahh reader, i couldnt stop writing i apologise, pregnancy, children, one slight mention of beating (a rumor, not actually done.) i'm a lil rusty when it comes to akotsk content, sorry :-(
This marriage to Prince Aerion Targaryen was unlike what you had hoped. It was humiliation given form, and he was mediocrity in shape of a human. Other ladies are granted knights who smile without it meaning certain cruelty ahead, who win tourneys for their wives instead of winning it to release some maddening anger onto unsuspecting victims. Other ladies are given handsome men, or even a nicer prince belonging to an even nicer family. You are given Aerion instead.
You pay the price every day for being unwillingly arranged to marry such a foul creature, whispers follow you into every corridor, suggesting your marriage to be an ambition too big or a desperation that was too extreme – you did not quite know which to believe. The early days of the marriage were peaceful, distant, Aerion was present, yes, but rarely reachable; when he spoke to you, it felt less like a conversation and more like being taught something. You learnt quickly that bringing any form of weakness or performance to the table greatly annoyed him, unless it was within the confines of your chambers - which then it greatly amused him. You began to notice certain things about your princely husband; His need for precision and control - the need for control unsettled you most, because it implied he has restraint rather than an absence of violence.
It was perhaps around the yearly anniversary of your grand royal wedding that you realised you did not quite loathe him like others did, sure, he terrified you in ways you couldn’t speak of; but there was something that developed within you in spite of logic, not because of it. You began to watch him in ways that feel shameful; Whilst he is sweaty and panting heavily during training, or when his hands swipe through the pages of a book with an adeptness unknown to man, or even watching him in his Valyrian lessons that he certainly doesn't need, but watching the way he rolls his tongue when he's speaking was worth putting up with his nasty attitude.
Its not just that; the sound of his booming laughter in your dining hall, the shift in the atmosphere when he enters, or the slight smile he gives you when you stoke the fire that is his ego. It makes your heart pick up and beat, like a lion beating against its cage. You try to contain yourself, saying that its curiosity, duty perhaps? But you can’t fool him, its attraction heightened by the slight feeling of fear that excites you. Its that attraction and fear formed by the proximity of your marriage – yes, you being married to him makes avoiding him entirely impossible.
Your marriage started to settle during the end of the following year of it starting, it began to become more of a routine rather than an oddity; it was definitely not comfortable, but it was familiar. It was a surprise to most ladies and whispering at court that instead of distancing himself from you, Aerion embraced you as his wife – He had come to embrace you, and the stability of that was wonderful of course, but then came the pressure of something completely unknown.
Children.
Your own ladies-in-waiting hounded you into a barrage of questions;
When is a babe going to join us?
Are you two going to grace the court with a new targaryen prince?
Lets pray to the gods that any babe looks like him, but have your nature, my dear!
Aerion did not care for gossiping ladies and snide comments from their lord husbands; but he did notice how it affected you. How late at night you would invite him to your chambers more, and would not let him leave unless the act was done.
He knew that comments like that might have hurt his precious lady-wife more than she showed; so he invited you to more formal dinners, showing you off on his arm as he kept you close during social affairs. He ensured you were not over-exerting yourself during travel or your courtly obligations. It was sweet of him, truly, and it was almost tender.
But this was surely his need for control over the situation leaking into the domesticity of your marriage; until one night, he rejects your invitation to your chamber and instead insists you come to his. Which you do, begrudgingly.
You find him sitting at the edge of his bed, waiting up for you. You take in his dishevelled appearance, how the scars on his face seem to only show up during the knight, embroidered in candlelight. The conversation that follows is not remotely romantic, but entirely intimate in its nature; he expresses finally his desire for a child, an heir – you note the way he softly looks up at you after saying the word ‘child’ and the way his face tightened as he hurriedly fixed it with the word ‘heir’.
It caused you to stutter slightly as you stepped forward, his legs spreading slightly to let you settle inbetween them. Your hand met his cheek, softly cupping him as you brushed the platinum locks away from his eyes. It is the first time your marriage stops being defined by your mixed feelings of fear and world-shattering attraction and starts being defined by the act of continuing, expanding and separating entirely.
You agree with him, as you lean down and kiss him; it is entirely romantic, which should be enough to shake him out of the softness he holds for you, he should just throw you on the bed and take you, should order you to not leave this room until it takes. But he accepts your kiss, and leans back onto the bed, accepting your soft touch and even gentler eyes for the night.
Whispers at court still trailed after you, they brought tales of him abandoning you for a tavern wench, or for a lady in your court; even whispers started that he beat you, stating that a babe would not thrive in such a hostile environment; to which Aerion stated that any man who beat his wife was no man at all, snarling at the weakness of the gossip.
It was then you began to notice a change in him, it was like a switch however; he was softer with you, slights swallowed before being said, glares at anyone who dared touch, or even walk in your general area, you began to see him in a different light. And it was not long before you greeted him one late evening with the greatest news to reach his ears; a babe lay in your belly. It brought a sense of permanence to your marriage. The thought that a child, his child, would be brought into the world soon; a piece of him, a piece of you. It makes his green, rotten, distorted heart almost beat with a flurry of positive emotions. He almost became soft, he was still wickedly mean at court and during training, but in your shared chambers his need for approval lessened into a need for you.
When you told him, it did not take him long to understand what you meant, there was no confusion in him, no need for repetition or clarification. He only looked at you for a moment longer than usual; then he moved toward you.
He crossed the space between you but there was something different in the way his hands came to you. When he pulled you into him, it was firm, almost careful, as though he was suddenly aware of how fragile you were to become.
You had seen him hold swords, reins, goblets, all with the same steadiness, but this was not the same kind of grip. It lingered longer than necessary, and when he spoke, it was low enough that it felt meant only for you.
He repeated it once, as if confirming it out loud made it real in a way silence could not manage. A child, ours.
His hand settled at your side after that, not moving much, just staying there, like he needed the contact to make sense of what had been said; he stayed close, looking at you in a way that felt unusually direct, as though something in him had stopped trying to maintain distance for the first time since you had known him.
There were no more words for a while, whatever he was thinking stayed contained behind his expression, but it was not empty. If anything, it was more focused than usual.
The court thankfully did not see the shift that followed immediately, it remained private, contained within your chambers and the spaces where only the two of you existed without peering eyes and an audience, time moved forward and there were changes in how you were attended to, how often he was present without being summoned, how certain decisions were made without discussion but with clear mutual understanding.
When the time came, the world outside your chamber became irrelevant by necessity rather than choice.
Eventually, there was a child; The babe came into the world small and alive with a force that was obviously inherited from their father, along with his looks; Silver hair, pale and unmistakable, eyes that carried the deep violet of old Valyrian blood. The sound of them was immediate, a sharp cry swiftly becoming dull and quiet.
Aerion did not speak at first; he remained where he was, as though movement might interrupt his child’s atmosphere; his attention stayed fixed, not shifting away even once, and when he finally stepped closer, it was without urgency. He looked at the child, then at you, and for a moment there was nothing else in the room that mattered.
Hiii! I was wondering if I could request something for Robby from the Pitt? Something like Robby has a girlfriend who’s knees pop out of place a lot and the first time that it happened In front of him he panicked slightly and was ready to pop them back into place for her and drive to the hospital to make sure everything is fine. But the reader pop them in herself and gets back up and walks around and Robby is just shocked because he’s never seen anything quite like that before.
You can use as much or as little as you’d like for inspiration. I hope you have a wonderful day/night!
Pop!
in which, you almost give your dear boyfriend, michael robinavitch, a cardiac event over something that, in your mind, is completely routine.
CW: reader has HSD (hypermobility spectrum disorder), fluff, kissing, domestic!robby.
REQUESTS ARE OPEN!
The early morning sun trickled in through the slight crack in the curtain, effectively blinding Michael for a brief moment. With a heavy sigh, he rubbed the palm of his hand over his face, trying to drag himself into consciousness after another night of half-sleep and ruined circadian rhythm courtesy of the ER. Beside him, you stretched your limbs lazily beneath the sheets, arms extending above your head as you woke up. “Guh’morning..” You murmur, voice rough with sleep, smiling sheepishly despite your eyes remaining shut.
Michael looked down at you for a second before leaning over, pressing a tired kiss against your mouth. “Good morning, baby,” he croaked, voice still wrecked from sleep.
You pushed yourself upright onto both hands, hair a complete mess around your face. Michael’s old navy-blue hoodie hung off your frame, the sleeves swallowing your hands and the hem brushing against your mid-thigh. It still smelt faintly like him despite the fact he barely wore it anymore; most of his clothes had somehow ended up becoming yours over the last few months anyway. “M’ gonna make coffee, want some pancakes?” you asked blearily, one hand shoved into the pocket of his hoodie whilst the other rubbed against your eye.
Michael watched you quietly.
There were mornings where he genuinely could not believe this was his life now. You in his apartment, in his clothes, half-asleep and talking about pancakes like it was the most normal thing in the world. Four months ago, he had fully expected this relationship to implode before it ever became anything serious. His hours were horrific, his temper after shifts was worse, and he carried stress around so permanently it may as well have been stitched into him. Yet somehow you were still here, still crawling into his bed at midnight after shifts, still leaving skincare products scattered across his bathroom counter, still filling the silence in his apartment so naturally that now, when you were not there, the place felt wrong.
It made something tighten painfully in his chest sometimes, not in a bad way, jsut enough to remind him that he had spent years convincing himself he neither needed nor wanted this sort of thing.
He nodded slowly, the corner of his mouth lifting; the expression softened the permanent exhaustion carved into his features, the faint crow’s feet beside his eyes becoming more obvious as he smiled. “Pancakes sound good.”
You hummed softly in acknowledgement before climbing out of bed completely, shuffling out of the bedroom still half asleep. Michael remained where he was for another moment, listening to your footsteps disappear down the hallway before he finally reached over for his glasses and phone on the bedside table.
A few seconds later, he heard the kettle click on; then your voice floated through the apartment quietly, humming Phantom of the Opera to yourself from somewhere in the kitchen. Minutes passed by, your humming gone uninterrupted until an almost quiet crackling pop alongside a heavy thud echoed throughout the apartment as Michael pulled a shirt over his head, followed immediately by a strained, hurried, “fuck,” from the kitchen.
Michael’s head snapped up instantly, within seconds he was moving down the hallway toward the kitchen, bare feet hitting against the hardwood as he rounded the corner quickly. The sight in front of him made his stomach twist immediately; you were down on the floor beside the counter awkwardly, one knee bent beneath you whilst both hands gripped around the other one tightly. The kettle continued boiling behind you quietly, steam curling upward as if nothing had hapened, it clicked off automatically, emitting a hissing sound.
“Baby?” Michael dropped down beside you immediately. “Are you alright, what happened?”
One of his hands landed against your back instinctively, steady and warm as his eyes scanned over you rapidly. You looked more annoyed than panicked, though your breathing was uneven as you leaned further over your knee. “It’s fine,” you managed quickly. “I promise, it happens.”
Michael frowned immediately. “What happens?” You couldn’t quite get the words out before another horrible sound echoed through the kitchen; you leaned forward, putting pressure on your knee as a thick knock-crunch noise that made Michael visibly tense beside you. Your face pinched briefly as your knee shifted back into place beneath your hands.
You exhaled hard afterward, shoulders finally relaxing slightly.
“Jesus Christ,” Michael muttered under his breath, staring directly at your knee. “Did you just pop your knee back into place?” You nodded weakly before letting your head fall forward for a second. “Sorry, turned too fast-”
Michael continued staring at you for another moment like he genuinely could not comprehend what he had just watched happen in front of him. “You wanna explain what the hell just happened, sweetheart?”
You looked up at him sheepishly despite the obvious discomfort still written across your face. “I told you, it happens sometimes.” You pursed your lips, sighing as you tried to stand up. “That is not a normal sentence.” Michael shook his head; before you could answer, Michael was already pushing himself back onto his feet. He turned toward the freezer quickly, opening it with far more force than necessary before grabbing a bag of frozen vegetables from inside. You watched him quietly as he moved around the kitchen, still trying to steady your breathing properly.
“Sorry, baby,” you murmured again. “I should’ve told you sooner, I guess.” Michael looked over at you immediately at that before walking back over. “Yeah,” he said honestly, crouching down again. “Probably.” His tone was not harsh, if anything, he just sounded worried.
He carefully helped guide you up from the floor afterward, one arm around your waist as he slowly walked you over toward the couch. The entire time his hand remained firm against your side like he expected your knee to give out again at any second. Once you sat down, he crouched in front of you again before pressing the frozen vegetables gently over your knee.
“Does this happen often?” he asked quietly, eyebrows knitted together as he looked up at you. You nodded once before taking the vegetables from his hand yourself. Michael let you, though his eyes barely left your face for longer than a few seconds.
“Have you gone to a doctor?” His words were met with another nod. Michael sighed softly before reaching up, brushing hair carefully away from your face. His hand lingered against your cheek afterward, thumb resting just beneath your eye as he tilted your head slightly toward him.
“What’s going on, hm?” he asked more gently this time; you looked down toward your lap for a moment before answering quietly. “I just… didn’t want you to look at me differently.”
Michael’s expression shifted immediately, one of worry replaced by curiosity. “I have hypermobility disorder,” you admitted finally. “Sometimes I get a bit ahead of myself when turning or walking..”
Michael stared at you for a moment before shaking his head slightly in disbelief, his hand dropping from your cheek down toward your shoulder. “Why didn’t you say anything? I’m a doctor, baby.” He huffed quietly, leaning forward enough to press a soft kiss into your hairline.
You looked down toward your knee instead, fingers tightening slightly around the bag of vegetables resting against it. “Didn’t wan’ to scare you off..”
Michael pulled back just enough to look at you properly again, brows furrowing almost immediately at the confession. “Scare me off?” he repeated quietly, like the idea itself made no sense to him. “Baby, c’mon.”
You shrugged weakly, avoiding his eyes again. “People get weird about it sometimes.”
“Well, I’m not people.” His hand rubbed slowly against your shoulder, thumb dragging back and forth absentmindedly through the fabric of his hoodie still hanging off your frame. Michael let out a quiet tsk beneath his breath before shaking his head once more. “You’d have to do a hell of a lot worse to scare me away, sweetheart.”
The coment managed to pull a small smile from you despite yourself; tired and embarrassed and a little sheepish all at once. The sight of it softened something in Michael almost instantly. His hand slid upward from your shoulder until his fingers curled loosely along the side of your neck. “Still can’t believe you just popped your knee back into place like it was nothing,” he muttered quietly.
A quiet laugh escaped you then, softer this time, Michael watched you for another second before leaning in properly; the kiss was slow, careful, much like him. His hand remained against your neck as his lips pressed against yours gently at first, lingering there for a moment before deepening slightly. You could feel the scratch of stubble against your skin as he tilted his head, kissing you with an almost unfair amount of tenderness considering he had looked ready to call an ambulance less than ten minutes ago.
Your hand moved instinctively toward the front of his shirt, fingers curling loosely into the fabric as he kissed you again, slower this time, like he was reassuring himself more than anything else. Michael always kissed like he had nowhere else to be when the two of you were alone together, unhurried, warm, the kind of kiss that made your chest ache a little afterward.
He finally pulled away reluctantly, a quiet hum escaping him as his forehead dropped lightly against yours; for a second neither of you spoke.
Your noses brushed slightly as you looked at him, his brown eyes still carrying that same concern from earlier despite how much calmer he seemed now. “Still gotta check you out though, baby,” he whispered softly, you groaned quietly at that, letting your head tip forward against his. “After breakfast, please?”
Michael closed his eyes briefly like he was genuinely considering arguing with you over it, he sighed mockingly. A small smirk pulling at his lips;
“Alright, sweetheart.”
ignore any spelling mistakes please, its two in the morning for me.
you wont answer michael's messages, so he shows up at your apartment fearing the worst - only to find exactly that.
CW: talks of death, seizures, probable innacuracies with medicine - i have done research, and i am epileptic; so the seizures are just based off of the ones i have, swearing, talks of marriage and children.
REQUESTS ARE OPEN!
this cannot be read as a standalone, part one is here!
WC: 9.3k
WATER trickled from your hair down your spine as you stepped into your bedroom, the cold droplets disappearing beneath the collar of the oversized Pittsburgh Penguins tee-shirt you had just dragged over your head. Your apartment was quiet aside from the distant hum of traffic outside and the soft rattling of old pipes somewhere in the walls. You have been home for nearly three hours now. Three hours spent rotting into the corner of your couch with the television running quietly only for noise, your untouched tea going cold on the coffee table beside your freshly reprinted scans.
Five hours since your entire life had narrowed into a handful of grainy images. Cancer. Brain tumor. The words looped around your skull endlessly. You leaned briefly against the doorway of your bedroom, exhausted despite having done absolutely nothing.
Regret sat in your chest.. A starving thing that kept biting deeper every time you thought about Michael standing outside the ambulance bay looking at you like you had personally ripped the ground out from beneath him.
Michael’s love wasn’t enough. No. That was a lie. It was enough.
Enough for you to sit there for three hours and genuinely think about survival for the first time since Dr. Voss had slid those scans across her desk. Enough for you to think about surgeries and chemotherapy and rehabilitation. Enough for you to wonder whether maybe you were being selfish by refusing treatment outright.
Enough for you to picture a future- but not enough for you to want the reality of it.
Not enough for endless hospital rooms and medications and pitying looks from strangers – or worse pitying looks from your friends – Not enough for surgeries that could leave you unable to speak properly, or walk properly, or remember properly. Not enough for the possibility of surviving whilst pieces of yourself disappeared anyway.
The thought alone made your stomach churn, and guilt tore into you for it.
You should want to fight. People always wanted to fight.
You rubbed tiredly at your face before moving further into the room. Your damp hair clung coldly to your neck. Every movement felt delayed tonight, like your body had become slightly disconnected from your brain.
Then the room tilted, enough for your stomach to drop.
Your hand shot out instantly, catching the edge of your nightstand before your knees gave out beneath you completely. The wood dug painfully into your palm as you steadied yourself with a sharp inhale.
“Fuck…”
The word barely made it out as your breathing turned uneven immediately. Pain bloomed violently behind your right eye and spread toward the back of your skull, hot and sickening, like someone had shoved something burning into your brain and left it there. Your vision blurred around the edges and for one awful second you genuinely thought you were going to collapse face-first onto the floor.
You squeezed your eyes shut hard enough to hurt, this was real, that was the terrifying part.
Not the scans, the diagnosis, the pamphlets Dana still probably had clutched in her hand somewhere back at the hospital.
This; your body failing whilst you stood alone in your bedroom trying not to fall over, a shaky breath escaped you as your grip tightened harder against the nightstand.
You had spent years recognizing symptoms in other people before they even noticed them themselves. Tiny facial droops, delayed speech, uneven pupils, tremors hidden beneath pockets or crossed arms.
Now every piece of knowledge you had felt like a curse; you knew exactly what was happening to you.
Your head throbbed harder with each heartbeat. Your lungs felt lined with glass every time you inhaled, even your balance felt wrong, like the world itself had shifted half an inch to the left and only you could feel it.
A bitter laugh nearly escaped you at the irony of it all. Ex-combat medic, trauma attending, the woman friends called Sunshine because you could smile through anything yet you could barely stand upright in your own apartment.
Your eyes burned suddenly, not from the blinding pain this time, from grief; Not even grief for dying, but grief for everything you suddenly realized you would never have. Marriage, children, growing old - waking up beside somebody every morning instead of alone. You thought of Michael again and your chest twisted so sharply it almost made you nauseous.
Too late. Everything felt too fucking late. Your knees threatened to buckle again and you swallowed harshly, forcing yourself upright with whatever strength you still had left in you anyway.
Your knees trembled like a fawn’s, but you eventually made it to your living room. It horrified and amazed you how quickly you deteriorated. How quickly after your diagnosis you shrunk, and the cancer conquered. It was scary, and scarily beautiful.
You knew that because you were tired, the signs were becoming more and more significant – it was like filling a bucket; you waited until it became too heavy to carry, until the water pooled over the sides, until the water licked at the metal rim and fell. How much could you take before you inevitably either seized or stroked. It wasn’t something you were looking forward to, no not at all.
That's why when you sat down on the couch, you were determined to rest. So you leaned against the couch's pillows, pulled the quilt at your feet over your legs and shut your eyes; eager to get some shut-eye.
And for roughly three hours you were dead to the world; unaware of the messages and spam calls your phone had received.
Michael was panicked. You were sick, alone and without anyone there for you, no family nearby, no partner, no close neighbours, not even a roommate to realise something was wrong. He knew he should be hurt, hurt at your clear rejection of him earlier, but he understood it too well to take it personally.
You were like a dog - and yes, Michael knew that metaphor was degrading and perhaps worthy of a meeting in HR, but it was true. Dogs wandered off when they knew they were dying. They tucked themselves away somewhere dark and quiet, isolating themselves due to deep-seated instincts to protect themselves whilst they’re vulnerable.
That thought had rooted itself into his chest nearly an hour ago and refused to leave – It sat there now, lingering and nauseating, as he stared blankly at his phone screen in the dimly lit peds room. Your contact photo stared back at him. The night lights caught in your hair. He had taken it months ago during a night out with Dana, Benji, Samira and Jack.
sweet girl.
The stupid contact name made his throat tighten, beneath it sat an embarrassing amount of unanswered messages.
Michael dragged a hand over his face harshly before leaning back further in the chair beside Jane Doe’s crib. The tiny baby slept peacefully, completely unaware of the grown man beside her slowly unraveling. One of her tiny fists remained wrapped around his finger; every so often she twitched in her sleep, making him look over automatically.
Anything at all to make you answer, and you hadn’t. Not a text, a call back, nothing. It had gotten pathetic enough that Jack eventually cornered him.“You look like a mess, brother.” Jack stepped into the peds room carefully, nearly tiptoeing around the sleeping infant. Michael flinched slightly at the sudden voice before looking over. “You don’t look much better,” he muttered back automatically, though there was no bite behind it. “Yeah, well.” Jack huffed quietly. “I’m not exactly thriving.”
His eyes dropped immediately to the phone still sitting in Michael’s hand. The open message thread. The ignored calls. His eyebrows lifted slightly. “Oh, Jesus Christ,” Jack muttered. “You’re spiraling.” Michael rolled his eyes tiredly. “I’m not spiraling.” Jack shook his head, “You’ve sent her enough messages to qualify as cyberstalking.”
“She has brain cancer, Jack.” Michael snapped it back too quickly, immediately scrubbing a hand down his beard with exhaustion. “Sorry.” Jack’s face softened almost instantly. “No, I know.” He leaned against the counter beside him with a sigh. “Believe me, I know.”
Silence settled between them for a moment. Outside the room somebody yelled for labs, a monitor alarm chirped twice before cutting off again. Normal hospital noise, normal life continuing while yours had been completely split open hours earlier.
Jack nodded toward the phone. “Still nothing?” Michael shook his head. His stomach twisted every time he looked at the unanswered texts. Because you always answer eventually. Even when angry, or upset. You’d send some sarcastic thumbs up or a passive aggressive sticker just to prove you were alive.
Nothing from you felt wrong. “How about I cover the rest of your shift and you go home?” Jack finally suggested, eyeing the phone like it personally offended him. Michael just shrugged faintly, adjusting the blanket around Baby Jane absentmindedly. “No, it’s okay.”
Jack snorted immediately. “Bullshit.” He shoved his shoulder lightly against Michael. “Go and check on your girl. Me and Shen can hold down the fort.” Michael’s eyes widened slightly before settling again. “She’s not my girl.”
“Mhmm.”
“I’m serious.” Michael huffed, shaking his head as he rubbed his eyes. “And I’m serious too. You look one missed phone call away from putting her on a missing persons poster.” Despite himself, Michael let out a quiet laugh through his nose. Jack’s expression softened again. “Look, brother… she just got told she’s dying. She’s scared.” He folded his arms tightly across his chest. “And you know how she gets it. She spends her whole damn life taking care of everyone else, the second she’s the one needing help, she runs.”
Michael looked back down at the phone, his jaw tightened. “I’m sorry for blowing up on you before,” he admitted quietly after a moment. “Earlier.” Jack waved him off instantly. “No need to apologize, s’ been a stressful fucking day.” He tilted his head slightly. “Guess you aren’t going on your weird Eat, Pray, Love motorcycle trip now?”
That actually got a real laugh out of Michael this time. “No,” he muttered, rubbing tiredly at his eyes. “Definitely not now.” Jack watched him carefully then. Really watched him; the panic, the guilt. The way he kept checking his phone every thirty seconds like he could force it to light up through sheer willpower alone.
Michael was in love with you; the idiot just clearly had not realized how much until now.
“I’ve known her a long time,” Jack said quietly, “And all she’s ever wanted was to be loved properly,” He clapped a hand against Michael’s shoulder firmly. “Go do your welfare check, loverboy.” Michael stood slowly, already grabbing his jacket. “I’m gonna go make sure she’s alive.”
Jack smirked faintly. “Riigghhtt. Totally different thing.”
Michael finalized a few things before leaving. He checked on his residents, signed off charts that had been abandoned in the chaos of the shift, listened to Whitaker nervously ramble through an update he had already mostly heard, he even stopped briefly at a trauma room to help Shen with a discharge, though his mind was nowhere near the hospital anymore.
It was with you. Alone in your apartment, sick, probably crying whilst pretending you were fine – the thought made him feel vaguely nauseous.
By the time he reached the ambulance bay doors, he looked exhausted enough that Dana physically stopped mid conversation to stare at him, her eyes flicking toward the motorcycle helmet tucked beneath his arm.
“You better not be going on that stupid fucking sabbatical tonight,” she warned immediately. He looked offended. “I’m not.”
“Good.” She pointed at him sharply. “Because if you leave that girl alone right now, I will personally hunt you down.” Michael huffed, “She stopped answering me.” Dana’s expression faltered slightly. Concern replacing irritation almost instantly. “How long?”
“Three hours.” He shuffled his feet, looking away.“Jesus Christ.” She mused. Michael rubbed a hand over his face tiredly. “Jack’s convinced she’s isolating herself.” Dana nodded, “She is isolating herself.” Dana folded her arms tightly. “She’s terrified.”
Michael swallowed hard at that. Terrified. You had looked terrified outside earlier, beneath the anger and the stubbornness and the sarcasm, you had looked completely overwhelmed. And he had still let you leave alone.
“You gonna go check on her or just stand here looking miserable?” Dana asked flatly. He huffed quietly through his nose. “I’m going.”
“Good.” She eyed the helmet again. “And put the damn helmet on. I am not dealing with both of you having brain injuries in the same week.” Despite everything, his mouth twitched slightly.
A few minutes later he was pulling out of the employee parking garage, begrudgingly wearing the helmet. The cold and sharp Pittsburgh air bit against his skin as he rode through evening traffic, headlights reflecting off wet pavement from the earlier rain. Usually riding calmed him down, usually it gave him room to think.
Tonight it only made his thoughts louder, every red light became another chance for his mind to spiral. What could he even say to you? Please don’t die, I love you? His grip tightened on the handlebars. Pick recovery because if you die, I'm sure I will too? Jesus Christ.
Every version of the conversation in his head sounded manipulative somehow, too emotional, too selfish. Because this wasn’t about him, you were the one dying, you were the one terrified of spending the next seven years sick and miserable and grieving a future you never got to have. And yet all he could think about was the possibility of losing you; It hit him harder now outside the hospital, outside the noise and chaos and constant distraction. You could actually die, not speaking in hypotheticals, nor someday far away in the future;
Soon.
The thought caused a shiver to run down his back. By the time he reached your apartment complex he was sure he looked insane, hair windblown, face flushed – he parked directly in your designated spot, immediately noticing your car was missing. Right, you had ubered home, your car was still sitting abandoned in employee parking.
Michael pulled off his helmet slowly, staring up at your apartment building for a long moment before finally forcing himself toward the entrance.
The elevator had an OUT OF SERVICE sign taped across it.
“Evil,” he muttered flatly; of course it was broken. He stared at the stairs for a solid five seconds like he was personally offended by their existence before dragging himself toward them anyway. Halfway up he regretted every life choice that had led him there, by the third flight his knees hurt, and by the fourth he was actively reconsidering human survival as a concept.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he breathed, gripping the railing; you lived entirely too high up. By the time he finally reached your floor he was embarrassingly out of breath. He bent slightly at the waist for a second, dragging air into his lungs while glaring down the hallway toward your apartment door.
Then came the nerves. Because what if you told him to leave? What if you didn’t answer at all? What if Jack had been right? Michael swallowed thickly before straightening himself up. He scrubbed a tired hand over his face, trying to make himself look less frantic than he felt, then stepped toward your door.
He steadied his breathing and knocked against your apartment door. “Sunshine? It’s me, Michael.” He called out, voice muffled slightly by the old hallway walls; no response.
Michael frowned instantly.
Inside, your eyes fluttered open with a sharp gasp – for a second you forgot where you were, your couch, your apartment. Your body felt heavy, like somebody had replaced your blood with wet cement while you slept. The headache was still there too, drilling behind your eyes and spreading down the back of your neck.
Jesus Christ, it really did feel like you had a brain tumor. Another knock echoed through the apartment; you coughed roughly before croaking out, “Give me a minute.” Your voice sounded horrible, thick and sluggish.
You planted a hand against the coffee table and pushed yourself upright slowly, your legs trembling underneath you almost immediately. The room tilted for a brief second, not enough to send you falling, but enough to make your stomach twist unpleasantly. You squeezed your eyes shut and pressed a hand against your forehead.
Everything felt wrong; like your body had quietly stopped working properly hours ago and you were only just catching up to it now.
You dragged your fingers through your hair with a tired sigh before making your way toward the door, slowly. Your bare feet shuffled against the hardwood as another pulse of pain throbbed through your skull hard enough to make your vision blur at the edges. Tiny black specks danced briefly across your sight before disappearing again.
Oh, cool, awesome. You reached the door and rubbed tiredly at your eyes with the heel of your palm before leaning forward to glance through the peephole.
Michael Robinavitch.
Your eyebrows knit together instantly, your heart kicked hard against your ribs as you unlocked the door and pulled it open.
He looked terrible– not physically terrible, but worn down. Like somebody had wrung him out and left him standing upright. His hair was slightly windblown from the bike ride over, beard uneven where he’d clearly been dragging nervous hands across his face all evening. His brown eyes landed on you instantly.
Relief hit his face so quickly it almost hurt to look at; With guilt, you remembered that you technically did this to him. “Michael…” you whispered quietly.
“Sweetheart, how are you?” he asked immediately. There was a sad smile sitting on his lips, but it didn’t reach his eyes, not even remotely. His gaze scanned over your face too carefully, taking in the exhaustion beneath your eyes, the flushed skin, the way you were leaning subtly against the doorframe to stay balanced.
“Uh… I’m good,” you lied weakly. “What are you doing here?” You shuffled your feet anxiously, suddenly very aware of how you looked. Your hair was completely messed up from sleeping on the couch for hours, your face still slightly creased from cushions, oversized Penguins shirt hanging off one shoulder with sleep shorts underneath.
Michael exhaled softly through his nose. “I messaged you, but… you didn’t answer.” His eyes dropped briefly toward the floor before lifting back to you. “Just thought I’d check in. Make sure you got home okay.”
You smiled; unfortunately, it hurt your head immediately.
Your heartbeat felt strange; too fast, too hard. Every pulse seemed to echo directly behind your eyes, your fingertips tingled faintly as you gripped the edge of the door tighter. You ignored it. “Sorry,” you murmured. “I think I passed out.” Michael’s expression tightened at the wording. “You passed out?”
“No, not like medically.” You waved him off quickly. “Just slept really hard.” His eyes narrowed slightly. Your head throbbed again, the hallway light suddenly looked far too bright, you squinted slightly before looking away from it. “Do you want to come in?” you asked quietly, shifting out of the doorway. The change in him was immediate. “Yeah,” he answered softly. “Sure.” A small smile tugged at his mouth this time, he stepped inside carefully while you shut the door behind him.
Michael glanced around your apartment as he shrugged off his jacket. It was small, a little cluttered in places, but painfully you; your favorite books stacked unevenly beside the couch, plenty of throw blankets, and many inside plants. It looked lived in, it looked lonely too.
“Take a seat on the couch,” you told him quietly. “I’ll make coffee.” You brushed past him gently, your hand briefly patting against the middle of his back as you moved toward the kitchen.
The touch was small, Michael still felt it like a gunshot. You missed the way he closed his eyes briefly at the contact, missed the way his jaw tightened. Because by the time you reached the kitchen counter, another sharp pulse had gone through your skull hard enough to make you grip the edge of it.
Your fingers twitched once involuntarily, then again.
You hit your head softly with the palm of your hand, urging yourself to pull it together. Your thoughts felt thick, sluggish, like they were moving through mud rather than your own brain. The headache had settled somewhere deep behind your eyes now, hot and throbbing, every pulse making your stomach twist unpleasantly. Still, you forced yourself to move around the kitchen normally.
Or as normally as someone with a fucking brain tumor could.
Michael watched you from the couch in complete silence. That somehow made it worse. He was a doctor, trained to notice every small thing wrong with a person before they even realized it themselves, and you could practically feel him piecing you together from across the room.
The curtains were still drawn despite the dying evening sun outside. The kitchen light stayed off while you moved through muscle memory alone. When you opened the fridge, the sudden burst of light made you visibly squint, your free hand immediately coming up toward your temple before you forced it back down.
Then there was your hands.
The spoon clinked repeatedly against the mug while you stirred the coffee. Ding. Ding. Ding. Not because you were rushing, because your fingers would not stop trembling. You clenched your jaw and tightened your grip until your knuckles whitened, forcing the shaking to settle enough for the noise to stop. God, this was humiliating. You could practically feel Michael noticing every little twitch, every delayed movement, every slight pause where you needed to regain your balance.
You carried his mug over carefully, placing it down before sitting beside him.
“Thank you,” Michael murmured quietly. He gave you a tight-lipped smile, one that looked exhausted around the edges. You folded your arms over yourself instinctively, more for comfort than defensiveness. “Why did you come, Michael?” you finally asked; your voice sounded tired, smaller than normal.
He took a sip of the coffee before placing the mug down carefully on the table. His eyebrows pulled together slightly as he looked over at you. “I came to check on you,” he answered simply. “You had me worried, leaving like that.” You looked away immediately. “I also wanted to apologize.” He sighed heavily, rubbing a hand over his beard before continuing. “I made it about me, and that… that was horrible of me.”
Your throat tightened; Michael Robinavitch was not good at apologies; not because he was arrogant, but because most of the time he carried guilt quietly instead of saying it aloud. Hearing him admit fault so openly made something ache sharply in your chest.
“I want you to know that I’m spending my sabbatical with you,” he continued, leaning forward slightly. “No soul journey, no disappearing into the sunset on my bike.” Despite yourself, a weak laugh escaped you.
Michael smiled faintly at that. properly this time, small creases formed at the corners of his eyes and for a second he looked lighter than he had all day. Then he looked back at you properly, and the expression vanished again, his eyes softened instead.
There was something terrifying about the way he was looking at you tonight, too open, too careful; like he was scared you might disappear if he blinked wrong. “I meant every word I said, sweetheart,” he murmured quietly. “You have people who love you. People who want you to fight, not just for them but for yourself.”
Before you could react, he reached over and took your hand gently in his; your breath caught instantly. “...You deserve to be fought for,” he whispered. “Even if that means I have to fight you a little to make you believe that yourself.”
His fingers slid between yours naturally, warm and grounding and unbearably gentle; the burning behind your eyes intensified immediately. “Michael, I cant…” you huffed shakily, a tear slipping down your cheek despite your efforts to stop it. “You don’t understand - treatment would ruin me, ruin me more than dying could.” Your voice cracked embarrassingly on the last part, the room suddenly felt too warm.
Your skin prickled unpleasantly as another pulse of pain struck behind your eyes. For a brief second your vision blurred strangely, black specks flickering at the corners before disappearing just as quickly. Your stomach rolled hard enough to make you swallow against nausea.
You stood abruptly, the room tilted slightly underneath you and your hand immediately shot toward the couch to steady yourself before Michael could notice.
“I forgot my coffee,” you muttered quickly. “Give me a moment.” Michael sighed softly as he watched you move back toward the kitchen. He was still trying to keep you talking, trying to keep you grounded in the conversation, but his expression had changed again. The concern was sharper now, more clinical beneath the emotion.
Because he noticed the way your shoulder clipped lightly against the doorway – the way your fingers flexed strangely at your side.
“Brain tumor recovery is often started with six weeks of radiation,” Michael murmured carefully, watching you over the rim of his coffee mug. “And yeah, it’s exhausting, and yeah, it’s brutal sometimes, but you wouldn’t be doing it alone. I could be there for you, sunshine. Dana too. Jack would probably move into your damn apartment if we let him.” He took a slow sip of his coffee, eyes briefly lowering into the cup before returning to you again, constantly returning to you, like he was checking every few seconds to make sure you were still there. Your fingers dug harder into the kitchen counter.
The apartment suddenly felt wrong, too warm, too quiet. Your hearing dulled strangely, like someone had shoved cotton into your ears. The dull ache in the back of your skull sharpened violently, spreading behind your eyes; you blinked hard, trying to clear your vision, but the room tilted oddly around you.
Fuck.
You swallowed thickly, staring down at the marble counter as nausea twisted in your stomach. There was a strange smell lingering in your nose too, metallic and burnt, despite nothing cooking. Your hand twitched beside your mug.
Michael stopped speaking mid sentence.
Immediately, he noticed the way your shoulders locked up. The way your eyes unfocused slightly. Your breathing had changed too, shallow and uneven. Years in emergency medicine made things like that impossible for him to ignore.
“Sunshine?” His voice lowered instantly - you didn’t answer.
Your stare remained fixed on nothing, pupils unfocused as your fingers jerked again against the countertop, the mug rattled softly. Your lips parted like you were trying to speak, but nothing came out properly. Just a faint, strained sound stuck in your throat.
Michael was standing before he fully realized he had moved. The coffee table nudged harshly beneath his knee as he crossed the room quickly. “Hey,” He spoke softly, cautiously approaching you the same way he approached frightened patients in psych holds. “Sweetheart, look at me.”
Your head turned slightly at the sound of his voice, but not fully. One side of your face twitched sharply, then your arm jerked.
And Michael knew.
“Okay, okay…” His tone immediately steadied despite the panic clawing at his chest. “You’re alright.”
Your knees buckled before he could fully reach you. Michael caught you around the waist just as your body gave out, the both of you stumbling harshly toward the floor. Your shoulder clipped the cabinet with a loud thud before he managed to ease you down properly. Your body stiffened beneath his grip, muscles tightening violently as the seizure spread further.
“Fuck…” He breathed, heart hammering so hard it hurt. “Okay, sweetheart, I got you.”
Your back arched sharply off the ground as the convulsions worsened. Michael immediately rolled you carefully onto your side, one hand supporting your head so you wouldn’t hit it against the tile. His other hand trembled despite every effort to keep himself composed.
He had seen seizures hundreds of times, probably thousands, in strangers, in patients, in trauma bays flooded with noise – but not you never you.
Your breathing hitched unevenly between jerking movements, face pinched tightly in pain even through unconsciousness. Michael felt physically sick watching it, like something inside his chest was actively tearing itself apart. “It’s okay, sweetheart,” He kept repeating quietly, voice cracking despite himself. “You’re okay. I’m right here.”
The seizure continued for what felt like an eternity but was probably barely over a minute. Still, every second stretched horribly. Your fingers twitched weakly against his sleeve as the harsher convulsions finally began easing. Small jerks still lingered through your arms and shoulders, Michael carefully brushed damp hair away from your face with shaking fingers.
His own breathing was becoming uneven now, panic sat ugly in his throat. He reached for his phone with fumbling hands and immediately dialled Jack. The phone rang once, twice, three times.
“Wasn’t expecting a call so soo-”
“Hey.” Michael cut him off instantly, voice rougher than intended. “Could you send an ambulance? She’s seizing, and I can’t exactly throw her on the bike.” The silence on the other end vanished immediately. “What?” Jack’s tone sharpened at once. “What happened?”
“She just dropped.” Michael swallowed harshly, eyes locked on your exhausted form curled weakly against the kitchen floor. “Focal onset first, then generalized.”
“Jesus Christ.” Michael could hear movement instantly, drawers slamming somewhere in the background. “No ambulance, okay, I’m coming instead, stay with her.” Jack stopped speaking briefly, muffled voices carrying through the line before he picked the phone back up again. “Alright, Shen’s covering for me until I get back.” His breathing sounded quick now too. “Keep her on her side. Talk to her when she wakes up. Don’t overwhelm her, okay? She’s gonna be confused as hell.”
Michael looked down at you again, your lashes fluttered faintly, exhausted tremors still moving through your limbs every few seconds. “Jack, I’m also a doctor;” He sassed hoarsely, tightening his grip slightly around your shaking hand.
When you awoke, confusion was all you had the capacity to feel. Your thoughts came slow and thick, sticking together in awful ways that made your head hurt worse the harder you tried to think. Above you was a dark ceiling shifting faintly with movement, and for one disorienting second you genuinely thought you were floating somewhere - adrift - like you were trapped on some tiny fishing boat being dragged across violent water. Your stomach rolled unpleasantly at the sensation before your sluggish brain finally corrected itself.
Not water. A car.
Your eyes blinked slowly, struggling to focus properly as streetlights flashed through the windows in brief streaks of yellow and white, the motion made your nausea worse. Every muscle in your body ached deeply, the kind of ache that settled into bone. Your jaw hurt, your shoulders hurt, even your tongue hurt. It felt like your body had turned against you while you were unconscious and you were only just now waking up to deal with the aftermath.
What happened?
The answer lingered somewhere just out of reach, buried beneath the fog filling your skull. Every time you tried pulling the memory forward your head pulsed violently in protest; your stomach twisted. Idiot. You were a doctor, you should know exactly what happened.
The cruel thought came fast enough to make your throat tighten painfully. Where was Michael? Whose car even was this?
Then the memories returned in ugly little fragments – coffee mugs, Michael sitting on your couch, him holding your hand, the kitchen floor pressing against your cheek, fear, so much of it, then blankness.
A weak sound escaped your throat as you tried sitting up. Immediately your body protested, your muscles trembled beneath the effort, weak and unreliable, like your limbs no longer properly belonged to you. You lifted your hand sluggishly toward your face only to stop halfway when you realized something was weighing it down.
No, someone. Your gaze dragged sideways through the haze.
Michael.
His hand was wrapped tightly around yours, warm and solid against your freezing skin. The second he realized your eyes were fully open, relief hit his face so suddenly it almost made you feel guilty, like he had been holding his breath waiting for this exact moment. His hair was messier than usual, eyes bloodshot and exhausted, jaw tense enough that you could see the muscle ticking beneath the skin. “Hey, sweet girl.” His voice came out low and rough, softer than you had heard it all day. He immediately shifted closer, carefully sliding an arm behind your shoulders to help ease you upright. “Easy… easy, sweetheart.”
The movement made nausea slam into you hard enough that you sucked in a sharp breath, eyes squeezing shut instantly. Pain exploded behind your eyes, hot and deep and vicious. It genuinely felt like somebody had driven a metal spike through the back of your skull.
“We’re heading to the Pitt,” Michael continued carefully, watching your face with the same intense focus he used during traumas. “You had two seizures. Focal first, then generalized.”
You heard every word, you tried to understand them. But there was some disconnect between your brain and your mouth because when you tried responding only a weak rasp escaped your throat, barely a sound at all.
Panic hit instantly, your hand jerked toward your mouth as another failed attempt at speech caught painfully in your throat, your breathing sped up immediately. No. No no no.
Dr. Voss had warned you; speech difficulties, neurological deficits worsening under stress.
Fuck.
You should have gone straight to bed, you should have ignored Michael, you should have lied harder.
“Hey.” Michael’s hand tightened gently against your shoulder before you could spiral further. “Look at me.”
You tried. “You’re okay,” He continued steadily, voice calm despite the fear written all over his face. “Postictal confusion can last awhile. Your brain’s recovering from the seizure, alright? Just breathe.”
But breathing felt difficult now too, your chest tightened painfully with every inhale, heart slamming hard enough to make your skull pound with it. You suddenly felt horribly trapped inside your own body, awake enough to understand something was wrong, but too neurologically scrambled to properly function.
Michael kept rubbing slow circles against your shoulder blade, grounding you the only way he seemed to know how. “You’re safe, sunshine.” His voice lowered further. “I’ve got you.”
It was then that you properly noticed the front seat – Jack.
His hands gripped the steering wheel tightly enough for his knuckles to pale beneath the dashboard lights. The second he noticed movement in the mirror his eyes flicked upward toward you. Relief crossed his face first, immediate and raw, before concern swallowed it again. His eyes looked suspiciously red too, though whether from stress or exhaustion you couldn’t tell.
“Hey, soldier.” His voice lacked most of its usual humor, quieter and rough around the edges. “You scared the absolute living shit outta us.” You swallowed thickly, blinking slowly at him. “Your seizure lasted longer than we would’ve liked,” Jack admitted carefully, eyes returning to the road. “But you’re alright now.” He cleared his throat before continuing. “We called Voss- She’s meeting us at the hospital to talk treatment options.”
Treatment. The word landed heavily in your chest – this felt like a cruel intervention.
Jack’s fingers tapped restlessly against the steering wheel and his prosthetic, a self soothing habit you had noticed years ago during difficult shifts, seeing it now made something ache inside you; Jack Abbot did not rattle easily, neither did Michael. Yet both of them looked like they had aged ten years in the span of an hour.
Your body swayed faintly again, barely noticeable, but enough to make dread settle hard in your stomach. Your limbs still felt disconnected somehow, sluggish and delayed. Like signals inside your brain were arriving too slowly, something felt deeply wrong inside you now, not just pain, something worse.
A horrible heaviness settled low in your stomach, death, you hated that. Then suddenly you could taste blood, metallic and thick at the back of your mouth. Your tongue throbbed painfully, you must have bitten through it during the seizure.
The car finally slowed as Jack turned smoothly into the employee parking entrance. The familiar sight of the hospital made your stomach twist harder. God. This was humiliating. You had spent years walking through those doors helping people, stabilizing people, comforting people.
Now you were about to walk in as the patient.
Jack parked quickly before climbing out first, Michael immediately opened your door beside you, crouching slightly to look you over again. He was trying very hard to remain composed, you could tell.
“Do you think you can walk?” He asked quietly. You looked down toward your legs, hesitated – then nodded weakly. The second your feet touched the pavement your knees nearly buckled beneath you, your whole body trembled violently with the effort of standing upright. A humiliating huff escaped your chest somewhere between frustration at the situation and at your weakness.
Jack was beside you instantly, steadying your elbow before you could collapse. “Easy there.” His grip tightened slightly. “Easy.”
“She can’t talk properly,” Jack muttered toward Michael. “Postictal aphasia isn’t uncommon,” Michael answered automatically, though his eyes never once left your face. “Could last minutes, could last hours.” Then softer, quieter, entirely for you. “You’re alright.”
Jack forced a small grin despite how tense he looked. “Besides,” He nudged your shoulder lightly as the three of you slowly started toward the entrance. “If you’re gonna have a neurological emergency, at least you picked the best ER in Pittsburgh. Very exclusive establishment.”
You hummed out something that almost sounded like a laugh, though it came out strained and weak through the fog still crowding your head. Every sound around you felt distant, muffled beneath the pounding ache lodged deep behind your eyes. You forced yourself to focus on walking instead, left foot. right foot. Don’t fall in front of your entire workplace after having a seizure in your apartment like some tragic episode of greys anatomy.
God, Santos and Mohan would never let you live it down if you survived long enough for them to make fun of you for it.
Your slippers scraped softly against the pavement as the three of you made your way toward the ambulance entrance. You looked down blearily, only just realizing you were still dressed in your oversized Penguins shirt and sleep shorts – the stupid fluffy bunny slippers on your feet made your chest tighten painfully.
Michael must have put them on you before carrying you down many flights of stairs.
The Pitt was still alive despite the late hour – ambulance bay doors hissed open and shut every few seconds, paramedics wheeling patients in beneath harsh fluorescent lights while voices echoed throughout the department in overlapping waves. Nurses moved quickly between bays, monitors beeped endlessly somewhere nearby, overhead pages crackled through speakers. It was usually comforting, familiar even; tonight it made your stomach turn.
Michael’s arm stayed firm around your waist the entire walk inside, steadying you each time your balance threatened to tilt sideways. His hand remained warm against your side, grounding enough that you could almost ignore the lingering tremors still working through your muscles, almost.
Jack walked slightly ahead of you both, clearing space without making it obvious he was doing it. He still wore his badge clipped to his scrubs, still technically working despite the fact he had absolutely abandoned whatever patient he was supposed to be charting on the second Michael called him. He needed to go home and get off that leg, you noticed how he was over compensating, putting more pressure on his good leg.
Shen appeared from the nurses station halfway down the hall, already grinning before his expression dropped completely once he got a proper look at you.
“This is the emergency?” He looked between you and Jack, brows furrowing deeply. “What happened to Sunshine?”
His voice lost most of its usual teasing edge instantly. John Shen was exhausting in the way little brothers were; loud, nosy, incapable of minding his business for longer than thirty seconds. But he made your rare night shifts easier; you hated that this was how he had to see you now.
Jack glanced toward you immediately before answering, asking permission; even now. Your throat tightened painfully as you gave the smallest nod you could manage.
Jack inhaled once before shifting fully into doctor mode. “She presented earlier tpday with a grade III astrocytoma,” he explained quietly. “Had a focal impaired-awareness seizure at home that progressed into a generalized tonic-clonic seizure. Total seizure activity lasted around ten minutes. She’s postictal now, some expressive aphasia, confusion, photophobia. Questions should be yes or no right now unless directed to Michael.” His jaw tightened briefly before he added, “And Michael isn’t here as attending tonight. He’s here as family.”
The area went quiet; a couple interns standing near Shen looked horrified, one of the nurses at the front desk lowered her eyes immediately, humiliation crawled up your spine.
You hated this.
Not the pity, surprisingly not even the diagnosis anymore, you hated being looked at like you were fragile, like you had already started disappearing.
“Alright,” Jack clapped his hands together once, sharp enough to break the tension. “Move. Trauma three’s open.” He grabbed an iPad off the counter before looking toward Lena. “Lena, can you call neuro and let them know Voss wants a room prepped?”
She nodded immediately and reached for the phone.
The lights overhead buzzed violently against your skull as you kept walking, each step making nausea roll harder through your stomach – your vision blurred around the edges again briefly and you instinctively leaned heavier into Michael. His grip tightened instantly, “I got you,” he murmured quietly beside your ear.
The words nearly broke you; he must be so tired.
Everything blurred together after that. Hallways, curtains. The squeak of sneakers against tile floors. At one point Michael disappeared from your side briefly only to reappear seconds later dragging a chair beside the exam bed before sitting close enough that the chair touched the bed.
Dr. Voss entered not long after; her expression shifted the second she saw you sitting there. “Well,” she sighed softly, chart tucked beneath her arm. “I wasn’t expecting to see you again quite this soon, Doctor.” You tried to smile but didn’t quite manage it.
Michael straightened beside you immediately, his hand remained near yours on the bed. Dr. Voss glanced briefly between the two of you before continuing carefully. “Have you given any more thought to treatment options?” The room felt suffocatingly warm suddenly, you stared down at your hands instead. Your body still ached from the seizure, your head felt like it had been split open with an axe, every muscle in your body trembled faintly beneath the exhaustion. And somewhere beside you sat the man you had spent years loving from the sidelines, now looking at you like your answer might destroy him. It was entirely selfish, yet everything you had ever wanted.
Your chest tightened hard enough to hurt. Because what exactly was waiting for you at home? Nothing. Just an apartment that would stay exactly the same whether you walked back into it or not, lights you forgot to turn off, a couch that you slept on more than your bed. It was too late to make something out of the nothingness.
A part of you, a softer part, wanted to turn your head and look at Michael properly – admire him for who he is; that part of you wanted to accept what he had said earlier, the clumsy and desperate confession. It wanted to accept it, survive. For him, for the version of you that still believed in continuation. You wanted to pick the treatment protocols, resection margins, survival rates that never sounded like they belonged to actual people. That part of you insisted on choosing life in the most procedural sense possible, surgery, then radiotherapy, possibly chemotherapy.
You realized you had been silent too long when Dr Voss’s voice continued in the background, explaining next steps to Jack and Michael. Your eyes drifted without meaning to; Jack was listening, Michael, however, wasn’t looking at the bigger picture, he was looking at you. Really looking at you.
He was tracking you in small moments, every flicker of expression, every delay in your breathing, like he was trying to map you back into something whole again just by observation alone. There was admiration there too, buried under exhaustion and the slightest bit of hesitation. You hated how much that mattered right now.
You thought, absurdly, about timing. About how cruel it was that people only ever said the things they meant most when there was suddenly no guarantee they would get to say them again. You had spent years orbiting Michael in the space between professional distance and personal restraint, never quite stepping over it, and now it felt like all that restraint had been replaced by something far less manageable. Regret, maybe, or just delayed honesty arriving too late to be convenient.
Dr Voss’s voice sharpened slightly as she finished outlining the plan.
“–So after maximal safe resection of the astrocytoma, ideally via craniotomy with intraoperative neuronavigation to preserve eloquent cortex, we would proceed with adjuvant radiotherapy. Likely fractionated external beam radiation, potentially combined with temozolomide depending on pathology and response. The goal would be cytoreduction and slowing of residual tumor proliferation. It is aggressive, and it is not without significant cognitive and physical side effects, but it is standard of care in this situation.”
It felt like her voice echoed off the walls; back into your ears. Jack exhaled once through his nose, a small controlled sound, already somewhere between acceptance and action. Michael didn’t move at all.
Then you spoke.
“I’ll do it.” Your voice came out rough, like it had been dragged through something sharp on the way out – perhaps it had – the background noise of the ED seemed to fall slightly away for a second. Your gaze stayed fixed downward, the floor was easier than faces.
“I’ll do the treatment,” you added quietly, more to confirm it to yourself than anyone else, and only then did you feel it properly, the tear slipping down your cheek without permission, warm and frustrating and entirely human.
Dr. Voss nods once, looking far more relieved than she had any right to show professionally. “Alright, that's excellent. I’m going to organize a bed upstairs in neuro, put through the admission orders, and make a quick phone call to the attending neurosurgeon. I’ll be back shortly.” She gives you a small smile before stepping out of the trauma room, the curtain swaying slightly behind her as she leaves.
Silence settles for a moment, though it is never truly quiet in the Pitt. Monitors continue beeping somewhere down the hall, stretchers roll across the floor, someone calls for respiratory over the intercom, and down the corridor you can hear Shen laughing loudly at something one of the interns said. It is strange how the world continues moving so normally while yours has been split apart entirely.
Jack looks at you for a long moment before pointing a finger in your direction. “You better not be messing with me, Sunshine.” His tone is light, but there is something strained underneath it. He reaches forward before you can respond and pulls you into a quick hug, one hand pressing against the back of your head carefully, mindful of the cords that are latched on, mindful of you. “Dana is gonna lose her mind when she hears this. Give me a second, I gotta call her..”
You almost smile at that – Jack pulls away, snapping his gloves off as he walks toward the curtain. “Seriously though,” he says, turning back briefly, “good choice.” Then he disappears into the hallway, already pulling his phone out of his pocket.
The room feels smaller once he leaves. Michael rises slowly from the chair beside you, exhaustion written plainly across his face now that he is no longer forcing himself to hide it. His hair is disheveled from repeatedly running his hands through it, his thermal is wrinkled slightly, his eyes bloodshot enough to tell you that he's definitely been awake longer than the 20-hour mark. Even now, after a hellish shift, after the seizure, after carrying you down far too many flights of stairs, his attention remains entirely fixed on you.
You look up at him and immediately regret it, the way he is looking at you makes your chest ache. “What made you change your mind?–” Michael asks quietly as he steps closer to the bed. His voice has softened completely now, stripped clean of the sharpness he usually carries around at work, “–About treatment.”
You stare at your hands for a second before answering. Your fingers are still trembling faintly, your IV taped messily against the back of your hand after one of the nurses missed the vein the first time. You laugh once under your breath, humorless. “You really wanna know?”
“Yeah.” He answers immediately. “I really do.” Your throat tightens slightly, “Did you mean it?” Michael’s eyebrows pull together faintly. “When you said you loved me,” you continue before you can lose your nerve entirely. “Did you actually mean it, or was that just… stress, and adrenaline, or was it the seizure?” Your eyes drop back down to your lap. “Because I can't do this if its guilt, Michael. I can't sit through surgeries, radiation and chemotherapy knowing you’re only here because you’d feel bad leaving.”
His expression changes instantly, not anger, like you were expecting – but one of offense.
Your fingers twist together anxiously as you continue speaking. “And I know you care about me, obviously, but caring about someone and loving them aren’t the same thing, and I don’t want you waking up six months from now realizing you tied yourself to someone with brain cancer because you panicked after watching them seize on the kitchen floor.”
Michael stares at you for a long moment before exhaling through his nose, then he steps forward. Your words cut off the second his hand reaches for yours. “You think I’d do all this because I feel guilty?” he asks quietly; you avoid his eyes, “Baby,” His thumb brushes slowly against your knuckles until you finally look at him again. “I have spent months trying not to love you.”
That gets your attention.
Michael huffs out something close to a tired laugh before continuing. “You walked into the Pitt smiling at six in the morning every day like the place wasn’t actively ruining everybody’s lives, you brought me coffee without asking how I take it because somehow you already knew, you stayed late for patients nobody else wanted to deal with, and every time I tried putting distance between us you’d look at me like I had stabbed you..” His jaw tightens briefly. “Do you understand how hard that made this?”
Your breath catches somewhere in your throat. “I didn’t say anything because I’m your boss,” he continues. “And because I’m older than you, and because my dating history is embarrassing enough without adding ‘fell in love with coworker during neurological oncology crisis’ onto the list.” A tired smile pulls briefly at the corner of his mouth. “But none of this is guilt.”
His fingers tighten around yours slightly. “I love you.” He says it plainly this time. “I loved you before the tumor. I loved you before tonight. And I’m gonna love you after surgery too, even when you’re yelling at me because radiation makes you miserable and Jack keeps sneaking terrible cafeteria pudding into your hospital room.”
You blink rapidly at him, feeling tears gathering despite how badly you are trying to stop them. “Michael…”
“You dont have to say it back right now,” he interrupts gently. “Honestly, after today you could probably tell me to go to hell and I’d still sit outside your neuro room like some weird guard dog.” A laugh escapes you unexpectedly, weak and breathy.
“There she is,” he murmurs quietly.
You shake your head slightly. “You make this very difficult.” He nods, a small smile on his face, “Good,” he says immediately. “Because your original plan was terrible.”
Despite everything, another laugh slips out of you; the sound seems to visibly undo him.
His hand comes up slowly, brushing your hair carefully away from your face before resting against your cheek. The exhaustion in his eyes is still there, along with fear, along with stress, along with the reality of everything waiting ahead of both of you.
You lean forward before you can overthink it further – the kiss is soft at first, awkward only for a second before he deepens it carefully, one hand remaining against your jaw while the other stays wrapped around yours. He kisses you like someone terrified you might disappear if he pulls away too quickly, you kiss him back just as clumsily, your brain still fogged from anticonvulsants and exhaustion and the longest day of your life.
When you separate, neither of you moves very far; your forehead rests briefly against his.
His eyes close. “You scared me tonight,” he admits quietly, you swallow hard. “Sorry.”
“Dont apologize for having brain cancer,” he mutters tiredly, the curtain suddenly swings open; both of you jerk apart immediately.
Jack stops dead in the doorway, his eyes flick downward toward your still intertwined hands before he looks back up slowly. “Wow.” He blinks once. “So Shen owes me forty bucks.”
You cover your face instantly while Michael groans quietly beside you – Jack points between the two of you. “You know, Dana said this would happen months ago and I defended both of you like an idiot.”
“Jack,” Michael warns.
“No, absolutely not, I deserve to speak.” Jack walks fully into the room now, clearly pleased with himself despite the dark circles beneath his eyes. “Do you understand how painful it has been working beside you two? It was like watching the slowest burn imaginable.”
Michael pinches the bridge of his nose; Jack pats your shoulder lightly. “Anyways. Neuro has a room ready upstairs, Dana promises to see you first thing tomorrow morning and Dr. Voss already contacted neurosurgery for consultation.” He looks between you both again before grinning faintly. “Also, congratulations, very weird timing. Proud of you both.”
You laugh quietly despite yourself, Jack nods once, satisfied. “There’s my sunshine.” He steps back toward the hallway again before pointing firmly at Michael. “And you are going home after she gets upstairs. You look horrific.”
“I’m staying.” Michael attempts to sound firm, but exhaustion has settled too deeply into him now. His words drag together slightly at the edges, subtle enough that most people would miss it, though Jack catches it instantly.
Jack looks at him flatly. “Michael, in about ten minutes you are going to fall asleep standing upright and concuss yourself on the ER floor.” He folds his arms across his chest as Michael glares at him from beside your bed. “You look terrible, brother.”
“I’m fine,” Michael mutters automatically.
“Mhm.” Jack nods like he does not believe a word of it. “Shen’s grabbing transport now.” A grin tugs at the corner of his mouth before he steps back toward the curtain. “Keep your hands to yourselves, kids.”
“Get out,” Michael deadpans tiredly.
Jack chuckles under his breath before disappearing into the hallway, his voice already audible outside the room as he starts pestering some poor resident. Michael looks back toward you after a moment before stepping closer once more, his hand coming up carefully to brush beneath your eye with his thumb.
“I’ll be here when you wake up,” he says softly, eyes fixed entirely on yours. “Every time.”
did far too much research for this brain cancer i'm pretty sure i ended up on the dark web at one point, definitely on a watchlist now.
part two of promise? coming tomorrow! sneak peek below..
(edit: its posted!)
You reached the door and rubbed tiredly at your eyes with the heel of your palm before leaning forward to glance through the peephole.
Michael Robinavitch.
Your eyebrows knit together instantly, your heart kicked hard against your ribs as you unlocked the door and pulled it open.
He looked terrible – not physically terrible, but worn down, like somebody had wrung him out and left him standing upright. His hair was slightly windblown from the bike ride over, beard uneven where he’d clearly been dragging nervous hands across his face all evening. His brown eyes landed on you instantly.
Relief hit his face so quickly it almost hurt to look at; With guilt, you remembered that you technically did this to him. “Michael…” you whispered quietly.
“Sweetheart, how are you?” he asked immediately. There was a sad smile sitting on his lips, but it didn’t reach his eyes, not even remotely. His gaze scanned over your face too carefully, taking in the exhaustion beneath your eyes, the flushed skin, the way you were leaning subtly against the doorframe to stay balanced.
“Uh… I’m good,” you lied weakly. “What are you doing here?” You shuffled your feet anxiously, suddenly very aware of how you looked. Your hair was completely messed up from sleeping on the couch for hours, your face still slightly creased from cushions, oversized Penguins shirt hanging off one shoulder with sleep shorts underneath.
Michael exhaled softly through his nose. “I messaged you, but… you didn’t answer.” His eyes dropped briefly toward the floor before lifting back to you. “Just thought I’d check in. Make sure you got home okay.”
You smiled; unfortunately, it hurt your head immediately.
Your heartbeat felt strange; too fast, too hard. Every pulse seemed to echo directly behind your eyes, your fingertips tingled faintly as you gripped the edge of the door tighter. You ignored it. “Sorry,” you murmured. “I think I passed out.” Michael’s expression tightened at the wording. “You passed out?”
“No, not like medically.” You waved him off quickly. “Just slept really hard.” His eyes narrowed slightly. Your head throbbed again, the hallway light suddenly looked far too bright, you squinted slightly before looking away from it. “Do you want to come in?” you asked quietly, shifting out of the doorway. The change in him was immediate. “Yeah,” he answered softly. “Sure.” A small smile tugged at his mouth this time, he stepped inside carefully while you shut the door behind him.
having thoughts of angsty, heavy unrequited love, no happy ending, lowk evil michael robinavitch who knows you have this crush on him and weaponizes the hell out of it.
lets be honest out of everyone who would do that, it'd be robby.
you wont answer michael's messages, so he shows up at your apartment fearing the worst - only to find exactly that.
CW: talks of death, seizures, probable innacuracies with medicine - i have done research, and i am epileptic; so the seizures are just based off of the ones i have, swearing, talks of marriage and children.
REQUESTS ARE OPEN!
this cannot be read as a standalone, part one is here!
WC: 9.3k
WATER trickled from your hair down your spine as you stepped into your bedroom, the cold droplets disappearing beneath the collar of the oversized Pittsburgh Penguins tee-shirt you had just dragged over your head. Your apartment was quiet aside from the distant hum of traffic outside and the soft rattling of old pipes somewhere in the walls. You have been home for nearly three hours now. Three hours spent rotting into the corner of your couch with the television running quietly only for noise, your untouched tea going cold on the coffee table beside your freshly reprinted scans.
Five hours since your entire life had narrowed into a handful of grainy images. Cancer. Brain tumor. The words looped around your skull endlessly. You leaned briefly against the doorway of your bedroom, exhausted despite having done absolutely nothing.
Regret sat in your chest.. A starving thing that kept biting deeper every time you thought about Michael standing outside the ambulance bay looking at you like you had personally ripped the ground out from beneath him.
Michael’s love wasn’t enough. No. That was a lie. It was enough.
Enough for you to sit there for three hours and genuinely think about survival for the first time since Dr. Voss had slid those scans across her desk. Enough for you to think about surgeries and chemotherapy and rehabilitation. Enough for you to wonder whether maybe you were being selfish by refusing treatment outright.
Enough for you to picture a future- but not enough for you to want the reality of it.
Not enough for endless hospital rooms and medications and pitying looks from strangers – or worse pitying looks from your friends – Not enough for surgeries that could leave you unable to speak properly, or walk properly, or remember properly. Not enough for the possibility of surviving whilst pieces of yourself disappeared anyway.
The thought alone made your stomach churn, and guilt tore into you for it.
You should want to fight. People always wanted to fight.
You rubbed tiredly at your face before moving further into the room. Your damp hair clung coldly to your neck. Every movement felt delayed tonight, like your body had become slightly disconnected from your brain.
Then the room tilted, enough for your stomach to drop.
Your hand shot out instantly, catching the edge of your nightstand before your knees gave out beneath you completely. The wood dug painfully into your palm as you steadied yourself with a sharp inhale.
“Fuck…”
The word barely made it out as your breathing turned uneven immediately. Pain bloomed violently behind your right eye and spread toward the back of your skull, hot and sickening, like someone had shoved something burning into your brain and left it there. Your vision blurred around the edges and for one awful second you genuinely thought you were going to collapse face-first onto the floor.
You squeezed your eyes shut hard enough to hurt, this was real, that was the terrifying part.
Not the scans, the diagnosis, the pamphlets Dana still probably had clutched in her hand somewhere back at the hospital.
This; your body failing whilst you stood alone in your bedroom trying not to fall over, a shaky breath escaped you as your grip tightened harder against the nightstand.
You had spent years recognizing symptoms in other people before they even noticed them themselves. Tiny facial droops, delayed speech, uneven pupils, tremors hidden beneath pockets or crossed arms.
Now every piece of knowledge you had felt like a curse; you knew exactly what was happening to you.
Your head throbbed harder with each heartbeat. Your lungs felt lined with glass every time you inhaled, even your balance felt wrong, like the world itself had shifted half an inch to the left and only you could feel it.
A bitter laugh nearly escaped you at the irony of it all. Ex-combat medic, trauma attending, the woman friends called Sunshine because you could smile through anything yet you could barely stand upright in your own apartment.
Your eyes burned suddenly, not from the blinding pain this time, from grief; Not even grief for dying, but grief for everything you suddenly realized you would never have. Marriage, children, growing old - waking up beside somebody every morning instead of alone. You thought of Michael again and your chest twisted so sharply it almost made you nauseous.
Too late. Everything felt too fucking late. Your knees threatened to buckle again and you swallowed harshly, forcing yourself upright with whatever strength you still had left in you anyway.
Your knees trembled like a fawn’s, but you eventually made it to your living room. It horrified and amazed you how quickly you deteriorated. How quickly after your diagnosis you shrunk, and the cancer conquered. It was scary, and scarily beautiful.
You knew that because you were tired, the signs were becoming more and more significant – it was like filling a bucket; you waited until it became too heavy to carry, until the water pooled over the sides, until the water licked at the metal rim and fell. How much could you take before you inevitably either seized or stroked. It wasn’t something you were looking forward to, no not at all.
That's why when you sat down on the couch, you were determined to rest. So you leaned against the couch's pillows, pulled the quilt at your feet over your legs and shut your eyes; eager to get some shut-eye.
And for roughly three hours you were dead to the world; unaware of the messages and spam calls your phone had received.
Michael was panicked. You were sick, alone and without anyone there for you, no family nearby, no partner, no close neighbours, not even a roommate to realise something was wrong. He knew he should be hurt, hurt at your clear rejection of him earlier, but he understood it too well to take it personally.
You were like a dog - and yes, Michael knew that metaphor was degrading and perhaps worthy of a meeting in HR, but it was true. Dogs wandered off when they knew they were dying. They tucked themselves away somewhere dark and quiet, isolating themselves due to deep-seated instincts to protect themselves whilst they’re vulnerable.
That thought had rooted itself into his chest nearly an hour ago and refused to leave – It sat there now, lingering and nauseating, as he stared blankly at his phone screen in the dimly lit peds room. Your contact photo stared back at him. The night lights caught in your hair. He had taken it months ago during a night out with Dana, Benji, Samira and Jack.
sweet girl.
The stupid contact name made his throat tighten, beneath it sat an embarrassing amount of unanswered messages.
Michael dragged a hand over his face harshly before leaning back further in the chair beside Jane Doe’s crib. The tiny baby slept peacefully, completely unaware of the grown man beside her slowly unraveling. One of her tiny fists remained wrapped around his finger; every so often she twitched in her sleep, making him look over automatically.
Anything at all to make you answer, and you hadn’t. Not a text, a call back, nothing. It had gotten pathetic enough that Jack eventually cornered him.“You look like a mess, brother.” Jack stepped into the peds room carefully, nearly tiptoeing around the sleeping infant. Michael flinched slightly at the sudden voice before looking over. “You don’t look much better,” he muttered back automatically, though there was no bite behind it. “Yeah, well.” Jack huffed quietly. “I’m not exactly thriving.”
His eyes dropped immediately to the phone still sitting in Michael’s hand. The open message thread. The ignored calls. His eyebrows lifted slightly. “Oh, Jesus Christ,” Jack muttered. “You’re spiraling.” Michael rolled his eyes tiredly. “I’m not spiraling.” Jack shook his head, “You’ve sent her enough messages to qualify as cyberstalking.”
“She has brain cancer, Jack.” Michael snapped it back too quickly, immediately scrubbing a hand down his beard with exhaustion. “Sorry.” Jack’s face softened almost instantly. “No, I know.” He leaned against the counter beside him with a sigh. “Believe me, I know.”
Silence settled between them for a moment. Outside the room somebody yelled for labs, a monitor alarm chirped twice before cutting off again. Normal hospital noise, normal life continuing while yours had been completely split open hours earlier.
Jack nodded toward the phone. “Still nothing?” Michael shook his head. His stomach twisted every time he looked at the unanswered texts. Because you always answer eventually. Even when angry, or upset. You’d send some sarcastic thumbs up or a passive aggressive sticker just to prove you were alive.
Nothing from you felt wrong. “How about I cover the rest of your shift and you go home?” Jack finally suggested, eyeing the phone like it personally offended him. Michael just shrugged faintly, adjusting the blanket around Baby Jane absentmindedly. “No, it’s okay.”
Jack snorted immediately. “Bullshit.” He shoved his shoulder lightly against Michael. “Go and check on your girl. Me and Shen can hold down the fort.” Michael’s eyes widened slightly before settling again. “She’s not my girl.”
“Mhmm.”
“I’m serious.” Michael huffed, shaking his head as he rubbed his eyes. “And I’m serious too. You look one missed phone call away from putting her on a missing persons poster.” Despite himself, Michael let out a quiet laugh through his nose. Jack’s expression softened again. “Look, brother… she just got told she’s dying. She’s scared.” He folded his arms tightly across his chest. “And you know how she gets it. She spends her whole damn life taking care of everyone else, the second she’s the one needing help, she runs.”
Michael looked back down at the phone, his jaw tightened. “I’m sorry for blowing up on you before,” he admitted quietly after a moment. “Earlier.” Jack waved him off instantly. “No need to apologize, s’ been a stressful fucking day.” He tilted his head slightly. “Guess you aren’t going on your weird Eat, Pray, Love motorcycle trip now?”
That actually got a real laugh out of Michael this time. “No,” he muttered, rubbing tiredly at his eyes. “Definitely not now.” Jack watched him carefully then. Really watched him; the panic, the guilt. The way he kept checking his phone every thirty seconds like he could force it to light up through sheer willpower alone.
Michael was in love with you; the idiot just clearly had not realized how much until now.
“I’ve known her a long time,” Jack said quietly, “And all she’s ever wanted was to be loved properly,” He clapped a hand against Michael’s shoulder firmly. “Go do your welfare check, loverboy.” Michael stood slowly, already grabbing his jacket. “I’m gonna go make sure she’s alive.”
Jack smirked faintly. “Riigghhtt. Totally different thing.”
Michael finalized a few things before leaving. He checked on his residents, signed off charts that had been abandoned in the chaos of the shift, listened to Whitaker nervously ramble through an update he had already mostly heard, he even stopped briefly at a trauma room to help Shen with a discharge, though his mind was nowhere near the hospital anymore.
It was with you. Alone in your apartment, sick, probably crying whilst pretending you were fine – the thought made him feel vaguely nauseous.
By the time he reached the ambulance bay doors, he looked exhausted enough that Dana physically stopped mid conversation to stare at him, her eyes flicking toward the motorcycle helmet tucked beneath his arm.
“You better not be going on that stupid fucking sabbatical tonight,” she warned immediately. He looked offended. “I’m not.”
“Good.” She pointed at him sharply. “Because if you leave that girl alone right now, I will personally hunt you down.” Michael huffed, “She stopped answering me.” Dana’s expression faltered slightly. Concern replacing irritation almost instantly. “How long?”
“Three hours.” He shuffled his feet, looking away.“Jesus Christ.” She mused. Michael rubbed a hand over his face tiredly. “Jack’s convinced she’s isolating herself.” Dana nodded, “She is isolating herself.” Dana folded her arms tightly. “She’s terrified.”
Michael swallowed hard at that. Terrified. You had looked terrified outside earlier, beneath the anger and the stubbornness and the sarcasm, you had looked completely overwhelmed. And he had still let you leave alone.
“You gonna go check on her or just stand here looking miserable?” Dana asked flatly. He huffed quietly through his nose. “I’m going.”
“Good.” She eyed the helmet again. “And put the damn helmet on. I am not dealing with both of you having brain injuries in the same week.” Despite everything, his mouth twitched slightly.
A few minutes later he was pulling out of the employee parking garage, begrudgingly wearing the helmet. The cold and sharp Pittsburgh air bit against his skin as he rode through evening traffic, headlights reflecting off wet pavement from the earlier rain. Usually riding calmed him down, usually it gave him room to think.
Tonight it only made his thoughts louder, every red light became another chance for his mind to spiral. What could he even say to you? Please don’t die, I love you? His grip tightened on the handlebars. Pick recovery because if you die, I'm sure I will too? Jesus Christ.
Every version of the conversation in his head sounded manipulative somehow, too emotional, too selfish. Because this wasn’t about him, you were the one dying, you were the one terrified of spending the next seven years sick and miserable and grieving a future you never got to have. And yet all he could think about was the possibility of losing you; It hit him harder now outside the hospital, outside the noise and chaos and constant distraction. You could actually die, not speaking in hypotheticals, nor someday far away in the future;
Soon.
The thought caused a shiver to run down his back. By the time he reached your apartment complex he was sure he looked insane, hair windblown, face flushed – he parked directly in your designated spot, immediately noticing your car was missing. Right, you had ubered home, your car was still sitting abandoned in employee parking.
Michael pulled off his helmet slowly, staring up at your apartment building for a long moment before finally forcing himself toward the entrance.
The elevator had an OUT OF SERVICE sign taped across it.
“Evil,” he muttered flatly; of course it was broken. He stared at the stairs for a solid five seconds like he was personally offended by their existence before dragging himself toward them anyway. Halfway up he regretted every life choice that had led him there, by the third flight his knees hurt, and by the fourth he was actively reconsidering human survival as a concept.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he breathed, gripping the railing; you lived entirely too high up. By the time he finally reached your floor he was embarrassingly out of breath. He bent slightly at the waist for a second, dragging air into his lungs while glaring down the hallway toward your apartment door.
Then came the nerves. Because what if you told him to leave? What if you didn’t answer at all? What if Jack had been right? Michael swallowed thickly before straightening himself up. He scrubbed a tired hand over his face, trying to make himself look less frantic than he felt, then stepped toward your door.
He steadied his breathing and knocked against your apartment door. “Sunshine? It’s me, Michael.” He called out, voice muffled slightly by the old hallway walls; no response.
Michael frowned instantly.
Inside, your eyes fluttered open with a sharp gasp – for a second you forgot where you were, your couch, your apartment. Your body felt heavy, like somebody had replaced your blood with wet cement while you slept. The headache was still there too, drilling behind your eyes and spreading down the back of your neck.
Jesus Christ, it really did feel like you had a brain tumor. Another knock echoed through the apartment; you coughed roughly before croaking out, “Give me a minute.” Your voice sounded horrible, thick and sluggish.
You planted a hand against the coffee table and pushed yourself upright slowly, your legs trembling underneath you almost immediately. The room tilted for a brief second, not enough to send you falling, but enough to make your stomach twist unpleasantly. You squeezed your eyes shut and pressed a hand against your forehead.
Everything felt wrong; like your body had quietly stopped working properly hours ago and you were only just catching up to it now.
You dragged your fingers through your hair with a tired sigh before making your way toward the door, slowly. Your bare feet shuffled against the hardwood as another pulse of pain throbbed through your skull hard enough to make your vision blur at the edges. Tiny black specks danced briefly across your sight before disappearing again.
Oh, cool, awesome. You reached the door and rubbed tiredly at your eyes with the heel of your palm before leaning forward to glance through the peephole.
Michael Robinavitch.
Your eyebrows knit together instantly, your heart kicked hard against your ribs as you unlocked the door and pulled it open.
He looked terrible– not physically terrible, but worn down. Like somebody had wrung him out and left him standing upright. His hair was slightly windblown from the bike ride over, beard uneven where he’d clearly been dragging nervous hands across his face all evening. His brown eyes landed on you instantly.
Relief hit his face so quickly it almost hurt to look at; With guilt, you remembered that you technically did this to him. “Michael…” you whispered quietly.
“Sweetheart, how are you?” he asked immediately. There was a sad smile sitting on his lips, but it didn’t reach his eyes, not even remotely. His gaze scanned over your face too carefully, taking in the exhaustion beneath your eyes, the flushed skin, the way you were leaning subtly against the doorframe to stay balanced.
“Uh… I’m good,” you lied weakly. “What are you doing here?” You shuffled your feet anxiously, suddenly very aware of how you looked. Your hair was completely messed up from sleeping on the couch for hours, your face still slightly creased from cushions, oversized Penguins shirt hanging off one shoulder with sleep shorts underneath.
Michael exhaled softly through his nose. “I messaged you, but… you didn’t answer.” His eyes dropped briefly toward the floor before lifting back to you. “Just thought I’d check in. Make sure you got home okay.”
You smiled; unfortunately, it hurt your head immediately.
Your heartbeat felt strange; too fast, too hard. Every pulse seemed to echo directly behind your eyes, your fingertips tingled faintly as you gripped the edge of the door tighter. You ignored it. “Sorry,” you murmured. “I think I passed out.” Michael’s expression tightened at the wording. “You passed out?”
“No, not like medically.” You waved him off quickly. “Just slept really hard.” His eyes narrowed slightly. Your head throbbed again, the hallway light suddenly looked far too bright, you squinted slightly before looking away from it. “Do you want to come in?” you asked quietly, shifting out of the doorway. The change in him was immediate. “Yeah,” he answered softly. “Sure.” A small smile tugged at his mouth this time, he stepped inside carefully while you shut the door behind him.
Michael glanced around your apartment as he shrugged off his jacket. It was small, a little cluttered in places, but painfully you; your favorite books stacked unevenly beside the couch, plenty of throw blankets, and many inside plants. It looked lived in, it looked lonely too.
“Take a seat on the couch,” you told him quietly. “I’ll make coffee.” You brushed past him gently, your hand briefly patting against the middle of his back as you moved toward the kitchen.
The touch was small, Michael still felt it like a gunshot. You missed the way he closed his eyes briefly at the contact, missed the way his jaw tightened. Because by the time you reached the kitchen counter, another sharp pulse had gone through your skull hard enough to make you grip the edge of it.
Your fingers twitched once involuntarily, then again.
You hit your head softly with the palm of your hand, urging yourself to pull it together. Your thoughts felt thick, sluggish, like they were moving through mud rather than your own brain. The headache had settled somewhere deep behind your eyes now, hot and throbbing, every pulse making your stomach twist unpleasantly. Still, you forced yourself to move around the kitchen normally.
Or as normally as someone with a fucking brain tumor could.
Michael watched you from the couch in complete silence. That somehow made it worse. He was a doctor, trained to notice every small thing wrong with a person before they even realized it themselves, and you could practically feel him piecing you together from across the room.
The curtains were still drawn despite the dying evening sun outside. The kitchen light stayed off while you moved through muscle memory alone. When you opened the fridge, the sudden burst of light made you visibly squint, your free hand immediately coming up toward your temple before you forced it back down.
Then there was your hands.
The spoon clinked repeatedly against the mug while you stirred the coffee. Ding. Ding. Ding. Not because you were rushing, because your fingers would not stop trembling. You clenched your jaw and tightened your grip until your knuckles whitened, forcing the shaking to settle enough for the noise to stop. God, this was humiliating. You could practically feel Michael noticing every little twitch, every delayed movement, every slight pause where you needed to regain your balance.
You carried his mug over carefully, placing it down before sitting beside him.
“Thank you,” Michael murmured quietly. He gave you a tight-lipped smile, one that looked exhausted around the edges. You folded your arms over yourself instinctively, more for comfort than defensiveness. “Why did you come, Michael?” you finally asked; your voice sounded tired, smaller than normal.
He took a sip of the coffee before placing the mug down carefully on the table. His eyebrows pulled together slightly as he looked over at you. “I came to check on you,” he answered simply. “You had me worried, leaving like that.” You looked away immediately. “I also wanted to apologize.” He sighed heavily, rubbing a hand over his beard before continuing. “I made it about me, and that… that was horrible of me.”
Your throat tightened; Michael Robinavitch was not good at apologies; not because he was arrogant, but because most of the time he carried guilt quietly instead of saying it aloud. Hearing him admit fault so openly made something ache sharply in your chest.
“I want you to know that I’m spending my sabbatical with you,” he continued, leaning forward slightly. “No soul journey, no disappearing into the sunset on my bike.” Despite yourself, a weak laugh escaped you.
Michael smiled faintly at that. properly this time, small creases formed at the corners of his eyes and for a second he looked lighter than he had all day. Then he looked back at you properly, and the expression vanished again, his eyes softened instead.
There was something terrifying about the way he was looking at you tonight, too open, too careful; like he was scared you might disappear if he blinked wrong. “I meant every word I said, sweetheart,” he murmured quietly. “You have people who love you. People who want you to fight, not just for them but for yourself.”
Before you could react, he reached over and took your hand gently in his; your breath caught instantly. “...You deserve to be fought for,” he whispered. “Even if that means I have to fight you a little to make you believe that yourself.”
His fingers slid between yours naturally, warm and grounding and unbearably gentle; the burning behind your eyes intensified immediately. “Michael, I cant…” you huffed shakily, a tear slipping down your cheek despite your efforts to stop it. “You don’t understand - treatment would ruin me, ruin me more than dying could.” Your voice cracked embarrassingly on the last part, the room suddenly felt too warm.
Your skin prickled unpleasantly as another pulse of pain struck behind your eyes. For a brief second your vision blurred strangely, black specks flickering at the corners before disappearing just as quickly. Your stomach rolled hard enough to make you swallow against nausea.
You stood abruptly, the room tilted slightly underneath you and your hand immediately shot toward the couch to steady yourself before Michael could notice.
“I forgot my coffee,” you muttered quickly. “Give me a moment.” Michael sighed softly as he watched you move back toward the kitchen. He was still trying to keep you talking, trying to keep you grounded in the conversation, but his expression had changed again. The concern was sharper now, more clinical beneath the emotion.
Because he noticed the way your shoulder clipped lightly against the doorway – the way your fingers flexed strangely at your side.
“Brain tumor recovery is often started with six weeks of radiation,” Michael murmured carefully, watching you over the rim of his coffee mug. “And yeah, it’s exhausting, and yeah, it’s brutal sometimes, but you wouldn’t be doing it alone. I could be there for you, sunshine. Dana too. Jack would probably move into your damn apartment if we let him.” He took a slow sip of his coffee, eyes briefly lowering into the cup before returning to you again, constantly returning to you, like he was checking every few seconds to make sure you were still there. Your fingers dug harder into the kitchen counter.
The apartment suddenly felt wrong, too warm, too quiet. Your hearing dulled strangely, like someone had shoved cotton into your ears. The dull ache in the back of your skull sharpened violently, spreading behind your eyes; you blinked hard, trying to clear your vision, but the room tilted oddly around you.
Fuck.
You swallowed thickly, staring down at the marble counter as nausea twisted in your stomach. There was a strange smell lingering in your nose too, metallic and burnt, despite nothing cooking. Your hand twitched beside your mug.
Michael stopped speaking mid sentence.
Immediately, he noticed the way your shoulders locked up. The way your eyes unfocused slightly. Your breathing had changed too, shallow and uneven. Years in emergency medicine made things like that impossible for him to ignore.
“Sunshine?” His voice lowered instantly - you didn’t answer.
Your stare remained fixed on nothing, pupils unfocused as your fingers jerked again against the countertop, the mug rattled softly. Your lips parted like you were trying to speak, but nothing came out properly. Just a faint, strained sound stuck in your throat.
Michael was standing before he fully realized he had moved. The coffee table nudged harshly beneath his knee as he crossed the room quickly. “Hey,” He spoke softly, cautiously approaching you the same way he approached frightened patients in psych holds. “Sweetheart, look at me.”
Your head turned slightly at the sound of his voice, but not fully. One side of your face twitched sharply, then your arm jerked.
And Michael knew.
“Okay, okay…” His tone immediately steadied despite the panic clawing at his chest. “You’re alright.”
Your knees buckled before he could fully reach you. Michael caught you around the waist just as your body gave out, the both of you stumbling harshly toward the floor. Your shoulder clipped the cabinet with a loud thud before he managed to ease you down properly. Your body stiffened beneath his grip, muscles tightening violently as the seizure spread further.
“Fuck…” He breathed, heart hammering so hard it hurt. “Okay, sweetheart, I got you.”
Your back arched sharply off the ground as the convulsions worsened. Michael immediately rolled you carefully onto your side, one hand supporting your head so you wouldn’t hit it against the tile. His other hand trembled despite every effort to keep himself composed.
He had seen seizures hundreds of times, probably thousands, in strangers, in patients, in trauma bays flooded with noise – but not you never you.
Your breathing hitched unevenly between jerking movements, face pinched tightly in pain even through unconsciousness. Michael felt physically sick watching it, like something inside his chest was actively tearing itself apart. “It’s okay, sweetheart,” He kept repeating quietly, voice cracking despite himself. “You’re okay. I’m right here.”
The seizure continued for what felt like an eternity but was probably barely over a minute. Still, every second stretched horribly. Your fingers twitched weakly against his sleeve as the harsher convulsions finally began easing. Small jerks still lingered through your arms and shoulders, Michael carefully brushed damp hair away from your face with shaking fingers.
His own breathing was becoming uneven now, panic sat ugly in his throat. He reached for his phone with fumbling hands and immediately dialled Jack. The phone rang once, twice, three times.
“Wasn’t expecting a call so soo-”
“Hey.” Michael cut him off instantly, voice rougher than intended. “Could you send an ambulance? She’s seizing, and I can’t exactly throw her on the bike.” The silence on the other end vanished immediately. “What?” Jack’s tone sharpened at once. “What happened?”
“She just dropped.” Michael swallowed harshly, eyes locked on your exhausted form curled weakly against the kitchen floor. “Focal onset first, then generalized.”
“Jesus Christ.” Michael could hear movement instantly, drawers slamming somewhere in the background. “No ambulance, okay, I’m coming instead, stay with her.” Jack stopped speaking briefly, muffled voices carrying through the line before he picked the phone back up again. “Alright, Shen’s covering for me until I get back.” His breathing sounded quick now too. “Keep her on her side. Talk to her when she wakes up. Don’t overwhelm her, okay? She’s gonna be confused as hell.”
Michael looked down at you again, your lashes fluttered faintly, exhausted tremors still moving through your limbs every few seconds. “Jack, I’m also a doctor;” He sassed hoarsely, tightening his grip slightly around your shaking hand.
When you awoke, confusion was all you had the capacity to feel. Your thoughts came slow and thick, sticking together in awful ways that made your head hurt worse the harder you tried to think. Above you was a dark ceiling shifting faintly with movement, and for one disorienting second you genuinely thought you were floating somewhere - adrift - like you were trapped on some tiny fishing boat being dragged across violent water. Your stomach rolled unpleasantly at the sensation before your sluggish brain finally corrected itself.
Not water. A car.
Your eyes blinked slowly, struggling to focus properly as streetlights flashed through the windows in brief streaks of yellow and white, the motion made your nausea worse. Every muscle in your body ached deeply, the kind of ache that settled into bone. Your jaw hurt, your shoulders hurt, even your tongue hurt. It felt like your body had turned against you while you were unconscious and you were only just now waking up to deal with the aftermath.
What happened?
The answer lingered somewhere just out of reach, buried beneath the fog filling your skull. Every time you tried pulling the memory forward your head pulsed violently in protest; your stomach twisted. Idiot. You were a doctor, you should know exactly what happened.
The cruel thought came fast enough to make your throat tighten painfully. Where was Michael? Whose car even was this?
Then the memories returned in ugly little fragments – coffee mugs, Michael sitting on your couch, him holding your hand, the kitchen floor pressing against your cheek, fear, so much of it, then blankness.
A weak sound escaped your throat as you tried sitting up. Immediately your body protested, your muscles trembled beneath the effort, weak and unreliable, like your limbs no longer properly belonged to you. You lifted your hand sluggishly toward your face only to stop halfway when you realized something was weighing it down.
No, someone. Your gaze dragged sideways through the haze.
Michael.
His hand was wrapped tightly around yours, warm and solid against your freezing skin. The second he realized your eyes were fully open, relief hit his face so suddenly it almost made you feel guilty, like he had been holding his breath waiting for this exact moment. His hair was messier than usual, eyes bloodshot and exhausted, jaw tense enough that you could see the muscle ticking beneath the skin. “Hey, sweet girl.” His voice came out low and rough, softer than you had heard it all day. He immediately shifted closer, carefully sliding an arm behind your shoulders to help ease you upright. “Easy… easy, sweetheart.”
The movement made nausea slam into you hard enough that you sucked in a sharp breath, eyes squeezing shut instantly. Pain exploded behind your eyes, hot and deep and vicious. It genuinely felt like somebody had driven a metal spike through the back of your skull.
“We’re heading to the Pitt,” Michael continued carefully, watching your face with the same intense focus he used during traumas. “You had two seizures. Focal first, then generalized.”
You heard every word, you tried to understand them. But there was some disconnect between your brain and your mouth because when you tried responding only a weak rasp escaped your throat, barely a sound at all.
Panic hit instantly, your hand jerked toward your mouth as another failed attempt at speech caught painfully in your throat, your breathing sped up immediately. No. No no no.
Dr. Voss had warned you; speech difficulties, neurological deficits worsening under stress.
Fuck.
You should have gone straight to bed, you should have ignored Michael, you should have lied harder.
“Hey.” Michael’s hand tightened gently against your shoulder before you could spiral further. “Look at me.”
You tried. “You’re okay,” He continued steadily, voice calm despite the fear written all over his face. “Postictal confusion can last awhile. Your brain’s recovering from the seizure, alright? Just breathe.”
But breathing felt difficult now too, your chest tightened painfully with every inhale, heart slamming hard enough to make your skull pound with it. You suddenly felt horribly trapped inside your own body, awake enough to understand something was wrong, but too neurologically scrambled to properly function.
Michael kept rubbing slow circles against your shoulder blade, grounding you the only way he seemed to know how. “You’re safe, sunshine.” His voice lowered further. “I’ve got you.”
It was then that you properly noticed the front seat – Jack.
His hands gripped the steering wheel tightly enough for his knuckles to pale beneath the dashboard lights. The second he noticed movement in the mirror his eyes flicked upward toward you. Relief crossed his face first, immediate and raw, before concern swallowed it again. His eyes looked suspiciously red too, though whether from stress or exhaustion you couldn’t tell.
“Hey, soldier.” His voice lacked most of its usual humor, quieter and rough around the edges. “You scared the absolute living shit outta us.” You swallowed thickly, blinking slowly at him. “Your seizure lasted longer than we would’ve liked,” Jack admitted carefully, eyes returning to the road. “But you’re alright now.” He cleared his throat before continuing. “We called Voss- She’s meeting us at the hospital to talk treatment options.”
Treatment. The word landed heavily in your chest – this felt like a cruel intervention.
Jack’s fingers tapped restlessly against the steering wheel and his prosthetic, a self soothing habit you had noticed years ago during difficult shifts, seeing it now made something ache inside you; Jack Abbot did not rattle easily, neither did Michael. Yet both of them looked like they had aged ten years in the span of an hour.
Your body swayed faintly again, barely noticeable, but enough to make dread settle hard in your stomach. Your limbs still felt disconnected somehow, sluggish and delayed. Like signals inside your brain were arriving too slowly, something felt deeply wrong inside you now, not just pain, something worse.
A horrible heaviness settled low in your stomach, death, you hated that. Then suddenly you could taste blood, metallic and thick at the back of your mouth. Your tongue throbbed painfully, you must have bitten through it during the seizure.
The car finally slowed as Jack turned smoothly into the employee parking entrance. The familiar sight of the hospital made your stomach twist harder. God. This was humiliating. You had spent years walking through those doors helping people, stabilizing people, comforting people.
Now you were about to walk in as the patient.
Jack parked quickly before climbing out first, Michael immediately opened your door beside you, crouching slightly to look you over again. He was trying very hard to remain composed, you could tell.
“Do you think you can walk?” He asked quietly. You looked down toward your legs, hesitated – then nodded weakly. The second your feet touched the pavement your knees nearly buckled beneath you, your whole body trembled violently with the effort of standing upright. A humiliating huff escaped your chest somewhere between frustration at the situation and at your weakness.
Jack was beside you instantly, steadying your elbow before you could collapse. “Easy there.” His grip tightened slightly. “Easy.”
“She can’t talk properly,” Jack muttered toward Michael. “Postictal aphasia isn’t uncommon,” Michael answered automatically, though his eyes never once left your face. “Could last minutes, could last hours.” Then softer, quieter, entirely for you. “You’re alright.”
Jack forced a small grin despite how tense he looked. “Besides,” He nudged your shoulder lightly as the three of you slowly started toward the entrance. “If you’re gonna have a neurological emergency, at least you picked the best ER in Pittsburgh. Very exclusive establishment.”
You hummed out something that almost sounded like a laugh, though it came out strained and weak through the fog still crowding your head. Every sound around you felt distant, muffled beneath the pounding ache lodged deep behind your eyes. You forced yourself to focus on walking instead, left foot. right foot. Don’t fall in front of your entire workplace after having a seizure in your apartment like some tragic episode of greys anatomy.
God, Santos and Mohan would never let you live it down if you survived long enough for them to make fun of you for it.
Your slippers scraped softly against the pavement as the three of you made your way toward the ambulance entrance. You looked down blearily, only just realizing you were still dressed in your oversized Penguins shirt and sleep shorts – the stupid fluffy bunny slippers on your feet made your chest tighten painfully.
Michael must have put them on you before carrying you down many flights of stairs.
The Pitt was still alive despite the late hour – ambulance bay doors hissed open and shut every few seconds, paramedics wheeling patients in beneath harsh fluorescent lights while voices echoed throughout the department in overlapping waves. Nurses moved quickly between bays, monitors beeped endlessly somewhere nearby, overhead pages crackled through speakers. It was usually comforting, familiar even; tonight it made your stomach turn.
Michael’s arm stayed firm around your waist the entire walk inside, steadying you each time your balance threatened to tilt sideways. His hand remained warm against your side, grounding enough that you could almost ignore the lingering tremors still working through your muscles, almost.
Jack walked slightly ahead of you both, clearing space without making it obvious he was doing it. He still wore his badge clipped to his scrubs, still technically working despite the fact he had absolutely abandoned whatever patient he was supposed to be charting on the second Michael called him. He needed to go home and get off that leg, you noticed how he was over compensating, putting more pressure on his good leg.
Shen appeared from the nurses station halfway down the hall, already grinning before his expression dropped completely once he got a proper look at you.
“This is the emergency?” He looked between you and Jack, brows furrowing deeply. “What happened to Sunshine?”
His voice lost most of its usual teasing edge instantly. John Shen was exhausting in the way little brothers were; loud, nosy, incapable of minding his business for longer than thirty seconds. But he made your rare night shifts easier; you hated that this was how he had to see you now.
Jack glanced toward you immediately before answering, asking permission; even now. Your throat tightened painfully as you gave the smallest nod you could manage.
Jack inhaled once before shifting fully into doctor mode. “She presented earlier tpday with a grade III astrocytoma,” he explained quietly. “Had a focal impaired-awareness seizure at home that progressed into a generalized tonic-clonic seizure. Total seizure activity lasted around ten minutes. She’s postictal now, some expressive aphasia, confusion, photophobia. Questions should be yes or no right now unless directed to Michael.” His jaw tightened briefly before he added, “And Michael isn’t here as attending tonight. He’s here as family.”
The area went quiet; a couple interns standing near Shen looked horrified, one of the nurses at the front desk lowered her eyes immediately, humiliation crawled up your spine.
You hated this.
Not the pity, surprisingly not even the diagnosis anymore, you hated being looked at like you were fragile, like you had already started disappearing.
“Alright,” Jack clapped his hands together once, sharp enough to break the tension. “Move. Trauma three’s open.” He grabbed an iPad off the counter before looking toward Lena. “Lena, can you call neuro and let them know Voss wants a room prepped?”
She nodded immediately and reached for the phone.
The lights overhead buzzed violently against your skull as you kept walking, each step making nausea roll harder through your stomach – your vision blurred around the edges again briefly and you instinctively leaned heavier into Michael. His grip tightened instantly, “I got you,” he murmured quietly beside your ear.
The words nearly broke you; he must be so tired.
Everything blurred together after that. Hallways, curtains. The squeak of sneakers against tile floors. At one point Michael disappeared from your side briefly only to reappear seconds later dragging a chair beside the exam bed before sitting close enough that the chair touched the bed.
Dr. Voss entered not long after; her expression shifted the second she saw you sitting there. “Well,” she sighed softly, chart tucked beneath her arm. “I wasn’t expecting to see you again quite this soon, Doctor.” You tried to smile but didn’t quite manage it.
Michael straightened beside you immediately, his hand remained near yours on the bed. Dr. Voss glanced briefly between the two of you before continuing carefully. “Have you given any more thought to treatment options?” The room felt suffocatingly warm suddenly, you stared down at your hands instead. Your body still ached from the seizure, your head felt like it had been split open with an axe, every muscle in your body trembled faintly beneath the exhaustion. And somewhere beside you sat the man you had spent years loving from the sidelines, now looking at you like your answer might destroy him. It was entirely selfish, yet everything you had ever wanted.
Your chest tightened hard enough to hurt. Because what exactly was waiting for you at home? Nothing. Just an apartment that would stay exactly the same whether you walked back into it or not, lights you forgot to turn off, a couch that you slept on more than your bed. It was too late to make something out of the nothingness.
A part of you, a softer part, wanted to turn your head and look at Michael properly – admire him for who he is; that part of you wanted to accept what he had said earlier, the clumsy and desperate confession. It wanted to accept it, survive. For him, for the version of you that still believed in continuation. You wanted to pick the treatment protocols, resection margins, survival rates that never sounded like they belonged to actual people. That part of you insisted on choosing life in the most procedural sense possible, surgery, then radiotherapy, possibly chemotherapy.
You realized you had been silent too long when Dr Voss’s voice continued in the background, explaining next steps to Jack and Michael. Your eyes drifted without meaning to; Jack was listening, Michael, however, wasn’t looking at the bigger picture, he was looking at you. Really looking at you.
He was tracking you in small moments, every flicker of expression, every delay in your breathing, like he was trying to map you back into something whole again just by observation alone. There was admiration there too, buried under exhaustion and the slightest bit of hesitation. You hated how much that mattered right now.
You thought, absurdly, about timing. About how cruel it was that people only ever said the things they meant most when there was suddenly no guarantee they would get to say them again. You had spent years orbiting Michael in the space between professional distance and personal restraint, never quite stepping over it, and now it felt like all that restraint had been replaced by something far less manageable. Regret, maybe, or just delayed honesty arriving too late to be convenient.
Dr Voss’s voice sharpened slightly as she finished outlining the plan.
“–So after maximal safe resection of the astrocytoma, ideally via craniotomy with intraoperative neuronavigation to preserve eloquent cortex, we would proceed with adjuvant radiotherapy. Likely fractionated external beam radiation, potentially combined with temozolomide depending on pathology and response. The goal would be cytoreduction and slowing of residual tumor proliferation. It is aggressive, and it is not without significant cognitive and physical side effects, but it is standard of care in this situation.”
It felt like her voice echoed off the walls; back into your ears. Jack exhaled once through his nose, a small controlled sound, already somewhere between acceptance and action. Michael didn’t move at all.
Then you spoke.
“I’ll do it.” Your voice came out rough, like it had been dragged through something sharp on the way out – perhaps it had – the background noise of the ED seemed to fall slightly away for a second. Your gaze stayed fixed downward, the floor was easier than faces.
“I’ll do the treatment,” you added quietly, more to confirm it to yourself than anyone else, and only then did you feel it properly, the tear slipping down your cheek without permission, warm and frustrating and entirely human.
Dr. Voss nods once, looking far more relieved than she had any right to show professionally. “Alright, that's excellent. I’m going to organize a bed upstairs in neuro, put through the admission orders, and make a quick phone call to the attending neurosurgeon. I’ll be back shortly.” She gives you a small smile before stepping out of the trauma room, the curtain swaying slightly behind her as she leaves.
Silence settles for a moment, though it is never truly quiet in the Pitt. Monitors continue beeping somewhere down the hall, stretchers roll across the floor, someone calls for respiratory over the intercom, and down the corridor you can hear Shen laughing loudly at something one of the interns said. It is strange how the world continues moving so normally while yours has been split apart entirely.
Jack looks at you for a long moment before pointing a finger in your direction. “You better not be messing with me, Sunshine.” His tone is light, but there is something strained underneath it. He reaches forward before you can respond and pulls you into a quick hug, one hand pressing against the back of your head carefully, mindful of the cords that are latched on, mindful of you. “Dana is gonna lose her mind when she hears this. Give me a second, I gotta call her..”
You almost smile at that – Jack pulls away, snapping his gloves off as he walks toward the curtain. “Seriously though,” he says, turning back briefly, “good choice.” Then he disappears into the hallway, already pulling his phone out of his pocket.
The room feels smaller once he leaves. Michael rises slowly from the chair beside you, exhaustion written plainly across his face now that he is no longer forcing himself to hide it. His hair is disheveled from repeatedly running his hands through it, his thermal is wrinkled slightly, his eyes bloodshot enough to tell you that he's definitely been awake longer than the 20-hour mark. Even now, after a hellish shift, after the seizure, after carrying you down far too many flights of stairs, his attention remains entirely fixed on you.
You look up at him and immediately regret it, the way he is looking at you makes your chest ache. “What made you change your mind?–” Michael asks quietly as he steps closer to the bed. His voice has softened completely now, stripped clean of the sharpness he usually carries around at work, “–About treatment.”
You stare at your hands for a second before answering. Your fingers are still trembling faintly, your IV taped messily against the back of your hand after one of the nurses missed the vein the first time. You laugh once under your breath, humorless. “You really wanna know?”
“Yeah.” He answers immediately. “I really do.” Your throat tightens slightly, “Did you mean it?” Michael’s eyebrows pull together faintly. “When you said you loved me,” you continue before you can lose your nerve entirely. “Did you actually mean it, or was that just… stress, and adrenaline, or was it the seizure?” Your eyes drop back down to your lap. “Because I can't do this if its guilt, Michael. I can't sit through surgeries, radiation and chemotherapy knowing you’re only here because you’d feel bad leaving.”
His expression changes instantly, not anger, like you were expecting – but one of offense.
Your fingers twist together anxiously as you continue speaking. “And I know you care about me, obviously, but caring about someone and loving them aren’t the same thing, and I don’t want you waking up six months from now realizing you tied yourself to someone with brain cancer because you panicked after watching them seize on the kitchen floor.”
Michael stares at you for a long moment before exhaling through his nose, then he steps forward. Your words cut off the second his hand reaches for yours. “You think I’d do all this because I feel guilty?” he asks quietly; you avoid his eyes, “Baby,” His thumb brushes slowly against your knuckles until you finally look at him again. “I have spent months trying not to love you.”
That gets your attention.
Michael huffs out something close to a tired laugh before continuing. “You walked into the Pitt smiling at six in the morning every day like the place wasn’t actively ruining everybody’s lives, you brought me coffee without asking how I take it because somehow you already knew, you stayed late for patients nobody else wanted to deal with, and every time I tried putting distance between us you’d look at me like I had stabbed you..” His jaw tightens briefly. “Do you understand how hard that made this?”
Your breath catches somewhere in your throat. “I didn’t say anything because I’m your boss,” he continues. “And because I’m older than you, and because my dating history is embarrassing enough without adding ‘fell in love with coworker during neurological oncology crisis’ onto the list.” A tired smile pulls briefly at the corner of his mouth. “But none of this is guilt.”
His fingers tighten around yours slightly. “I love you.” He says it plainly this time. “I loved you before the tumor. I loved you before tonight. And I’m gonna love you after surgery too, even when you’re yelling at me because radiation makes you miserable and Jack keeps sneaking terrible cafeteria pudding into your hospital room.”
You blink rapidly at him, feeling tears gathering despite how badly you are trying to stop them. “Michael…”
“You dont have to say it back right now,” he interrupts gently. “Honestly, after today you could probably tell me to go to hell and I’d still sit outside your neuro room like some weird guard dog.” A laugh escapes you unexpectedly, weak and breathy.
“There she is,” he murmurs quietly.
You shake your head slightly. “You make this very difficult.” He nods, a small smile on his face, “Good,” he says immediately. “Because your original plan was terrible.”
Despite everything, another laugh slips out of you; the sound seems to visibly undo him.
His hand comes up slowly, brushing your hair carefully away from your face before resting against your cheek. The exhaustion in his eyes is still there, along with fear, along with stress, along with the reality of everything waiting ahead of both of you.
You lean forward before you can overthink it further – the kiss is soft at first, awkward only for a second before he deepens it carefully, one hand remaining against your jaw while the other stays wrapped around yours. He kisses you like someone terrified you might disappear if he pulls away too quickly, you kiss him back just as clumsily, your brain still fogged from anticonvulsants and exhaustion and the longest day of your life.
When you separate, neither of you moves very far; your forehead rests briefly against his.
His eyes close. “You scared me tonight,” he admits quietly, you swallow hard. “Sorry.”
“Dont apologize for having brain cancer,” he mutters tiredly, the curtain suddenly swings open; both of you jerk apart immediately.
Jack stops dead in the doorway, his eyes flick downward toward your still intertwined hands before he looks back up slowly. “Wow.” He blinks once. “So Shen owes me forty bucks.”
You cover your face instantly while Michael groans quietly beside you – Jack points between the two of you. “You know, Dana said this would happen months ago and I defended both of you like an idiot.”
“Jack,” Michael warns.
“No, absolutely not, I deserve to speak.” Jack walks fully into the room now, clearly pleased with himself despite the dark circles beneath his eyes. “Do you understand how painful it has been working beside you two? It was like watching the slowest burn imaginable.”
Michael pinches the bridge of his nose; Jack pats your shoulder lightly. “Anyways. Neuro has a room ready upstairs, Dana promises to see you first thing tomorrow morning and Dr. Voss already contacted neurosurgery for consultation.” He looks between you both again before grinning faintly. “Also, congratulations, very weird timing. Proud of you both.”
You laugh quietly despite yourself, Jack nods once, satisfied. “There’s my sunshine.” He steps back toward the hallway again before pointing firmly at Michael. “And you are going home after she gets upstairs. You look horrific.”
“I’m staying.” Michael attempts to sound firm, but exhaustion has settled too deeply into him now. His words drag together slightly at the edges, subtle enough that most people would miss it, though Jack catches it instantly.
Jack looks at him flatly. “Michael, in about ten minutes you are going to fall asleep standing upright and concuss yourself on the ER floor.” He folds his arms across his chest as Michael glares at him from beside your bed. “You look terrible, brother.”
“I’m fine,” Michael mutters automatically.
“Mhm.” Jack nods like he does not believe a word of it. “Shen’s grabbing transport now.” A grin tugs at the corner of his mouth before he steps back toward the curtain. “Keep your hands to yourselves, kids.”
“Get out,” Michael deadpans tiredly.
Jack chuckles under his breath before disappearing into the hallway, his voice already audible outside the room as he starts pestering some poor resident. Michael looks back toward you after a moment before stepping closer once more, his hand coming up carefully to brush beneath your eye with his thumb.
“I’ll be here when you wake up,” he says softly, eyes fixed entirely on yours. “Every time.”
did far too much research for this brain cancer i'm pretty sure i ended up on the dark web at one point, definitely on a watchlist now.
in which, robby figures things out too late - you are gone, or are you?
CW: angst, unrequited love, mentions of death, terminal illnesses, reader is nicknamed sunshine. reader is lowk a bitch, mentions of suicide, robby does kind of love you back, no comfort guys im sorry, i could write a part two maybe!
part two, the sick, is here!
making my debut in the pitt fandom with a 10k word fanfic. love u all. requests are open! (ignore spelling mishaps its 3:44am... yawn) heavily implied u served with jack
IT WAS OBVIOUS TO EVERYONE – to everyone, perhaps, that you had some sort of weird crush on Michael Robinavitch.
It was almost annoying how unaware he stayed of it. It seemed you and everyone else could see it; but he just never turned his head far enough to notice. You would stand there sometimes, just watching him across the ED, hand on your cheek as you watched him, perched against the nurses desk; thinking there was no way he could be that intelligent and that blind at the same time. It felt like a lengthy chain and heavy ball were stuck to you.
It hurt your soul - a wretched burning feeling that sat under everything else, even under the noise of monitors and calls and footsteps that never stopped in this place. You watched him move through it all like he belonged to it more than he belonged to anything else, because it was true. Confident in the way he spoke, sharp when he needed to be, dismissive when things were wasting his time. And you, somehow, always just outside of whatever space he occupied in his head. His best friend. His best friend.
That word never stopped feeling strange.
You watched him now as he crossed the nurses hub with Noelle, already mid-conversation, both of them moving like they had somewhere important to be, which they probably did. He was leaning slightly forward as he spoke, and then he pulled her into a hug.
You looked away before it could sit in your head properly.
Dana’s hand landed on your wrist before you could drift too far again. “Sunshine,” she said, steady.
You blinked, dragged back into it, shoulders pulling back a fraction too quickly like you had been caught doing something worse than you were actually doing.
“How about you take your break, love?” Dana said, softer now. She gave your hand a light pat, motherly.
“I’m fine,” you said automatically, shuffling the notes and charts.
Dana gave you a look that said she was not going to argue with you, but also that she did not believe a single word of it. You opened your mouth again, probably to say something worse, then closed it. There was nothing clean that came out of this anyway - nothing that sounded normal when you tried to explain it out loud. So you did not.
Dana just watched you for a second longer, then nudged her head slightly toward the corridor.
“Go take five,” she said. “Before I decide you’re useless and assign you paperwork instead.”
A small, weak laugh slipped out of you before you could stop it.
“Cruel,” you muttered. She chuckled, shaking her head. You left your charts in a pile; noting to come back and finish them before complete hand-off; You leaned against the desk for a moment longer, letting your eyes drop closed for just a second too long.
That was when your phone buzzed. You frowned before even looking at it, already expecting something work-related. Something trivial, something that would pull you right back in without giving you a chance to actually step out of it.
The message was from an unknown number, you stared at it, then opened it.
You re-read it twice to make sure you knew what you were looking at.
And something in you went very still; It was just the kind of moment where your brain stopped arguing with itself for a second and accepted what it was looking at before your emotions had time to catch up.
Your grip on the phone tightened slightly, but your hands were steady. That part surprised you more than anything else. You stood there for a moment longer than you probably should have, phone still in your hand.
Then you breathed out once, slow, and pushed yourself off the wall. “Yeah.. might take that break now..” You stuttered as you looked at the clock, words catching in a way that made your jaw tighten the second they left your mouth. At your grown age, stuttering. Fuck. You dragged your gaze away from the time, swallowing it down like it hadn’t just happened, like it didn’t mean anything. You hoped you weren’t late for your appointment.
You adjusted your grip on your phone, thumb hovering over the screen like you were going to check it again, like that would somehow change the time already staring back at you. It didn’t. Of course it didn’t.
“Go,” Dana said without looking up, already shuffling through a stack of papers like she had ten other things occupying her brain at once. “Before I make it a command.”
You huffed out something that might have been a laugh, but it didn’t land properly. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t start,” she muttered. You turned before you could hesitate. That was the only way to do it. If you paused, if you gave yourself a second to think, you’d stay, you always stayed.
You hurried into the elevator; doors shutting as you pressed for the sixth floor.
Jack evil-eyed Michael when he let go of Noelle - the woman smiled before heading to the already ascending elevator; Robby held up the middle-finger, as Jack scowled playfully; clearly he had been spotted.
“Unbelievable,” Jack muttered under his breath, though there was no real bite to it, just habit. He shifted his weight slightly, adjusting without thinking, eyes flicking after Noelle for a second before landing back on Michael.
“Jealousy doesn’t suit you,” Michael shot back, not missing a beat. “Yeah, yeah,” Jack waved him off, but the corner of his mouth twitched anyway. Michael turned slightly, scanning the department without making it obvious he was doing it, it was second nature, he tracked movement, positions, who was where, who wasn’t.
And then he paused. “Where’s Sunshine gone?” He leaned over the nurses desk, looking at Dana.
Dana didn’t look up immediately, continuing to sort through her stack like the question hadn’t reached her yet. “She’s on her break,” Dana shuffled a stack of papers, before looking up at him. “You are as blind as a damn bat, Robby.” She tuts, turning sharply and leaving. Emma following behind.
Michael blinked once, thrown just enough for it to show.
“What?”
But Dana was already walking away, Emma trailing behind her, both of them disappearing into the movement of the department like it swallowed people whole if they stood still too long.
Jack watched as you were swallowed by the closing doors of the elevator; curious.
Michael knits his eyebrows, “Hey! What does that mean?” He calls after her, yet all he can see in the flurry of residents, interns and nurses is Dana’s raised arm with her middle finger up.
That earned a quiet snort from Jack. “Means you’re an idiot,” he said, not even bothering to soften it. Michael shot him a look. “Careful.”
“Or what?” Jack raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. “You’ll glare at me some more?”
Michael exhaled through his nose, not rising to it, but not denying it either. His attention drifted back toward where you had been, like he was trying to piece together something he hadn’t been paying attention to in the first place. “You see her leave?” Michael asked, tone more neutral now.
Jack shrugged slightly. “Yeah.”
“And you didn’t say anything?”
Jack gave him a look then, something pointed, something that sat just under the surface. “Was I supposed to?”
Michael didn’t answer immediately. His jaw shifted slightly, like he was working through the question and not liking where it landed.
“She didn’t say anything,” he muttered.
Jack huffed out a breath. “She said she was taking a break, not fucking moving to France..”
“That’s not–” Michael stopped himself, shaking his head once. “Whatever.”
Jack watched him for a second longer, then let it go. There were only so many ways to point something out before it became pointless. “Are you excited for the three-month respite?” He asks, glancing towards the chart hes holding.
Michael dragged his attention back to the present, to the paper in Jack’s hand, to something concrete he could actually engage with.
“Boy, am I ever…” He didn’t sound particularly excited, just tired. He scrubbed a hand down his face briefly, then straightened, like he could shake it off if he tried hard enough.
Jack gave a quiet hum, not entirely convinced but not pushing it either. “You’ve been talking about it long enough.”
“Yeah,” Michael said, flat. Jack flicked through the chart, scanning it quickly. “You’re actually going to take it, right? Not bail halfway through because you get bored.”
Michael shot him a look. “I don’t get bored.” Jack let out a short laugh. “Right.” Michael opened his mouth to respond, but a med student called his name from across the department before he could.
“Dr. Robby!” He turned immediately, attention snapping into place like it always did when work called for it. “Yeah?” he called back, the intern waved him over, urgency clear even from a distance.
Michael didn’t hesitate. He stepped away from the desk, already moving, already shifting back into it like the conversation hadn’t happened at all. As he passed Jack, he reached out, slapping him once on the back.
“Later, brother,” he said.
Jack watched him go, eyes narrowing slightly.
You, however, were entirely anxious. The elevator pinged as it reached Radiology. You sighed, trying to calm your shaking hands as you entered the floor. Your fingers didn’t listen properly at first, a slight stiffness as you reached for your badge, unclipping it from the front of your scrubs and shoving it into your pocket like it didn’t belong on you right now. You walked faster than you meant to, then forced yourself to slow before you looked like you were rushing. You reached Dr. Voss’ office, knocking.
“Come in,” A voice echoed, and you inhaled sharply before entering the room. Dr. Voss was an impeccably sharp woman usually, controlled and precise. What shocked you was the look on her face.
You have been in this side of work for far too long, you knew that look and what it meant. “Hey, Doc.” She smiled as she spoke - but it didnt reach her eyes.
“Hey, Sara..” Theres a slight pause, before you speak again; “It isn't good.. Is it?” Your voice came out trembling.
The signs had started not too long ago;
“What do we got?” You asked, slapping on the gloves as you entered the emergency room; Whitaker glanced from you to the patient, “Mid-30s male, MVC, significant facial trauma, sats dropping despite oxygen, airway compromised.” You huff, “Alright, prepare for an intubation, Whitaker.” You dart towards the unconscious male, and grimace as the tightening headache gets worse as you focus.
“BP’s unstable, eighty over fifty, pulse one-twenty and climbing,” a nurse called from the head of the bed, voice clipped and practiced, already hanging fluids as the monitor screamed its steady warning rhythm. The smell of blood and antiseptic hung heavy in the air, sharp enough to sit behind your eyes. “Suction ready,” you said automatically, extending a hand without looking away from the patient. The laryngoscope tray was opened beside you, metal glinting under the overhead lights – someone placed the bougie within reach, standard setup and familiar rhythm. Your body should have settled into it; it did not.
The headache tightened again, a hard band behind your eyes, and for half a second the room felt slightly out of sync, like the sounds were arriving a fraction late. You blinked once, slow, forcing focus back down into the airway. Blood pooled at the patient’s lips as the nurse tilted the head back, positioning for exposure.
“Okay,” you said, quieter now, more controlled than you felt. “Pre-oxygenate again. I want a clean window.”
Whitaker was already at your shoulder, close enough that you could feel the shift in his presence rather than see it, he did not speak yet, just watched your hands as you reached for the laryngoscope.
The first movement was wrong.
A fraction too rigid at the wrist, like the joint was resisting the angle you knew it should take. The blade tapped against the teeth slightly harder than intended.
“Sorry,” you muttered immediately, adjusting, forcing precision into it.
The monitor beeped louder.
You tried again, slower. Deliberate. Tongue displaced, blade advancing. Blood obscured the view and suction moved in, but the angle still would not settle cleanly in your hands the way it always had. It was as if your depth perception had narrowed, like your brain was insisting on a slightly incorrect map of the space.
“Bougie,” you said, sharper now.
It was already there, handed in without hesitation.
You went to pass it in, and that was when it happened again - a brief stiffness, not tremor, just resistance in the fingers, like they did not want to separate cleanly from the instrument. The bougie hesitated at the threshold.
Whitaker moved – just his hand sliding in under yours, steady and unassuming, taking the angle. He adjusted the laryngoscope position by a few degrees, almost invisible to anyone not watching closely.
“I’ve got the view,” he said simply.
The shift was immediate. Your hands dropped half an inch, hovering now instead of leading. The relief was subtle but undeniable, like a pressure point you had not realized you were fighting against finally releasing.
You exhaled once through your nose, controlled. “Tube’s yours,” you said, voice even, already stepping back into the role of observer without making it a surrender.
Whitaker did not look at you, thankfully. Behind your eyes, the headache pulsed again, deeper this time, less like pressure and more like something slithering and pulsing.
You blinked hard, it hurt, but you needed to refocus on the monitor instead of your hands.
“How about we talk, before we go over this morning's scans..” She sent you a tight-lipped smile. You sighed, feeling the tension in your head pull at the movement of your eyebrows meeting, like even that small shift took more effort than it should have. You didn’t like the way your head felt lately; wrong in a way you couldn’t quite name.
You didn’t answer straight away. Just nodded once, because speaking felt like it might make something in your chest tighten further around your heart.
Begrudgingly, you sat down opposite her; the chair felt too firm, too real. Your hands came together in your lap, fingers lacing without thinking, gripping tighter than you meant them to. They trembled — enough that it irritated you.
You focused - really, really hard.
And they stilled; it took effort, more than it should have.
“Now, I want you to know before we start off; whatever is said in this room is between us and only us.” She sighed, reaching for your scans – passing them to you over the desk.
That alone told you enough.
You reached, and took them. Your fingers brushed the edge of the folder, and for a second you almost missed it, that slight delay. That fraction of hesitation before you gripped properly - you ignored it.
A slight dredge of panic seeped into your skin as you opened the folder. The images were familiar, far too familiar. You had seen them a hundred times before, just never with your name attached.
Your eyes tracked over it once; then again.
“Fuck.” A shaking hand came up to your mouth, fingers pressing hard enough against your lips to keep anything else from coming out. “That's… bad..” You could feel the bile in your throat, sharp and immediate, rising faster than you could control.
She didn’t interrupt you.
“It is also.. Very rare. You are very young for this type of cancer.” She looked down at her nails, before back at you.
You let out a breath that didn’t steady anything.
Your eyes stayed on the scan.
You knew what you were looking at.
Of course you did.
“It is… fast-growing, highly infiltrative, and in some cases not fully resectable in the way most tumors are. Even when a surgeon removes the visible mass, microscopic tumor cells could have spread through the surrounding brain tissue, we will only know more with extra tests.”
Fuck. Fuck.
Your grip tightened slightly on the folder, the edge digging into your palm. You didn’t feel it properly.
“Listen, grade 3 astrocytoma is treatable. It depends purely on whether you choose further treatment.” She sighs.
You wanted to speak. You wanted to say something, anything, just to prove you were still part of the conversation. That you hadn’t just… checked out.
Nothing came. Your throat felt too tight. Your tongue too heavy. Words sat there and refused to move.
“Do you have someone you want to call, to tell?” She asks, standing up from her desk and taking the seat beside you. The chair shifted slightly under her weight. You stared at the scans, you had no one to call. Parents that felt like they were across the world, even when they weren’t. Conversations that had turned into occasional messages, then into nothing. Siblings gone quiet, lives moving on in directions you hadn’t followed.
You only had Dana, Jack and Robby. But even then; they weren’t family. Not in the way that counted for something like this – you refused to be a burden.
“No..” Your voice comes out shaky. You swallowed, forcing it down, but it didn’t steady. “No, there is no one..” Your eyes scan over the papers again, like you’re checking for a mistake you already know isn’t there. It is a sizable tumor - roughly the size of golfball, maybe even an extra half of one. You stared at it longer than you should have, in any other case perhaps you would have admired it. “Your symptoms will only get worse without treatment, so… I thoroughly recommend taking time off as soon as possible, even take the rest of this shift off. Its remarkable you're still standing - the slightest moments of stress or sudden action and that could trigger seizures, intense lack of speech, strokes, lack of memory…” She takes your hand in hers.
You almost pulled back, not because of her, just because you didn’t like being held in that moment. It made it real in a way the scans hadn’t yet. “If you need anyone to speak to, just someone to have coffee with – I'm only a call away.. Okay?” She pat your hand, before rubbing your shoulder.
You nodded automatically.
You had known Sarah for over a decade, almost two - stupidly you made sure to befriend as many people as possible, you used to be a lovely person. That's why they called you Sunshine.
A name you rebuked; It felt almost mocking now; more people to miss you when you go.
“We should go through treatment plans on Monday,” You nod as she speaks. The words blurred slightly at the edges, not unreadable, just harder to hold onto.
“Is eight okay?” She walks back to her desk, scheduling it into her calendar.
“Yes, um.. Yeah..” You stand as you speak, the movement a little too quick, like sitting there any longer would’ve pinned you in place.
Your break is most definitely over and it would only be a matter of time before either Jack or Robby attempt to scare you into coming back down.
“Okay, remember I'm only a call away. You aren’t alone.” She gives you a watery smile, that you cannot replicate.
It is as if the world has swallowed you whole. Your mind was a swirl of pain, flashbacks and lingering thoughts of doom as you slowly took in everything. The folder of scans in your hands felt heavy, heavier than it should have been, as if the weight had nothing to do with paper and everything to do with what it meant. It dragged at your arms like you were carrying men back to the pitched tents in Iraq again, boots digging into sand, shoulders screaming, lungs burning while you told yourself to keep moving.
You shook your head, sharper this time, trying to rid yourself of the thoughts of going back there. You weren’t there. You were here. Fluorescent lights, polished floors, the faint smell of antiseptic instead of sand, gunpowder and blood.
It didn’t feel any better.
The elevator dinged closed as you entered, the doors sliding shut with a soft finality that made your chest tighten. You were alone.
And the second you were alone, you broke.
Fuck.
A sob crawled out of your throat before you could stop it, raw and ugly, like it had been sitting there waiting for the moment the door closed. Your hand came up to your mouth, pressing hard against it as if that would quiet it, as if that would stop the sound from existing at all.
Cancer? The word didn’t sit right in your head. It didn’t belong there. It felt misplaced, like someone had written it into the wrong chart.
A month ago you thought it was burn out. A week ago perhaps stress. Too many shifts, not enough sleep, you had told yourself that with full confidence, like you always did. Like you always fixed things by naming them something manageable.
You heard the elevator ding once, then again. The sound snapped something back into place, just enough for you to move.
You hurriedly wiped your eyes with the heel of your hand, pressing harder than necessary like you could erase the redness, like you could wipe away the evidence. You dug into your pockets for your ID, fingers fumbling slightly before finding it. You clasped it back onto your scrubs, the clip catching on the fabric before settling properly.
You straightened your back, cxollected your shattered self and prepared to go back to work as the doors opened.
Jack Abbot knew something was wrong when you didn’t take your lunch to the roof, in fact he knew there was something wrong when you did not take your lunch at all.
He noticed things like that - always had.
Jack, a man you would call your brother, your confidant, your best-fucking-friend in the whole world stood outside the elevator; a flurry of emotions on his face as he looked to you. It shifted quickly, too quickly for anyone else to catch, but you saw it. Confusion first. Then concern. Then realization.
A woman he would call his sister, a warrior and a damn good doctor.
And right now, you couldn’t meet that version of yourself.
You stepped out, hiding the folder behind you, pressing it flat against your lower back like that would somehow make it invisible. “Hey, what are you doing here?” Your voice comes out raspy, the strain obvious the second it leaves your mouth, and Jack's face shifts to a look of pain.
“Looking for you, sweetheart.” He gives you something like a grimace mixed with a short smile, like he’s trying to keep it light and failing. “What took you so long, hm?”
You know he doesn’t want to be invasive. You know that. He never forced things out of you. Not unless it mattered.
“Erm.. nothing. Just talking to a doctor about something– seems to be all that I do now.” You chuckle, though it feels wrong– it sounds wrong, it sits wrong in your chest. And your heart burns as you lie. Fuck.
You don’t wait for him to respond.
You walk ahead of him, keeping a tight grip on the folder behind you, eager to keep it from him, like distance might buy you time you don’t actually have. Your steps are a fraction too fast.
He notices.
Of course he does.
He huffs, lurching forward to keep up with you, his stride uneven but practiced, closing the gap like he always does. “You wouldn’t lie to me, yeah?” He asks, hand coming to your shoulder, firm enough to stop you from returning to your job.
You stop.
You contemplate telling him, but all it would lead to is either an argument or tears and grieving. You don’t have the energy for either. Not right now. Not when the word is still sitting fresh in your head, especially when it hasn’t even set in for you fully yet.
You shake your head. “No, of course not.” You don’t look directly at him. “Thats a lie..” He whispers, your jaw tightens.
“Tell me what's up..”Jack grabs each side of your head, getting him to look at you. His hands are warm. Familiar. Grounding in a way you don’t want right now.
You try to memorize his face. The lines at the corners of his eyes. The way his expression is already shifting toward something protective, something ready to fight something he doesn’t even know yet.
“I..” You whimper, a feeling of dread tightening into your stomach. “I…”
You huff, getting annoyed, frustration flaring sharp and quick. This wasn’t you struggling to speak due to the want to cry, this was something else. This was the stress of telling him, yes, but also something else, the stress induced lack of speech that Dr. Voss spoke about.
That thought hits harder than anything else so far.
“Tell me, sunshine..” He cups your head, affectionately; trying to calm you down, voice softer now, careful. You stare at him for a second longer. Then you sigh.
Your hands drop from behind your back, and you pass him the folder. Just like that, like it doesn’t matter, like it’s just paper.
Jack looks at it with a look of momentary shock, as though he can't quite believe the thought of a damn folder. His brows pull together, confusion flickering before something more serious replaces it.
Then he opens it; you watch as his face shifts as he reads further, horror on his face as he examines the scans, a hand goes to his mouth. “Fuck..” He muttered.
You don’t look away, you watch him read it.
“This..” He clears his throat, voice catching slightly before he forces it steady, “–is yours..?” He asks, flipping through the symptoms that are highlighted, the side effects – the treatment pamphlets.
You nod once; it feels like more effort than it should.
“How long have you known?” He asks, closing it as he looks around, like he expects someone to overhear, like this is something that needs to be contained immediately. It is just you two in this hallway and the lingering sounds of shouts of orders, faint machine noises and the sound of chatter bleeding through the walls. “I.. I just found out.. Like, twenty minutes ago.” You sighed, the headache pounding with each syllable, each word pressing against something already sore.
“I have to take time off after this shift; hell I was told I shouldn’t even be here now.” You busy your hands as you shuffle your feet, not looking at him, not wanting to see what is on his face now.
“Makes sense, I could call someone to cover for you for the rest of today...” He says it automatically, like he’s filling space, like he’s trying to keep things normal for just a second longer. Then he reaches out, grabbing your shoulder. “Don’t stress alright?” He pulls you into a hug.
Your head meets his shoulder and you shake with a small cry, your hands come up, gripping the back of his shirt without thinking. “I-It is just going to get worse, seizures, memory loss, lack of speech, motor troubles.” You huff, pulling back slightly, taking your arm back from being looped around his waist and wiping at your cheek with the back of your hand.
You hate how steady your voice sounds saying it.
You hate that you understand it.
“But you're gonna get treatment, right? You're gonna fight..” He pulls back fully now, hands on your shoulder as he studies your face.
Did you have it in you? The tumor would only get worse if you refused treatment – recurring seizures, memory loss, vision loss, scrambled speech, focal nervous system could be fully compromised. Death. But even if you fought what was there waiting for you? Certainly not a husband nor children – yeah, you had waited too long for those opportunities.
No, you hadn’t thought of fighting.
Or maybe you had, somewhere in the back of your mind, buried under everything else. You knew how these things went. You had seen it before, stood at bedsides, read charts, explained outcomes to people who looked at you the same way Jack was looking at you now. You knew the words, you knew the progression, you knew exactly what it would do.
You just hadn’t put yourself in it.
Survival felt.. weird. It sat in your chest wrong, like something you were supposed to want without question, but didn’t, not fully; It wasn't a relief, it wasn’t hope. It was a decision, along one and a painful one. It could promise years, yes, but would it be worth it?
Radiation would surely tear you apart. You would not be able to have children; though you really hadn’t thought that far ahead. A family felt so far away, especially with this life-altering road block. It all felt… strange. Off putting.
Like dragging something behind you that didn’t want to move.
You knew that with cancer like this, at the size like this; there would be a lack of you - the real you. Even if you did everything right. Even if you fought it the way Jack was already expecting you to. Surgery, chemo, radiation, time carved into appointments and side effects and slow changes that no one would say out loud.
There would be pieces missing. Pity at every corner, whispers of how strong you are, how this couldn’t have happened to a nicer person. You could already hear it, you had said it yourself to other patients, softer, but the same words all the same. You knew how it sounded. You knew how it felt on the other side.
You didn’t want that; You didn’t want people looking at you like you were something fragile. Something already gone.
You most definitely did not want to tell your friends; Dana, Samira, Robby…
Robby..
You could picture it too easily. The way he would react, or rather, the way he wouldn’t at first. That slight pause. The narrowing of his eyes as he processed it. The questions that would come, quick and precise. Clinical, because that’s how he handled things; then the shift, the kind that meant he had taken it on whether you wanted him to or not.
You didn’t want that either.
“I’ll need to think about it more, I have an.. appointment to discuss it further with Dr. Voss in Radiology..” You sigh, patting him affectionately as you pull your folder from his grasp. “I don't want to.. tell anyone.. Samira, Dana, Michael, especially Michael.. when he's.. about to be free of this place.” You wave off the idea, and Jack fixes his position, leaning on his good foot. “You don't want him here for your treatment? The treatment that you are most definitely going to do, whether I have to tie you to the chair or not?” He huffs a dry laugh. “Fine, but you will have to tell him eventually. He's your friend.” He sighs.
There's a temporary silence. Jack knew about your little crush on his friend from med-school; however he had been sworn to utter secrecy. Something that felt so small now.
A man so detached from the world, so sad and so miserable. You, a woman so entirely enraptured in saving him from himself, wanting to be there for him emotionally – wanting him to want you as much as he wanted his own self-assured destruction. It felt foolish, to want someone so much at your grown age; especially after all you had done.
You sigh, shoulders deflating as the world around you reconnects, like a plug being pushed into a socket. The noise returns and you are out of your own head and instead surrounded by medicine.
“I just want to go home.” You try to control your voice, holding it steady for as long as you can. It falters anyway. Your lip wavers, slight but noticeable, and Jack catches it without trying. It feels like something in you has been pulled back without warning, like peeling away decorative wallpaper only to expose the rot beneath – clean on the surface, held together just enough to pass, but never meant to last; It was never meant to be seen this closely.
You hate that he’s seeing it now, you’ve always been good at keeping it in place, keeping yourself in place. But it slips, just for a second, and that’s all it takes.
It feels like standing in front of something you wanted once, something you could have held onto, and choosing to walk away from it anyway. Not because you didn’t care, but because you knew you couldn’t keep it.
“Go get your things, sweetheart. But you will have to tell Dana.” He murmurs, voice low.
He isn’t usually the type to hug, especially not in the middle of a shift, but he seems to be giving them out freely today; He pulls you in as he sways slightly, just enough for you to notice, grounding more than anything else. “Do you want me to tell her?” He whispers into your hair, before pulling back to look at you properly as you wipe at your cheeks.
Jack had always been like that for you, steady, there without needing to be asked. Your head pounded as you shook your head, the movement sharper than intended. “Im a big girl, i’ll go tell her after grabbing my things.” You try to smile, but it doesn’t land right. The meek smirk pulls wrong across your face, more like a grimace than anything else, and the tightening at your scalp only makes it worse.
Jack rubs your arm, slow, absent, like he’s thinking about something he doesn’t want to say. He bites the inside of his cheek, jaw working slightly, and for a second it looks like he might argue. His pager goes off just as he opens his mouth; cutting through it.
“Okay… call me when you get home, please?” He asks instead, softer now, his eyes fixed on you in a way that makes it clear he isn’t asking. There’s something in it, something that knows you well enough to expect resistance. He knows that if you don’t let him in, he’ll find a way to be there anyway; he would force you into recovery.
One you did not know if you wanted. If you deserved.
“Yeah, okay.. Get going!” You usher him with a pat on his arm and a light shove, forcing a small smile that feels easier than anything else you’ve tried yet. He hesitates, just for a second longer than necessary, before turning and running off toward an incoming trauma.
As you trudge through to your locker, you think about ways you could summarise it to Robby. There would be no easy way, that’s for sure. There isn’t a version of it that sounds better out loud. Face to face would be too hard, being forced into telling Dana was almost too much as it is. The idea of someone looking at you and knowing, really knowing, about the fat tumor resting in your head, growing, sits wrong in your chest, not concern, not care. You don’t want that, you don’t want to be reduced to pity and people grieving you before you are truly gone.
You could write a letter, and give it to Dana; to give to him? You could summarise everything in an email?
Fuck, you might as well have plastered the folder’s scans around the hospital at this point.
Why were you so terrified about telling Robby? What, like the brain cancer is going to make him look at you in a different light? He was one loss away from hopping from the roof; it’s not like he could try and force you into recovery when he had spent all this time running from his. Especially with this reckless, half-thought-out bike ride he was leaving for.
Fuck this. Fuck this brain cancer. Fuck him.
You did not deserve to be pitied. You were not going to spend the rest of your short life being picked at by vultures, or pumped full of drugs that where only going to weaken you. You were going to go to Greece, or Italy or the Bahamas. You were going to enjoy life on a beach, or admiring art in the Lourve, or fucking a random Greek man from a bar during the sunset.
Maybe it was time for you to go on a spiritual ride of your own.
You pulled your bag out of the locker, clutching it as you held the folder. You felt sick just looking at it. You stepped out, braving the beeping, the yelling, the constant churn of chatter that never stopped.
Frank looked at you oddly, his gaze catching on the fact that you were only a couple hours into your shift and already had your bag slung over your shoulder. He narrowed his eyes slightly as you walked past, something about it not sitting right with him. He leaned on the nurses desk, chart in hand
You probably looked as bad as you felt. Fuck, you hoped you didn’t over do it.
The lights felt wrong, they seemed to pulse with each step you took, with each breath you dragged in, uneven and a little too fast. Your fingers twitched at your side, restless, and your eyes kept darting without meaning to, scanning the room for something familiar.
For your favorite charge nurse. Your vision blurred at the edges as you searched for that head of blonde hair. Finally, you found her, half-turned away, talking on the phone about an incoming emergency.
You blinked, forcing yourself back into focus, pulling yourself out of whatever daze you’d slipped into. Unbeknownst to you, Langdon was still watching, expression tight with curiosity.
Like he was trying to figure something out, something slightly off that he couldn’t quite place.
“Ah, there you are! What are you doing with your bag, Its not home time..” Dana smirked as she saw you, one hand resting on her hip, her eyes carrying that usual edge of mocking she usually held.
You tried to mirror it, but your smile came out weak, thinner than you meant it to be. The lights pulsed again, and you could feel your arm tremble slightly just at the thought of doing this here, in the open, where anyone could look a second too long. “I.. I have to go home, Jack told me that you could help me find someone to fill in for me?” You spoke quietly, just enough for her to hear, the words catching at the edges.
The smile slipped the second you looked back up at her.
“Whats up, doll?” She stepped closer, lowering her voice, not soft, but contained, like she already knew something wasn’t right.
The fucking lights. Why were they so bright.
“I can’t really say, but I can show you..?” You murmured, trying to keep it casual, like it wasn’t what it was, like your hand wasn’t giving you away as you passed her the folder. Princess and Perlah lingered nearby, but they knew better. They always did. Confidentiality wasn’t something you had to worry about with them.
Robby must be in on a trauma. And Abbot… Well, he was somewhere. Dana’s hand dropped from her waist as she took the folder from you, sharper than usual, opening it without another word. Her fingers stilled almost immediately, just for a second, before continuing.
You watched her face as her eyes moved across the pages. “What the fuck..” She tried to keep it down, but it came out wrong, the panic sitting underneath it pushing the volume up just enough.
Your eyes darted around in quiet panic, scanning the floor, the halls, anywhere but her face for a second, praying she didn’t accidentally summon Robby from wherever he was. The last thing you needed was him preaching about vitality and the importance of health and to fight.
Dana didn’t give you the chance to think much further. She grabbed you by the arm, firm, and pulled you with her. You followed, begrudgingly, letting yourself be guided into a supply closet. The door shut behind you with a dull click, and she pressed her back against it like she needed the barrier.
“Have you told anyone?” She asked, arms folding tight across her chest.
You had never really been able to get a proper read on Dana. Her Pittsburgh accent was thick enough to blur the edges of whatever she felt, something she leaned into, something she was good at, it kept things contained and rather controlled. Right now, it didn’t, it hurt.
This was exactly what you didn’t want. Not this part, the part where it stopped being just yours and started affecting everyone else.
“Jack found out. I was coming back from the appointment and he found me.. Crying in the damn elevator...” You whispered the last part, quieter than the rest, shifting your weight slightly like you could move away from it just by not standing still.
The supply closet was dim, thankfully. The lack of harsh light gave your eyes a break, took some of the pressure off the constant ache that had been building since you stepped back onto the floor. Dana stared at you for a second, then back down at the folder, like she needed to check it again. Like it might say something different the second time; She flipped through it, slower now.
“You.. You’re going to do chemo, yeah?” She nods as she says it, like she’s already decided, like that’s the only answer that makes sense.
You let out a breath, heavy enough that your shoulders shift with it.
“As I told Jack, recovery is not definite. Dr. Voss and I will talk about it in my next appointment. Chemotherapy would only give me a couple of weak years left, personally I would rather be tanning on a beach in Australia, or attempt to master a sport or instrument, or spend my money on a yacht, wasting away at sea and then leave it to Jack.. or you in my will.” You explain it as evenly as you can, like you’ve already thought it through, like you are no longer before her breathing.
“But.. but you are so young. There’s so much more to life. I.. We cannot lose you, sweetheart.” Her voice cracks on the last word, and you see it then; She’s crying – You don’t think about it. You just step forward and pull her into a tight hug.
“I do not have the fight in me,” You whisper, and she tightens her grip around your waist, holding on harder than you expected.
“I have no family, no husband nor any children– Chemotherapy would fuck up any chance of having them, and I’m not getting any younger so it’s not like they could just freeze a few eggs and call it a day.” You huff out the last part, a dry edge to it that doesn’t quite land as humour but sits close enough.
You both let out a small, uneven chuckle as you pull apart.
“You, Jack, Robby, everyone at the Pitt have been… amazing for the past some-odd years. But if I keep working here, I will die here. The stress could make me stroke, seize; I’m already losing some speech, fuck, even seeing is hard. I have a headache all the fucking time these days, I’ve had to give most of my cases to Whitaker recently because my hands are no longer steady.” You sniff, getting it out as evenly as you can, even as it burns in your throat.
Dana brushes your hair back from your face, careful, wiping at your tears with her thumb before she swipes at her own like it’s nothing. “I dont want to tell Robby.” You say it plainly, like it’s already decided.
She steps back slightly at that. “Why not?” She asks, eyebrows pulling together as she exhales.
“I do not want to ruin his sabbatical, and frankly, I dont want to waste my months left with Robby inserting himself into my final moments. Much love to him, but I cant focus on saving him from himself whilst fading into the abyss.”You huff out something like a chuckle and a scoff; hoping the gallows humour softens the look Dana is giving you.
She sniffs, a slight, disbelieving smile pulling at her mouth. “Thats funny, because hes the chief attending in the emergency department. He has to sign off on you leaving, not only today but until You. Pick. Chemotherapy. Because you will. Me and Abbot will force ourselves into your apartment to make sure you go.” She points a finger into your chest, firm, not backing down.
Your heart stills for a second, you had forgotten that. Somewhere between everything else, you had let yourself forget that in all of this, he was still your higher up.
Fuck.
Dana’s pager goes off, sharp in the small space. Her grip tightens slightly on your folder as she pulls it from her waist. “Its Robby, hey..” She says, cutting straight through your spiralling thoughts.
“He has to know, doll, its policy. You head off, I will deal with all the paperwork, okay? And Robby. Get some rest, and think about everything.” She pulls you into one last hug, holding you there just a second longer than usual. “I love you, kid, please… pick the fight.”She opens the door, leaving it open behind her as she steps out, the folder still in her hand, well, you guess that means you’ll have to come back another day for that.
You stand there for a second longer than you should before you force yourself to move. You fix what you can out of habit, smoothing down your scrubs, wiping under your eyes with the heel of your hand, dragging in a breath that doesn’t quite fill your lungs the way it should. Your phone feels heavier than usual when you pull it out, fingers fumbling slightly as you push back into the blinding lights of the department.
It hits you all at once again, the noise, the movement, the constant, never-ending rhythm of it. For a second, it feels too loud, too sharp, like everything has been turned up just a fraction too high. You would miss it. Langdon has moved from where he was studying you from earlier, you don’t see him now. Instead, Santos and Whitaker have taken over the space near the nurses desk, both of them mid-conversation, heads bent slightly toward each other.
You tap at your phone as you make your way toward them, pulling up the Uber app, your fingers not quite doing what you want them to as you type in your address. You have to correct it twice.
“Dont you have like another six hours of your shift left?” Santos asks, leaning onto the palm of her hand as she watches you, eyes narrowing slightly as she takes in the bag, your posture, all of it.
You raise an eyebrow at her, finally glancing up. “Look at me, do I genuinely look fit to work.”
It comes out flatter than you expect.
You haven’t seen yourself, not properly, but you don’t need to. You can feel it. The heaviness under your eyes, the thin layer of sweat that won’t settle, the faint pull of dried tears on your skin. If you had any mascara on, it’s long gone, smudged somewhere it shouldn’t be. Your lips are raw from worrying at them, and there’s a slight tremor in your hands that you can’t fully control. Could be anything, low blood sugar, the cold, or the evil meteor in your fucking head.
“Yeah, im not gonna answer that.” Trinity smiles, small, knowing, dropping her gaze back to the chart in her hands like she’s giving you an out.
“Whitaker, I apologise but im gonna have to leave you to do the charts for our cases. Doctors orders for me to go home.” You keep your tone light enough, something close to normal, offering them a small smile that doesn’t quite reach where it should.
You linger there for a second, longer than necessary, committing them to memory without meaning to. They weren’t just residents. Not really.
“Don’t be surprised if you never see me again, Robby might kill me.” You let out a quiet huff of a chuckle; Both of them look at you, concerned. You ignore it, “Okay, have to go, bye guys!” You step forward, pulling them both into quick hugs. There’s something in the way you hold on for half a second too long before letting go.
You don’t think about that, you pull away, turning before either of them can say anything else. You move toward the ambulance entrance, pace just a fraction quicker than usual, wanting to get out before Dana finishes whatever conversation she’s having with Robby.
You glance over without meaning to.
They’re in the soundproofed psych room. Jack is there too, standing slightly off to the side. He catches your eye through the glass, and there’s a look there before he gives a small shake of his head. Dana and Robby seem to be arguing, and Jack joins in shortly.
You sigh, looking away immediately. But Robby had already seen you in the corner of his eye, your eyes squeezing shut for a second as your head pounds, steady and insistent, pressing behind your temples.
You just want out.
The doors slide open; cold air hits you straight away, brushing your hair back from your face, cutting through the heat and the noise and everything else for just a moment. The wind moves across your skin, and for a second, it feels like something close to relief.
You pace a hole into the concrete outside the ambulance bay, your steps uneven but constant, like if you stop moving for even a second everything will catch up to you. Pittsburgh traffic was no joke, so you weren’t worried about the late arrival of your Uber driver. It gave you something to focus on, something simple; In, out, wait, leave.
But the footsteps behind you cut through that almost immediately, recognisable, too familiar. It felt like you had been caught doing something you shouldn’t have; that instinctive tightening in your chest, the brief pause before you turn, you freeze for half a second, then shift slightly, already knowing what you’re going to see before you do.
Michael Robinavitch – his eyes land on you, sharp, disapproving, something heavier sitting underneath it. “So you were going to leave without saying goodbye?” He shrugs, like he’s trying to play it off, but his hand drags over his face, slower than usual, tension sitting in the movement.
“Well, yes..” You admit, because there’s no point pretending otherwise. That really is what you were going to do.
“Wow,” he exhales, looking away for a second before glancing back at you, “so the past 15 years of friendship mean that you dont…” He gestures vaguely, frustrated, searching for something that fits, before stepping closer, hands coming up as he finishes it. “You have fucking brain cancer and you didn’t want to tell me… why?”
You step back instinctively, more from the pressure of it than anything else, your head pounding in time with the shift. “I literally only found out an hour or so ago, Robby. It’s not some personal attack, it’s moreso preference. Because I did not want to ruin your sabbatical.” You huff, folding your arms across your chest, more to hide the tremor in your hands than anything else. Your fingers twitch against your sleeves, subtle but there.
“You have to be fucking joking me,” he snaps, shaking his head, disbelief clear across his face. “My sabbatical means nothing – if Dana hadn’t have told me I would have come back to attend a fucking funeral.”
That makes you look at him, really look; his eyes are glassy, not quite gone, but close enough that you can see it. “I would rather spend the next three months chained to your damn hip making sure you go to every appointment and chemotherapy session.” He steps closer again, voice lower now but no less firm, like he’s trying to push it into something solid.
It doesn’t move you, not the way he thinks it should. “I dont want treatment,” you say, steady enough, even if your head is screaming at you for it. “I have told Jack, I have told Dana. And now, I am telling you.” You hold his gaze, forcing yourself not to look away. “I would rather have four to six freeing months than seven painful, weak, draining years.”
Your voice lifts slightly without you meaning it to, the volumeof it carrying further than you intended. You catch movement out of the corner of your eye. Ahmad, not even pretending not to listen anymore; eyeing you two warily. A couple of others lingering just a second too long. Inside, Dana’s probably already snapping at people to get back to work.
“You might as well announce to our entire workplace that I’m fucking dying, Robby. Congratulations. Whatever dignity I had left is now gone. Thank you.” You let out a sharp exhale, but it doesn’t really settle anything in your chest. It just sits there, building. “You cannot look me in the eye and preach about life, and recovery when everyone knows what you were going to do on that fucking trip, Michael. No helmet, a spiritual retreat done by the most depressed person I know? Yeah… sure..”
Your voice cracks just slightly at the end, but you don’t stop, you can’t. It all spills out before you can think better of it, there’s a shift in him immediately. You see it land. Not just the words, but the intention behind them. And you know it cuts deeper than you meant it to.
“I have nothing keeping me here, no family, not even a fucking pet. I have dedicated my life to this hospital, to this country. All it gave me was a brain tumor and PTSD.” Your voice goes quieter at the end, but the weight of it doesn’t lessen..
“What about us, me, Dana, Jack.” His voice is lower now, almost careful. He steps closer like distance will fix something. You shake your head before he finishes properly, tears slipping anyway, uninvited and steady.
If you turn all of them away, they’ll leave you alone.
Fuck.
Your head throbs again, sharper this time, and your heartbeat feels wrong in your ears, too loud, too close. You can feel it in your vision, the edges of things tightening slightly as you force yourself to keep looking at him.
“There will be a time, where I will be just a mere back thought. Where you might see something and think of me briefly, but walk past and continuing on with another thought. And that is all I wish for you, especially Jack. To forget me is to honor me.” You push it out steadily, even as your throat tightens around the words.
It sounds final, thankfully– you intend it to. Push them all away, surely it will be for the better. No one to mourn you, no one to carry it further than it needs to go.
Your chest aches at the thought, but you don’t let it show, especially not now; not when you look back up and see him properly. Michael is looking at you like something in him has been pulled wrong; hurt, in a way he doesn’t try to hide fast enough.
“Don’t push me away, please, sweetheart. Not when you need support, not during this… not ever…” You turn at that, but not fully. Your shoulders move first, like your body is negotiating with your mind before you’ve even decided anything. Your eyes squeeze shut as another tear slips out anyway, you don’t wipe it straight away. You don’t trust your hands to be steady enough to pretend it didn’t happen.
Your chest feels tight in a way that has nothing to do with lungs and everything to do with this sudden overbearing pressure. Your heart is still going too fast, uneven, like it’s trying to outrun something it already knows it can’t.
You are afraid to look at him, not because you don’t want to, but because you do.
“Michael, please.. You have to accept this.” Your voice comes out rough, dragged low, like it’s being pulled through something heavy before it reaches him.
He shakes his head immediately, “You aren’t even looking at me. I can’t accept anything when you’re not looking at me.” His voice softens at the end, that makes you turn properly.
It takes effort, more than it should – its scary how much you decline the more tired you get.
When you face him, everything feels worse and better at the same time, which is its own kind of cruelty. Because now he’s there, fully, and there is no version of this where you don’t see him clearly. “If I do treatment, I will be signing myself up for seven– fuck even more than seven– years of loneliness, of peering into others lives and regretting a lack of my own. I thought I would be married by now, atleast three children.” You say it like you’ve rehearsed it, but the cracks show anyway. Mid-sentence, your voice falters, like it’s not convinced you should be saying it out loud.
You shrink after it leaves your mouth. Not on purpose. Just instinct. Like your body is trying to make you smaller so none of it has to stick. Robby watches you change in real time. You can see it on his face; the shift from argument to something lesser; like he wants to step forward but knows he shouldn’t, like that would break something you’re still holding together by force.
“I can’t take another seven years of this, Michael. Of loving but not being loved.” Your throat tightens on the last word. You swallow and it barely helps.
The air feels wrong, too still, too aware; Your vision blurs at the edges again, not fully gone, instead its llike your body can’t decide how much of the world it wants you to keep.
“I’ll love you..” he says, quieter now, and his hand finds your wrist, his touch is gentle, caring; that alone nearly breaks something open in you. You hate how quickly your body reacts to it – The immediate tightening in your chest, the way your breath stutters like it’s forgotten how to keep up with this moment. “You can’t do that, Michael. That would be a wretched thing– for me to allow you to do that.” Your voice shakes slightly, and you feel it immediately, like a flaw exposed too late to fix.
“I love you..” He steps closer again, this time you don’t move away, you look at him properly – really properly.
Your hand lifts before you decide to stop it, and it lands against his cheek, warm, gentle, real. The shape of him is suddenly too clear, too specific, like your mind is forcing you to store details you didn’t ask for; the grey in his beard, the way his lashes sit uneven with tears, the faint tension in his jaw like he’s holding back everything he shouldn’t say.
Your uber pulls up somewhere behind you, shocking you out of your haze – reminding you that life is continuing on around you. “Its too late for that, Mikey..” you whisper, and your smile barely holds its shape. It trembles at the edges, slipping in and out of place. Your thumb moves once under his eye without thought, catching what falls before it can fully leave him.
He goes still under your hand.
You see it then, the way he notices. The way he starts to track you differently, like he’s realizing time is doing something irreversible in front of him. You’re looking at him like you’re memorizing him; and then he’s realizing you already have. He opens his mouth like he’s going to argue – but you’re already stepping back, and you’re gone. Like you were never there to begin with.
where do you think is the men’s favorite place to finish? i need to read your opinion 🫣
(aerion, daeron, maekar, baelor, & lyonel)
and if I said all of them was inside what then??
Maekar. Inside you. That man lives to breed. He wants to see you round with his child all year round.
Daeron. Inside also, but then I think he goes down and eat it out (oops)
Aerion. Tits/chest. He wants you to get pregnant on his terms so he is very specific about where he finishes. He will pull out purposefully to stroke himself over you to cover your chest with a large grin before scooping it up with his fingers and forcing you to clean himself off his hand.
Lyonel. Face. He likes to paint your pretty face with his seed, he swears he always tries to get it in your mouth, but he never does.
Baelor. Stomach. I don’t think he’d want to make a mess and think it would be a practical choice when pulling out
Are you not into Baelor and Maekar anymore? Don’t really like the Pitt and followed because of anotsk!! it’s okay if not just curious!! Much love to you!! 🫶🏼
I am most definitely still into both! But I do like different fandoms as well and hope to start writing again soon, writers block is just kicking my ass lol
