"is that your final lesson to these kids?"
is what's gonna make him stay. btw. you can see it on his face. that was the thing to say. Robby doesn't care about himself. although he's been very shit at showing it this shift, he does care about others. these are his people. this is his department. this hospital contains the "best things he's ever done."
he wants to leave it better than he found it, he wants his students to do better than him. but the implication of this being his "final lesson" is gutting. and that did get to him. oh, it pierced straight through. he's grappling with how tortuous it is to live in his mind and how badly he does not want to fail his students yet again, how deeply he cares about them. fuuuuckkkkk
Do you think the thing that really got to Robby was the memory of his own mentor’s death? I mean he literally never worked Dr. Adamson’s death date until last season/year and the first time he does PittFest happens, Leah dies, and Langdon’s addiction is revealed. Robby get flashbacks of the hell of COVID and of losing Adamson— I bet he thinks of the final lesson Adamson gave him alllll the time, but he knows Adamson didn’t have a choice or know it was his last lesson…
But Robby has a choice.
He hasn’t even had a full year with the new medical students / residents, and yet he has memories and jokes of/with them. He is barely just really making connections with them, learning about them. Like he JUST handed Whitaker his official Doctor’s badge— he helped shape Whitaker into the Doctor he is today and is becoming (as we clearly see in how he repeats what Robby has said to him to Ogilvie and Joy). We see Langdon perform a procedure on his first day back that even Robby has never done before. Robby HIMSELF is still learning, as we saw Dr. Al-Hashimi perform a procedure he’s never heard of.
There is still so much for Robby to teach and learn and do. There are still so many lessons he has yet to give.
And I feel like the driving force to keep living for Robby is remembering just how much pain Dr. Adamson’s death caused him. He views his death as his fault, a guilt that consumes him. And I think he knows his own staff will do the same, viewing his suicide as something they could’ve stopped. He doesn’t want them to carry that guilt— he just wants them to be better than he is.
His work isn’t done.
He’s not ready to give his final lesson—
not yet, at least.
