Rabbotfest - Day 4: Stubbornly injured and protectively exhausted
Robby knows the second he walks into the ED that Jack’s leg is bothering him.
His gait is unbalanced, and his face screws nastily when he lands on his foot wrong. Everyone else has likely written it off as building irritation from the past twelve hours, but Robby knows better. Not ever Jack’s beaming face can hide it from him.
“Hey, Mikey,” Jack says when he spots him. “What’re you doing here?”
“Woke up unfortunately early for my day off. Decided to walk here, thought maybe we could get breakfast after you hand off.”
“That sounds great. Let me—“
“Oh, no,” Robby shakes his head. “We’re going home.”
“Wha—“ Jack throws his hands out, mock-offended. “You can’t tease me with a date, then say it’s not happening.”
“If you took proper care of your leg, this wouldn’t be an issue.”
Jack’s smile flattens into an unimpressed line. “We’ve been over this. I have to wear it at work. Crutches and the chair take up too much space for what we’re dealing with.”
“Sure, but you don’t just wear the leg to work—“
“Work outs are easier when—“
“And that’d be fine, but you’re already wearing it more than you should just by being on shift. Something's got to give. You can’t be on it for 14 hours a day, every day.” Robby snatches Jack’s bag from under the desk and digs around for his keys.
“It’s not that bad.”
“Hm.”
“It’s been worse.”
“Oh,” Robby laughs. He swings the key ring around one finger. “I’ll keep that excuse in mind the next time you’re worried about me.”
Jack huffs. “Let me do the hand off,” he grumbles.
His leg must be bothering him worse than Robby thought, because on their way to the parking lot, he hooks their elbows together and gives too much of his weight to Robby to hold for it to be strictly romantic. He doesn’t even refuse help getting into the passenger seat.
The desire to tell Jack to take the prosthetic off while they're in the truck itches at Robby's chest, but he keeps his mouth shut. Jack is being shockingly receptive to help, and the last thing Robby needs is for him to get defensive again.
He offers a hand to help Jack out of the car, but doesn't make a fuss when it's ignored, no matter how much he'd like to. "How do you feel about a bath?"
That perks him up a little. "With you?"
It'll be a tight fit, but Robby has had to squeeze into worse places. Better to be cuddled close with his husband than bumping shoulders with another doctor every five seconds while they rush around a new trauma. "Sure."
Immediately, Jack picks up the pace.
"Slow down," Robby calls after him.
Jack waves him off and manages to get up the stairs to their front door in record time. Robby grimaces at the extra pressure that must have put on his knee. "Come on. Open the door."
"You need to relax."
"I'm fine."
He's not fine. His residual limb is rubbed raw, with a large, ugly pink mark near his scar. "Christ, Jack."
"It's not a big deal."
"It looks like road rash."
"Well, it's not." Jack bites. “I don’t need you to baby me.”
“I’m not babying you—“
Jack leans from his spot on the closed toilet and starts up the bath water. The echo from the walls of their guest bathroom hides Robby’s sigh. He taps his fingers on the counter and excuses himself to get towels.
Robby buries his face in the soft cotton. He wants to be frustrated with Jack; he is, but he knows he shouldn’t be because he’s just as much of an ass when Jack’s the one with concerns.
On his way back to the bathroom, Robby’s eye catches a photo mounted on the wall. Framed in a handsome mahogany is Jack signing their marriage license. Robby is sitting at his side, smiling brighter than the sun, his name already stamped proudly on the paper. He traces his finger over Jack’s frozen figure; his precious curls had only just begun to grey at his temples, the stress of the past 45 years finally catching up with him.
When Robby returns to the bathroom, Jack is already sitting in the bath, looking lonely.
“Can I still join?”
Jack splashes the water in front of him. “I’m never gonna complain about having you in my lap.”
Once Robby is stripped and settled against Jack’s chest, he lets the rhythmic pattern of his husband’s breath calm him.
“I don’t ever mean to imply that you can’t handle yourself,” Robby says. “But I can see when you’re hurting, and I hate it.”
Jack kisses his temple. “I know, but I don’t know how to fix it. Not wearing it isn’t an option most of the time.”
“I get that,” Robby whispers. Jack adjusts under him, and the raw flesh under his knee lands on Robby’s thigh. He pets around it delicately. “But I’d still like to see you hurting less.”
Jack takes in a deep breath and latches his right arm across Robby’s chest, resting his hand above Robby’s tattoo. Robby takes the opportunity to bury his nose in the crook of Jack’s elbow, letting his cheeks be smushed by his muscles. He loves being close like this; he wishes they could do it more frequently and under more pleasant circumstances.
“I’ll talk to my doctor about getting a new one,” Jack offers. “This one’s going on four years, and I abuse the hell out of it.”
Robby’s soft chuckle vibrates through his bicep.
Jack continues, “Maybe one of those fancy cooling liners.”
“That’d be nice.”
“Being able to go out to breakfast would be nice.”
Robby tilts his head and presses a quick kiss to Jack’s chin. “Take a nap, and maybe I’ll treat you to lunch.”
Jack relaxes back against the porcelain. “Wake me up if I start to drown.”
rabbotfest day 4 - stubbornly injured & protectively exhausted
tw: canon-typical medical procedures, author is NOT a doctor
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
It's one of those days.
Robby walks in to three callouts - Dennis and two nurses, Kim and Avanti - and a notice that Presby was taking limited traumas for some reason. Dana didn't know, and he believed she'd harassed everyone she could to get that much.
One of their early traumas, barely 0700, consisted of a man covered in an industrial glue. The dispenser pierced his chest, caused a pneumothorax, and took them twenty minutes to get him stabilized enough to go upstairs. The fucking glue covered Trauma Three and no solvent they had on hand could dissolve it. Princess has been stuck on the phone since then with the company to get the type of glue but they've been stonewalling her - proprietary information or some bullshit.
Frank pulled him aside to warn that Mel was in rough shape today, teetering on a meltdown and if it kicked off, they'd both be out for however long that required. Officially, nothing was happening between them, but when Robby raised his eyebrows, Frank had the grace to blush.
So, he's down one - potentially three - doctors and two nurses and a trauma room with extra patients. Must be Thursday.
The one bright light strolled into the ED around 1200, shades low, camo bag hanging loosely off one shoulder. Jack's smirk stretches across his face insufferably.
Robby pulls him into a hug and Jack gives him a loud obnoxious kiss to the side of his head.
"You look like shit brother." He raises his voice pointedly. "Dana get feisty with you today?"
"Tryna start something already, Abbot?" Dana says behind the counter, zeroing in on him over the rim of her glasses. Jack lifts his hands in surrender.
"No, ma'am." But the grin he tosses to Robby indicates that he will, in fact, continue to be a shit for the rest of the day. It's the gentle annoyance that will give Dana something to pick at while she's keeping the ED from burning down, a mild irritant always preferable to something more dire.
The refresh from Jack clocking in seems to spread through the department. Trinity and Samira both clear a few rooms within the hour, a fist bump exchanged between them every time they passed each other. A small piece of Robby thought of how men at his first hospital would compete with things like room clearings, most number of stitches, weirdest item removed from a body cavity. Turning patients into sport roiled in his gut and he hadn't been able to speak up back then.
But that couldn't be the case here - his recent group had taken an extra scoop of empathy and suffered on the regular for it. No, he imagines that the ladies are merely being efficient, the tension of the day seeping in. He gives Samira a thumbs up the next time he sees her, earning himself one of her kind smiles.
Frank's kept Mel right next to him, and they've been bouncing between traumas, emergent cases kicked back from triage, and whatever's happening in Central 12 (turns out to be two young boys teaching Mel the rules of some game that requires a lot of concentration and a ball on a string).
He busies himself swanning between his residents and the RNs absolutely crushing triage. McKay stops him for a consult on a toddler that they agree to send up to ortho. The next time he catches Jack, the man's in Trauma Three, animatedly speaking with Esme, scrubs top already changed from the dark gray one he came in with to the backup black. He raises his brows and gestures toward the shirt. Jack rolls his eyes.
"- with vinegar. Let me know if it doesn't work. I gotta go to the principal's office." He squeezes Esme's arm and she pats his shoulder. Then he's next to Robby, expression serious even if his eyes dance. "What's it gonna be? Detention the rest of the week? Or are you the kind of old school guy who gives out spankings?"
Robby does not respond to that. "You have an accident?"
Jack looks down, shrugs. "Me and Mohan were draining an abscess that'd compromised the femoral. Took one for a colleague, doc."
"The patient?"
"Mohan got it under control pretty quick. She's good."
"Yeah," Robby says, crossing out the urgent he's scrawled next to Samira in his mental list. "She really is. Anything else I should know about?"
Jack swings into the nurses' station and scrolls through the whiteboard, picking up another two rooms. He leans back and squints to read the screen, even though Robby knows he has his glasses in his shirt pocket. "Yeah. Oil 'll get up that shit in Three. Hopefully we can get it operational in ten? Twenty?"
Robby does not say 'what would I do without you' but Jack still hears in it the relieved sigh, winking as he brushes past Robby to South 1. Dana flicks her fingers between her eyes and Jack, grinning all the while. She picks up the ringing phone.
"Incoming, ETA six minutes. Bar fight, three with stab wounds, one unconscious on scene, another crashed in the ambo."
"What's open?"
"One and Four."
"Let's hope one of these guys is stable," Robby mutters. Jack slaps his shoulder. "Langdon, King - take the unconscious on scene. Mohan, with me on the crash and Jack -"
"I'll grab Santos on the 'fingers-crossed-it's-minor."
The team breaks apart in even splits and the ambos arrive in quick succession. Frank and Mel grab the unconscious guy who is still out. A distant part of Robby notices that Mel's hair is braided differently than normal and her eyes are tight at the edges, but she's working without hesitation. Jack and Santos' guy is strapped down in the gurney but talking, drunkenly slurring insults and Jack lets Santos lead while he scrunches his nose up at Robby.
Mohan's on the crash with McKay swinging in where she'd been heading back to Central. Robby stands back to let them work. The guy is stabbed in the way he usually sees from prisons, lots of small punctures in a tight grouping. Blood is seeping out on the sheets from somewhere, and when they all turn him, there's a three-inch laceration to the kidney that has Samira pushing her sweaty hair back from her head and issuing orders to McKay, Jesse, and Emma.
The patient has good tidal sounds, lungs probably fine, but heart rate is vacillating as hands fly trying to stop that kidney wound from bleeding out everywhere. Robby opens his mouth to say something about the look of the EKG when the patient slips into V-Fib.
Samira shocks the guy and gets him back, but the monitor beeps again, an ominous knell.
"What's the depth of those lacerations, Dr. Mohan?"
She glances at him quickly, mouth set in a firm frown, then back at the patient. "EMT said the recovered blade was only an inch and a half, it shouldn't - okay. Okay."
The patient's still shaky, and he's not sure the guy'll make it, especially if those punctures got to the heart, but he pushes through the doors to Four, where Frank and Mel dance around each other in that rhythm he sees with people who've worked together for years. One of them will give half and order and the other is already in the middle of it. He can't help but smile. He knows that when he works with Jack they get like this and people are as annoyed as they are impressed.
"What we got?"
Mel rattles off symptoms: several superficial stab wounds, one laceration to the duodenum that's barely intact, which would be their main concern if the guy's blood pressure wasn't 183/120 and -
Garcia pops in at that moment to get the same explanation and confirm that the guy's intracranial pressure is going to blow his lid if they don't do an emergency craniotomy. Graciously, Garcia walks Mel through it, hovering behind her and smirking at Frank.
Good to see not much has changed.
Garcia will take the guy up as soon as they stabilize that perforation.
Robby dips out the double doors to head back to One - having to bypass Three where he can see Gertie from Esme's team rolling up the industrial glue in large sheets thank God - only for a yell to catch his attention. He diverts, almost a run to the partitioned area where Jack and Santos are working on 'no really it's minor' guy.
A spray of blood arcs across the striped curtain. His heart stutters.
Jack sweeps around in a move that puts him behind the patient, who is standing with a glint of silver in his hand. In a quick fluid move, Jack comes up under the man's arm and flips him over, slamming them both into the ground. The knife skitters across the floor, crimson. The crack of the man's head seems to echo in the ED; silence settles.
"Santos, get the pulse ox. Princess, we need restraints." Jack has his knees pinning the guy's arms to the floor. Blood drips out of the wound on his forearm.
"Jack, get up. I got it," Robby says, voice even. Jack huffs a laugh.
"If it's all the same to you -"
"It's not. Dr. Abbot, get up."
Jack doesn't look at him, pausing long enough that Robby thinks he's going to have to make it an issue. But Ahmed arrives with Clive in tow. Between the three of them and the guy still drunk and dazed from the fall, they wrestle him back into the bed. Robby secures the man to the metal rails. Trinity holds Jack's arm, grimacing.
"You're gonna need stitches."
"I'll do it later. Get me some surgical glue and butterflies and I'll make it work."
Robby takes a deep breath and releases it slowly. Most of the ED knows Jack as the casual guy, intense and a little wild, eager to do something new and exciting, but mostly laidback and thoughtful. They don't get to see the stubborn Jack and Robby learned to combat years ago. "Dr. Abbot, let Dr. Santos stitch you up."
Jack's eyes flicker to him askance, sly and glittering, dangerous. "We got the time to take out an attending and a resident?"
"We're making the time. Dr. Santos?"
"Oooookay," Trinity says, hands still wrapped around the gauze on Jack's arm. "I'm quick at it."
A loud beeping from Trauma One interrupts Jack's response. Dana's voice comes over the speaker.
"Incoming, ETA five minutes. MVA, critical abdominal injury, three stable."
Robby allows himself a moment to squeeze his eyes shut. He mutters under his breath "sus met" and yanks surgical glue out of the cabinet beneath the console to shove at Jack. When his fingers wrap around it, Robby holds on until their eyes meet. "As soon as you can."
"Yes, boss," Jack says, and it's more sincere than Robby expected.
They work through the MVA, Robby keeping a close eye on Jack even as he goes from room to room, checking in with Dana to make sure their med students are keeping a steady pace of clearing out rooms. It's chaos, madness like the ED always is, the one mistress he can rely on to subvert his expectations at every turn.
Gertie finally gets Trauma Three open. Robby has Trinity working with Frank, Mel keeping the balance with a little bit of a sharp, authoritative tone that he has never heard from her. Whenever he nods at her in approval, she beams, and hopefully they can stave off that meltdown at least until Shen and Ellis arrive. He has to leave when Trinity and Frank do everything Mel tells them, slightly bewildered in the face of her confidence.
McKay has Four in hand, collaborating with Garcia to get the woman with a barely closed chest upstairs. Garcia doesn't get along with the chief resident in surgery right now, and he might be able to pull some strings if she needs it. He couldn't get anything finished in the ED without her aggressive competency.
He barely glances into One, Jack and Samira both wrist-deep in a guy's stomach. The extra long nitrile glove over Jack's wound makes it look like he's a vet about to deliver a calf. Robby turns to go back to McKay when he notices something red out of the corner of his eye. The trauma bays are always covered in red, blood and offal splattered everywhere on a good day, and more dire with the mess they have right now. But Jack's back is to him, and Robby catches red seeping into his sock, the top of his gray shoes.
Fuck.
McKay gives him the okay to leave her. He ducks into One and Samira runs down the patient. Mostly stabilized, waiting for a call from upstairs. Jack pulls out of the body and peels off his gloves, praising Samira and critiquing her procedure in the considerate but blunt way that he has.
"Dr. Mohan, I expect Dr. Shen to be here in no more than ten minutes. Can you handle the ED until then? I'll have my phone if you need me."
Samira's eyes widen, and they - rightfully so - dart over to Jack before returning. "Of course. Is… everything okay?"
"Yes, thank you." He jerks his head toward the doors for Jack. "Mel - Dr. King might duck out. She's fine, but don't let Langdon leave for more than a few minutes."
"Yes, okay." She opens her mouth, and then decides against it. Garcia pushes through the doors.
Robby grabs a suture kit on his way to North 2, empty with a door that shuts. If Jack isn't following behind him, he might scream.
But Jack is following, dutifully and neutrally, blank face with a casual walk. Robby sets down the kit, washes his hands, and then begins to set up his station. "Take off your shirt."
The slight laugh from Jack is still casual. "Shit man, we're at work? I think the kids are right around the corner? But if you insist. Hey, do you think we could put it on OnlyFans and make some money?"
Robby grips the needle so hard it pops out of his hand, clattering to the tray. Jack has not removed his shirt. There's even a visible patch now, hard to tell with the black scrubs, but sticking to his skin near his beltline, just around the side. Almost imperceptible. He tries to keep his voice level.
"Shut up and strip. I know you got stabbed."
"Who, me?" Jack asks, teeth more bared than smiling.
"You want me to remove it?" he bites out.
Jack purses his lips. "Pretty sure that's an HR violation."
"Jack -" exasperated, almost pleading.
Hands raised, hip cocked out, Jack shrugs. "Maybe I got swiped. You think I can't aim a stab? Know where I can get hit and still work?"
Robby's around the stand with the kit before he realizes, close enough that he's looming, the height difference with Jack always surprising when he remembers, and now - for once - used in his favor. He leans down. "I think you can do exactly that, and that's the problem. Don't make me ask again."
The grin this time is a little more playful, a little more feral. "You're so hot when you're bossy."
Robby scoffs. "Then you must always find me hot because I'm always bossy."
"Maybe I do." Jack holds his gaze for a long moment, the smile dimming. It's a precipice and Robby has an ED that is currently struggling to stay afloat with people out sick and a hospital sending them extras.
"Please." Jack doesn't react, but he doesn't resist when Robby tugs the shirt over his head, and he can't fully hide the grimace when it pulls at the injury at his side. Robby crouches to examine it. Blood still trickles sluggishly from it, almost completely coagulated. He palpitates around the area, and even though Jack makes a soft noise, there's no hematoma or rigidity.
Unfortunately, Jack is right: he knows how to take a stab. He avoided his kidneys and neutralized the attacker, shit he was trained to do, and protected Trinity. Robby leans his head against the warm skin of Jack's ribs, the fine hairs of his obliques rising when a gusty sigh washes over them.
Jack combs his fingers through Robby's hair. "Diagnosis?"
"You've been fucking stabbed. But you'll be fine."
As Jack hums quietly, Robby reaches for the iodine; his hands are shaking. He clenches his fingers into fists, tight enough his knuckles go white, then releases them. After a few more moments, the shaking is lessened enough that he doesn't knock over the iodine. He swabs the stab wound and the forearm laceration.
"Hey," Jack says softly. He cups his palms around Robby's jaw, bringing their faces together, thumb rubbing against the line of his beard. "I know how to handle my shit. I'm sorry it scared you."
"I -" that's it,isn't it? Jack's a talker, persuasive and handsome, the sort of sarcastic that flew over a person's head or invited them into the joke. Although Robby knew he'd been trained in the Army, that he was in an active combat zone, he never had to witness Jack in any sort of fights. Even when there'd been altercations in the ED, Jack's techniques were for neutralization, never going farther than pinned arms, twisted wrists.
When Robby kisses him, it's not really anything, an assurance that his friend is present, that his friend is alive.When Jack surges forward, kisses him harder, hands hot around his throat, Robby doesn't expect it. He doesn't expect it, and surprises himself when Jack's tongue touches his and he moans. Their bodies collide and a shiver works its way through one of them. Their mouths part and a thread of saliva follows, breaks, the cold air of the AC a chill upon his wet lips.
Jack swallows, visibly gathers himself. "We're probably gonna have to talk about that, but we broke the clot - I'm bleeding again."
"Fuck." Robby rubs his mouth against his wrist and shakes his hand out until he can reach for the iodine with relative steadiness.
