The Pitt | Kids These Days
This fic exists because Robby said "kids these days" in S1 E6, and my brain immediately went, "What if someone at The Pitt spoke exclusively in Gen Z slang?" The answer, apparently, is absolute workplace chaos.
warnings: crack treated seriously, canon-typical medical emergencies, mass casualty event, hospital setting, emergency medicine procedures and injuries, lots of Gen Z slang and internet brainrot, Abbot just wants to be cool, workplace chaos, everyone gets bullied equally, reader is an absolute menace (affectionate), accidental emotional support through comedy, established cast dynamics, no use of reader pronouns, not beta read, I know nothing medical related, I might be wrong with everything medical related
This is a work of fanfiction based on The Pitt. I do not own The Pitt or any related characters or settings; all original material belongs to their respective creators.
The first thing anyone learned about you was that you were brilliant.
Annoyingly brilliant, depending on who was asked.
At twenty years old, you were the kind of medical student who made attendings pause mid-sentence because you had already reached the conclusion they were trying to guide you toward. You remembered obscure presentations, drug interactions, abnormal lab patterns, and the exact difference between “unlikely but possible” and “statistically improbable but still worth ruling out.” You could walk into a room, listen to a patient describe their symptoms for thirty seconds, and somehow ask the one question that made everyone else go still because, irritatingly, impossibly, it was the right one.
The second thing everyone learned about you was that you were a menace.
Not in a dangerous or in an incompetent way. Robby would have kicked you out of his emergency department within the hour if you were either of those things. No, your particular brand of menace came wrapped in big eyes, an innocent expression, and the kind of unhinged Gen Z vocabulary that made half the staff feel like they were being actively aged by exposure.
You had been at the Pitt for less than two months before Santos started calling you “the prodigy gremlin,” which was unfair only because she said it like you weren’t proud of it.
You were very proud of it.
Especially today.
Today, the emergency department was already groaning under the weight of a bad morning when the call came in. A bus had clipped the median on an icy stretch near an overpass and caused a multi-vehicle collision that sprawled across three lanes of traffic. Initial reports were messy, the way they always were in the first few minutes of a disaster. Multiple injuries. Entrapments. Possible ejections. At least one paediatric patient. EMS was still triaging on scene, but they were already warning hospitals in the area to prepare for overflow.
Robby stood at the center of the department as the air changed around him.
It happened quickly, that shift from ordinary chaos into organized crisis. Dana’s voice cut through the noise at the nurses’ station, assigning beds, clearing rooms, moving patients who could be moved and snapping at anyone who looked like they were waiting for permission to be useful. Robby started calling out roles before the first ambulance even arrived, eyes sharp, posture squared, his entire body seeming to settle into the shape of command. Collins moved with grim efficiency. Langdon grabbed a tablet. Mohan started checking available trauma bays. Mel’s expression closed into focus, all soft edges vanishing as she turned toward the work that needed doing. McKay was already tying her hair back, irritation and readiness blending into one sharp line across her face.
Then someone announced that night shift was being held over.
A collective groan rose from somewhere near the nurse station.
Jack appeared with a coffee in hand and the expression of a man who had spiritually clocked out six hours ago and was now being dragged back into the narrative against his will. Ellis followed him, already annoyed, jaw tight, eyes scanning the board like it had personally insulted her. Shen came in a moment later with his usual calm, looking like he had accepted the cruelty of the universe and planned to chart it appropriately.
Brendan, who everyone still called Park the Shark when he was out of earshot and sometimes when he wasn’t, appeared from ortho with a surgical cap still shoved half into his pocket.
“Tell me this isn’t as bad as it sounds,” he said.
Dana looked up from the board. “It’s worse.”
Brendan shut his mouth.
You, standing beside Whitaker with a fresh pair of gloves tucked into your pocket, watched all of them arrive like reinforcements in a war movie and felt something bright and terrible spark in your chest.
A captive audience. A stressed captive audience. A stressed captive audience containing several people over the age of forty.
Perfect.
Whitaker noticed your expression and immediately narrowed his eyes. “Why do you look like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like you just had an idea.”
“I have many ideas.”
“That’s what scares me.”
You gave him your sweetest smile, the one that made Santos once say you looked like a raccoon about to commit tax fraud. “Relax, Dennis.”
“No.”
“Lowkey, you worry too much.”
Whitaker’s face tightened. “See, that. That’s what I mean. I don’t know what percentage of your sentences are threats.”
“Skill issue.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it again, defeated before the day had even properly begun.
The first ambulance arrived three minutes later, and whatever mischief had been gathering behind your eyes vanished so cleanly that anyone who hadn’t known you would never have believed it had been there at all. The bay doors opened, cold air rushed in, and EMS rolled in a teenage girl strapped to a backboard, blood matting the hair near her temple, one leg splinted, oxygen mask fogging with shallow breaths. Robby stepped in at once, voice steady, asking for vitals, mechanism, interventions done en route. You moved when Dana pointed you toward Trauma Two, falling into place beside Mel and Collins as EMS rattled off the report.
“Seventeen-year-old female, restrained passenger, significant intrusion on passenger side, brief loss of consciousness on scene, GCS thirteen, BP ninety-two over sixty, heart rate one-thirty, obvious deformity to right femur, abdominal tenderness, FAST not done, two large-bore IVs established.”
“On my count,” Collins said, and everyone moved together.
One, two, three.
The patient shifted from stretcher to bed, monitors connected, clothes cut away, warm blankets pulled up as much as possible while still allowing access. You stood near the foot of the bed, hands moving before your brain had to command them, helping expose the injured leg, checking pulses, noting the rotation, the shortening, the swelling that already made the skin look too tight. Mel called out vitals. Collins ordered blood. Dana pushed someone toward the warmer. Robby stepped in briefly, eyes sweeping the room.
“What do you have?” he asked.
You answered before anyone else could. “Likely femur fracture with hypotension concerning for haemorrhage, plus abdominal tenderness after high-speed impact. Distal pulse present but weak. We need pelvic binder considered if instability worsens, type and cross, trauma labs, FAST, pain control, ortho consult, and imaging once stable.”
For half a second, Robby’s gaze landed on you.
Then he nodded. “Good. Keep going.”
You did not say anything.
You did not say anything because there was a bleeding teenage girl on the bed and you were, contrary to popular belief, capable of behaving like a normal human being when it mattered.
But when the FAST came back negative, when the blood pressure responded to fluids and the first unit of blood, when Brendan arrived and took one look at the leg before muttering that, yes, obviously ortho was involved now, and when the room settled into the controlled rhythm of a patient who was not okay but was no longer actively trying to die in front of you, you finally let yourself breathe.
Brendan finished assessing the leg, his hands careful despite the irritation permanently stamped onto his face. “We’ll need traction films and then she’s going upstairs. This isn’t staying down here.”
You nodded solemnly. “You ate that.”
The room went quiet in a way that no medical emergency had managed to achieve.
Brendan slowly looked up. “I what?”
“You ate.”
His eyes shifted to Collins, then to Mel, then back to you. “Is that…medical?”
“No.”
“Is it bad?”
“No.”
“Then why did you say it like that?”
“Because you did.”
Mel’s mouth twitched.
Collins turned away with a cough that was very obviously not a cough.
Brendan stared at you for another beat, decided he did not have the time, energy, or spiritual resilience to investigate further, and looked back at the patient’s leg. “I hate this place.”
You leaned slightly toward Mel and whispered, “Park the Shark is giving confused.”
Mel did not look at you. “Please don’t make me laugh in front of the femur fracture.”
“Valid.”
Across the room, Dana saw the entire exchange and made the mistake of smiling.
That made her next.
You waited until the patient was transported to imaging, until the bed was stripped and reset, until Dana swept through the bay with clean efficiency, barking at Whitaker to stop standing in the doorway like a decorative plant and actually restock gloves if he wanted to be helpful. She moved with the kind of terrifying competence that made the entire department bend around her. A family member appeared at the desk demanding information, a monitor started shrieking in Trauma Three, and someone dropped a tray of instruments with a crash that made three people flinch. Dana handled all of it without so much as blinking.
You watched her redirect two nurses, answer a question from Robby, locate a missing portable ultrasound, and scare an intern into moving faster using only one eyebrow.
When she passed you, you pressed a hand to your chest. “Queen behaviour.”
Dana stopped.
Very slowly, she turned her head.
“What?”
“Queen behaviour,” you repeated, reverent.
Dana looked at Robby. “Am I being insulted?”
Robby, who was signing something on a clipboard, did not look up. “Probably.”
“I’m complimenting you,” you said.
Dana’s eyes narrowed. “That makes me trust it less.”
“You slayed the house down.”
Whitaker, who had been restocking gloves exactly as ordered, made a strangled noise.
Dana’s stare sharpened. “I’m sorry, I what?”
You smiled. “Nothing.”
“No, say it again.”
“I value my life.”
“Smart kid.”
“Thank you, queen.”
Dana pointed at you as she backed out of the trauma bay. “Thin ice.”
The second she was gone, Whitaker collapsed against the cabinet, one hand over his mouth. “You’re going to get us killed.”
“Us?”
“I’m associated with you against my will.”
“Bestie, that’s so sad.”
“I am begging you to stop calling me things.”
You patted his arm.
He stared at the ceiling. “I’m not built for this.”
By the time the third and fourth ambulances arrived, the department had tipped fully into disaster mode. The noise became a living thing, pressing against the walls, filling every corner with alarms, voices, wheels, footsteps, orders, pain. Patients came in waves: a middle-aged man with chest trauma from the steering wheel; an older woman with a scalp laceration that bled dramatically but blessedly less dangerously than it looked; a child with a fractured wrist and eyes too wide for his face; a driver with glass embedded along one cheek and a blood pressure that made everyone in the room stand straighter.
You were assigned where you were needed, which meant everywhere.
One minute you were helping Santos keep pressure on a wound while Robby placed a chest tube, the next you were pulling up medication dosing for Javadi, then running labs, then helping Mateo move a patient, then answering a question from McKay before she had finished asking it.
You were good.
Infuriatingly good.
Even Parker Ellis, who looked as though compliments physically pained her, seemed forced to acknowledge it when you correctly flagged a possible compartment syndrome developing in a patient whose forearm had been crushed between two vehicles.
Parker swept in with Brendan, irritation sharpening into focus as she assessed the limb. The patient was pale, sweating, trying not to cry as his arm swelled against the splint. You gave the history cleanly, noting pain out of proportion, increasing paraesthesia, tense compartments, and preserved but concerning pulses. Brendan’s face changed immediately. Parker’s did too.
“Good catch,” Parker said, briskly, already reaching for the next step.
You blinked at her.
Parker made the mistake of noticing. “What?”
“I’m processing.”
“Process faster.”
“You complimented me.”
“I acknowledged a clinical observation.”
“Mother is mothering.”
Parker froze.
Brendan, beside her, closed his eyes like he had just developed a migraine behind both temples.
Parker turned to you, slowly. “Do not call me that.”
“Understood.”
“Do not explain it either.”
“Wasn’t going to.”
“Good.”
“You lowkey ate, though.”
Parker inhaled through her nose.
Brendan muttered, “I don’t know what that means, but I feel attacked on your behalf.”
“You should,” Parker said.
You grinned.
Parker pointed a gloved finger at you. “No.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“You can’t prove that.”
“I don’t need proof. I have instincts.”
“Your instincts are giving paranoia.”
Parker stared at you for one long, dangerous second before turning back to the patient. “I want them off my service.”
“I’m not on your service.”
“Then I want them farther away from me spiritually.”
From the doorway, Ahmed the security guard leaned in just enough to observe the aftermath. He had been posted near the ambulance entrance since the first combative patient of the morning tried to swing at Mateo, but he had somehow managed to appear wherever the funniest thing was happening, which told you that security work had given him either incredible situational awareness or a deep appreciation for workplace chaos.
Possibly both.
He looked at Parker’s expression, then at your delighted one, then at Whitaker absolutely failing to pretend he had not been listening from the hall.
Ahmed’s eyes narrowed with interest.
Fifteen minutes later, during the first true lull anyone had seen since the mass casualty began, you found him near the security desk with a folded piece of paper and a pen.
Whitaker stood in front of him.
“So ten on Robby?” Ahmed asked.
Whitaker nodded gravely. “He’s already halfway there.”
Ahmed wrote it down.
You stopped walking.
Whitaker stiffened.
Ahmed did not.
“What is this?” you asked.
“Nothing,” Whitaker said too quickly.
Ahmed looked up at you calmly. “Morale initiative.”
Your eyes dropped to the paper.
There were names.
Robby. Dana. Ellis. Brendan. Jack. Shen. McKay.
Beside each name were dollar amounts.
You gasped.
“Is this a betting pool?”
“No,” Whitaker said.
“Yes,” Ahmed said at the same time.
Whitaker turned to him. “Dude.”
Ahmed shrugged. “She was going to find out.”
You stepped closer, delighted beyond measure. “A betting pool for what?”
Ahmed clicked his pen. “Who breaks first.”
You pressed both hands to your chest. “Because of me?”
“Mostly.”
“I’ve never been so honored.”
Whitaker looked deeply regretful. “This is going to make you worse.”
“Oh, absolutely.”
Ahmed studied you for a moment, then added something to the paper.
You tried to look. “What did you write?”
“Side bet.”
“On?”
“Whether you get all of them before end of shift.”
Your grin spread slowly.
Whitaker groaned. “Ahmed, why would you give them a goal?”
Ahmed capped his pen. “Because I believe in excellence.”
“You believe in chaos.”
“That too.”
Before you could respond, Dana’s voice cracked across the department with terrifying precision. “Y/N! Trauma Two!”
You spun on your heel. “Coming, queen!”
“Thin ice!”
“Love you too!”
Whitaker looked at Ahmed. “We’re doomed.”
Ahmed looked down at his paper. “No. We’re invested.”
By early afternoon, the hospital had settled into the long, gruelling rhythm that followed the first violent impact of disaster. The initial wave was over, but consequences kept arriving. Patients who had seemed stable on scene started to decline. Imaging revealed worse injuries than expected. Families arrived panicked and demanding answers no one fully had yet. The operating rooms filled. Ortho kept getting called. Surgery moved in and out of the department like storm clouds. Everyone looked a little more tired, a little sharper around the edges.
Abbot appeared beside you at the nurse station while you were charting, his coffee replaced by another coffee, because apparently his bloodstream had given up and simply become caffeine.
“You’re causing trouble,” he said.
You kept typing. “Allegedly.”
“I respect it.”
That made you pause. You looked up slowly. “You do?”
Abbot leaned against the counter with the casual confidence of a man who had decided, very incorrectly, that he understood the assignment. “I’m not like Robby. I know things.”
You stared at him. He nodded once, as if confirming this to himself. “I’m cool with the kids.”
From the other side of the station, McKay looked up from her charting with immediate interest.
“Oh?” you said.
Abbot smiled. “Yes.”
“Define ‘rizz.’”
His smile faltered for half a second before recovering. “Charisma.”
You blinked. Unfortunately, he was correct.
McKay’s eyebrows lifted.
Abbot looked smug. “See?”
“Okay,” you said slowly. “Define ‘ate.’”
“Performed well.”
Your mouth dropped open.
Abbot pointed at you. “I told you.”
McKay leaned back in her chair. “I don’t like this. He’s adapting.”
Abbot took a sip of coffee, visibly pleased with himself. “I contain multitudes.”
You narrowed your eyes. “Define ‘Ohio.’”
Abbot stopped. The silence stretched. McKay’s grin grew. Abbot set his coffee down with great care. “That’s a state.”
“Yes.”
“But not in this context.”
“Correct.”
His eyes narrowed. “Bad?”
“Sometimes.”
“Embarrassing?”
“Sometimes.”
“Cursed?”
“Getting warmer.”
He looked genuinely invested now, the mass casualty temporarily forgotten in the face of a linguistic puzzle he had absolutely no business trying to solve. “So if I said Robby was being Ohio—”
From behind you, Robby’s voice cut in. “Don’t.”
All three of you turned. Robby stood there with a chart in hand, exhaustion settling into the lines of his face, his glasses slightly crooked, his expression caught somewhere between suspicion and resignation.
Abbot straightened. “We’re discussing language.”
“You’re discussing nonsense.”
“It’s actually quite nuanced.”
You nodded solemnly. “Dr. Abbot is lowkey cooking.”
Abbot pointed at you. “That’s good.”
You beamed. “That is good.”
“I knew that.”
Robby looked between the two of you. “Why are you encouraging him?”
“Because he’s cool with the kids.”
Abbot looked deeply satisfied.
McKay muttered, “God help us.”
Robby stared at Abbot for a long moment, then at you. “Both of you back to work.”
“Yes, king,” you said automatically.
Robby closed his eyes. Abbot’s shoulders started shaking. McKay turned fully away from her computer, delighted.
Robby opened his eyes again. “Do not call me that.”
“Understood.”
“Do you understand?”
“Highkey.”
He stared at you.
You stared back, angelic.
Robby looked at Abbot. “Translate.”
Abbot, glowing with the confidence of two correct definitions and one catastrophic failure, said, “It means very.” Robby looked betrayed that this was a real answer.
You clapped once. “He ate!”
Abbot lifted both hands. “I’m telling you, I know things.”
Robby rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I have patients actively trying to die, and somehow this is still the thing giving me a headache.”
“Skill issue,” McKay said under her breath.
The three of you went silent. You turned to her slowly. McKay’s face changed as she realized what had just left her mouth.
“Oh no,” she said.
You pointed at her. “YOU’VE BEEN INFECTED.”
“I have not.”
“You said skill issue.”
“I said it medically.”
“That’s not a thing.”
“It is now.”
Abbot looked thrilled. “Welcome.”
McKay glared at you. “I hate all of you.”
Before anyone could respond, another overhead page called Robby back toward Trauma One, and the moment snapped back into motion. The department swallowed everyone again: Robby to a decompensating patient, McKay to a shoulder reduction, Abbot to a confused older man with chest pain, and you to wherever Dana pointed next.
But the damage had been done. The language had spread. And you had witnesses.
Ahmed caught your eye from across the department and silently lifted his betting sheet. You gave him a thumbs-up. He shook his head, but he was smiling.
By the time you reached Trauma One, Robby was already elbow-deep in the kind of controlled chaos that made everyone around him move faster. The patient was a man in his forties who had initially seemed stable after the crash and then suddenly wasn’t. His pressure was dropping. Breath sounds were diminished on one side. The room smelled like antiseptic, blood, sweat, and the metallic bite of adrenaline. Robby called for a chest tube with that rough, steady authority that made even panic organize itself around him.
You stood ready when Dana shoved supplies into your hands. Santos watched from the far side of the bed, eyes wide but focused. Mateo assisted with positioning. Robby worked quickly, cleaning the site, draping, anesthetizing, cutting through skin and tissue with practiced precision. He moved like someone who had done this too many times to be impressed by it, fingers sure as he dissected down and pushed through the pleura. Air rushed. Blood followed. The tube slid in, connected, secured. The patient’s oxygen saturation began to climb.
For a moment, the room exhaled.
Robby pulled off his bloody gloves and looked at the monitor. “That bought us time. Get surgery down here now.”
Dana was already moving. “On it.”
You watched the numbers stabilize, watched the team reset around the patient, watched Robby’s shoulders lower by a fraction.
And because you had been very good for almost twenty whole minutes, you smiled.
“Respectfully,” you said, “you devoured that chest tube, king.”
The silence was immediate.
Robby turned his head very slowly.
Santos looked at the floor. Mateo looked at the ceiling. Dana, halfway to the door, stopped dead.
Robby stared at you with the expression of a man who had just been forced to process a second emergency against his will. “I did what.”
“You devoured.”
His eyes narrowed. “The chest tube?”
“Metaphorically.”
Dana made a sound that might have been a cough if she had ever been less committed to lying.
Robby looked at her. “Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking something.”
“I think a lot of things.”
He looked back at you. “Is that supposed to be good?”
“So good.”
“No cap,” Mateo added, and immediately looked like he regretted every choice that had led him to this moment.
You whipped around. “MATEO.”
He pointed at you. “No. Don’t make it weird.”
“You’re learning.”
“I’m surviving.”
Dana finally lost the battle and laughed, one sharp burst before she walked out of the room shaking her head.
Robby stared at the doorway she had escaped through, then at Mateo, then at you. His face shifted through exhaustion, confusion, irritation, and something dangerously close to amusement before settling back into command by sheer force of will.
He shook his head once.
Quietly, almost to himself, he muttered, “Kids these days.”
Your entire body went still.
Santos’s eyes widened.
Mateo whispered, “Oh no.”
You pointed at Robby with both hands, triumphant. “HE SAID THE THING.”
Robby looked immediately regretful. “What thing?”
“THE THING.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“YOU SAID THE LINE.”
“I say a lot of lines.”
“Iconic behaviour.”
“Stop.”
“Never.”
From the hallway, Whitaker appeared at the doorway like he had sensed comedy through the walls. “Did he say it?”
You spun toward him. “HE SAID IT.”
Whitaker doubled over.
Robby’s eyes closed.
Somewhere behind you, Ahmed’s pen clicked.
And even though there were still patients waiting, charts unfinished, families crying, surgeons being paged, and half the hospital running on fumes, laughter rippled briefly through the trauma bay like a pressure valve releasing steam.
Robby opened his eyes, looked at the ridiculous collection of people around him, and sighed with the bone-deep exhaustion of a man who knew he had lost control of something far less medically significant and far more spiritually damaging than a mass casualty event.
“Back to work,” he said.
“Yes, king,” you replied.
Dana’s laughter echoed from the hall.
Robby pointed at you without turning around. “Thin ice.”
You smiled sweetly.
Behind the security desk, Ahmed added another mark to his betting sheet.
