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In her five years of working at the emergency department, Heather Collins has never been to the roof. But now, ten hours into her a twelve-hour night shift, with the cries of a grieving mother ringing through her ears, she’s desperate to watch the sun rise. She pictures the clouds, tinged with pink and gold, only to remember seeing those same colors in Trauma 2 earlier.
Lily Jackson. Five years old. Car accident, drunk driver, head trauma, massive internal hemorrhage. Picked up from a sleepover by Dad, too afraid to spend the night. Dressed as a ballerina. Pink ribbons in her hair. Gold sparkly tutu.
The details run through Heather’s mind on a cruel loop. She rubs the skin between her brows, trying to chase them away. It’s fruitless, of course. They have started to manifest as a piercing ache in her skull. More pain. Everything hurts. Cowering behind her desk, she pops some Advil and downs it in cold coffee, even though it’s not advisable, even though she knows it’s a short-term fix to a long-term problem. Physician, heal thyself.
An image appears in her mind: Robby hunching his shoulders as if to deflect the bullet from her lips, his hands buried in his pockets, so capable yet so ashamed. Her heart clenches. Ever considered taking that advice?
She’s trying. Therapy is expensive, but cheaper than IVF. Cheaper than loss, grief, loss, grief, loss, grief. A young psychiatrist, Dr. Olive Banks, is guiding her toward acceptance. After five sessions of narrative therapy, she’s starting to feel afraid, like she’s roaming a labyrinth she’ll never escape. The urge to acquire a flamethrower and blaze through the whole thing is overwhelming. The last time, she asked Banks what she’s supposed to do about the pain when talking is too much or not enough.
Banks told her to reach out. Find someone who sees her. Don’t hide, Heather. Never hide. Don’t run. Never run.
Pushing herself out of her chair, Heather spots Ellis in Room 15, examining a man who is recovering from severe hypoglycemia. His wife injected him with glucagon before the ambulance arrived, but it wasn’t enough, and he started seizing. He’s alert now, which is a good thing. A good thing. She’ll cling to it, though that’s not advisable either.
Don’t hide, Heather. Steeling herself, she starts toward the room. She’s only a few steps away when the double doors toward the ambulance bay burst open. Fleetingly, she locks eyes with Adrian, the night shift charge nurse, but he looks just as bamboozled as she is. No one called this in? What the hell? Used to the chaos, Heather rushes toward the entrance, knowing it’s her duty to be prepared for whatever comes her way.
But nothing could’ve prepared her for this.
Robby is trembling and shockingly pale, his eyes darting around the room in a frenzied fashion. The right sleeve of his hoodie is soaked through with blood. Jake is holding his left arm, keeping him moving. When he sees Heather, the boy croaks, “I—I found him like this.”
Fear shoots through Heather’s veins. In med school, her teachers told her she’d make a great emergency care doctor because her impulse was to run toward danger, not away from it. This doesn’t mean that she never experiences the classic panic-induced paralysis. She feels it now, acutely, making her breath shudder.
Robby… She’s seen him sick, she’s seen him sobbing, she’s seen him sleeping. She’s never seen him bloodied. It makes her falter for a moment. In that time, three nurses swarm him; the door to Room 15 opens; Ellis appears and clocks Robby, then her.
“Yours?”
“Mine,” Heather hears herself say, surprised at the power behind the word. It’s a thing she can’t dwell on, but it spins her into action.
In a flash, she’s standing in front of him, demanding, “What happened?”
He doesn’t appear to hear her. Hell, he doesn’t even seem to see her, his eyes flickering about the room, unable to settle on anything. She’s close enough now to notice the cold sweat on his face, the shallowness of his breathing. A panic attack? Shock? Both?
“Michael,” she tries, enunciating his name in a way she hasn’t done in ages. It comes out more intimate than she anticipated, and she feels several pairs of curious eyes resting on her. Still, she can’t bring herself to care because it works.
His gaze snaps to hers. His brow furrows as if he can’t quite decide whether she’s real. “Heather?”
“It’s me, all right. Come on, let’s get you patched up.” Reluctantly, she breaks their eye contact to look at Adrian, who reads her mind immediately and tells her that Room 19 is open.
For the next couple of minutes, she’s locked into her usual sharp focus. She tells one nurse to inform Shen, who’s been in Trauma 1 with García for half an hour stabilizing a burn victim. Then she tells another to escort Jake to the staff lounge. The third one, Belinda, offers to stay and help, but Heather assures her that she’s got this, knowing Robby is more likely to speak if it’s just the two of them. Wrapping an arm around his back, she leads him into the open room. To her relief, he seems to have gained more awareness of his surroundings, as he sits on the bed himself. Closing the door, Heather takes advantage of the fact that he can’t see her face and squeezes her eyes shut. Don’t run. Don’t hide. He needs you.
She usually tries to smile at patients if the situation isn’t dire. It gives them comfort. That’s what she should do. Comfort him. But when she turns around again and sees him sitting there, his broad shoulders trembling, a knife twists in her gut.
“Hey,” she murmurs, tipping up his chin to make him focus on her. His eyes are more distant than usual but somehow more intense. Fighting off an onslaught of memories, she grabs the zipper of his hoodie. “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”
Silence.
Toward the end of their relationship, it wore her down, having to pry the words out of him. It was like a never-ending, painstaking procedure. Eventually, she gave up. Once she’s exposed his wounds — a deep gash on his elbow and at least a dozen smaller cuts along his forearm — he takes a shuddering breath. His lips remain parted, but he doesn’t make a sound.
It would be easier to give up. Walk away. Let someone else take over. At least, it would feel easier in the moment. However, she knows that abandoning him would be yet another short-term fix to a long-term problem. Even now, months later, she still struggles to accept that she wasn’t there to help during the Pittfest shooting. Even now, years later, she revisits her last morning with him, lingers in the memory… in his sunlit bed.
Her guilt is as sharp as the antiseptic she uses to treat his injuries. Despite this, she can’t look away from him. He won’t meet her gaze. He doesn’t wince. Not until she says his first name again. It terrifies her, too, the affection lingering at the edges of it. Pulling herself together, Heather turns her clinical attention to the smaller cuts. They’re superficial, jagged, and close together. It looks like…
“Glass?” she asks.
Robby nods. “A window.”
Relief rushes through her at the sound of his voice, which seems steadier than before, as does the rest of him. Emboldened by this, she dares to push a little further, “You tried to break a window?”
It could explain the damage to his elbow. But it’s alarming. Why? Was it blind rage? Doesn’t seem likely. Robby can be volatile, but he’s not violent. Besides, anger is impulsive. It runs through the fists, and his hands are unscathed.
“The window was crushed from the crash,” he says, sending a chill down her spine. “But I couldn’t get to her without breaking through it. I had to get to her. She was in the passenger seat. She was too small. She-she should’ve been in the back.”
Heather drops the thread, smothers the gasp in her throat. No. No way.
Her efforts to hide her shock prove fruitless, as Robby’s face falls. For the first time since he arrived, he seems truly present. She feels the warmth radiating off his body and the tenderness pouring out of his expression, as the realization seems to dawn on him. Her voice is brought back to life, seeking confirmation, “Gold tutu? Pink ribbons?”
Tears well up in his eyes, and she has to wield all of her strength to resist dropping her forehead onto his shoulder. When she moves to pick up the thread, she notices her fingers are trembling. He must notice as well because he takes her hand. Gently.
“Her name?”
“Lily,” she says. “Lily Jackson. I couldn’t save her.”
“Neither could I. I’m sorry, Heather.”
His sincerity knocks the air out of her, and she touches his cheek. For a moment, she fools herself into believing that the gloves render her less vulnerable, but then he leans into her palm, and her throat closes up. “Not your fault,” she croaks.
“Not your fault,” he echoes back to her.
Their next breaths are taken in unison. Slowly, her hands start to feel as though they belong to her again, and she turns to thread the needle. She offers to numb the area before suturing, but he refuses, just as she guessed he would.
“Always the tough guy,” Heather remarks, her tone icier than she intended. She’s been watching him grit his teeth for years, and she’s sick of it. Although she could just say that, it’s not their style. Never was.
Robby strikes back flawlessly, effortlessly. “You used to like that.”
Meeting his eyes, she senses a tiny smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Because I thought it was genuine.”
“Ouch.”
“Oh, sorry,” she says, wiggling the needle as if his complaint has everything to do with her sutures and nothing to do with her call-out. “I’ll be more careful with the next one.”
A hearty laugh escapes him. This —the easy playfulness, the double meanings, the heavy looks—is their style. The pinch in her chest tells her that she’s missed it more than she thought she would.
Closing the ugly gash on his elbow requires eight of her neat stitches. She’s still desperate to know more, but she decides that now isn’t a good time to bombard him with questions, as he’s finally recovered a bit from the shock. Instead, she cleans the dried blood off the rest of his arm and orders him to take some Tylenol.
“Also,” she says, her hand resting on the door handle. “Stay with me until the end of this shift. If you try to leave, I will hunt you down. Got it?”
Robby only says, “Where are you going?”
It rattles her, reminding her too much of a fight they had five years ago. She tries to play it off with a smile, but it crumbles on her face. This time, he deserves an answer from her, a reason for her leaving. “I just wanna talk to Jake, make sure he’s all right. I’ll be back with you after, I promise.”
His expression softens. “Thank you.”
Heather finds Jake in the staff lounge, staring vacantly at his phone and clutching a Monster energy drink. Sitting down beside him, she eyes the can. Unable to help it, she offers her unsolicited advice, “How about switching to coffee? Those things are really bad for you.”
“You sound like Robby,” Jake says plainly, taking one eye off the screen to glance at her. “How is he?”
“He’s…” Heather’s gaze lowers, causing her to notice his knee rapidly bouncing under the table. He’s fidgeting with the sleeve of his sweatshirt, too, folding it into his palm. This kid is anxious. “... A little better, I think. How did he seem when you got there?”
“Like a wreck,” Jake replies, trying and failing to sound nonchalant. “He was sitting under the kitchen table, rocking back and forth…. bleeding all over the place.” When Heather presses a careful hand to his shoulder, he drops his phone and the act, burying his hands in his hair. “He wouldn’t look at me, he just kept saying that he couldn’t save her, and I thought he was—I thought he was talking about Leah.”
A couple of days after Pittfest, Heather met up with Dana for their bi-monthly chick-flick night, but they ended up pausing the movie ten minutes in to talk through everything that happened. Heather didn’t have much to say, as her glass of wine and hot bath just filled her with shame. But Dana told her about the mayhem, the unauthorized blood donations that saved lives, about losing Leah, about Jake’s reaction to it.
At a loss for words, Heather just rubs Jake’s shoulder soothingly, and he lets her. After taking a raspy breath, he asks, “Did he hurt himself?”
Heather’s heart seizes. “Not intentionally.” She swallows hard against a lump. “He tried to save a little girl from a car crash. Broke through the window. It must have triggered him. Jake, it’s good that you found him.”
Jake is quiet for a minute, toying with the tab on the can until it dislodges. “I should’ve never said those things to him.”
“I’m sure he doesn’t hold it against you. We all say things we regret.”
For the first time since she walked in, Jake gives her his full attention, squinting slightly. “Even you?”
The question catches her off guard. On any other day, she might’ve laughed. “Yes, even me. What do you mean?”
Jake shrugs. “Oh, nothing. It’s just… the way he talks about you.”
Heather feels her breath catch and decides their conversation can’t continue down this route. Because this isn’t about her. It’s about Robby, about Jake, about Lily. Taking her hand off his shoulder, she asks, “Why were you at his place?”
“We were gonna watch a basketball game. I was running late because I was studying, so he ordered food for us and went to pick it up. When I made it to the apartment, he…”
Based on this, it seems as if Robby witnessed the crash while on his way to pick up dinner. Since he has the same instinct that tells him to run toward danger as she does, he must’ve been the first person there to help. Images flash through Heather’s mind of Robby pulling Lily out of the car, cradling her small body in his arms, trying to stop the bleeding, not knowing—but probably suspecting—that most of it was internal.
Heather closes her eyes for a moment. “Thank you for bringing him,” she says. “If you want to go home and sleep, I can take him home later.”
“I’m not tired, it’s fine.”
“Tell that to someone who hasn’t seen the evidence,” she says teasingly, gesturing to the empty can.
A small smile plays on Jake’s lips. “Just like Robby.”
For her own sanity, Heather ignores that comment. “My shift is over in a couple of hours. I can probably discharge him then. You can rest here in the meantime.”
She leaves him with two ham sandwiches and a KitKat bar since he hasn’t eaten. Then she makes quick rounds. Most of the patients are trying to sleep at this point, so she mainly checks that their vitals are stable. Knowing Ellis would curse her out for even thinking it, things seem to be quieting down now. The only patient she’s currently worried about is… Robby.
Heather half-expects to find an empty bed in Room 19, but he’s listened to her for once. He even smiles a little when she walks in. “How’s he holding up?”
Crossing the room, she sits on the stool next to the bed. “He’s concerned about you. So am I.”
Their eyes meet. It’s one of those moments where the line between doctor and ex-lover blurs. She’s prescribed him antibiotics and painkillers, which should put him in the clear physically. But she can’t let him go. Not like this.
His eyes dart in the way they do when he’s about to lie for someone else’s benefit, to his detriment. “I’m all right. It was… just a small setback.”
“You let yourself bleed all over the kitchen floor.”
“I didn’t notice I was injured.”
“You dissociated, Michael.”
He groans in frustration. “Yeah, okay. What do you want me to say? I’m sorry? It won’t happen again?”
Heather suppresses a sigh. “I’m not blaming you. I’m telling you that maybe you should consider asking someone for help.”
The deep breath he takes warns her that he’s about to argue, so she starts planning the perfect rebuttal, only for him to say, “I’m already in therapy. Surprised you didn’t see that in my chart.”
“You…?”
“You should’ve taken my history, it seems, Dr. Collins. I would’ve told you. Sessions twice a week since Pittfest. Complex PTSD diagnosis. It’s quite riveting stuff.”
It’s a classic case of his using forced professionalism and sarcasm to build walls around himself. If she weren’t so stunned, she might’ve huffed at the attempt. She’s always seen right through it. More than once, she’s responded to it with a pointed look that says, ‘You think you can deceive me? Me? How cute. Try it on someone you haven’t made love to.’
He might not be able to deceive her, but he can still surprise her; he just proved that. This admission has her mind spinning. In therapy? Since Pittfest? That would mean he’s been trying to work through his shit longer than she has. When this hits her, the guilt makes a strong comeback.
“I… didn’t know,” she says quietly, staring at her hands.
A heavy moment passes before Robby replies, “How would you have known? You’ve been doing your best to get the hell away from me.”
She winces. There is nothing he could say that would hurt her more, that would ring truer. When she put in the request to switch to nights, she told herself it was for her own good, and she believed it for a while. She thought a change in scenery would help her adjust to the loss and cope with the shame. But the truth is that she ran away. Again.
She’s been silent for too long. Breaking the silence, Robby sounds a more than a little panicked, “Fuck, fuck, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“Yes, you did,” Heather cuts in calmly. “And you’re not wrong.”
“Oh.” It’s a small, choked sound that reveals he’s in pain. She wishes she knew how to fix it, but she fears it might be too late. That’s one reason why she never came back to the day shift. She couldn’t bear knowing that, no matter what, she’d always be too fucking late.
A monitor alarm goes off close by, beeping mercilessly. Heather shoots out of her seat, and—on instinct—so does Robby. Pressing a hand to his chest, she pushes him back down. “Forgive me. I need you to stay here,” she says.
And then she bolts.
Heather spends the next twenty minutes in Room 15 with Shen and Ellis, stopping yet another hypoglycemic seizure. It will never fail to shock her, how quickly a situation can worsen. One moment, everything will be fine; the next, it will come crashing down. Once the patient is stable again, Heather breathes a sigh of relief, recalling his wife’s face when the EMTs brought him in. She looked like she thought it was all her fault, like she could’ve saved him somehow.
“Collins,” Ellis pulls her out of her thoughts. “All good?”
Heather straightens. “Yeah. Just exhausted.”
“Robby tends to have that effect,” Ellis jokes, but the humor doesn’t land as it might have under different circumstances. Probably realizing this, she adds, “Is he okay? What happened to him?”
Heather gestures to the door, and they leave the room. Unfortunately, the three seconds this buys her is not nearly enough time to prepare for this conversation. Wrapping her arms around herself, she says, “Lily Jackson… Robby witnessed the crash, had to break a window to get her out of the vehicle.”
Ellis’ lips part. “Jesus. And you had to tell him we lost her.”
“I think he knew it was a long shot. He’s too good a doctor to miss the damage.”
Turning away, Heather senses her colleague’s eyes on her. Then, she remarks, “You’re worried about him.”
It’s not a question, which makes her feel scrutinized. It may be paranoia, but she thinks she hears an unspoken, ‘How much?’ attached to the statement. If anyone actually asks her that question, she’s fucked. She wouldn’t know how to begin unpacking their complex relationship.
Oh Lord. Should she talk about him in therapy? Does he talk about her in therapy?
The thought is terrifying and way too much to deal with right now, so she shoves it aside. To give herself an exit, she murmurs, “I should go check on him.”
She doesn’t. She goes to the roof.
The only problem is that he’s beaten her to it. At first, she wonders if sleep deprivation is making her hallucinate. But it really is Robby, standing just behind the safety railing, surrounded by soft pink and gold light. Lily. She is everywhere and, apparently, so is he. Still, there’s something off about his stance, like an oak about to topple over.
Heather closes the door and reaches out across the distance, as if to catch him.
He looks over his shoulder. Sees her. “Ah, you found me. Your turn to hide now.”
The easy playfulness, the double meaning, the heavy look… Her heart swells, and she’s pulled to him by some unseen magnetic force. At his side, she squeezes his shoulder. “We’re a bit too old to play that game, don’t you think? We should stop now.”
Robby smiles at her in that warm, fond way that makes the corners of his eyes crinkle. Then he risks a move that was discontinued when they broke up, brushing his thumb along the curve of her neck. It’s quick and casual, and she shudders at it.
“It’s a little chilly out here.”
He chuckles at her feeble excuse but plays along because that’s the kind of man he is. “I’d offer you my hoodie, but it’s covered in blood.” She shoots him one of her pointed looks, and he sighs, “It’s fine. I’m fine. Today was shit, but I’m not on that ledge.” The way he eyes the edge of the roof, with scary familiarity, tells her all she needs to know. “That’s a good thing.”
A good thing. She’ll cling to it.
Finally, she gives in to the urge she’s been fighting for ages and lets her head drop onto his shoulder. She’s brought back to that afternoon in the back of the ambulance. Somehow, this is what pushes her to embrace honesty. “I’m sorry for running away.”
A cruel voice pipes up in her mind, Which time?
Robby hums warmly. “I think you blame yourself far too much.”
“Oh, please don’t use therapy speak on me. I hear enough of that as it is.” His silence makes her realize what she’s just inadvertently revealed, and she figures she might as well be honest about that, too. “You’re not the only one who should’ve asked for help a while ago.”
For a minute, he appears to digest what she’s said. As he does, Heather notices that the sky is turning blue, the strokes of pink and gold fading as a new day breaks. She tries not to feel as though she’s lost something that was never really hers, yet again.
Robby says, “I could’ve called you. Told you to come back before it was too late.”
The voice repeats, Which time?
Awestruck, Heather lifts her head off his shoulder to gaze at him. The air between them is tender, like the skin you bruise without realizing, and she knows that they could hurt each other in that involuntary way again. But she also knows that she can’t hide anymore.
“It’s not too late,” she whispers. “Tell me now.”
“Heather,” Robby says breathily, making her silly heart skip a beat. “Please come back to the day shift.”
What she hears is, Please come back to me.
With those words echoing in her mind, she says, “Okay. You got me.”