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“Upper GI bleed in South 5. Intubated and stable after two units, but is awaiting an ICU bed. There’s also a mom-to-be in North 7 who’s having contractions, now 13 minutes apart. Apparently, there’s a baby boom going on upstairs, and they can’t take her yet.”
“Uh-huh, yep.” Robby furtively looked left and right around Abbot’s frame.
“You missing something? Someone?” Abbot asked with a smirk. “She just got pulled into an escharotomy. She’ll be out soon.”
Robby shook his head, clasping his hands and begging. “No, no, please, I’m trying to avoid an argument.”
“Brother, whatever you did, apologize. It’ll make it easier on everyone.”
“But she’s wrong,” Robby huffed, sounding a bit like the 5-year-old Abbot had just treated. “You know that math problem, the Monty Hall problem? She thinks you should choose the unopened door when really—”
“Math problem? Keep me out of it. Mrs. Stevens from Westwood High can testify that math was never my strong suit.”
He grabbed his go-bag and patted Robby on the back. “Relax, I know it’s been a long two weeks, but Shen will be back from vacation soon, and you’ll get Collins back on the day shift in no time. She’s good, but keeps complaining about her lack of vitamin D?”
Robby sighed, looking up at the board to see how his day was starting. Could’ve been worse—but could’ve been better.
“Good morning, Robby.” Samira took a last sip of her coffee before tossing the cup and stepping next to him. She had already started mentally filling in her name for some of the patients before Robby could say anything.
“Morning, Samira. Santos.” Robby nodded at the intern coming up beside her.
“How are we looking?”
“Not bad, but we’ll wait for Dr. King to get here before we get started on rounds.”
“I saw her putting her stuff up in the lockers. She should be here in a minute.”
“Great. There’s also a trauma in Trauma 1 that Dr. Collins—”
“—Has stabilized.” Heather came up behind him. “Patient’s just waiting to be sent up to Surgery.”
It was hard to miss the iciness in her voice when she added, “By the way, tonight’s Dana’s birthday party at Joe’s. The night shift is planning to stop by before the shift starts, with cake and candles, but we need her out of here by 6:30 p.m. sharp. Think you can handle that, Dr. Robinavich?”
Robby didn’t look away from the patient board. “I can read a clock.” His tone was clipped.
Heather shifted her weight, arms crossed tighter than necessary. “Good. Because we’re not doing the ‘Dana shows up an hour late to her own birthday’ thing again.”
“Of course not.” He finally glanced at her—quick, sharp, charged.
A pause. No one around them dared say anything.
Samira blinked and turned back to her chart, pretending not to witness the small war being waged over birthday logistics.
Samira thought they were past this, that after The Labor Day Incident, Collins and Robby had finally figured their shit out and wouldn’t make the rest of the ED deal with their drama anymore.
And they had—for a while. The staring hadn’t gone down, but now it was more of an adoring gaze than a pathetic, yearning-across-the-room one. Everyone preferred sickly-sweet, in-love Robby over breathing-down-your-neck, snapping-at-everything Robby. It reminded Samira of the doctor she’d met as a lowly med student before the cloud of COVID came overhead and Adamson’s ghost started haunting the hallways.
“Trouble in paradise?” Trinity failed to whisper under her breath. Samira elbowed her, but it was too late.
Heather and Robby turned to their audience, then glanced back at each other, both with the same idea.
“Actually, maybe you two can help us out,” Robby started.
“We really shouldn’t get involved in your personal life.”
“Don’t worry, it’s not personal—it’s a math problem.”
“Last night, right before I had to leave for my shift, Dr. Robinavich decided to spoil our few minutes of time together with a riddle—”
“Oh, of course, it’s my fault,” Robby said sarcastically. “Well, excuse me for trying to keep our brains stimulated!”
“The math problem, please,” Samira jumped in before it escalated. Santos rolled her eyes—this would end well.
“It’s the Monty Hall problem. Imagine you're on a game show. There are three doors, behind one of which is a car—”
“You’re telling it wrong.” Heather interrupted. “There are three doors, behind one of which is a car. You pick a door, the host, who knows where the car is, opens a different door showing that there’s nothing behind it. Now the host asks if you’d like to choose the other unopened door. Should you do it?”
“No,” Robby declared.
“Yes!” Heather threw her hands up.
“It’s simple math,” they both chorused, glaring at each other.
“It doesn’t make any sense to switch. The prize is behind one of two,” Robby emphasized, “doors. It’s a 50/50 chance either way.”
“It’s 2/3 if you switch, 1/3 if you don’t. The probability locks in when you make the choice.”
“We’ve been over this eight times.”
“Seven times.”
“Now you can’t even do simple addition.”
Santos spotted Samira doing the mental math and shook her head, wide-eyed, mouthing a desperate “No” across the circle. She was already inching back like the blast radius of this conversation might be measurable.
Samira ignored her. “Collins is right,” She said, loud enough to slice clean through the argument.
Santos let out a soft, audible “Oh my God.”
Robby stared at her like she’d just told him she’s a Baltimore Ravens fan. Not quite angry, more personally betrayed.
Heather, on the other hand, looked deeply satisfied. Glowing with the kind of quiet vindication that only comes from being right. And maybe a little bit of gloating.
“Ha!” she said, pointing dramatically at Robby. “Told you.”
“Samira, you’re fired,” Robby said, deadpan.
“What?”
“Hey! If you bozos are done playing Wheel of Fortune, we’re ready for rounds!” Dana called out from Central. “Heather, get out of here—you should be halfway home already.”
Heather was already turning to go. Robby lingered, watching her walk away for a second longer before leveling a look at Samira with a shake of his head.
The next day…
“Good Morning, Robby,” Trinity greeted the attending from the lockers, grabbing her stethoscope and putting it around her neck.
“No, it’s not. I haven’t slept because I’ve been going over that stupid problem. Now I finally understand Heather’s side.”
“Cool, so it’s all better, and I never have to hear about math again?” Trinity guessed, hopeful.
“The opposite. I know better than ever how wrong she is.” Dr. Robby replied, walking away with a tone of finality that left no room for argument.
But of course, Samira didn’t hear that. Unlocking her locker: “Okay, we have got to explain this thing to Robby to save their relationship.”
“Nope. No shot. You might be a masochist and want to get involved, but you’ve got all your letters of recommendation set and chief resident basically assigned to you at this point. I don’t.” Trinity shook her head as she slammed her locker shut. “Anyways, it’s not about math. They haven’t seen each other because of the night shift. They just need to bone.”
“What? Gross!” Samira’s head shot up, nearly colliding with the locker door. “Trinity, those are our parents! I mean…” She awkwardly laughed. “That’s not what I think. Doctor Dad is just my boss.”
“Wooooow,” Santos shrugged. “You sure you don’t want to unpack that with your therapist?”
Later that day, Robby would never say it out loud, but it was quiet. A little too quiet. It had him on edge—but what had him confused was Samira, on her hands and knees next to the nurses’ station.
“Is everything okay, Samira?”
“No, I sat down to fill in some charts and lost my ring.”
“Did you see where it went?”
“Actually,” she got up from the floor, lifting a tray normally used for carrying needles. On it were three upside-down paper medicine cups. “It’s behind one of these three doors. Why don’t you pick one?”
“Are you trying to Monty Hall me?” Robby shook his head. “This is unbelievable. I don’t need Monty Hall ruining the hospital too, when Monty Hall has already ruined my home life. Don’t you have patients? I can guarantee there is someone on the board who would be a better use of your time.”
Trinity winced as she heard the scolding from across the bay and stepped in. “Come on, sir, the math thing isn’t the problem.”
Robby and Samira turned their attention to her. She weighed her options before continuing—she was already in it now. “Night shift’s keeping you and Collins apart. You two just need to bone.”
Robby chuckled, not believing what he just heard. “What did you say?”
“Don’t say it again,” Samira whispered.
“I said you two need to bone,” Santos repeated, not backing down.
“How... dare you, Doctor Santos,” Robby replied, slamming down the tablet in his hands, gaining the attention of the patients and nurses around them. “I am your chief attending! What happens in my bedroom, Doctor, is none of your business.”
30 minutes later, Mel was cleaning the wound of the 8-year-old who’d come in after a trampoline accident—some bumps, a few bruises, and a gnarly scrape on their leg, but overall, nothing serious.
She looked up at the mother. “It’s not too bad, I can see—”
She heard “BONE!” shouted in the distance. Not the strangest thing to echo through the ER, but Mel could almost guarantee it was the third time she’d heard it since entering the room.
“Bone?” she repeated distractedly, confused.
The mom’s eyes widened. “You can see his bone?! Does he need surgery?”
“Bone!”
Dana jumped, clutching her chest as Robby exited a patient room and sanitized his hands. “Do you need me to call Ortho?”
“No, I need you to teach these interns some manners,” Robby grumbled, stomping over to the charge desk. “Back in my day, we actually respected our attendings. We were scared of them, in fact. Not making guesses and assumptions about their love life.”
Dana agreed, looking back at the computer in front of her. “Mm-hm.”
“Seriously,” he went on, arms crossed like a sulking teenager in scrubs. “It’s like open season on my personal business. Santos used the word bone, Dana. Out loud. In front of patients.”
Dana finally looked up, raising an eyebrow. “And? Did you?”
Robby sputtered. “That’s not the point!”
She bit back a smile. “Funny. I seem to recall a story—your story—about how you won $500 betting your attending would crash the wedding of the love of their life.”
“That’s different!” he snapped.
“How?”
“It was the ‘90s. And he did crash it. With a boombox. In the rain. It was cinematic.”
Dana chuckled. “Uh-huh. I don’t think Heather needs all of that. Flowers would be nice, though.”
“Don’t start.”
She smiled, going back to her notes. “Just saying, Robby. You can't dish it and not take it. And the kids love you—it’s why they care that you and Heather are... boning.”
He groaned. “Please stop saying that word.”
“Bone.”
“Dana.”
At the end of the shift, Robby had calmed down enough to walk Santos through a fracture reduction—but not before ending with:
“And Santos, don’t ever speak to me like that again.”
“Why would you do that?” Secretly, Samira was glad the heat was off her for the day, even if Trinity had to bear the brunt of it.
Trinity shrugged. “Dude was pent up. Now he knows. Problem solved.”
The next morning, before Robby could even walk into the hospital, Samira had already gotten through three patients.
While she did want to update him on their status as he walked in, she also wanted to share what she’d learned. “Dr. Robby, I know you don’t want to talk about Monty Hall, but I did just treat a math professor for—”
“No need, Samira. It’s all good,” he interrupted with a smile.
“So the fight with Heather is over?” she asked, confused.
“Yep.”
“Because you understand the math now?”
“Nope.”
“Because you guys…”
“Yep.” Robby looked up at the board. “Hey, nice job—three patients and it’s not even 7:20 yet. Keep up the good work!”
He walked away, leaving Samira gaping—and Trinity to fill his spot beside her.
“Knew it. See, what happened is, your parents had se—”
“MVC incoming!”