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The grass was still dewy, as Jack walked across it.
It caught, ever so lightly on his shoes, soaking the ends of his boots and darkening the already stained fabric. Jack had had these things for years, and they still didn't fall apart. Technically, they were hiking boots. He wore them because they never lost traction on linoleum, no matter how much blood there was.
He should be in his chair. Or on his crutches. But the paths here were so ridiculously inaccessible, so he settled for a cane and dealing with the repercussions. He wasn't going to disrespect Robby's burial wishes just for his own comfort.
The sun was kind with her gaze, spreading light golden across the cemetery. It caught on the stones. Some were well kept, dusted free of dirt and grime and vines. He passed one that read numbers from the 1800's on it, polished and shining bright in the early morning. Another, just a couple paces west, was so degraded he thought the only way he could make out a name was by touch. Feeling over granite to see if engravings still held.
He didn't. That wasn't why he was here.
A gentle breeze passed by, and it cut through Jack's shirt like a scalpel.
From roof to graveyard, he must've fallen even if he hadn't jumped. The ground was spongy beneath him as he hit his mark. A granite headstone, reading words he thought he'd never live to see.
Here lies Michael Robinavich
March 4th, 1971 - December 21st, 2026
A beloved son, father, husband, and friend
There was further inscription in Hebrew, abbreviated words he learned when planning all of this. When he had to sit there in a funeral home, trying not to be angry at the dead, and navigate Robby's last will and testament. Of course he has one. That wasn't surprising.
May his soul be bound up in the bond of life.
He learned from Dana it was a reference to a Biblical quote, 1 Samuel 25:29. Now that he knew what it looked like, etched with hammer and chisel into the backs of his eyelids, it was easy to spot on other graves.
"Hey, Robby."
The dirt did not respond. He spoke to it just the same.
"I brought uh," Jack looked down at the stone in his hand, turning it over once, "I went up to the mountains, last week. To that spot by the lake we used to go to."
It was this gorgeous clearing between trees, down a road people didn't tend to find. Not unless you knew the area, which Robby did, having spent free days when he first moved here exploring his new surroundings.
Even still, it was the lake Jack taught Robby how to skip stones on. Watched him blush and learn a new skill, chuckle frustratedly as he couldn't manage to get the rocks. It was a stupid flirting thing, Jack standing next to him, palming over flat ones he found, adjusting Robby's grip so it would sail.
The way Robby smiled, secret and proud, the first time he got it to hit across the water a couple times played like a film reel in Jack's mind for months afterwards.
"Thought you might like it." He leaned forward a bit, standing to the side of the grave, and placed it on top. Jack didn't bother to try and count all the pebbles and rocks littering the headstone.
All it did was make him think of how damn crowded that trauma room must've been.
He'd gotten just about every detail he could out of Langdon, wrung the kid dry on every procedure they tried, what state Robby had been in, what exactly happened. Langdon had taken it, answered every question, and presented Robby's necklace to him, Star and ring both there, like it was a torch.
Someone had cleaned the blood from it. He still didn't know who.
Slowly, with purpose and a want not to fall, Jack lowered himself to the ground beside the burial plot. He broke his cane down in two, wrapped the Velcro band around it, and set it beside himself on the grass. The ass of his pants would get soaked through, the same style cargo pants he'd sported since his twenties, but to be honest, that was the least of his concerns right now.
Jack reached into his pocket, folded fingers around a gold chain that Robby had worn for as long as he could remember, and sighed out a ghost.
"The hospital's managing alright. Langdon and Mohan are killing it as attendings, you'd be proud of them. They run day shift well, and fight off Gloria with your fire. I think Mohan's thinking of transferring somewhere a little smaller, though, where she can put more time into her work."
The two of them had a long talk, about three weeks ago. She loved it in Pittsburgh, really, she did, but since making attending, she felt like she's being forced to take her fingers from the pulse of her patients and instead look at the monitor. She didn't like it, that detachment forced upon her just because she was a little higher on the ladder.
There wasn't anywhere for her to go, after this. If anything, if she chose to, she'd keep drifting further away from what it was she loved. The people. And she didn't want to do that.
He understood. It was part of many, many conversations he'd had with Robby over the years. At what point in time are we nothing more than a puppeteer? Stood behind the curtain, directing marionettes and hoping the audience enjoys. No longer someone that could see the fruits of their labor, instead waiting for ratings in newspapers to see if it came across well.
"I remember you struggled with it, for a while. Feeling like you didn't have time with patients." Jack pulled his legs up, wrapping his arms loosely around his knees and grasping two fingers in his other hand.
Jack had told her what Robby had said to other doctors fighting with the same thing. That it was all perspective, that you had to work it out yourself, find your own way. But Jack didn't have the eloquence with words Robby did. It all came out clumsy, stiff imitations, misshapen. Not false, but not right.
He wasn't good at pep talks to anyone that needed anything other that plain answers. It's why he was on night shift with all the other awkward sons of bitches. They were damn good doctors that handled the weird just fine, almost craved it, and the only social ability they needed was some back pocket sympathy and the ability to hold conversations with care.
"Dana's finally retiring. I think uh, I think losing you was the final straw. She just couldn't take anymore heartache. End of the month, she's out. Believe it or not, Princess is actually taking over. Can't wait to see how that goes."
Dana had been slipping slowly ever since PittFest. He saw it, Robby did too, but there was only so much you could say to a person without seeming like an asshole.
Then everything that went down on the Fourth. Having to run all of that shit on analog, it was nothing short of a Herculean task. It started tipping, slowly, further and further into Sisyphus and Tantalus. Punishment, desire, hope. Squandered kindness crushed like a bug under heel, and Robby dying like that?
It broke her. He saw it when he was finally left the viewing room, eyes red and vision blurry and cheeks wet. She offered him a hug he took, and felt the way she shook like a leaf under his palms.
The three of them had worked together for ages. He and Robby knew her kids, were there when she showed off graduation photos and could barely believe how big they got. They remembered when Robby came into Jake's life. When he almost left it, and Janey brought him back with warm eyes saying Jake couldn't stop asking for him.
That woman was a saint, truly.
Jack didn't believe in a God, and there was precious little he could think of that he'd attribute to one. Robby and Jake mending their relationship before December? That was nothing short of divine.
He sighed, running a hand over his hair as he tried to think of more updates to give. Anyone else to talk about. Anything else to say, to give, to offer.
A reason to keep sitting here, and not go back to his home that had been half empty again for too long.
"Um." He cleared his throat, grasping a little for stuff he'd already told Robby. "McKay's kicking ass as a senior resident. She works great with the kids. King and Santos are fine, so's Whitaker, actually. I know you worried about them."
Fine as they could be after watching their chief attending bleed out in trauma one.
Langdon had run the trauma with King. She had gotten swapped for Santos, actually, struggling to keep her head in the game about someone she cared about so deeply about. All of this he got second hand when the then senior resident sat with Jack and painstakingly combed through every detail of Robby's code.
From what he'd heard in passing, in gossip, in nurses, the residents were doing okay. They adjusted to the new leadership, they were managing their caseloads, they were working out fine.
With the exception of Javadi, who he found out decided to take year between med school and residency. She was going a PCP route, apparently, wanting to guide good care and not have to deal with as much gore as the ED provided. Made sense, considering the look on Robby's face that night after the MCI.
That fucking night.
Jack should've put him on a psych hold. Should've forced him into a therapist's chair, talked him into a sabbatical sooner, made him sit down and breathe. Regrets weren't something he was fond of, but this? This would haunt him until he died.
"Why'd you have to ride without a helmet, man?" Jack shook his head, sniffing. "Why the fuck did you do that? You knew better than that, you knew better."
He knew why. He knew good and goddamn well why Robby rode without a helmet and he'd carry the guilt of not finding out every single day until he too became worm food. Not that he'd actually be buried, he wanted to be cremated, left to be spread around some mountains or put on a shelf until remembered.
It's what he did for Hope. Part of her was in one of her vases, something she made in the ceramic studio she went to. Glazed in rubies and sapphires and daffodils, it was what she wanted, something they talked about over her cigarettes and his paperwork. He still had her ring, kept in the box he bought it in, one she couldn't let go.
He had put his own next to it, teary eyed and warm hearted, when he slipped off a black band so worn you could feel the scratches and replaced it with one undamaged. Unhurt. Familiar squeeze, unfamiliar weight. It took him weeks to get used to how right it felt, and thanked Hope's ashes for letting him do so.
It stood clashing with necklace in his palm. Robby's ring was gold, his preferred metal whenever he got the chance. Jack preferred his something that didn't show wear, and Robby loved the way dings showed up.
Funnily enough, it was evident in their pocket knife choices, too. Jack went for a coated blade, even if it meant it was took specific care to sharpen. Fingerprints on the blade were annoying and distracting. Robby went with a traditional silver, said the smudges added character.
Night and day, they were.
Robby wore his flaws under cloud cover, and Jack kept his stowed in shadow.
Here lies Michael Robinavich
"You weren't supposed to die first, you know that, right?" Jack felt his throat tighten, felt that familiar fight or fight urge sting at the backs of his eyes. "You fucking- you're a self-fulfilling prophecy, aren't you? You always talked my ass off the roof, told me you couldn't handle me coming in on your shift, couldn't deal with seeing me on a stretcher."
Jack scoffed at the audacity of his dead husband. He knew him intimately, the way stars knew they were too far away to matter, and knew that if Robby could see him now he'd be wearing that brain meltingly soft look. The one where he settled into himself, lowered his shoulders, tilted his head. Dark brown eyes dropping out into abyss, comforting and promising.
The same thing Jack stared into on nights when it all got too loud, all got too much. When the concept of falling felt better than the reality of walking, and those damn eyes forced focus from one void to another. From grinding relief to hard comfort, the way one pulled off socks after being caught in the rain and covered them in something dry and soft.
It didn't get rid of the blisters forming. But it gave you the safety to examine them without rubbing the skin raw.
"Guess fucking what, Robby?" Rhetorical. Upset. He leaned towards the grave, voice deep, dragging vocal cords over gravel. "I couldn't handle it either."
He couldn't. He wasn't. Dana asked him if he was retiring with her because the blank walls that got painted red day in and day out were grabbing at the both of them. The cold hands of those they couldn't save sunk nails into their calves and tried to drag them with, splitting them in half with the need to ascend or drown.
Jack was choking on his words, seeing them fill his gaze and overwrite the inscription in front of him.
March 4th, 1971 -
"You scared, selfish asshole. You wouldn't tell me what was going on, you- you didn't trust me, your husband, with this? What the fuck is wrong with you? What made you think that?"
Robby knew how often he looked down that same gun. Is that what it was? Not wanting to add iron to his shoulders? Thinking if Robby, what, burdened him with the weight on his it would tip the scales? That it would drive Jack to see if he could fly? To join the teeth nipping at every ED physician's Achilles? At the ones biting into Robby's?
Jack shook his head, upset cowering in his chest and grasping desperate onto his ribs. "I would've helped you, baby, you know that. You know that. I would've- fuck, Robby, I would've done anything."
- December 21st, 2026
"Why the hell did you not trust me?"
If Jack closed his eyes, maybe he could enjoy the warmth of the daylight. Instead, he felt the tightening of skin as tears rolled down his cheeks, voice coming out between little stutter step gasps. He knew how to keep his cool under pressure. He knew how to sew up a ripped seam. He didn't know how to glue together the shards of a person splintered like a wooden bat hit too many times against the ground.
Angry, and disappointed, and mournful of what could've been.
Jack felt the points of a star dig into his clenched palm, ring against loving ring grating each other to dust. "You made me promise you, you made me promise that I would tell you on a hard day. And you didn't tell me shit."
A beloved son
"And now everyone in that goddamn ED is grieving you. Do you realize that? What you fucking did to them? Dana's leaving that desk because of you."
father
"All those residents that followed you around like lost dogs, every single one you adopted. Fucking Mohan, and Langdon, Whitaker, and King and Santos, even my shift is missing you. Ellis and Shen won't stop checking on me."
husband
"They miss you. I miss you. Do you know that? Do you realize that you made me a widower for the second time? Did you even think about that? Did you think about me for a second before setting that helmet to the side?"
and friend
"You touched, so many goddamn people, Robby. You helped, so many people. And I still can't go to meetings or conventions without people mentioning you. You're following me like a damn ghost."
May his soul be bound up in the bond of life.
Jack refused to try an exorcise the spectre following after him. Fate or love or desperation were keeping Robby's claws in him, drawing blood from old scars he would open and reopen again and again if it meant keeping his husband close by. If it meant Robby on his hip like a flask, poison and sacred.
There were no ashes to keep in a special box, in a hand sculpted urn made of precious gems and memories.
Robby was laid six feet below him, body falling apart in a pine box so he could blend back into the dirt. Be allowed the mercy of decomposition, become one with the Earth once more. What was left of Robby to him was sat in boxes in his garage, where they'd rot next to Hope's things he could never get rid of, stay there until he was rotting himself.
His voice was small, low, clogged and too loud in the echo of the graveyard.
"I miss you so fucking much, Michael. I miss you every fucking day. You know that? There's a-a gouge in my heart now. You put that there."
They would all become fertilizer at one point or another.
Jack bowed his head, dipped low between his shoulders, moved his hands into his hair the way Robby used to. He felt pendants hit against his wrist where the necklace dropped a little from his hand before he tightened it, afraid to lose this little piece he got to carry.
He felt his shoulders shake with the way he missed Robby's laugh, felt his chest tighten at how he missed their gentle flirting in front of company. It dripped from his face, how he missed Robby's cooking, the way he glowed on late mornings. It wailed something wet and crushing, the way he missed Robby's touch, his voice, his kiss, his glare, his smile, his snark.
It would sit in his bones until he too died, this ache. This longing.
Jack sat in the graveyard he buried his husband in, and cried. Let himself cry. Because, even now, Robby was still the only thing that could grab him from that edge. The promise of this.
Of bloody, open sadness, pulled screaming from his soul like a bullet.