Chapter Text
The shift was over.
At least, that was what everyone kept telling him.
Fifteen hours. Hundreds of patients. A department-wide technology failure. Staff shortages. Administrative headaches. More trauma than anybody should have seen in a single day. The Fourth of July weekend had delivered exactly the kind of chaos PTMC had come to expect.
And somehow, despite all of it, Robby felt restless.
The Emergency Department was finally beginning to quiet down. The constant stream of voices had faded into the low murmur of night staff taking over. Cleaning crews moved through hallways. Monitors beeped somewhere in the distance. A floor buffer hummed near radiology.
For most people, the end of a shift brought relief.
For Robby, it brought something dangerously close to uncertainty.
He stood alone at the attending station staring at a chart he hadn't read for nearly five minutes.
His eyes tracked the words.
His brain processed none of them.
Across the department, Dana was directing nurses toward the locker rooms with the same fierce authority she'd displayed all shift.
Since the assault ten months earlier, something had changed in her.
Not broken.
Hardened.
Dana had always been protective, but now she seemed to carry that instinct like armour. Every new nurse was under her wing. Every vulnerable patient became her responsibility. Anybody who threatened either quickly discovered why nobody in the department was foolish enough to cross her.
A young nurse attempted to return to a computer.
Dana pointed toward the exit.
"No."
"I still need to finish charting."
"No, you need to go home."
"It'll take five minutes."
"You said that twenty minutes ago."
The nurse sighed dramatically.
Dana didn't budge.
Eventually the nurse surrendered and headed for the elevators.
Only then did Dana glance toward Robby.
"You're still here."
"So are you."
"I have an excuse."
"And what's that?"
"I'm right."
Robby huffed out a laugh.
Dana folded her arms.
"You packed?"
"The motorcycle's downstairs."
"That's not what I asked."
He looked back at the chart.
Dana waited.
The woman had the patience of a predator.
Eventually he sighed.
"Mostly."
"Mostly packed or mostly ready?"
"Neither."
"Thought so."
She grabbed a coffee from the station and slid it toward him.
Robby accepted it automatically.
The coffee was terrible.
The gesture wasn't.
"Three months," Dana said quietly.
"That's the plan."
"You actually going through with it?"
He stared into the coffee.
The answer should have been simple.
For nearly a year he'd been talking about this trip.
A motorcycle.
An open road.
No schedules.
No hospital.
No responsibility.
Just distance.
But now that the moment had arrived, he wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with himself.
Emergency medicine consumed people.
It became their identity.
Their rhythm.
Their purpose.
Without it, what was left?
"I'm leaving in about an hour," he finally said.
Dana nodded.
Neither of them mentioned that he hadn't actually answered her question.
Across the department, Dr. Al-Hashimi sat reviewing charts.
Even at the end of a fifteen-hour shift she looked annoyingly focused.
Robby watched her for a moment.
She noticed immediately.
"Do you need something?"
He shrugged.
"Just checking you're real."
Her eyes narrowed.
"Excuse me?"
"No normal person enjoys charting this much."
"I enjoy accuracy."
"That's somehow worse."
Dana snorted into her coffee.
Al-Hashimi rolled her eyes and returned to her work.
The first few hours after her arrival had been rough.
They had disagreed about almost everything.
Technology.
Workflow.
Leadership.
Generative AI integration.
Half the department had expected one of them to quit.
The other half had expected murder.
Instead, they'd slowly settled into something resembling mutual respect.
Neither would ever admit it out loud.
But it was there.
"I'll keep your department alive while you're gone," Al-Hashimi called without looking up.
"My department?"
"Our department."
He smirked.
She didn't look up.
Neither said anything else.
Some conversations didn't need finishing.
The residents were gathered nearby.
Whitaker looked exhausted.
Mel looked like she was running entirely on caffeine and stubbornness.
Santos somehow appeared composed despite having endured exactly the same shift as everyone else.
Robby had never figured out how she managed it.
Probably black magic.
"You're really doing it?" Whitaker asked.
"The motorcycle trip?"
"Yeah."
"That's usually what happens when somebody spends six months planning a motorcycle trip."
Whitaker frowned.
"I just mean... alone?"
Robby shrugged.
"Somebody has to keep me company."
"There is literally nobody else there."
"Exactly."
Mel laughed softly.
The sound surprised her.
It surprised everyone.
The shift had drained them all.
The last few months had drained them all.
For ten months they'd been carrying scars from the events that had changed the department forever.
Some wounds healed.
Others simply became easier to hide.
Santos folded her arms.
"If you come back looking like a mountain man, we're staging an intervention."
"I can grow a full beard."
"No."
Dana appeared instantly.
"Absolutely not."
"I didn't realise this was a democracy."
"It's not."
"Good."
"Because we're all voting against the beard."
For the first time all night, the group laughed.
A real laugh.
Tired.
Brief.
Necessary.
The kind that only happened between people who had survived impossible days together.
Robby looked around at them.
Whitaker.
Still learning that medicine couldn't save everyone.
Santos.
Brilliant and terrifying in equal measure.
Mel.
Holding together responsibilities nobody her age should have to carry.
Dana.
The heart of the department.
Al-Hashimi.
Preparing to take over while he disappeared for three months.
His people.
His strange, dysfunctional family.
For a moment the thought made leaving feel harder than staying.
Eventually people began filtering out.
Whitaker left first.
Mel followed shortly after.
Santos lingered long enough to remind him not to die in a ditch somewhere.
Then she disappeared too.
The department grew quieter.
Until only a handful of staff remained.
Robby finally grabbed his bag and headed toward the elevators.
The doors opened onto the parking garage.
His motorcycle sat exactly where he'd left it.
Packed.
Fueled.
Ready.
Three months of his life condensed into a few saddlebags.
He stood staring at it for a long moment.
"You look like a guy considering a prison break."
Robby glanced over.
Jack Abbott emerged from between two parked cars holding a pair of coffees.
One was already extended toward him.
Robby accepted it.
"You stalking me now?"
"Just making sure you actually leave."
"Why?"
Abbott leaned against a concrete pillar.
"Because if you go back upstairs, they'll find another patient and you'll never escape."
Robby couldn't argue with that.
It was probably true.
Abbott took a sip of coffee.
For a while neither spoke.
The silence wasn't awkward.
Years of friendship had made that unnecessary.
Finally Abbott sighed.
"You ever notice nobody teaches us how to stop?"
"What?"
"They teach us how to intubate patients."
Robby nodded.
"They teach us trauma surgery."
"Mostly."
"They teach us how to function on three hours of sleep and bad decisions."
"Definitely."
Abbott looked across the garage.
"But nobody teaches us how to stop doing any of it."
The words landed harder than Robby expected.
Because Abbott understood.
Maybe better than anyone.
The exhaustion.
The burnout.
The endless accumulation of grief.
The way medicine demanded everything and still asked for more.
"You planning on retiring?" Robby asked.
Abbott barked out a laugh.
"God, no."
"Then what's with the speech?"
Abbott's smile faded slightly.
"I'm worried about you."
Robby immediately looked away.
Of course he was.
Everybody was.
The problem was they weren't entirely wrong.
The nightmares hadn't stopped.
The panic attacks hadn't completely disappeared.
Some days he felt fine.
Other days he felt like he was balancing on the edge of something he couldn't quite identify.
"You'll survive three months without me."
"Not worried about that."
Abbott's voice was quieter now.
"I'm worried whether you'll survive three months with yourself."
The garage fell silent.
For a moment neither moved.
Neither spoke.
Robby stared at the motorcycle.
At the open road waiting beyond the city.
At the uncertainty stretching out in front of him.
Then he forced a smile.
"That's optimistic."
Abbott didn't smile back.
And somehow that worried him more than anything else.
Hours later, long before sunrise, Robby finally left Pittsburgh behind.