jackabbot | Arrival

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robby

Arrival

Jack had gone home, eaten, taken care of his leg, showered, then collapsed into the bed that was, still, too large. He didn’t have any real expectation of getting more than a few hours of sleep, especially after the way the shift ended today, but that just kept his body clock set for the night shift. That was what he told his therapist and the docs at the VA, anyway.

He woke up slowly after a dreamless sleep and laid in the bed for a few more minutes than he might have normally. He was off tonight and there wasn’t too much he needed to do. His laundry was clean and folded, the few dishes he actually got dirty cooking for one were done, and he’d even been to the grocery store recently. He thought about reading a book that had been on his side table long enough for it to be dusty.

The condo was always too quiet, so he opened the police scanner app on his phone and selected the Pittsburgh PD stream for background noise as he started to move around. He wondered if Raymond Orser’s family had come by and if the letter had helped. He hoped it had. He’d seen too many letters written by too many commanding officers, but he also knew they needed to be written. There needed to be more than two people in a uniform on a porch, whether it was a military uniform or a police uniform.

The scanner had been reporting the usual combination of traffic accidents, break-ins, domestic disputes, and missing persons. The rhythm of the dispatcher and the officers was almost like listening to someone calling cadence. He got down on the floor and started doing pushups, then situps, feeling his muscles warm as he focused on proper form and repetitions. Both types of cadence were broken suddenly by the words, “Automatic fire! Automatic fire! Active shooter, all units respond, PittFest, Point State Park.”

His adrenaline spiked, just for a moment. Robby had given Jake his tickets to PittFest. The chances of Jake or Leah being involved were low, but not zero. The chances were never zero, unless they were talking about the chances of everything going well on any given day.

The scanner traffic continued and it became clear that this was going to be a mass casualty event and that PTMC would be the primary facility. Robby and the day shift were going to need backup staff, and he was sure he’d get a text in the next few minutes asking him to come in. He didn’t need it, though. He was already donning his leg and getting into a clean pair of scrubs. He went to the bathroom since god only knew the next time he’d have a chance to piss, then grabbed his go bag from the corner of the living room and headed out. It was going to be a long night for everyone.

There were distant sirens as he ate a protein bar and walked the few blocks to PTMC. They’d get closer soon, and he couldn’t help but think of the sound of Dustoffs arriving. The glass doors to the hub were in front of him as he walked in from the ambulance bay and he could see Robby starting to direct people. Just as the automatic doors opened to let him step in, he was suddenly not in the hub. He was in a hospital, but it wasn’t PTMC. He didn’t recognize any of these people or any of their uniform colors.

What the fuck had just happened?

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It's a pretty run of the mill shift -- the usual parade of addicts and drunks and accidents and, occasionally, even a genuinely sick person. Robby has slipped into the roll of Attending in Darrow General just as easily as he'd ever operated at the Pitt. A hospital's a hospital and an er? It's an er.

Still, the last thing he's expecting when he looks up from the chart he's been updating is Jack Abbot, in the flesh.

"Holy shit," he says, taking off his glasses. "Jack?"

Jack had been scanning around him, looking for anyone he recognized and there was just no one familiar. This was like one of those dreams he'd had now and then, although at least in this case he was wearing scrubs instead of just his skivvies.

Someone glanced up from a computer, though, and okay, maybe this was actually a dream. That was Robby, in different scrubs and with slightly different hair, but that was Robby, probably charting. He had a particular expression when he charted, like he was in his head but not. Jack had his own charting expression, he was sure. They all did.

"What the fuck?" he said, which was not his most eloquent, but ... seriously. What the fuck?

He doesn't vault the desk, because he isn't twenty-two anymore, but it's a pretty close run thing -- he abandons what he's doing, crossing the tiled floor and throwing his arms around Abbot, pulling him in for a hard hug. He's kind of gotten used to Darrow, just about, but he's be hard pressed to convey how relieved he is, right then.

"You have no idea how glad I am to see you."

Jack returned the hug reflexively because when Dr. Michael Robinavitch actually admitted that he needed human contact, Jack wasn't going to disagree with that, even if he still had absolutely no idea what was going on here.

"Robby, man, sorry to sound like a broken record, but what the fuck? Where are we and what the hell just happened to me?"

This was clearly not an ER getting ready for a MCI. It was an ER that was having a good day, actually, if he could judge by the way the nurses and techs were walking around. Everyone was getting it done, but no one looked overly harried.

He is in no way prepared to play welcome wagon but, if he has to, he's pretty glad it's for the man standing in front of him. He'd told Langdon he doesn't have a best friend, and that's probably true, but Jack Abbot is probably the closest thing he does have.

"I'm mid shift but..." He looks down. "Pretend your leg is giving you shit. If I get you on the board, I can put us in a bag and we can talk."

"Oh my god, my leg hurts so much right now," Jack said flatly. He didn't know why he had to pretend that his leg hurt or why this needed to be explained in a bay, but he trusted Robby.

"You're completely screwing up the triage process and your charge nurse is going to have your ass," he said in a more normal tone.

"She's not a patch on Dana, and I'm pretty sure I can take her if it comes to a fight."

He pauses, picking up a marker to scream on the board and grabbing a clipboard with a chart before he ushers Jack in the right direction with an outstretched arm.

"This way, Sir," he says, eyebrows slightly raised. "Let's get that looked at."

“No one’s a patch on Dana,” Jack agreed, because there were a few things in the universe that he knew were undeniably true and one of them was that Dana was the best goddamn nurse he’d ever been fortunate enough to take orders from. Technically, he and the other doctors gave the orders, but they all knew how it actually ran. Robby had told the new kids that morning, even.

He followed Robby into a bay and put his bag down next to the chair, then sat in it. They might be doing this charade of him needing care, but he wasn’t going to mess up the exam table paper so that facilities had to change it for no good reason.

“Okay. Start explaining already, Robinavitch.”

Edited 2025-08-30 18:45 (UTC)

Robby pulls the curtain shut behind them and leans against the wall, arms folded across his chest. His eyes go to Jack's go bag. He's heard that people from the same place can come here from all over their timelines but it looks like him and Jack are from sometime on the same night, at least.

"Do the words "pocket universe" mean anything to you?"

He wasn’t sure what he expected Robby to start with, but that wasn’t it. Robby’s posture was deliberately relaxed, but Jack wasn’t feeling very relaxed about anything here.

“It sounds like something out of one of those comic book movies Jake probably drags you to,” he replied. “What’s it got to do with why I meant to walk into the Pitt and walked into … whatever this hospital’s called?”

"Darrow General," says Robby. "And the same thing happened to me about...three months ago. This place...this city...brings people in from all over -- without consent, I might add -- and we're just expected to...live our lives here." He plucks at the bottle green scrub top he's wearing. "Hence this. Based on the fact that you have your go bag with you, I'm assuming that you're here from the night of the shooting at Pitt Fest?"

None of that made any sense whatsoever, but Robby clearly believed it and Jack trusted him, even when Robby was speaking what seemed to be total nonsense.

“Three months? I saw you this morning, Robby. You told Dr. King I was having an existential crisis.”

He was temporarily distracted from that by Robby’s question about his bag, but he’d be coming back to it. Robby definitely had not been gone for three months. Not even a little bit.

“Heard it on the scanner and headed in,” he confirmed. “I’m sure they would have texted me eventually.”

Edited 2025-08-30 23:10 (UTC)

"I'm pretty sure Dana was trying you as you walked through the door," he says. He leaves the stuff about timelines alone for a minute. He only half understands it himself. "Did...Is that the last thing you remember, then? Coming in to help us out because you heard it on the scanner?"

He pulled his phone out of his pocket just to check and noticed that he’d changed networks. He was now getting service from DT&T, whatever that was. Good service, so they weren’t in the lower bowels of a hospital at least. None of that mattered, though, and he slipped the phone back into his pocket to focus on Robby.

“I was about to walk through the doors from the ambulance bay. I came in that way to avoid whatever chaos was happening in the waiting room.”

There was always chaos in the waiting room, but there were levels of the chaos.

"Yeah," says Robby, scuffing the toe of his sneaker against the linoleum. "You walked in just as I was explaining the protocol to everyone." He scratches his beard, a smile tugging the corner of his mouth. "I don't think I've ever been so glad to see someone in my life." He pauses for a moment. "You got there at 6pm. The last time I remember being in the Pitt, it was about 7.45."

“I’d say that’s because you know I’m awesome, but I’m not a surgeon, so I’m not that conceited,” he commented. He respected his surgical colleagues, but there was definitely a different level of ego there.

Almost two hours in a casualty situation was a lifetime. Jack remembered looking at the clock once or twice in Afghanistan and wondering how it had only been thirty minutes, much less almost two hours.

“We’re gonna be talking about those two hours I missed, but not while you’re on shift,” he informed Robby. Robby probably wouldn’t want to talk about it, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t need to. Jack talked about all kind of things he didn’t want to talk about with his therapist.

“So where do I live here? You have a couch, I hope.”

"No, but there's not many people I'd trust more in a crisis." He'd hope that Jack would feel the same about him though, given the way he'd broken down right before he arrived in Darrow, possibly not. The last thing he wants is to discuss those two hours but he doesn't say that to Jack, not then. He can argue abotu it later.

"I've got a couch, but the city will have assigned you an apartment." He scratches his bearded jaw. "I know. It's fuckin' weird. There's a station about ten minutes walk from here, where you pick up your welcome packet. A guy called Joel took me on my first day."

That was pretty fucking weird. He hadn’t known he was going to appear here but somehow someone else had? And they’d made a “welcome packet” for him that included an apartment?

“I kind of thought I’d stopped moving to places because someone told me so when the Army kicked me out,” he observed. Robby knew very well that Jack hadn’t been kicked out in the way that most people might mean it, but he’d still been told he was done and there hadn’t been any arguing about it.

He doesn't comment on kicked out. He knows Jack well enough to know that it's not worth it. The last thing Jack wants is anything approaching sympathy, anyway.

"Yeah, it's all kind of fucking weird," he says. "And, if you don't want it, you're welcome to my couch for as long as you want, but..." He shrugs. "From what I've heard, people don't get to choose when they come and go, so most people end up just...making a life here. For as long as they get."

This just kept sounding more and more like the Army, which was actually not that unsettling. He understood making whatever life you could for whatever time you had on this earth or in a particular place.

“I don’t think I need to crash on your couch,” he decided. “I appreciate the offer though. I might change my mind if my neighbors are really annoying.”

He looked at Robby straight on. Robby was probably going to not answer because it would involve talking about his feelings and Jack wouldn’t push it, but he was going to ask anyway.

“Have you made a life?”

"Suppose I ought to be flattered that you think I'd be the less annoying option," says Robby. It doesn't surprise him that Jack is adjusting to take what's happening in stride. Robby wouldn't honestly expect anything less from him.

"I've got a job," he says, shrugging. It's not quite an answer to Jack's question, but it's something. "I'm done here in about half an hour and then I can walk you over to the station and we can find your place?"

Clearly he had a job since they were at that job, but it was something. Robby wasn’t sitting around moping all day, at least. Jack couldn’t really picture that happening for more than a little while anyway. He and Robby could both manage a good mope, but they either snapped themselves or the other man out of it pretty fast.

“I can probably find my way myself, if you’ve got something you need to do after you’re done,” he offered. “Hopefully the map application on my phone downloaded something useful while I’ve been sitting here”

He wasn’t a huge smartphone user — social media was definitely not his thing — but he did like map apps.

"I haven't seen you in months," he says. "I haven't seen anyone I know in months. I think I can walk you somewhere and then get you settled. My take out menus can wait." He shrugs. "Unless you don't want to hang around. In which case, my number is the same as it was at home."

Jack had been there himself — people were always coming and going in his various units and so seeing someone he hadn’t expected to see (but was happy to see) was worth taking some time with. It was doubly true because it was Robby. If their situation had been reversed, he was pretty sure Robby wouldn’t have gotten away with just one hug from Jack.

“Honestly, I was expecting to walk into a mass casualty situation. Sitting and listening to you try to explain why no one should put anything without a flared base up their ass instead is just fine,” he replied.

“You think anyone will notice if I stay here? If I leave, someone’s gonna ask me a question and I don’t know where anything is.”

Edited 2025-09-06 20:44 (UTC)

"God, the things that some people think are okay to shove in their asses," says Robby, grinning, even as he's shaking his head. "Yeah, you'll be okay to hang out in here while I do handover and get changed. You want me to grab you a coffee or something? It's better than the shit we've got in the lounge at the Pitt, anyway."

“No one ever warned me about that part of civilian emergency medicine,” Jack agreed. “It was all blunt force trauma, lacerations, and STEMIs.”

They obviously saw those frequently as well, but things people deliberately did to themselves was a much higher percentage. And sure, soldiers could be incredibly stupid, especially when they were nervy and bored. It was usually a different kind of stupid, though.

“Nah, I’ll sit here and catch a soldier’s nap. Go make sure your charge nurse doesn’t hate you for disappearing on her.”

He shifted forward in the chair a little, crossed his left ankle over his right, and leaned his head back against the wall before closing his eyes.

Robby looks at him for a long moment before he ducks out of the bay. Even he'd be hard pressed to explain quite what he's feeling in that moment.

It takes him a little over half an hour to wrap up his shift and then he reappears, his back pack slung on his shoulder, his sunglasses pushed up on top of his head.

"Ready to go exploring, Doctor Abbot?"

Jack hadn’t really been sleeping, but he’d been listening to the rhythms of the department with his eyes closed. It still seemed pretty functional, although there was definitely one person who didn’t realize that “clever” remarks could land as asshole remarks. There was always one.

When Robby came back with sunglasses and a different but very similar backpack to the one he’d had before, Jack shook his head at his friend fondly.

“Brother, you are a creature of habits.”

He stood up and grabbed his own bag, then slung it over his shoulder.

“Show me what you got, Doctor Rabinavitch.”

"My man, sometimes all you can do is cling to that familiar," says Robby, gesturing for Jack to follow him. The er in Darrow General is nowhere near as subterranean as the Pitt and, in a minute, they're on the street.

"So," he says. "The best way I can contextualise this place is like...small town New Jersey."

Jack looked around him and up. Darrow General Hospital seemed much newer than The Pitt. He’d always sort of liked the faded elegance of PTMC, which was probably a little sentimental of him, but sometimes he was a sentimental guy.

“That roof’s not as high,” he observed. “Any way to get up there?”

If the helipad was up there, access wouldn’t be hard, but if it wasn’t, there would be some coaxing of someone somewhere. He was pretty sure Robby would have started that process, and if he hadn’t, Jack would.

“Fucking Jersey?”

"There is. I'll show you sometime."

Jack's reaction makes him laugh, shaking his head. "I know, right? Of all the places. It's not so bad, though. There's a boardwalk."

“You’re assuming they’re going to hire me,” Jack noted. As much as he’d asked about the helipad, there were details here that were important. “If they’re not looking for another ER attending, preferably on the night shift, I’m gonna end up at some kind of urgent care taking beans out of toddlers’ noses.”

He did that at the Pitt, too, but mostly he left that to the residents, students, or nurses. It wasn’t his favorite kind of medicine.

“I could handle a beach and a boardwalk,” he agreed. “Is your apartment near there?”

Robby was a California kid, so he probably wanted to be near the beach if he could be.

"I'll put in a good word for you." The powers that be at Darrow General would be stupid if they didn't jump at the chance of an attending like Jack Abbot. But, he wonders, would they have gotten to be the powers that be.

"I'm actually a few blocks from here," he says, nodding his head in the direction of his apartment. "It's a small town though so nothing is very far from anything else."

From someone else, that might be an idle offer, but Jack knew Robby would actually do it. Honestly, whoever was the equivalent of Gloria here might hire Jack just to get Robby out of their office, if he really decided to be annoying about it. Jack had no complaints about that.

"Convenient," Jack agreed, because he still hadn't moved out of the condo near PTMC despite missing what his life had been when he'd moved in there. It was just too useful for work. Also, he'd gotten a great deal on it since the neighborhood had still been a little rough when he'd bought.

He looked around as they walked. It did seem like a much smaller, quieter town than Pittsburgh.

"I'm guessing you don't get many MCIs here of any kind."

"Yeah. All my furniture is from whatever they fuck they call Ikea here, but it's comfortable enough," says Robby. His bed, actually, is particularly comfortable. He just wishes he spent more time actually asleep in it, instead of staring at the ceiling. He thinks that Jack would probably know something about that, too.

"Not since I've been here, but people say shit hits the fan semi-regularly," he says. "There was a train crash, a while ago. Bunch of people got seriously incident. And a cult, apparently?" He shrugs. "Who the fuck knows, right?"

"IKEA's good at what they do, even if no one can pronounce the names of any of the furniture," Jack agreed. He wasn't sure what else you'd call IKEA, but that was something he could figure out later. It didn't really matter right now.

"Train crashes and a cult? There's a combination that ends about as well as alcohol and 'hey, watch this!'."

They'd just entered what was clearly the government part of town, with a police station, post office, and Darrow Public Library on their left, then City Hall on their right. People were going in and out of all of them, but not nearly as many as he was used to from Pittsburgh.

"This does seem like a small town. What do you do for fun around here, other than the beach?"

"I don't think they happened at the same time, if that helps," says Robby, smirking at the thought of it. "I'm not so naive as to think that something shitty won't happen now we're here, but we can but hope for quiet lives, right?" He's not sure either of them are ever going to have that. "Mostly? I read and I drink. There's some pretty decent craft beer being brewed." He shrugs. "Mostly, I go to work. There's some good coffee shops."

It's shorthand for admitting that he hasn't been doing much.

Jack didn't think he was likely to ever live a quiet life, and he was fine with that, mostly. He liked the adrenaline and the mental challenge of emergency medicine. He wasn't exactly lonely other than always missing his wife, but he didn't have a huge number of friends, either.

"No shame from me on mostly working and occasionally reading or drinking," Jack said, holding his hand up. "I'm the one who was listening to the police scanner on my night off."

"How often do you do that, by the way?" asks Robby, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Like, to a level I should be concerned, or just sometimes, or..." He shifts his grip on his backpack as, ahead of them, the station comes into sight. "That's where we're heading," he says, pointing. "Somebody told me that some people arrive by train but me..." He hesitates, unwilling to tell Jack exactly the moment he came from. "One moment I was in paeds, and the next moment I was here."

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Arrival

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