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Entry tags:
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?
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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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."
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"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.
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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."
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"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.
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"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."
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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.”
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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?"
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“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?”
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"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?"
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“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.”
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"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?"
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“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.
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"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."
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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.”
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"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."
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“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.
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"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."
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“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?”
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"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?"
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“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.
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“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.”
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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.
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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?"
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