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Most people would think that Robby did his drinking in the daytime, with the sunlight. They’d think he’d prefer company to quiet his mind, even if that company was just the din of the early evening crowd that settled before the rest of the world got off shift.
But they would be wrong.
Robby did his drinking alone. He did his drinking in the dark. He did his drinking where no one could see him, where no one could judge him, but mostly he did his drinking where no one could help him.
It was Hell— those long shifts. The ones that ran far over when he should have clocked out. When the incoming patients and trauma seemed endless. Not seemed. Were. They were endless. They would never stop coming.
There would always be someone in trouble, someone in pain, someone gone before he could really help. And every single one placed another stone in his heart. Those patients, the ones he could save and the ones that he couldn’t alike, clogged up the valves in his heart with rock until he was sure that his heart would fall right out of his chest if he ever went back.
Every night that he went home, he’d tell himself “no more.” He’d tell himself “I can’t take it,” and “I can’t keep doing this,” and “I can’t go back.” Yet every morning, Doctor Robby would drag himself out of bed, shut off the tv that kept him sane with its nonsense, and sling himself over that godforsaken motorcycle that would plunge him right back into Hell. Because those people needed him. Not just the patients that haunted him but the staff that relied on him; the nurses that respected him, the colleagues that admired him and the students who feared him— they needed him and he needed them just the same, though he would never ever admit it.
Robby dragged himself off of his motorcycle, the back of his mind cursing their successful journey, and trudged up to his brownstone with the weight of a thousand souls burdening his steps. His keys clinked together as he pulled them from his pocket, sifting through the collection until he found the right one. His hands didn’t shake. That felt wrong. He should be shaking. He should be breaking— he should be broken. But just the same as they never shook when he held a scalpel, his hands refused to shake as he shoved the correct key into the lock and pushed the door open with a little too much force.
The door hit the foyer table with a loud crack. Robby winced, eyes blinking shut for just a moment as he promised himself to be gentler next time. If the dent in that table could talk, it would shout that his promise was a practiced lie. But the table couldn’t talk. It couldn’t air out its everlasting grievances with Robby’s indelicacies. The hollow just grew with every passing day like a tender reminder of the pit in Robby’s chest that did the same.
His place was nothing special. A safe place to sleep more than anything else. Of course, it carried touches of all the people he’d been in the years before he closed himself off for good. A few photos of him and Jack from their early years, a collection of records that could basically carbon date him and mementos from all the people who’d wanted to stay but he couldn’t bring himself to let them.
Robby dropped his backpack by the door as he kicked it shut, clicking the lock behind him and throwing his keys into the bowl on the table.
He let out a loud sigh that he’d been holding in since midday and kicked off his shoes, sending them flying into the dark. Wherever they landed, he didn’t care. He didn’t have to care until he had to go hunting for them in the morning. If he made it there.
He didn’t bother turning on the lights as he stumbled gracelessly down the hallway. He never did. The lights were a harsh reminder of his Hell.
The lights stayed off even as he staggered into his bathroom. Robby ripped his scrubs off, tossing them into a pile in the corner. He ripped open the shower curtain and blindly grasped at the wall until he found the shower handle and twisted it roughly. Cold water splashed his head before he could remember to move out of the way as the echoing sound of running water filled the otherwise silent apartment. Robby held his hand under the slowly warming stream until it satisfied him.
Once he stepped under the burning hot jets, Robby’s breathing slowed. He wasn’t calm, just placated for a moment. Surely his skin would end up bright red from the heat though there wasn’t enough light to tell him if he was right or not. He let the water burn through him, eyes closed as he relished in the sting. His nails dug into his scalp when he shampooed his hair. The dirt seemed to seep from every pore as Robby scrubbed at his skin.
Out, damned spot! Out, I say! The words echoed in his mind as he scoured over every inch that had been stained with blood. One: two: why, then, 'tis time to do't. — Hell is murky! Robby scrubbed harder. What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? Guilt flashed through the man faster than a lightning strike. Surely by now he’d have drawn blood just by trying to coax it from his every pore. Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him.
Damn the bard. His poetry carried a nasty habit, one all too familiar to the doctor who thought himself cursed. His words stained Robby’s soul the way a laceration could carve an everlasting scar into an unfortunate patient’s skin. What, will these hands ne'er be clean?— No more o' that, my lord, no more o' that: you mar all with this starting.
He’ll never be clean. The blood may wash itself away, may swirl down the drain in a whirlwind of pale pink guilt, but Robby will never rid himself of it. Forever haunting him, forever staining him, forever dripping off his footsteps as though it were his own blood that he left in his wake.
As he did every night, Robby willed himself to cry. He begged and pleaded with his eyes to pour tears like the heavens themselves had opened within him to salt the earth with his sins. But they never came. It was a punishment in itself, his inability to cry. He wanted the pain, wanted the helplessness that tears often carried. Robby wanted to feel something as he trapped himself under the boiling water but God, himself, must be standing in the way because, God help him, he never could. Instead he just pressed his hands deep into his eyes and made bright lights dance behind the inky shadows behind his eyelids.
Robby prayed for tears. He prayed for guilt. He prayed for the strength that slowly ate away at him day by day and he willed the horrors that he witnessed to leave him. And when none of his prayers were answered, he slammed his hand against the shower handle, abruptly shutting the simmering water off and stepped carefully out of the shower. He didn’t bother to pull the shower curtain shut as he blindly grasped for his towel. Robby just toweled himself off until the water no longer dripped from his skin and he wrapped the towel around his waist. He held a hand out to the wall, dragging his fingertips along the way to his room.
Once he had loose fabric clinging to his skin and overwhelming his senses, Robby made his way back to the living room in the moonlight that filtered through the windows that he never bothered to close.
Grabbing a clean glass from the bar, Robby uncorked his favorite bottle of bourbon and tipped a generous amount in. He should let go of the bottle. He really should. Instead the bottle comes with him as he unceremoniously collapses into his favorite chair. The bourbon bottle settles onto the side table right next to his glass as Robby clicks the tv remote. It doesn’t really matter what he puts on. He’s not watching it anyways. He just needs the noise. He just needs something to interrupt his thoughts.
Like I said, Robby does his drinking alone.
It’s an agonizing ritual of sorts. One that he can’t let anyone else see. If they saw then he wouldn’t be Doctor Robby anymore. He wouldn’t be their fearless leader anymore. He’d be the broken man that he’s done his damndest to conceal.
Not a leader. Not an inspiration. Not a hardened professional. Just the man who’s haunted by his pain. The man haunted by his failures. The man who prays for a car to hit him every time he gets on the road.
It’s the part of him that he hides from everyone, even Jack. Sure he knows the broad strokes but even when you stand and study a painting for hours on end there are bound to be details that you miss.
Robby prays for his own death. He has for months. Of course, he’s never uttered this pain aloud. Too many people would worry. Too many would have questions. They would never see him the same again. If he ever breathed a word of it to anyone but Jack then they’d have to tell. They’d have to rat him out. He’d be subjected to therapies that don’t help. Maybe even medications. Ones that he can confidently say will do nothing but spread the numbness that already tickled at the edges of his sanity.
So, he drinks.
He sits, and he stares. At the unnatural light of the TV. At the darkness that creeps into the edges of his vision.
The fuzzy feeling of the alcohol drowns out sharp blades of horrifying thought.
The thoughts that tell him to turn into oncoming traffic. The ones that tell him to jump. The ones that tell him to see what his muscles look like anytime he holds a knife while he cooks.
Long ago, Robby learned how to numb that feeling. He learned how to distract himself when the days got too tough— when the thoughts got too loud. Robby had learned how to drown his pain in the sheer bitterness you could only find at the bottom of a bottle.
He emptied his glass.
Then tipped the bottle to the inner edge until he could drain it with a satisfying swallow once more.
Robby drained glass after glass until a satisfying buzz settled into his bones. He stared at the dimly lit screen of his contacts. As he did every night, he wondered if someone would burst through the door to stop him. If someone cared enough to see that self destructive path that he trekked upon in every waking moment.
Maybe Jack— who saw his pain perhaps more than anyone else could. The man who shared his sufferings. The man whose eyes witnessed horror as he did. The man who had marked the same spot on the roof many-a-times as he, himself, had, though perhaps never as close to the edge as Robby had ever ventured. Jack Abbot certainly knew more of Robby’s misgivings than any other unfortunate soul he’d ever happened upon so maybe he would be the one— the one that burst through the door with all fire and fervor.
No. The night was Jack’s comfort. The night was his domain. It was his shift. Robby knew that better than anyone. He’d had to hand off his caseload to Jack before he’d endured the arduous trek home. Jack was occupied. Jack would not be his savior this night or any other. He could only do as much as Robby asked of him and Robby refused to ask anymore than he already had.
So his mind drifted further into its haze.
Few had ever witnessed him in his most vulnerable state. Dana, of course, being one of them. She had a hard view of the world. She had to. The world had never been more than hard and cruel to her so she had conditioned herself to be just the same. Dana was the hard line between Robby and the worst of himself when the Pitt took a sledgehammer to his core. She could see the tremors in his hands before he even felt them. She knew when to pull him out before he lost himself in trying to save a lost cause.
But even to Dana, he knew how to hide his worst moments. After a while, he learned to mask the pain in his words. How, when she called, to turn the strain into a lilt that injected pure relief in her voice. Sure he was an attending physician, sure he was a teacher and a mentor but the one thing that he was surely an expert in was making his voice reflect a lightness that didn’t exist anymore. Besides, Dana had her own life to contend with. She didn’t need the nightmares that plagued Robby every night. He was sure of that.
In his burdened mind, that left only one last option. Robby was nearly half a bottle deep now, clinging dearly to the haze that he’d often scolded Louie for. Flashes of the day scarred his mind. A young girl who carried the marks of her abusive father. An old man who choked on his final breaths despite Robby’s best efforts. A parent’s nauseating cries when he told them that their child would never wake up again.
Sure, they were all too familiar. Sure, he’d heard them all before. But that didn’t make their talons any less sharp. Still they took an indelicate hand and clawed their way into his psyche, tearing the flesh of his heart and letting rivers of blood fall from their wounds.
His last option was just a kid. Just a boy. A final lifeline who had found him when the last of his walls had crumbled around him in the harsh light of their makeshift morgue.
Normally Dennis Whitaker would never have crossed Robby’s mind in his search for salvation. Afterall, he was just a kid. Barely a graduated doctor coming into his own in the chaos of the Pitt, he shouldn’t be on Robby’s mind. And yet, he was the one who had found Robby in his worst moment. When the guilt of losing Jake’s Leah had consumed him, Dennis Whitaker had found him on the ground and brought him back from the brink. Not only that but he’d kept Robby’s pain where so many would have spread it like wishing on a dandelion, letting rumors scatter every which way on the wind. It was such a brief moment that it shouldn’t have registered. It should have scattered itself in his mind as all things eventually did.
Instead, the kid’s presence lingered. His quiet kindness festered in Robby’s mind. His gaze flickered from the contact name to the time that lingered above it. 12:43. Hours had passed yet he’d barely registered a moment of it. Good. He thought. That meant he was surviving.
In the darkness, Robby’s eyes strained at the harsh light of his phone screen. The horrid thoughts flickered through his mind once more, terrorizing him as they had done for months. A harsh breath forced its way from his nose, itching so badly that he sneezed. Luckily the alcohol had managed to reach its way into his tongue, making it feel heavy and numb so when his teeth clenched onto it, the pain didn’t register.
He’d had enough pain.
He’d had a lifetime's worth of pain to contend with already. Anything beyond it barely registered anymore.
Robby continued to stare at the contacts on his screen until his eyes watered from his refusal to blink. Somewhere along the way he clicked it off, relishing in the darkness that followed. It was the same conclusion he came to every night. His burden was not to be shared. His burden was his own to shoulder, his own to struggle with as he rolled Sisyphus’s boulder up the hill once more. His divine punishment for the sins he’d surely committed to deserve such ire from God.
The glass, drained once more, sat abandoned in his living room as Robby stumbled numbly to his bedroom. His bedding, crumpled just as he’d left it when he dragged himself up that morning, sat waiting for him in the darkness of the eternal early morning hours. Robby stumbled with practiced ease into the comfort of his unmade bed. He burrowed himself into their cool embrace, twitching at the voices that never truly quieted despite his best efforts.
Even so, as the TV filtered white noise into his bedroom, there was a tinge of himself that congratulated the despondent man for surviving another night. The voice wasn’t even his own as the rest of them were. The voice that gave him unearned cheers was that of those who needed him most. The voice was a horrifying amalgamation of Jack and Dana and Dennis and the threads of every patient who had survived him. It gave a hollow ovation to the man who survived only by drinking until he couldn’t function long enough to give in to the rest of the voices. Until he couldn’t give in to the urge to solve his unending pain permanently.
Sleep took Robby slowly because even unconsciousness had to be a struggle to the man who suffered so willingly to atone for sins that no one else saw as his own. It dragged him beyond the depths, to the only relief that he could reach.
Tomorrow will be different. He said to himself quietly. Tomorrow I won’t need this just to keep going.
It was truly remarkable how easily a man could lie to himself. How easily he could force himself to believe such inanity.
Tomorrow won’t be any different. Tomorrow he’ll drive himself a step closer to the edge. Tomorrow he’ll still refuse to call for help. He’ll still believe that he is beyond help. Tomorrow he’ll hop right back onto that motorcycle. Tomorrow he’ll still lie about wearing his helmet.
Maybe tomorrow his ignorant God will hear his pleas.
Maybe tomorrow.
Maybe tomorrow it’ll end.