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The argument started over coffee. It always started over something stupid lately.
Not even the coffee itself. The cup.
Robby had left it half-finished on the nurses’ station far too many hours ago and forgotten about it entirely. By the time shift change rolled around, the thing had developed a skin thick enough to classify as a new organism. Jack picked it up between two fingers like it had personally offended him.
“You know normal people don’t drink biohazards, right?”
Robby barely looked up from the chart he was finishing. “Good evening to you too.”
The emergency department buzzed around them in that ugly transition between day and night shift. Stretchers moving. Phones ringing. Dana arguing with transport. Santos laughing too loudly at something Whitaker said. The fluorescent lights had that late-evening hum that always made Robby’s headache worse.
Jack set the cup down harder than necessary. “You’ve had caffeine and ibuprofen for dinner again, haven't you?”
“And?”
“And,” Jack said, voice tight already, “you’ve slept maybe eight hours total this week.”
Robby signed the chart with more force than required. “I’m busy.”
“So am I.”
“That’s different.”
Jack barked a humourless laugh. “Sure. Of course it is.”
Robby finally looked at him then. Really looked.
Jack was in dark scrubs, jacket half-zipped, prosthetic hidden beneath tailored trousers and years of practice pretending it didn’t hurt. His hair was damp from the rain outside. He looked exhausted too. Shadows under his eyes. The slight stiffness in his posture that meant the leg was bothering him.
But Jack always looked composed anyway. Controlled. Irritatingly functional.
“You don’t get to lecture me,” Robby muttered.
Jack folded his arms. “Someone has to.”
That gets right under Robby’s skin.
Robby’s jaw tightened. “I’m not one of your residents.”
“No,” Jack replied quietly. “You’re my husband. Which is why watching you run yourself into the ground is becoming a problem.”
A few feet away, Dana glanced over once, clocked the tone, and immediately developed a deep interest in literally anything else.
Robby shoved the chart into the rack. “Can we not do this here?”
Jack held his gaze for a beat too long. “Fine.”
They ended up on the roof because apparently neither of them knew how to stop escalating anymore.
Rain misted across the city skyline. Pittsburgh glowed orange and silver beneath heavy clouds, ambulance sirens echoing somewhere distant below them. The helipad lights painted everything in pale blue.
Jack limped slightly in the cold. Barely noticeable unless you knew him as well as Robby did.
Unfortunately, Robby knew him too well. “You think you’re helping,” Robby snapped, “but you just swoop in acting morally superior all the time.”
Jack stared at him. “Morally superior?”
“Yes.”
“Because I asked if you’d eaten?”
“Because you act like you’ve got everything figured out while your own life is held together with antidepressants and sheer dumb luck at this point.”
Jack flinched. Tiny. Almost invisible. Robby saw it anyway.
And because he was tired and angry and hurt in ways he didn’t know how to explain anymore, he kept going.
“You disappear into work just as much as I do, either here or with fucking SWAT. You don’t sleep. Your leg’s been killing you for months and you won’t even admit it, god forbid actually go see your prosthetists. Half the time you look one bad shift away from a breakdown, but apparently I’m the problem.”
Jack’s face closed off with terrifying speed. “That what you think?”
“Oh, come on.”
“No.” Jack’s voice sharpened. “Tell me, Michael. What exactly do you think of me these days?”
Robby laughed bitterly instead of answering honestly. “I think you like fixing people because it means you never have to look too hard at yourself.”
Silence. The wind cut cold between them.
Jack looked away first.
For one awful second Robby wanted to take it back. Every word. He wanted to step forward and grab Jack’s stupid jacket and say I’m tired and scared and I miss you even when you’re standing right next to me.
Instead he said, “God, just leave me alone, fuck's sake.”
Jack nodded once. Not angry anymore. Just wounded. “Yeah,” he said softly. “Maybe I will.”
Robby left before Jack could see how much that answer hurt.
The stairwell door slammed behind him.
By the time he reached the parking garage, his chest felt hollowed out. The rain had gotten worse. Cold needles against asphalt. His motorcycle gleamed black beneath fluorescent lights.
He shoved his helmet on too hard. His hands were shaking. The engine roared alive beneath him.
And still, stupidly, all he could think about was Jack standing alone on the roof.
Maybe I will.
“Fuck,” Robby whispered into the helmet.
He should go back upstairs. He should apologise. He should call Jack dramatic and kiss him stupid and drag him home and force both of them to sleep for twelve straight hours.
Instead he pulled out into traffic.
The roads shimmered wet beneath streetlights. Evening traffic crawled around him. His head throbbed. His thoughts spiralled.
Robby’s eyes burned suddenly. God. When had they become this?
His phone buzzed in his jacket pocket. Probably Jack.
Robby swallowed against the tightness in his throat and accelerated through the intersection just as headlights exploded across his vision.
Too fast. Wrong angle. A horn screamed.
There wasn’t time to think after that. Only impact. Metal shrieking.
Weightlessness.
Then pain so enormous it swallowed the world whole. The helmet cracked against pavement.
Something warm poured down the side of his face. He couldn’t breathe right.
Rain hit his skin in icy little taps.
People were shouting. Somewhere far away someone yelled for an ambulance.
Robby blinked at the blurred sky above him.
Everything felt… distant. Wrong. His body wouldn’t move properly.
And with horrible clarity, one thought cut through the chaos: Those were the last things I said to him.
Panic flooded him harder than the pain. No no no.
Not like this. Please not like this.
Jack was supposed to know.
Even after the arguments and exhaustion and resentment and all the sharp ugly edges lately, Jack was still the centre of every part of him.
Robby tried to speak. Blood filled his mouth. “Jack…”
Nobody heard him.
The rain kept falling. His vision dimmed at the edges.
And his very last conscious thought before darkness took him was desperately simple: I didn’t tell him I love him.
—
At first, there was nothing.
No pain. No light. No time.
Just deep, endless dark that swallowed everything whole.
Then something beeped. Slow. Rhythmic. A monitor.
Robby didn’t know that immediately. His mind drifted around the sound without understanding it. Sometimes it vanished completely. Sometimes it became the only thing in existence.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
There were voices too. Muffled. Warped strangely, like hearing people underwater.
“…pressure’s dropping again.”
“…increase the prop…”
“…neurosurgery said wait…”
Words floated in and out without meaning. Sometimes he thought he was dreaming. Sometimes he thought he was dead.
Once, he became vaguely aware of something in his throat and panicked violently for half a second before the darkness dragged him back under again.
After that came pain. Not sharp. Not specific. Just enormous.
A crushing ache through his entire body. Heavy. Distant. Like he was trapped under concrete.
And cold. God, he was cold. He has never been this cold before.
Something warm touched his hand. Immediately, instinctively, his mind reached for it, wanting to cling on to any comfort he could get.
“Hey,” someone whispered.
Jack. Even unconscious, Robby knew him.
Jack’s voice lived in him somewhere primal now. Threaded into bone marrow and heartbeat and muscle memory.
There was silence for a moment. Then Jack exhaled shakily. “You scared the absolute shit out of me, sweetheart.”
The words wrapped around him like blankets fresh from a dryer. Warm and soft and like home.
Robby tried to answer. Nothing happened. Panic fluttered weakly somewhere inside him.
“Don’t,” Jack murmured immediately, as though he could feel it. “Don’t do that. You’re okay. Just… stay still.”
Something brushed through Robby’s hair. Gentle fingers. Everything he was experiencing was too overwhelming and at the same time not enough. Robby silently pleaded for Jack to keep touching him. He knew where he was, who he was when Jack was touching him.
Then everything disappeared again.
—
Time stopped meaning anything after that. Consciousness came in fragments.
Little drifting islands in a black ocean. Sometimes there were hours between them. Sometimes days. Robby couldn’t tell.
He learned the ICU by sound before anything else. Ventilator hiss. Monitor alarms. Rubber soles squeaking across floors. Muted overhead pages.
Once he heard Dana crying quietly in the hallway. “I just thought he’d be awake by now.”
Robby wanted to tell her he was trying.
Instead he sank again.
—
Another fragment.
Jack was angry this time. Not at Robby. At someone else.
“You’re telling me there’s no change?”
A pause.
Then sharper. “No, don’t give me the careful doctor bullshit, I know what diffuse axonal injury means.”
Silence.
Robby could almost picture it. Jack standing with arms folded tight across his chest, jaw clenched hard enough to crack teeth. Exhausted. Frightened. Probably still in scrubs.
“You said the swelling was improving.”
Another pause.
Then quieter now. More dangerous somehow. “He’s fifty-two, he can recover from this.”
The room went silent except for machines.
When Jack spoke again, his voice broke. “He’s supposed to outlive me.”
The darkness swallowed everything before Robby could hold onto that thought.
—
Someone played music once.
Soft and scratchy through phone speakers. Fleetwood Mac.
Jack humming under his breath terribly off-key. Robby would have laughed if he could.
“You always complain about my music choices,” Jack said quietly. “Which is rude, by the way. Deeply rude for a man whose playlists sound like divorced dads at a barbecue.”
A long silence followed. Robby floated inside it.
Then “I’m sorry.”
The words cracked apart in the middle.
Jack inhaled shakily. “I shouldn’t have let you leave like that.”
Something warm pressed against Robby’s knuckles. Forehead maybe.
Jack did that sometimes. “I knew you were exhausted. I knew you weren’t thinking straight and I still…” His voice frayed thin. “Christ, Michael.”
Robby wanted desperately to wake up then. Wanted to claw his way through the dark just to say it wasn’t your fault.
But his body remained impossibly heavy.
Distant.
—
Another time. Chaos. Fast footsteps. Monitor alarms louder now.
“Seizing,” someone barked.
Hands everywhere suddenly.
The world fractured into pain and noise. Robby couldn’t breathe.
Or maybe he could and just didn’t understand how anymore.
Somewhere through the panic he heard Jack.
“Move.”
Not loud. Not shouting. Worse. The voice Jack used during traumas. Controlled to the point of terror.
“I’ve got him.”
Then a hand around his wrist. Grounding him. Anchoring him somewhere beyond the static.
“You’re okay,” Jack said immediately, close enough now that Robby could almost picture him leaning over the bed. “You’re okay, sweetheart, stay with me.”
The seizure dragged him back under before he could understand the words.
—
At some point, Robby realised Jack almost never left. Not fully.
Even when other people visited, Jack was there.
A chair scraping closer. The click of a coffee cup set down. The rustle of jacket fabric.
Sometimes silence stretched for hours except for the sound of pages turning. Jack reading. Research articles probably. Or trashy thrillers he pretended not to like.
Once, half-conscious, Robby heard Whitaker whisper: “Has he gone home at all?”
And Dana answered quietly: “Not really.”
Another pause.
Then softer: “He sleeps here more than anywhere else, if he sleeps at all.”
Robby drifted for what might have been days after that. The guilt followed him even unconscious.
—
One night, thunder rattled faintly against the windows.
Rain.
Robby knew rain now. Rain meant the accident. Rain meant headlights. Rain meant those last awful words on the roof.
The memory hit him harder this time.
I think you like fixing people because it means you never have to look too hard at yourself.
Even buried beneath sedation and brain injury, shame cut deep.
Something made a sound near him. A chair creaking.
Then Jack spoke into the dark. “You know what the worst part is?”
His voice sounded wrecked. Not angry anymore. Just tired in a way that settled into bones.
“I can’t even be mad at you properly.”
Silence.
“I tried. First couple days, I was furious.” A humourless laugh. “Thought maybe it’d be easier if I stayed angry.”
Robby listened with every fractured piece of himself.
“But then you looked…” Jack stopped abruptly. Swallowed hard. “Jesus, Robby.”
The mattress dipped slightly.
“I don’t care about the argument anymore.”
Jack’s hand wrapped carefully around his. Warm. Steady.
“I just want you back.”
And for the very first time, somewhere deep beneath the dark and pain and drifting nothingness, Robby fought his way upward toward the sound of his husband’s voice.
—
Coming back hurt. That was Robby’s first coherent thought.
Not physically, though that was there too. Pain sat inside him like broken glass wrapped in cotton wool. Distant but everywhere.
No, waking up hurt because consciousness arrived all at once.
Light. Noise. Weight. Fear.
His eyelids felt glued shut. His mouth was unbearably dry. Something tugged at his skin. Machines beeped steadily nearby.
For one awful moment he had no idea where he was. Then memory slammed into him in shattered pieces.
Rain. Headlights. Jack on the roof looking wounded and tired and heartbreakingly small beneath the helipad lights.
Panic surged instantly. Robby made a noise around the tube in his throat. Weak. Animal.
Movement exploded around him. “Easy, easy, hey-”
Jack.
Robby fought harder immediately, trying to open his eyes properly.
A hand grabbed his gently.
“Robby.” Jack’s voice cracked hard on the second syllable. “Stop fighting the vent, sweetheart, you’re okay.”
Sweetheart.
Jack only used that voice when terrified.
Robby finally managed to pry his eyes open a fraction. Everything blurred. Bright lights burned his vision. Shapes swam uselessly. But one of them leaned over him immediately.
Jack.
Unshaven. Exhausted. Eyes red-rimmed. He looked awful.
Relief hit Robby so violently it almost hurt more than the accident.
Jack was alive. Jack was here.
Robby tried to speak around the tube again. Couldn’t. Frustration and panic tangled together.
Jack squeezed his hand quickly. “I know. I know.”
There were tears in his eyes now. Actual tears. Robby couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Jack cry.
“You’re in ICU. You were in an accident.” Jack was talking too fast suddenly, like if he stopped he might fall apart completely. “You’ve been unconscious for a few weeks, but you’re okay, alright? You’re okay.”
Weeks.
Robby stared at him sluggishly.
Weeks.
God. Jack looked like he’d lived every second of them.
The realisation settled slowly through the fog.
Jack had already buried one spouse.
Robby knew the shape of that grief intimately. Knew the haunted look Jack still got sometimes when hospitals went quiet at three in the morning. Knew about nightmares and guilt and the way Jack loved like someone terrified the world might steal it away again.
And Robby had nearly done exactly that. Emotion surged up so suddenly his chest hurt with it.
Jack misread it instantly.
“Hey, hey, don’t.” He leaned closer immediately, thumb brushing shakily over Robby’s knuckles. “You’re alright. You’re alright, Michael.”
Robby blinked hard against sudden tears.
I’m sorry.
The words stayed trapped behind plastic and sedation. But maybe Jack understood anyway. Because his expression broke apart completely.
“You absolute idiot,” Jack whispered, voice wrecked with relief. “You scared me so badly.”
Then, very carefully, like Robby might disappear if he moved too fast, Jack pressed his forehead against the back of Robby’s hand and finally let himself cry properly.
—
The first proper conversation happened sometime after the tube came out.
Robby remembered that part vividly unfortunately.
The tube removal itself had been unpleasant enough that he was fairly certain he’d briefly left his body. Afterwards his throat felt like sandpaper soaked in acid, his chest hurt every time he coughed, and speaking above a rasp seemed wildly optimistic.
Jack hovered through all of it like an exhausted ghost.
He adjusted pillows. Held water cups with straws. Argued with nurses about pain relief. Threatened Whitaker with bodily harm for making a “well at least now you can take sick leave” joke when the poor med student finally worked up the stomach to visit.
Robby watched him quietly through most of it. Watched the shadows beneath his eyes.
The same wrinkled set of backup scrubs that Jack kept in his locker, now appearing for multiple days in a row.
The careful way Jack moved around his bed, like one wrong touch might break something fragile.
Guilt sat heavy in Robby’s chest.
By the third day of being properly awake, the fog had lifted enough that the silence between them started feeling deliberate.
Jack sat beside the hospital bed reading something on his phone while rain tapped softly against the ICU windows.
Robby stared at him for a long moment. “You look terrible,” he croaked finally.
Jack looked up immediately. Then, to Robby’s surprise, laughed. Not a proper laugh. More like exhaustion escaping through cracked walls.
“Good. Excellent. Glad we’re preserving honesty in this marriage.”
Marriage. That hurt strangely.
Robby swallowed hard against his ruined throat. “Jack…”
Jack put the phone down immediately. Every ounce of humour vanished from his face. For a second neither of them spoke.
The monitors hummed steadily around them.
Finally Robby whispered, “I’m sorry.”
Jack’s eyes closed briefly.
Robby pushed on anyway because if he stopped now he might never manage it. “What I said on the roof…” His voice wavered badly. “I didn’t mean it.”
Jack looked at him then with an expression so tired and open it made Robby’s chest ache.
“Yes, you did.”
The honesty landed softly. Not cruel. Worse somehow.
Robby stared at the blanket over his lap. “I was angry.”
“I know.”
“I wanted to hurt you.”
“I know that too.”
Rain rattled faintly against the windows.
Robby’s eyes burned suddenly. “I thought I was dying,” he admitted quietly. “After the crash.” He kept staring downward because looking at his husband felt impossible suddenly. “And all I could think was that the last thing I did was make you feel unloved.”
Silence. Then the chair scraped sharply closer.
Robby looked up just as Jack leaned forward, elbows braced against his knees, eyes bright with something painful.
“You don’t get to do that to me again.”
The words came out rough.
Robby blinked.
Jack laughed once shakily and scrubbed a hand over his face. “God, listen to me. That sounded threatening.”
“It kind of did.”
“Good.” Jack pointed at him immediately, eyes suspiciously wet. “Be afraid.”
Despite everything, despite the pain and monitors and bruises and the thick scar running into Robby’s hairline now, a tiny laugh escaped him.
Jack’s expression crumpled a little at the sound. “You absolute asshole,” he whispered.
Robby’s throat tightened painfully.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, more broken this time. “You already lost your wife and I just… I kept thinking you weren’t going to survive losing another spouse.”
Jack stared at him for a long moment. Then very quietly: “I wasn’t sure I would.”
Robby felt tears gather immediately. Jack looked wrecked saying it. Honest in the ugliest possible way.
“I sat in this room for weeks,” he continued softly, “trying to figure out how to exist in a world where you weren’t in it anymore.”
“Jack…”
“And the really pathetic part?” A watery laugh escaped him. “I still wanted to argue with you. Even while you were unconscious. I’d look at you and think, when you wake up we are having a very serious conversation about motorcycles.”
Robby actually smiled weakly at that.
Jack shook his head, looking down at their hands. “I’m sorry too.”
Robby frowned faintly.
Jack exhaled slowly. “I knew you were spiralling before the accident. I saw it happening and instead of helping properly, I just…” He gestured helplessly. “Kept poking at the wound until we were both bleeding.”
“You were worried about me.”
“I was angry too.” Jack met his eyes again. “And I said things I shouldn’t have.”
Robby thought back to the roof.
Maybe I will.
That quiet defeated little sentence. The memory still hurt.
“I miss you,” Robby admitted suddenly.
Jack’s face changed instantly. Transformed as something soft and aching slipping through the cracks. “I’m literally right here.”
“You know what I mean.”
Jack looked down for a second, blinking hard. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I know.”
Robby shifted painfully, reaching clumsily for his hand.
Jack took it immediately. Their fingers tangled together carefully around IV lines and bruises.
Neither of them spoke for a while after that.
They just sat there listening to the rain. Not fixed. Not healed. But finally, finally facing the same direction again instead of tearing each other apart in opposite ones.