Work Text:
The view from the roof of the twelfth floor of the hospital was beautiful. The skyline stretched with buildings, mostly shiny new things, but some were old stone with care and design factored in, the architect clearly having kept in mind how they would look against the skyline. The trees in the park right next to The Pitt were bright green, alive in the middle of the summer. Even this high up among the noise of cars honking and engines growling and the hustle and bustle of city life, kids could be heard laughing and crying out with giddy screams as the setting sun painted the horizon red.
The scene was beautiful, and the noise was joyful and full of life, but fourteen hours straight in The Pitt and another hour in the ICU had a way of draining it all of life. Of making everything feel like it was just washed in different shades of gray.
The world around her was undeniably beautiful, and all Samira could focus on was the drop down to the helipad.
Hard concrete. Not a full twelve stories up, but enough of a drop to destroy a body beyond repair. Nothing in between her and the landing to buffer the fall. And not on the street, so no kids or innocent passers by would see - just her co-workers picking her mangled limbs up off the ground, maybe the janitorial staff cleaning up the blood.
She felt a pang of guilt, able to imagine the faces of those who would have to clean up after her, but ultimately she knew it would be just another horror in the procession of horrors that made up an average day at The Pitt. Sure, it was different when it was a face you recognized, but she wasn’t close to any of them, not really. They didn’t talk outside of work aside from the occasional beer in the park, and even then Samira kept to herself. They weren’t friends, and The Pitt is a teaching hospital - people come and go all the time as they finish their rotations and internships and residencies. Only a few people ever truly stayed put. In a few years, they probably wouldn’t even remember her name - they would just have the faint memory that a resident they had once worked with had jumped off the roof and killed herself, nothing else particularly memorable about her.
She wondered if the emergency helicopters would still land if there was a body to clean up on the helipad. She hoped they would. She’d hate to ruin someone else’s chance at life just because she had decided to pack hers up and be done with it. Maybe the hospital would put up a better railing, or netting, or maybe her death would give the staff enough leverage for a raise or an extra eight hours of leave time per year. Or maybe they’d just get a pat on the back and a reminder to still be on time for their shifts the next day.
Her mom would still sell the house and still go on her cruise with her new guy and be perfectly well distracted. Probably. She couldn’t think about her mom too much right now. Where was her phone? She was probably calling again. Someone else would have to call her back and tell her the news. Maybe she would call the Pitt phone again, and maybe Perlah or Princess or Dana would answer. They’d say, “Oh, Mrs. Mohun, Samira, she - please hold.” They’d probably call over Dr. Robby. Ask him what they should do. Who should tell her the news? It would probably be Dr. Robby in his calm and collected Doctor Voice For Telling Families Bad News. Or maybe he would just tell her that at least her daughter had the good enough sense to pick a place that was high enough to jump from. Dealer’s choice. She wouldn’t be around to care.
“You’re in my spot.”
“What the fuck!” Samira jumped back from the edge and grabbed onto the safety railing behind her. She turned, still holding the railing for dear life, and saw Dr. Robby standing a few feet behind her, standing casually with his hands in his pockets. “You can’t just - just - just sneak up on someone on a roof!”
“Would it have been less startling if I had tapped you on the shoulder?” He walked a few paces closer to her, now just out of arm’s reach of the railing.
“Fuck off.” She turned away from him, keeping one hand behind her on the railing, steadying herself.
He whistled, long and sharp. “Strong language, Dr. Mohan.”
“I mean it. Fuck off. I’m done with your bullshit.” He was mocking her. Always mocking her.
She heard him step closer, until she could see him out of her periphery, leaning on the railing next to her.
“The view is pretty up here, but I find that the park is a much better after-work spot for preserving one’s mental health and physical safety. Wouldn’t you agree, Dr. Mohan?”
Samira stayed silent, defiantly staring out at the horizon.
“Can you do me a favor, and come back on the other side of the railing?” Robby almost whispered.
Silence, still.
“I know you think you want to be on that side of the railing, and maybe you think you want to jump, but you don’t actually want -”
“You don’t know what the fuck I want.” Silent tears were running down Samira’s face. “You said Orlando’s mistake was not picking a higher spot to jump from. In your expert opinion, Dr. Robby, do you think this spot is high enough?” She knew her tone was biting. She hoped he felt guilty. She hoped it hurt him.
Robby let out a heavy sigh and dropped his head. “That was fucked up of me. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry, Samira.”
“Correct, you shouldn’t have.” Samira scoffed. “You have a lot more than that to be sorry for today. I don’t -” She shook her head, gathering her thoughts. “My dad is gone. My mom is leaving. I’m supposed to go back to New Jersey but there will be nothing for me there by the time I get back. I have no relationships, no friends, here or there. People are nice to me but I don’t - no one actually - I’m all alone. But I have this - I have the ED and I thought I knew that I’m good at what I do but today has just been - there have been so many problems today, and then you tell me I can’t handle it and to go home and then Orlando -” she choked back a sob. “If I’m not a good doctor then that’s it. I have nothing left.”
“You’re an excellent doctor, Dr. Mohan. I - I can’t express how proud I am of your work. Please - please just come back to the other side of the railing. You have a brilliant career ahead of you. Please don’t throw all that away.”
Tears burst from Samira’s eyes. Sobs choked her as they wracked through her body, but she stayed quiet and kept them down. She slid silently down until she sat, leaning her back against the railing, quietly gasping through the tears.
“Why couldn’t you have said that a year ago?” she demanded. “A few months ago? Last week? Any other time today? I don’t - I can’t believe you now. It’s just a desperate attempt to get one of your residents from jumping on your watch.”
Robby shook his head silently in her periphery. She worked on steadying her breathing.
He didn’t say a word as he climbed through the railing and cautiously sat down beside her, like he was worried something was going to come up over the edge of the roof and pull him down. What had he said when he first startled Samira? You’re in my spot? She couldn’t imagine him standing up here on the wrong side of the railing like she had been. He looked so afraid just trying to sit down next to her.
“I know I don’t say it enough, but I mean it, Dr. Mohan. I think so highly of you and I wish - there’s so little time, and I’m being pulled in so many directions -”
“Bullshit.”
He looked startled as she cut him off.
“Bull. Shit. You praise Whitaker like he’s a dog doing tricks for you. Santos can be pushy and rude on a good day and you never seem to go off on her about anything. Mel you’re so gentle with. We all remember how you were with Langdon before his…sabbatical. He was your golden boy and even when you were ripping him a new one for getting too cocky, at the end of the day everyone, including him, knew he was your favorite. Even with Javadi it’s ‘show your mom why you belong in this ED’ and you pushing her to help on an EVD so she doesn’t end up in derm. Meanwhile you tell me to go faster and ignore my instincts and just follow orders and free up beds while you push me to look into geriatrics.” She laughed humorlessly. “I think the only times I really remember you giving me any sort of praise were when I picked up the pace.”
“I - I don’t know what to say.”
“Of course you don’t. You never know what to say to me if you’re not critiquing me. Do you remember what I was like when I first got to The Pitt? I was so excited, my emergency residency, the thing I had been working toward my whole life. Do you remember what I told you, the first time I lost a patient?”
Robby nodded. “Your reason for getting into medicine, for wanting to work in an ED. Your dad was evaluated and discharged, and his heart attack was not diagnosed, and he died. And you never wanted anyone else to have to go through something like that.”
She was caught off guard by his Doctor Voice For Telling Families Bad News as he recited the facts of Samira’s life and reason for becoming a doctor as if he had memorized them the day that she first said them three years ago.
“I didn’t think you would remember that.”
“I really do care,” Robby said. “I try, even though I know - I know I’m fucking it up most of the time. And it’s good to know, especially when we’re learning, why we’re doing this. It helps show some of our strengths, some of our areas for improvement.”
Samira scoffed.
“Caring about my patients and being detail oriented to make sure no one falls through the cracks is not an area for improvement.”
“You’re right, it’s not. You have the best patient satisfaction score in the department for a reason. You make real connections with patients, you ask questions some of us wouldn’t think to ask because you care and you want to get it right. Those are all valuable skills. I just - the ED doesn’t - administration is breathing down our necks about metrics. and I know the speed thing is a sore subject, I’m not trying to be a dick about it. Taking time and making connections and focusing on the details get punished a lot of the time. I see how good of a doctor you are, and I see your strengths, and I suggested geriatrics because it’s a place where a lot of people do get overlooked and do fall through the cracks, and I thought it could be a place where your strengths are praised, not punished.”
He sighed and paused for a moment.
“The ‘more your speed’ comment though,” he said, “that was me being an asshole, so I’m sorry for that.”
Samira nodded, taking in the words, the compliments, the explanations, the apology. It still felt so flat after everything.
“I want to be in an ED. I’ve always wanted to be in an ED. And every time - every time I start feeling confident, you come find a reason to knock me down a peg.”
They sat in silence for a long while before Robby spoke up.
“I knew I belonged in an ED the first day of my first rotation. We all have a way of figuring out if we belong here pretty quickly. I dove into the work, made it my entire life, have kept making it my entire life all this time and now -” he shook his head, at a loss for words. “I know you can make it in an ED. I know you can. But you remind me so much of myself and I just wonder if another specialty -”
“You were so mean to me today,” she cut him off abruptly. “I want to be in the ED and you know that, and I’ve been doing so good, I was on top of my game for weeks, and I didn’t know if you had even noticed because you hadn’t said anything, but I was feeling so good. My numbers, my patients, everything was going so good. And then this week has been awful and you’ve been awful, and you can’t even take a minute to understand all this bullshit with my mom and - never mind, you don’t want to hear about it.”
“No, please,” Robby encouraged, “please tell me what’s been going on.”
Samira sighed, still not trusting him not to burst into another tirade about leaving her bullshit at the door.
“I had a partnership lined up in New Jersey to go home and be with my mom. That was always the plan. That’s what you’re supposed to do - be successful, take care of your parents - well, parent - get married, have grandkids. My whole life, I’ve been told that’s what I’m supposed to do as a good daughter. And so I made it work, and I was going to go home, and now my mom is selling the house and leaving with this guy and - it’s not even about the house or the guy, it’s that I have no idea what I’m supposed to do now. And all of that has been hitting me this week, and I’ve had no time to think or make any new plans, and it all hit me today, and yes, I had a panic attack but you were so awful to me, Robby. And I don’t understand why.”
She looked at him next to her, demanding a response, anything. He looked so much older somehow, sitting on the roof in the last light of the sunset. The lines on his face were deeper, the grey hairs in his beard more pronounced. He looked so exhausted without the adrenaline of the ED running through him. But adrenaline wasn’t a good excuse to yell at your students about their mommy issues. Old age and years of hard work weren’t reasons to belittle your subordinates in a time of need.
“During the PittFest mass cas,” Robby started suddenly, “I just shut down. Jake’s girlfriend had just died on my table, and he was so mad at me, and I was in pedes with all the bodies and I just choked. Complete mess, sobbing, on the floor.” He paused, shook his head in the way he always did when he had some feelings about what he was going to say next. It seemed like he could barely make himself choke out his next words. “It was a panic attack. I don’t know how long I was there but people were looking for me when I got back - of course they were, I’m the damn attending and we were in the middle of a - anyway. Whitaker found me, gave me a speech about how everyone needed me, I pulled my shit together and that was that. Apparently a nurse saw me, some gossip started to spread, you know how it goes around here.”
Samira shook her head. “I didn’t know any of that happened. I remember people were looking for you for a while but -”
“Really?” Robby asked. “You never heard anything about that?”
She shrugged. “I’m not really big on gossip. No one really tells me that kind of stuff.”
Robby nodded, a small smile on his face for just a moment before he started again. “So, I broke, I shut down, and I’ve been - I don’t know, carrying all that around with me for, what, ten months? And then Joy tells me you’re having a heart attack, and I was so worried and then I realized it was a panic attack and all that bullshit just came pouring out on you. And that shouldn’t have happened. And I’m sorry.”
The silence between them was backdropped by the noises of the city.
“That’s so messed up,” Samira murmured.
Robby nodded. “Yeah. It is.”
“That was fucked up of you to put that all on me.”
“It was.”
“I don’t know what to do now. I don’t know - how am I supposed to trust you to not do that to me again?”
“Stay at The Pitt.” Robby looked at her, sincerity in his eyes. “I’m gonna be gone for three months after today. You’ve worked with Al-Hashimi before, you liked working with her. See what it’s like being in emergency medicine without me ruining your day. And when I get back, I’ll try and be better, really. That’s why I’m leaving in the first place, because I know I’m not - not at the top of my game. But if I come back and you still feel like you can’t trust me - I guess we’ll reevaluate then if we need to.”
Samira nodded, silently considering.
“And no more trips up to the roof,” Robby added, “because if I get word that you jumped, then I’m gonna follow you up with my own long ride off of a tall cliff. So you get some counseling while I’m gone too - it doesn't have to be through the employee program, just something, okay? Deal?”
He held his hand out for Samira to shake. She hesitated, not even lifting her hand up.
“If you come back, and things still aren’t…working,” she said hesitantly, “will you help me switch to the night shift?”
Robby’s face fell with distinct disappointment for just a moment before he schooled it back into a neutral expression.
“Yeah, Dr. Mohan, whatever is best for you.”
Samira reached up and shook his hand. It felt too formal and very final, like they both already knew that today had likely been one of the last shifts that they would ever work together. Samira felt lighter than she had in weeks.
“Let’s take the stairs down, okay?”
Robby got up carefully, holding onto the railing and keeping his back to the edge. He slipped between the railing again, and waited expectantly on the other side. Samira did the same, carefully standing, gripping the railing all the while. She thought she understood Robby’s fear now - the edge felt so much closer and so much more real as she stood. Without the imminent plan to jump in her mind, the multi-story drop with no barrier between her and oblivion looked much more intimidating than it had before Robby had appeared behind her.
She slipped through the railing, just as Robby had, and with the railing behind her it felt like she could breathe again.
Dr. Robby smiled at her, thin and a little sad, but a real smile all the same. He reached his arm up behind her, patting her shoulder as he led them both down the stairs. The sky turned black as the sun set behind them.