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It is 0547 when 18-year-old Helen Watkins is rolled into Trauma One. The paramedics, squeezing life into her with a balloon, tell Dr. Jack Abbot that she was found folded upside down in the passenger seat footwell with multiple crush injuries and several shards of glass embedded in her upper body. When Dr. Abbot asks who the driver was, they say that she was the driver.
Dr. Abbot sees her, and he immediately knows that her neck is broken. Helen Watkins' face is crushed, one black eye open but glazed; the neck brace narrowly avoids a five-inch shard of glass that had toppled from the passenger-side window into her shoulder. She is bleeding from a dozen places at once. There is a particular bruise on her breastbone that matches her chin, and it tells him exactly how she was folded. He tells Dr. Ellis to look for broken teeth.
"Can you wiggle your fingers for me, Helen?" he asks the girl. A droplet of blood falls from her tear duct. "Wiggle your fingers. Move your feet from side to side."
The paramedic who lingers – as Dr. Hendersen, a nightshift R2, prepares to intubate – has her now-free hands flexing in time with Helen's breath as if she still holds the balloon. The paramedic's name is Yolanda Mills, which she tells Dr. Abbot six times. She tells him that the seatbelt did not look torn. The locking mechanism failed when she hit the freeway guardrail at 80 miles an hour. It was a manufacturing error nobody could control, Dr. Yolanda Mills concludes. The car was as old as Helen was, and didn't need to test the seatbelt once for those near-twenty years.
Dr. Hendersen can't get an open airway. Her jaw is dislocated and has locked against her trachea; her sternum is fractured, and the force of the mandible slamming into her skull must have broken her neck. Dr. Abbot prepares for a tracheostomy.
Dr. Ellis tells him that all of Helen's front teeth are shattered. More cuts have accumulated on the inside of her throat as pieces make their way down; she swallows involuntarily, and Dr. Hendersen tries to suction what he can out of her mouth cavity. Finally, the propofol gets to work, and her body goes as limp as a corpse; the cric goes into a swollen, bleeding trachea. Dr. Yolanda Mills can't keep her eyes away.
"Get out of here," Dr. Abbot orders, finally, and the paramedic doesn't fight. She tells him her name, Dr. Yolanda Mills, and this is her number, and to please call her when Helen is stable.
As the nurses flit around Helen Watkins, one watching her blood pressure and giving Dr. Abbot a nervous look, another stuffing gauze into a glass-cut on her belly, another taking blood for an alcohol and drug screen, the five-inch shard in the girl's shoulder dislodges with the simple force of gravity. Cursing, Dr. Ellis impulsively catches the shard; she comes up with her scrubs drenched. The glass had kept Helen's subclavian artery from rupturing. Her shoulder becomes a fountain. Dr. Abbot orders two bags of whole blood, O-NEG, and another of pure plasma. He thinks of Leah and the Pittfest shooting.
It is 0621 when Helen Watkins is declared dead.
The nurses suggest several different causes. All of them have to do with blood. A blood injury in the brain they couldn't catch; too much blood loss, not enough time to save the artery; the broken neck might have severed her brainstem from her heart when they jostled the gurney in their haste to stop the bleeding.
Her heart gave. No rhythm to restart, no blood to fuel the muscle, and that was it.
Dr. Abbot places both hands on the gurney guardrail, staring at the girl. He catalogues the features that make her a human, and not a patient. Her black, tousled hair. Her eyes – blue, from what he can discern between the bruise. Before they cut off her shirt, he recalls that she was wearing a University of Pittsburgh emblem. She wasn't old enough for college. What was she going to study?
Maria Montes, the social worker for the night shift, approaches Dr. Abbot gently. She tells him that Helen Watkins was leaving a graduation party. The blood tests came back; her blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit for someone of age, never mind a freshly 18-year-old girl.
"She was too embarrassed to call her dad to come pick her up," Montez tells him. He swallows down bile. His scrubs are drowned in her blood.
"Call her dad," Dr. Abbot tells her.
It is 0653 when Dr. Jack Abbot is attacked by Helen Watkins' father, David. David Watkins is a bearded, angry man, three times his size. David throws himself into the PTMC, calling for Dr. Jack Abbot. He swings two-hundred-fifty pounds' worth of a right hook into his cheekbone; Dr. Abbot hears the crunch of his facial fracture before he sees the blood crawling into his eyes – before he feels the pain. His skull ricochets against the Emergency Department's tile floor. Two hundred fifty pounds slams into his breastbone, delivered through a steel-toed boot. The second kick is a kidney shot. He groans.
His instincts throw him back onto his feet, Corporal Abbot taking the place of himself. He can't stand up straight. He is crouching, more like, blocking his face with a hand, his other reaching behind for his pocketknife. It is the type of adrenaline – as he watches David Watkins try for another swing – that makes Corporal Abbot remember what it was like to be a wild animal.
David screams, saliva spewing from his mouth and clinging to his beard.
"You killed my daughter," he screams.
Dr. Abbot lets go of the knife. He only just begins to wonder when somebody is going to do something when Ahmed takes David Watkins by the armpits; he tries to wrestle the man's gargantuan arms over his head.
He does not stop screaming, "You killed my daughter, you killed my little girl," as the onsite police officers wrestle him to the ground. He says it three more times.
A loose bone from the fracture had nicked several arteries in Dr. Abbot's nose; posterior epistaxis, he provides to himself unhelpfully. Blood pours in thick globs onto the floor of the PTMC, splattering. Shouting, Dr. Ellis comes to his side, helping him balance over the bowl of his hips. He has three broken ribs and a pneumothorax. Only half of his lungs fill; he hiccups for breath.
"'m fine," he blubs.
"Jesus Christ." Dr. Ellis shouts, "Gurney!"
Severe posterior epistaxis, he understands, as he stares down at the hand that he'd been using as a shield. His palm carries a small lake of blood that splashes over onto the floor. He is still covered in Helen Watkins' blood. The world shakes underneath him, or maybe he is shaking.
"Somebody get me a goddamn gurney!"
It is 0702 when Dr. Michael Robinavitch arrives like a guardian angel.
Dr. Robby charges for Dr. Abbot across the department, throws him onto a gurney, and wheels him into Trauma Two before he can say "hello". He doesn't think he needs to be in Trauma Two. But he lies his head back and understands exactly why, as he gulps down a pint's worth of his own blood in thirty seconds.
He only absently registers that the day shift must be handing off. Dr. Robby's gloved hands appear and then disappear like flickering firelight around his body. Dr. McKay surges in, pulling on her gloves; so does Dr. Santos, and Princess, and a half a dozen other bees come to storm around him. Dr. Santos has a horror in her eyes when she sees Dr. Abbot wipe his face with his forearm, only to come away with a red smear and a fresh waterfall down his mouth.
"Mike," Dr. Abbot tries to say.
Princess shoves a rolled piece of gauze into his nose. It won't reach back far enough to stop the bleeding, he knows; an ache erupts deep in his sinuses, where his cheekbone pierces into the soft skin of his nose from the inside. He wonders if his cheekbone is severed from his orbital bone. He blinks, jaw loose. The overhead light needles into his eyes; he suffered a Grade 1 concussion.
"Give him all you got. Kill a horse," Dr. Robby orders to whoever is over his shoulder with Dr. Abbot's IV in hand. When did he get an IV?
Starting to feel so much better, Dr. Abbot tries again, "Mike."
"Jack," Dr. Robby moreso states his name as fact. "What the hell happened to you?"
"Killed somebody's daughter," Dr. Abbot says. He capsizes over the side of the gurney, coughing, vomiting, and then spitting blood overboard.
In the next room over, in Trauma One, Maria Montez speaks quietly to Kiara Alfaro, observing Helen Watkins side-by-side. Dr. Abbot sees the sympathy reddening their eyes; hands yank him onto his back.
It is 2356 the next day when Dr. Jack Abbot recognizes that he is awake.
The first thing he registers is that a machine is breathing for him. Two blue tubes snake out from his mouth. A ventilator in his periphery deems it the right time for him to inhale, and so he does. Then, he exhales. His lungs don't have to carry the weight of his ribs.
It's like he can feel the metal bar in his skull. Or the gauze that's been recently replaced, stuffed into his nasal cavity, so he can't rebel against the ventilator and try to breathe through his nose. He opens his eyes wide, straining against the low light of a hospital room that belongs to a wing he has never personally been inside of. Or, he supposes, he has now.
Paranoid, Dr. Abbot twitches select portions of his face experimentally and finds that he cannot. His face is bruised, swollen, and numb with morphine. A stupid, animal-instinct part of him wonders if the concussion paralyzed him. If he folded wrong on the way down. If there is a bruise on his sternum and chin.
Dr. Robby lifts his head from where he'd been lying near Dr. Abbot's hand. His hair sweeps up in tufts. Was he sleeping?
"Jack?" Dr. Robby says.
Dr. Abbot doesn't hear him. Or maybe he thinks he does. He is too busy trying to wiggle his fingers.
"Hey," Dr. Robby says, "Jack." He rubs Jack's bicep down, trying to stir him awake. Jack is awake. Jack remembers his name.
Jack desperately wants to be able to say, "Mike."
He blinks. A nurse has come to check his vitals. Not Princess. Not Perlah. She tells Dr. Robby that she can start weaning Jack off the ventilator, knocking the assistance down by a third every four hours. It's only when she looks at Jack for confirmation that he realizes she might have been talking to him. Jack can't talk. He can barely think.
"Concussion," the nurse tells Dr. Robby, who nods solemnly.
The nurse – she is wearing a badge, but Jack's eyes can't come together, he can't focus long enough to read it – presses some buttons on the ventilator, and a third of Earth's gravity bears down on Jack's chest. It is difficult to breathe alongside a machine that is setting the pace for him.
Dr. Robby asks him, "Do you remember what happened?" when the nurse leaves.
Jack wonders if Helen Watkins is still in Trauma One.
It is 1851, two days later, when Jack Abbot gets to leave the PTMC.
Jack blinks slowly, having barely the strength to wave goodbye to the day shift flock and then hello to the incoming night shift. Dr. Ellis pats his uninjured shoulder as she passes. Dr. Hendersen stops Dr. Robby in the middle of the hall to stare into Jack's pupils, measuring them in millimeters. Jack tells him to fuck off. Only mildly entertained, Dr. Robby resumes pushing him through the Ambulance Bay. Ahmed bows his head and goes for a fist bump, which Jack almost narrowly misses.
The wheelchair finds the troublesome bruises near Jack's flank and assures to aggravate them with every bump in the sidewalk. A cannula is looped around his ears – a precaution insisted on by the most aggressive Mother Hen Jack has ever known, Dr. Michael Robinavitch.
Jack isn't allowed to walk by himself. Dr. Robby confiscated his leg to make sure of it. His only job is to hold the portable oxygen tank in his lap. And look pretty, he supposes. He breathes through his mouth, almost like a personal rebellion; but he finds it difficult to close, discovering a new compulsion to count his teeth with his tongue. That, or the concussion has made him dumb.
He watches Dr. Santos watching him as she tries to walk casually to her car. When they meet at the front of her car and make eye contact – as Jack is pushed across the smoothest sections of concrete – Dr. Santos tells him that David Watkins hasn't been bailed out yet.
"Are you gonna press charges?" Dr. Santos asks him. She talks in that young way, like she can't wait to hear everything Jack thinks about David Watkins. Like they were about to get drunk and gossip about it.
He disappoints her by saying, "No."
Dr. Robby walks Jack the whole fifteen-minute distance between the hospital and his condo. He makes sure the journey is smooth, lifting him slowly over janky steps in the sidewalk until they roll to Dr. Robby's actually very pleasant front porch. The transition from outside to inside is a little fuzzy, but he recalls seeing his own leg and a pair of crutches propped against the mudroom table; he reaches for them instinctively, but Robby maneuvers him away quickly enough to give him vertigo. He apologizes.
Jack tells him, "Just put me on the couch."
Robby hums like he had already planned on it. He parks the wheelchair perpendicular to the couch. He takes the oxygen tank from Jack and places it against the closest arm like a decorative pillow. Hands sweep under his armpits, and Robby gives him a second to prepare before they stand together.
All at once, Jack feels the kick to the chest and kidneys. A shock of pain fires deep in his core, down further into his groin, and somehow he feels the bruise ache in his left thigh. He grunts, and Robby moves to set him back down, but he clasps his arms around his shoulders stubbornly. Slow as a sloth, Robby swings him onto the closest cushion he can reach and lowers him down while his knees rattle. His stomach strains, and it hurts to grit his teeth.
They linger there a little longer before Robby lets him go. The couch cradles his entire weight. Shoulders drooping, he drops his hands to either side as Robby stuffs a pillow under his head so he doesn't have to think about holding himself up.
Robby almost makes a show out of taking off his shoes at his makeshift foyer. Off goes his jacket. He hangs his keys beside the hoodie. He eyes the crutches. All while Jack sinks further into the cushion with every breath.
"You want a beer?" Robby asks him.
It hurts to smile, but he does. "Yeah."
For a second, all that's there in the room is the quiet throb in Jack's eye; it still feels like there's a blood clot stuck in his nose, or a wad of gauze. Robby returns from his garage with two ice-cold beers. Jack finds it harder to whistle than he remembers; his face is still swollen in places. Still, he tries. Robby uses his old-fashioned cap-popper and hands Jack the honorary first bottle.
The beer tastes like shit. It's perfect.
Robby asks him a question with his eyebrows, holding out the remote, and Jack shakes his head. He puts on Roseanne. Mutes it.
It feels weirdly surreal, the kind of calm that settles over Jack. It settles like a fog. He doesn't quite watch the TV as much as he sees it; the images cross over his face, and he doesn't think, because he doesn't have to. They sit there, quiet, drinking, staring out into the dark, for who knows how long.
"Fuck," Jack says without provocation.
"You're telling me," Robby murmurs.
He nurses the beer like it is a delicate wine. He thinks about Helen Watkins, who drank too much.
He tips his head toward Robby and asks, "Do I look different?"
After a long drag, Robby concentrates and scans his face. "You have a kind-of haunted look in your eye."
Jack smiles weakly. Something in his skull feels fundamentally different; one side of his oxygen tube sits higher than he thinks it should; his teeth don't come together right. It all still hurts.
"No, not really," Robby says. "Swollen. Bruised. The plastic surgeons came in as soon as we cauterized your nose. They put a reconstruction plate, a small one, right on your frontal bone. Right here." He reaches; the pad of his finger brushes where his eye and cheekbone meet, just barely touching. Still, Jack winces. "They hid the scar in your eyebrow. Wouldn't be able to notice unless you were looking for it and you already knew what it looked like. Another group made sure your ribs were fine. I personally took care of your pneumo. It was impressive how much air he got out of you."
"He was a huge dude," Jack says. "I can't really remember what he looked like." He looks at his beer and feels tired. "I can barely remember what happened."
"You had a concussion," Robby supplies.
He flattens his mouth. "I know. I knew before you knew, probably."
The quiet stretches for a long while. Jack, slowly, like Robby can't see him do it, presses the glass to his cheekbone.
"Need something for the pain?"
"I'm good."
Robby doesn't believe him. He goes on a mission somewhere in the bathroom as Jack slowly rolls the beer back and forth over his red and yellow-stained cheek. It loses its chill fast. Everything aches.
The next time Jack looks up, he is presented with a glass of water and a handful of pills. He trades the beer for the cups. His breath smells like hops, and he is grateful for the water outside of being a vessel for the pain meds. He doesn't even know what he takes.
Bouncing a question around in his mouth, Robby sits down slowly.
He asks, "Who was Helen?"
And Jack feels an invisible blood clot shift in his nose. With a wave, his beer is returned to him, and he downs the rest of it before he talks. He doesn't know what he wants to say. "Gossip gets around. Surprised you didn't know her blood pressure."
"Tell me."
Jack cranes his neck – winces for the hundredth time. Hesitant, he tells him, "Her name was Helen Watkins. Just turned 18. Got too drunk too late at a high school graduation party and decided to drive herself home. She didn't want to have her dad come pick her up. She was embarrassed. Scared, probably." His ribs start to ache. "Crashes into the guardrail at 80 miles an hour. Her seatbelt fails to lock. She–" He can't say it. So he swallows and says instead, methodically, "The impact broke her neck in a very specific way. We spent forty-five minutes working on her before she... gave out. Just like that."
Robby lets the moment soak; a moment of silent reflection.
Jack says, "And you know what happened with Dad, so."
He doesn't know when Robby talks again. One of the most annoying symptoms of a concussion is that he tends to blink in and out of reality. A small spell of vertigo makes him shut his eyes tight, and he slowly tips his head back toward the TV, careful with the ache in his sternum. A pain like a finger taps his clavicle with every heartbeat.
He asks, "What are you going to do about Dad?"
Jack blows out a breath through ballooned cheeks. "Attend his daughter's funeral." Then, he glances over and speaks quietly. "Do you know if the morgue techs fixed her jaw?"
"Her jaw?"
"Mm-hmm." He frames his own between his forefinger and thumb to demonstrate. "It was, uhm... it was dislocated up into her soft palate. Crushed her trachea."
"Oh, I don't know," Robby says. "I'm sure the techs did everything they could to prepare her for viewing."
Jack sighs.
"He did get to see her eventually. I know that much. He begged them until they caved; brought him out of the family room in cuffs. He asked to be alone. I respected it." Then, "He seemed sorry. As far as I know, Helen had no other family. Her girlfriend came later that morning. Her name was Denice. She was sweet. Polite. Held her head up even when she broke down the second she entered the room. Despite that, she asked to be alone, too. They two talked for a minute, her and Dad."
Jack notices the far-off look in Robby's eye and thinks of Jake and Leah and the Pittfest shooting. The world shifts beyond him, like a photo coming into focus, and he realizes that Robby might have said something. He doesn't hear it.
Then, "Jack?"
Jack makes a noise.
"It's concerning me how little you're talking." Robby pauses, sets his empty beer on the coffee table, and leans in close. "Are you doing okay?"
Jack just looks at him. With a little tilt to his mouth, he might as well be saying, 'Take a guess'. He says, "This isn't going to break me, Mike. Don't worry. I'll be up and at 'em in a couple days."
"With three broken ribs?"
"Yeah," he deadpans. "And half a leg."
He knows he's not going to win, so he drops it. Jack snoops when he flips his watch around. It is 8:21. It feels so much later than that.
"You must be tired," Robby tells him.
"Really using your degree, Robinavitch," Jack cracks, sounding tired.
His gaze is steady, unmoving, and Jack feels something dislodge from deep in his chest, and he rests a little deeper into the cushion. He could fall asleep right here. But Robby can't help the fact that he's a doctor.
Robby suggests, "You want to lie down?" in the way that he's gently telling Jack what's good for him because he can't know it himself. He introduces his hand slowly, placing it to the center of Jack's back, where his neck connects to his shoulders. The world sways slowly underneath him, his body a boat on the sea.
Before Jack realizes it, he's already lost the battle to stay upright. Robby's hand hooks around his head, fingers wandering through his hair, and it feels like he's being lulled by a siren. Finally, he gives, and another hand braces his shoulder, allowing him a slow, if painful, descent.
"There we go," Robby says softly, "Atta boy."
The world lurches as his uninjured cheek lands on Robby's lap. The rest of his body settles soon after. Little shocks of pain radiate throughout his chest when he tucks his hand against himself.
Robby adjusts his nasal cannula – refeeds it around his ears, tightens it, and passive-aggressively closes his mouth. Jack doesn't fight. He lets the oxygen tank give him oxygen, and he lets Robby's fingers drift back and forth near his silvered temple. Time becomes more of a concept. All he knows is that every three seconds, he thinks, Robby's hand appears at his temple, drifts down around his ear, and back again.
He doesn't think he's ever felt this young. He doesn't know why that word comes to him. Young. A tiny, childish fear surfaces in his throat, sore like he's about to cry, then soothes when the hand circles his ear.
He wonders if Helen Watkins ever had her head held like this as a little girl.
Once the dust settles, Jack says, "Didn't know you were so touchy."
"I thought it would help." Help what, Robby doesn't say. His hand stills, and Jack wishes he hadn't said anything. Then, he murmurs, "I just keep thinking about that morning."
"Mm?"
"Just... wish I'd gotten there sooner."
"There's nothing that you coulda done. Guy came in like a bullet. Took me down before I could even blink," he says.
Roseanne plays mindlessly in the background. It's the black-and-white 1950s parody episode. Roseanne, in a polka-dot swing dress, smiling too wide, holds a box of cigarettes to the camera.
Robby says, "They put him in the family room so I could talk to him after you were stable. I haven't been that angry in a long time. I haven't been allowed to express that I was that angry for even longer." He breathes a laugh. "I practically tore him a new asshole. I mean, putting a senior physician in the ICU? Jesus."
Jack says, "I really wish you hadn't done that."
"He burst the arteries in your nose. Burst them. You lost a fifth of your blood in the ten minutes it took to cauterize. He literally cracked your skull open – why should I not be upset at that?"
Jack shuts his eyes and waits a long time before opening them again. He isn't sure what the emotion is that bubbles in his chest; his ribs have mostly set, and only ache when he wheezes a breath out too far. A handful of minutes pass before he comes back to himself. This time, he thinks he might have fallen asleep.
"His daughter died," he says, and that settles that.
Robby brings his hand from Jack's head to his shoulder, resting it there. Jack opens his eyes again to find that the episode of Roseanne just ended. Credits roll, still in black and white.
Robby takes the initiative. "I think it's time for bed," he says quietly, sliding his hand under Jack's body to guide him back upright. Jack feels like an old, old man. His spine creaks – the world lurches in the opposite direction, and he feels frail.
It is 2101 when Jack Abbot falls asleep in Michael Robinavitch's care.
Alcohol, blood loss, and a mild brain injury make for an incredibly difficult transition into bed. He clings to Robby as he's lifted back onto his feet, back onto the wheelchair, pressing his forehead to his shoulder, hoping it will keep his head stable.
The process is repeated, and Jack is deposited onto Robby's guest bed. His load-bearing knee is still shaking, having just settled onto his back, having struggled to keep his weight through the ache and exhaustion.
"I haven't felt like this in a long time," Jack says to the ceiling.
Robby, untying his shoe and prying it off, hums a question.
"David Waktins is the obvious reason, but it was Helen who got to me." Off goes his sock. He shivers once, then not again. "You know?"
"Everyone you lose sticks with you," Robby says.
Jack looks at Robby and thinks of Jake and Leah and the Pittfest shooting.
"It was already such a long fucking day." He has a vision of telling this to his therapist. His hands are even resting over his stomach, like when he'd get comfortable and lie across the couch. "Just... kept getting more tired after that."
Robby takes Jack's shirt in his hands, and together, they carefully maneuver it over his head; he only winces once or twice. Whatever Robby gave him, it's working well.
Jack thinks he's falling asleep. He doesn't want to sleep. He slurs quietly, "I can barely remember what she looked like, but I can't get her face out of my head."
Folding the shirt, Robby sits on the edge of the bed and stares at his hands. "I understand."
"She hadn't even graduated yet..."
A hand on his hip. Robby is willing him to be quiet as gently as he can.
"You got scared 'cause I wasn't talking," Jack mutters.
"I know," Robby says, sounding fond. "But you should rest. Sleep is the best medicine. You'll probably knock out before you realize it."
Jack's eyelids lift a hundred pounds. He lets Robby adjust the oxygen to his nose tube, and it practically blasts into his lungs, but it means he won't have to work so hard to breathe. He lets Robby drape one blanket, then two, over his chest. Robby leans close. He thinks it's because Robby is measuring the bruise on his face – a bruise he actually hasn't seen on himself yet. Then, slow, he draws away, pats Jack's arm.
"Bathroom's at the end of the hall. Some crutches are right there–" He points to the bedside table, and a pair of crutches lean just in Jack's reach. When did those get there? Then, before Jack can really think about it, Robby says with finality, "I'll be in the next room over. Holler if you need me."
Robby's legs flex, preparing to lift him onto his feet, but he lingers for a few minutes more. He watches Jack's face. Jack runs his tongue along the oval of his teeth, ensuring each one is intact.
"Mike?" he asks.
"Yeah, Jack?"
He doesn't answer.
It is 0659, three days later, when Dr. Jack Abbot meets David Watkins at the police station.
Dr. Abbot had dressed himself respectfully, having lost his scrubs; simple dress shirt, simple dress pants. A navy-blue hoodie is draped over his arm. It is the only thing he carries into the station. His pocket knife and hospital badge were left at home. He approaches the holding cell door, eying the man inside, and bows his head to the perched officer.
"Doctor," the officer says.
"Officer," the doctor says.
The officer – her badge reads Officer Jacklyn Harris – tells Dr. Abbot the normal spiel an officer gives to a visitor: keep your hands to yourself, keep it respectful, that you shouldn't really be here, anyway, if you want to press charges. Dr. Abbot bows again, retaining nothing; Officer Harris opens the door to the holding cell, and Dr. Abbot remarks to himself that the cell resembles the family rooms at PTMC. Two soft gray couches face each other across a black coffee table. The walls are blank. The door is as heavy as a man, blue-painted steel.
David Watkins seems much smaller now than when they first met. He sits on the couch against the wall with his head down. His meaty hands are bundled around each other. Handcuffs strangle his wrists. He has white in his beard. More white than just a week ago, Dr. Abbot thinks.
Dr. Abbot hasn't sat down yet. He looks to Officer Harris and tells her, "Take the cuffs off."
Officer Harris gives him a nervous look, but he nods and gestures to David Watkins' hands, and she obeys. David Watkins stares into the woman's face as she unlocks the cuffs; his face reddens all over again. She has black hair and blue eyes.
Dr. Abbot thinks about Helen Watkins, who, in his mind, is still in Trauma One.
"We'll be fine," he tells Officer Harris when she lingers in the room. Again, she looks nervous, and she leaves.
Breath trembling, David Watkins massages his wrists. He can't look Dr. Abbot in the eye. He can't blame him. He'd spent collective hours in the mirror staring at the browning bruise across his cheekbone; he swore he could feel the reconstruction bar under his skin when he experimented with his fingers; he only stopped when the pain shot through his eyeball.
"My name is Dr. Jack Abbot," Dr. Abbot tells him as he sits down. He keeps his voice gentle, having perfected the tone with how often he needs to say it. But this time, he deviates, "You can call me Jack."
"I'm sorry, Doc," David Watkins tells him as soon as he can catch a breath. He has a southern twang in his voice. "I'm really sorry about what I did. I– I wasn't myself."
"It's okay."
"I just– I..." David Watkins says, his voice cracking, "My little girl. She was my little girl, Doc."
He forgets the rest of his rehearsed condolences. He says, "Tell me about her."
"Helen is my only child. My wife, Rose, died of cancer when she was a baby. It was just me takin' care of her. Oh, she was the most beautiful thing." David Watkins rubs his face down. "She– she loved going to the waterpark. Loved it. Had a swimsuit for every day of the week. She loved makeup and– and she had this really expensive lotion that I always got her. Until she was 13, she thought we had a magical, never-ending supply of hand cream. I woulda done anything to keep her thinkin' that." He smiles; his face wrinkles with emotion. "She loved how I made PB&J sandwiches, even though I really didn't do anything special to 'em."
"PB&Js are my favorite, too," Doc Abbot says.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
David Watkins tries to hold himself together for a second longer, but he splits at the seams and cries quietly to himself. Doc Abbot keeps his eyes down and doesn't dare speak.
He waits, trying not to gnaw on his bottom lip, until David Watkins tells the story in tears. "I– I remember," he says, "when Helen turned 8, she was talkin' all about these dolls. They were monster girls, but they were pretty, she said. Real pretty. All she wanted for Christmas was these dolls. And, shit, I didn't know which one she wanted– she usually had a favorite, but I could get nothin' out of her – and I don't know anything about dolls, so I– I got as many as I could find. Three dozen of them were in my basket. Cost me a goddamn fortune." He wheezes a laugh. "Oh, it was the best Christmas ever. She talked about it for years."
Eyes stinging, Doc Abbot tells him gently, "She seemed like a really sweet girl."
"Oh, she was. She was." He cries. He can't keep himself from crying. Through a sob, he says, "It was just me and Helen. Now it's– it's just me."
Doc Abbot wrings his hands through each other. He waits a while before asking, "What do you know about Helen's circumstances at the accident?"
David Watkins talks through a red face. "They didn't tell me a lot. Just that she got hurt. I saw her all dolled up and fixed up but... they didn't tell me anything about what was wrong. Was– was it bad?"
He doesn't know how to approach that question. "Helen had very severe injuries," he says, slow and methodical. "She had many injuries in many different parts of her body. We were... unable to keep up with the blood loss."
"She broke her neck, they told me."
"Yes." Doc Abbot glances down. "Helen's neck was broken as a result of the accident."
"Means that– means that she couldn't move? Even if she lived?"
"She would have been paralyzed from the neck down for the rest of her life."
David Watkins' breath hitches. "Oh, God." He holds a hand to his mouth and whispers, "Did it hurt? Was– was she in pain?"
"No," Doc Abbot says. "No. Helen experienced no pain. My team did everything we could to ensure that she didn't suffer."
He hiccups, "I knew she was at the party. They expected me to be mad about it, but I wasn't, because I let her go. I let her go, knowing she was probably going to drink and smoke weed and do whatever it is that teenagers do at a party. She deserved it, you know? To have fun. She was graduating, for Pete's sake." He tries to laugh, but it comes out as a sob. "I gave her my keys, told her to behave herself. That– that she could call me at any time when she wanted to come home and couldn't take herself."
"She wanted to go home to you," Doc Abbot says, "because you are her father."
David Watkins cries, "Why didn't she just call me?"
He thinks about Helen Watkins, having drunk too much, being too scared to call her dad and say that she overdid it. He lies, "I don't think we'll ever know."
Doc Abbot lets him cry. This man, the same age as himself, three times his size, weeps into his hand and tries to hide his red face. Doc Abbot counts his knuckles and massages one. He tries not to think about the ache that's still in his chest.
"I brought you something, if that's okay," Doc Abbot says quietly. He takes the hoodie from his lap and reaches across the aisle for David Watkins to take. "I saw that Helen was wearing a shirt with the University of Pittsburgh logo on it when we were treating her. I eyeballed your size."
"Oh." David Watkins feels the fabric with his thumbs, rubbing in circles as he draws the jacket over his lap. Little tears dot the emblem. "Helen, she, uhm..." He sniffles. "She got accepted into the medical program at this place. She wanted to be a doctor."
"That's incredible," Doc Abbot says. "Do you know what field she wanted to work in?"
"Pediatrics, I think. She always had a soft spot for the little ones." David Watkins starts shaking, and squints his eyes, and looks away.
Doc Abbot thinks of Dr. Robby and Dr. Adamson on ECMO inside Pediatrics.
"A good friend of mine told me once about a ritual called ho'oponopono," Doc Abbot says. " Ho'oponono is a mantra that you tell your loved one as you're saying goodbye. It's supposed to help the grieving process. Doesn't try to make the pain go away, just... helps you take your next step forward."
David Watkins looks down at the jacket. "Wh–what do I say?"
"It's real simple. I love you. Thank you. I forgive you. Please forgive me."
He trembles as he parts the hoodie, like he were holding his daughter's shoulders. His face turns red again, glancing at Doc Abbot for help. "Do I– Do I say it now?"
"If you want to," Doc Abbot says.
David Watkins breathes in deep. "I love you," he tells the jacket. "Thank you. I– I forgive you." His voice breaks. He tries again. "I forgive you, baby. Please... please forgive me." He buries his face into the jacket, sobbing so loudly that Doc Abbot feels like it's inappropriate for him to be there.
Several minutes pass, and Doc Abbot knows it's not because his concussed brain slipped a gear. He asks, "Mr. Watkins?"
He reveals one red eye.
"Would it help you to know that I forgive you?"
"Oh, don'... don' say that to me, Doc." David Watkins sobs into the hoodie meant to stand in for his daughter.
"I mean it," Doc Abbot says. "I mean it. I forgive you. I'm not going to press charges. When I leave, I'mna pay your bail. I'mna to tell my lawyers to do everything they can to make sure you never see the inside of a courthouse. You deserve to go and spend time with your girl."
"At least... 'least let me pay your hospital bill."
"No." He shakes his head.
"Please?"
Doc Abbot looks over him. He stands and says, "I'm going to give you a moment alone."
Officer Harris waits for Doc Abbot as he leaves the holding cell, desperately trying to hold himself together. David Watkins resumes crying when the door closes. She gives the man a look of pity that makes him angry. He flexes his fists at his sides and filters through the paperwork needed to pay for a grieving father's freedom. He drops his credit card for the teller like it's the easiest thing he's ever done.
It is 0745 when David Watkins is released from the police station. Doc Abbot stands to meet him as another officer guides him to the front doors. This policewoman doesn't look like his daughter.
David Watkins hugs him. He engulfs him in tree-trunk-sized arms and pats his back; it aggravates the bruise near his ribs, but he ignores it in favor of accepting the expression of goodwill. Doc Abbot returns it, patting him down firmly.
"Thank you," David Watkins says when they part. "Thank you for tryin' to save her. You are a good man. A good, good man."
He glances off. His eyes start to sting. "Thank you, Mr. Watkins."
David Watkins nods his head, lets Doc Abbot go, and walks out into the parking lot, holding a phone to his ear to order a rental car. The hoodie is draped over his shoulder, like a hug from a little girl; he holds it reverently.
Doc Abbot watches him leave. He stands in the police station with a tear comfortable sitting just beneath his bruised tearduct.
"Coming to your place," he says into his phone's receiver once he settles into his car. "Just need somebody beside me when it gets quiet tonight. Maybe Roseanne'll be on. Or some other old sitcom. I dunno. Be safe getting home."
He thinks of Helen Watkins, and her father, David, and her girlfriend, Denice, and he thinks of Robby, and Jake, and Leah, and the Pittfest Shooting.
It is 0327, four weeks later, when Dr. Jack Abbot receives an envelope containing a receipt for a week's worth of staff lunches, a cheque that will cover his entire hospital bill, and a picture of Helen Watkins in her prom dress with her dad in a matching suit, three days before she was rolled into Trauma One.