Work Text:
The patient sustained an injury during treatment.
Robby re-read the sentence but it didn't change. He couldn't quite believe it. Only yesterday he'd given a lengthy, urgent speech about patient satisfaction scores, about Underwood looking for mistakes, about how all of them had to work harder to make people feel safe and welcome; even if those patients sometimes got on their nerves or were difficult.
'If you have trouble with a patient, ask someone for help.'
Hadn't he used those exact words? He'd even ended with something encouraging about relying on each other and being a team, adamant that they had to work together as a team to keep this emergency department viable in the eyes of the hospital administration. And now this? One day later and they were back to avoiding lawsuits for injuring patients in their care. Did not one listen to him anymore?
Just then, someone behind him dropped a tray which clattered loudly to the ground, spilling instruments. Apologies followed, someone stepped in to help, Santos made a derogatory comment, of course, because that talk about togetherness had gone in one ear and right out the other with her. Robby sighed and ran both hands over his face and beard, trying to calm down.
"Hey," Dana said quietly. "You alright?"
"Just another glorious day," he replied and peeked at her from between his fingers. "You know anything about this?" he asked her and tipped his head towards the screen, turning it towards her.
Dana put her glasses on and leaned in. Her lips moved as she read what he had highlighted with the mouse. "No one's come to me about it yet. But the patient is still here, so…"
She seemed to catch something else because she made a sympathetic face. He knew why a moment later, when he read whose patient it was.
Langdon. Who else.
Robby knew he was being unfair. It could mean that one of the other residents had been with the patient, it could've been a nurse. He checked the chart, surprised to find Jesse's name.
But the fact that Langdon was the senior resident in charge of the patient was going to be a thing now. A thing. An issue. Something to reprimand Langdon over. Like they didn't have enough bad blood between them already. Like they weren't slowly inching towards their new normal at a snail's pace.
"Just…" Dana began but stopped herself. The moment was over quickly—the phone rang, she took her glasses off and picked up the receiver, all the while giving him a look he couldn't decipher.
He looked around the floor to see if he could catch his senior resident, but he was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he was hiding from Robby, fearing the dressing-down that was coming—as he fucking should.
Looking up at the monitor, Robby searched for a room with a door. "Do we have a room we could put him in?" he asked Dana, who had passed the receiver on to Princess in the meantime. He didn't want to give anyone special treatment, but if a quiet room with a door could avoid a lawsuit, he was going to use it.
Dana read his mind. "Not yet, but I'll see what I can do."
"Thanks. If it wasn't for you…"
She let out a snort. "Save the butter for that patient," she groused, her pen tipping at his monitor.
"Alright," he said, more to himself than to Dana. Alright, he could do this. Grovel time. He grabbed the guy's chart and made his way to the bay the patient was being treated in.
How did an examination for severe stomach pain result in a physical injury, anyway? He'd see in a moment.
When he arrived and pulled back the curtain, the patient didn't look worse for wear, mostly pissed off, bored, impatient, the typical state of those who had to wait for too long. He was beefy and a little too red in the face to be healthy, but Robby agreed with the initial assessment that this was nothing serious.
"Hey, finally, did my tests come back?" the patient asked without a greeting in a boisterous tone that set Robby on edge. "Can I get out of here now?"
Charming. Fucking charming.
"We're still waiting on those result. Shouldn't take much longer, they've been expedited." Concessions were, after all, an important part of negotiations, as was lying about expediting tests. This case was not urgent enough to warrant a higher prioritization in the lab.
The man ground his teeth together, showing them in what probably should've been a smile. "Then what are you doing here? Decided I can have something to eat after all?"
Robby took a breath. Another thing that he was intimately familiar with after years of negotiating for things with Gloria, was being asked for something but giving something else.
"Unfortunately not," Robby tried to placate. "We're trying to find you a quieter room, though." There, a concession for the impatient patient in Room 18.
"The fact that you call this a room is an embarrassment," the guy said mollified.
Robby didn't bother defending the thoughts that went into this layout, not in a time when everyone was an expert and knew better. He'd save whatever defending he had to do here for the person on his staff who had fucked up here. "I'm the chief attending and here to see about an injury you sustained during treatment?" he said, leaving the end of the sentence hanging.
"What, did that little faggot file a complaint?"
The sudden aggression, the wording, the slur—Robby hadn't been prepared for any of that. He froze for a moment, processing that; processing the sudden anger.
"Should've known," the guy continued. "Well, he should've kept his hands to himself then."
Robby took a breath and his eyes automatically went to the guy's right hand because sad as it was, he could already guess what had happened. The knuckles were swollen, bruised, red, an ice pack that Robby hadn't noticed before was lying on the sheet by his hip. They were treating the fucking guy for an injury he himself had caused, hurting one of them.
So, this wasn't about Langdon at all. Robby's thoughts immediately went to Jesse and his nose ring and how people were assholes sometimes.
"You need to keep your staff in check," the guy said, which Robby didn't even grace with an answer.
He also couldn't quite believe that Langdon hadn't ordered soft restraints when this patient was clearly a danger to the personnel.
Robby didn't remember how he'd excused himself. One moment he was still in there, telling the guy not to attack his staff or else, the next he was on the floor again. Blink of an eye. On his way back to the nurses' hub to get an order for restraints, he found his target. Langdon, walking down the hallway away from him, from one room to another, with Whitaker by his side, eyes trained on the senior resident like a hunting dog waiting for orders.
"Langdon!" Robby called out.
Whitaker made eye contact first, which Robby used to shoo him off wordlessly. Whitaker nodded hastily, plucked the tablet out of Langdon's hand, and left without another word. Maybe to do some charting, now that they'd finally taught him how to do that properly. Perfect; Robby and Langdon did not need an audience for this. Especially not when Langdon's body language was tense enough to tell Robby he knew exactly what was coming.
He stepped up behind him, close to his elbow but not touching, and maneuvered him towards a hallway with his bulk.
He collected himself for a second because if he talked right away, he'd hiss and spit that question out. He gave himself a second or two, before he said, "Room 18, talk."
Only now did Langdon turn to him and Robby's brain stuttered to a halt.
So it had been about Langdon, was the first thing that shot through his head. Anger came second. How did that guy think they palpitated, with a stick and a one-foot distance?
"Jesus, has anyone looked this over?" Robby asked and immediately looked for gloves on the shelf next to them.
Langdon sported a massive, discolored bruise on his cheekbone and temple. Broken blood vessels below his eye and around his cheekbone were already turning from red to blue, the skin was swollen and puffy.
"It's fine." Langdon raised his hands halfway to fend Robby off, but gave up when they bumped into Robby's chest.
"How about we let me be the judge of that." Langdon was not a doctor Robby trusted to 'heal himself'—he had learned that the hard way long before the benzo addiction; and that debacle certainly hadn't inspired him to change his opinion. That bruise did not look 'fine.'
"What happened?" he asked as he now put a hand on Langdon's elbow and guided him to the first room he found empty. Regretting his earlier way of pushing Langdon into that corridor, he tried to be all the more gentle now.
"Guess," Langdon replied sullenly.
Robby didn't need to guess because he already knew. He didn't even really need to talk it through, he could imagine what had happened. He pulled gloves on and tilted Langdon's head up. "You put something on it?"
Langdon's blue eyes focused on his and Robby automatically checked for even pupil dilation. He sighed at the subconjunctival hemorrhage staining his sclera red. His jaw lay heavy in Robby's hand as he leaned into the touch.
"Jesse did, but I had to wipe it off. Made my eyes tear up," he mumbled, breath puffing warm against Robby's palm.
"This will sting," Robby warned as he carefully checked for a fracture. He didn't want to press too firmly, but Langdon took it stoically. When he was done and let go, he turned to the computer behind him. "I want imaging."
"I don't need-"
"We need it for documentation." No shortcuts. Not if the chart said the guy sustained an injury and not that he did it to himself. "You could've phrased that better in the chart," he admonished when he turned back to Langdon. "And put him in restraints afterwards." He stopped himself, when he saw the sign he'd been told to look out for. The way Langdon pressed his lips together and nodded along told Robby that he was taking this to heart, soaking up the correction, vowing to be better and do better next time. That wouldn't do either of them any good. "But, I guess he got it out of his system. Is that why you didn't?" he asked carefully.
Langdon nodded. "I didn't think he'd go for anyone else."
"Langdon, you know he was wrong?" Robby let the end of that tip over into a question.
At that, Langdon looked up, firm as always, nodding. "I do. Of course, I know that. But-"
"No, no but." Robby shook his head. "Even if you didn't tell him you were going to palpitate, even if your hands were too cold, even if he was impatient or drunk..." At that, Langdon flinched—barely there, a micro expression, a millisecond of a wince. "There is no excuse."
He remembered the way Langdon had flinched when Robby had yelled and slammed his hand against the lockers during their blowout. And as hot as the anger had burned in him then, he'd known in that very moment he could never let a physical outburst happen again. That little flinch had sucked the oxygen out of the fire, leaving him feeling heavy with the realization what he had inherited.
"And now?" Langdon asked.
"I'm sending you to radiology for a CT. And I'm putting the guy in restraints because he hurt you. And I'm not getting him a room with a door."
Blue eyes snapped to his. "You would've given him a door?"
Of course, Langdon would focus on that detail; anything to distract them both from his shiner. "I was trying to avoid a lawsuit. I thought Jesse had dropped him or something."
"Jesse took the guy down like a pro wrestler."
Robby winced at the comparison. He absolutely did not want to know that. Violence against patients was not going to earn them any points upstairs. Still, he was glad Jesse had intervened. He shouldn't have expected anything else; Jesse was protective. "He did?"
When Langdon confirmed, he looked almost as excited as the last time Robby had seen Tanner and the kid had told him everything he needed to know about Paw Patrol. "He did. You should've seen it. Magnificent. Like a Power Ranger."
Robby groaned. That was not good even if the image it put in his head was a fun one. Eventually, he rolled the chair a little closer to Langdon until their knees touched. "What am I going to do with you, hm?"
Langdon didn't answer.
"I don't like it when you get into trouble. Makes me realize how much I care and then I… don't know what to do."
Langdon huffed, but Robby saw a smile slowly spreading across his face. He winced immediately, when his sore muscles contracted. "Don't make me smile."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
Robby reached out and tugged at Langdon's shoulder to pull him in for a lopsided embrace. He slid his hand up to cup the back of Langdon's head. "I'm sorry he hit you." He tried to convey that he didn't just mean the patient today and by the heavy way Langdon's head rested on his shoulder, he understood. Robby ran his hand down again and rubbed Langdon's back, feeling like he was too late for another hurt in Langdon's life. He was always too late to help.
They stayed like that a while longer, until Langdon seemed to get antsy from the closeness or the comfort or both, and twisted away. "CT?" he asked.
"CT," Robby confirmed. "After we fix you up with some naproxen."
"Thank you."
"And next time?"
"Next time, I phrase it differently and put the patient in restraints."
"You come to me," Robby corrected. Yes, Langdon's answer was what he should do, but more importantly… "Next time, if something like that happens again, you come to me. Let me check you out." And before he could think about it for too long, he put his hand on Langdon's wrist. "I want to know when you get hurt." He would never laugh or brush it off again.