Chapter Text
By mid-afternoon of his dayshift on the Pitt, Robby gave up on the idea of catching up. The board kept filling faster than they could clear it, patients moving through in a slow, grinding line. It was one of those days.
The radio cracked overhead, cutting through the noise without asking permission.
Two incoming. Teenagers. Physical altercation at a group home.
Robby didn’t sigh, but it sat somewhere behind his teeth anyway as he pulled on gloves and moved toward the trauma bays. “Split them,” he said to Sophie on his way past, already adjusting pace without thinking about it. “I’ll take whichever one’s not yelling.”
The ambulance doors opened before anyone had time to respond, bringing noise with them in a rush of movement and overlapping voices.
“What do we have?” Robby asked, stepping in as the gurneys came through.
“Two patients, both around sixteen,” the EMT said, steering the first one toward the closer bay. “Altercation at a residential placement. This is Evan Mercer. Took a hit to the face, likely nasal fracture, possible break in the right forearm. Alert, oriented, not exactly cooperative.”
Evan didn’t wait to prove that point.
“That kid’s fucking crazy,” he snapped, twisting against the straps, not quite sitting up but trying anyway. “He came at me out of nowhere, I didn’t even say anything to him, he just started swinging like a psycho—”
“Hey,” the EMT cut in, trying to push him back. “Stay still.”
“I am still, I’m just saying, you should be looking at him, not me, he’s the one—”
Robby didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to.
“Lie back,” he said, already looking at the angle of the arm, the swelling, the way Evan was favoring it without realizing.
Evan didn’t.
Robby glanced at the arm again, then back at his face. “Or don’t,” he added calmly. “But if you move it again and make that worse, I’m not fixing it twice.”
That did it.
Evan dropped back with a sharp breath, instinctively clutching at his forearm. “Yeah, okay, fine, fuck—my arm—”
“You’ll live,” Robby said, already stepping aside. “Get imaging, page ortho. He’s going to keep talking, you can decide how much of it is useful.”
Evan let out a short, frustrated sound but didn’t argue again, his attention already pulled toward the pain in his arm.
As they wheeled him away, he twisted slightly, still trying to track the other gurney. “I’m serious though, he’s not right, he just—”
“Move,” Robby said, not unkind, but final.
The second gurney rolled in behind him.
“Other patient?” Robby asked, shifting his attention without pause.
“Goes by Frank,” the EMT said. “No last name on file. Came in about a week ago, placement hasn’t updated anything yet. He got into it with the first kid, then went down later. Staff couldn’t wake him properly. Possible head impact. GCS was ten on scene, maybe eleven now. Slurred speech, not really answering questions.”
Robby nodded once, already stepping in closer. “Vitals?”
“BP’s a little soft, 102 over 66. Heart rate 108, respirations 12, satting fine on room air. No medical history attached yet.”
Of course not.
Robby leaned in slightly, taking a proper look.
Frank wasn’t unconscious, but he wasn’t fully present either. There was a lag to him, the kind that didn’t quite match sedation, more like his brain was a step behind his body. Blood had dried along his temple, still fresh at the edge where it had reopened, hair sticking slightly where it clotted. One eye was already swelling, lip split, and his right hand was curled in toward his chest in a way that didn’t look intentional so much as fixed there.
“Hey,” Robby said, not loud, not soft, just enough to cut through.
Frank’s eyes opened a fraction more, slow, like it took effort to get there. His gaze landed somewhere past Robby’s shoulder first, then drifted back, catching on him without really settling.
“Stay with me,” Robby said, steadying his head with one hand so he could check his pupils properly. Equal. Reactive. A little slow.
Concussion, probably.
“Let’s clean that,” he said, glancing to the nurse. “I want to see the laceration.
Saline hit skin, and Frank flinched slightly, not pulling away so much as tightening through his shoulders.
Robby’s attention shifted to his arm. “Open your hand.”
Nothing.
He tapped lightly at the wrist, not forceful, just enough to prompt. “Open.”
Frank’s fingers twitched, then stilled again.
Robby took the hand himself, careful, testing range without forcing it. The reaction came fast this time, a sharp inhale through his teeth, the arm trying to pull back without the strength to do it properly.
Not just the hand.
Robby adjusted his grip, rotating slightly.
Same response, quicker.
He let go.
“Alright,” he said, mostly to himself. “We’ll image that.”
“Ribs?” Jesse asked.
Robby nodded, stepping back just enough to watch.
He palpated lightly, methodical, moving across the ribcage.
Frank reacted immediately. Not localized, not one point. Everything tightened at once, breath catching like the pain didn’t belong to where she was touching at all.
He shifted position.
Same thing.
“Feels intact,” he said, frowning slightly.
Robby stepped back in, pressing more deliberately this time, testing pressure, not just contact.
Same reaction. Broader than it should have been. Faster too.
He withdrew his hand.
“Okay,” he said quietly, filing it away.
He leaned in again, just enough to catch Frank’s attention. “You with me?”
There was a pause, then, “…yeah.”
Robby nodded once. “Good.”
Frank’s gaze drifted past him again, unfocused but not empty, tracking something in the hallway.
“…other kid,” he muttered. “still here?”
Robby glanced briefly toward the noise where Evan was still being loud somewhere out of sight. “Yeah,” he said. “He’s fine.”
Frank let out a breath that might have been a laugh if it had more energy behind it. “…figures.”
Robby studied him for a second longer.
“Do you remember what happened?” he asked.
Frank looked back at him, focus sharpening slightly. “Yeah.”
Robby waited.
Nothing followed.
“…you planning on sharing,” he said, tone dry, “or are we done there?”
Frank’s mouth twitched faintly. “…nah.”
That, more than anything, felt honest.
Robby huffed once, not annoyed, just acknowledging it. “Alright,” he said. “We’ll work around you.”
He straightened slightly, already shifting gears. “CT head, X-ray wrist, monitor neuro. And somebody chase that file down before I have to start guessing.”
—
Frank had been in the system long enough that a new placement barely qualified as news. Summer was almost over, school starting back up in a week or two, which probably made him harder to place.
Temporary urgency, last-minute bed, one more kid shuffled somewhere before classes resumed. He had learned not to ask questions before arriving because the answers were never useful. You got there, you looked around, and within the first hour you usually knew what kind of house it was.
The Pritchards lived in a low apartment building with stained concrete stairs and a front hallway that smelled like mildew, frying oil, and cat piss cooked into old carpet. Mrs. Pritchard opened the door first, though he spent the first few days not fully convinced she was actually a Mrs. anything. She and the man had the same kind of face, same narrow hazel eyes, same long jaw, same thin lips that looked pinched even at rest. For a while Frank figured they had to be brother and sister, which made the whole arrangement seem even worse. Then, on his fourth or fifth day there, he walked in and saw them kiss in the kitchen in that absent, irritated way long-married people sometimes did, and had to readjust. He decided they might still be cousins. Distant ones, maybe. It would not have surprised him.
Mr. Pritchard worked construction, though not in a way that seemed impressive. He left before sunrise in a truck with mismatched doors and came back coated in drywall dust, sweat, and whatever stale aggression he carried around in his shoulders. He talked like he was the boss even when it sounded like he was just the loudest man on a mediocre crew.
Mrs. Pritchard stayed home almost all day, parked in front of the television with her cigarettes and her soaps, leaving only for the grocery store or to stand outside and complain to neighbors who never looked particularly interested in hearing it.
There were too many cats. Not enough to count as hoarding, maybe, but enough that the apartment always felt furry and damp at the same time. They got underfoot and on the counters and slept on the couch and hissed at him in the basement like he was the intruder, which, to be fair, he was.
They put him downstairs. Basement was generous, really. It was more like a converted storage space with concrete walls, one small window near the ceiling, and air that stayed wet no matter how hot it got outside. Dust clung to everything. The mattress smelled faintly of mold and something sweet-rotten underneath it. The floor had that tacky feeling old places sometimes had, like if you stood in one spot too long your socks would peel when you stepped away. He had slept in worse. Not many, but worse.
The rules were simple, which usually meant they were arbitrary. Dinner was at six. If he was there, he ate. If he wasn’t, he didn’t. He was not to touch anything in the kitchen unless told otherwise. He could sweep, mop, take out the trash, scoop litter, scrub the bathroom, and carry groceries back from the supermarket while Mrs. Pritchard complained about prices all the way home, but he was not allowed to make himself a sandwich. The first day she told him that she did it without even looking away from the stove, like she’d said the same sentence to a dozen boys before him and had no interest in hearing the response. He did not bother giving one. Lunch was his own problem, which in practice meant school cafeteria food bought with the aid card marked for kids like him. He had long ago stopped being embarrassed by that part unless someone else tried to embarrass him first.
“ the school supplies aid cards fpr people like you, you’ll have to take advantage of that if you're planning on eating”
He tested the edges of the place once, early on. Sat in the living room after school with his homework spread over his knees, mostly just to see what would happen. Mrs. Pritchard did not tell him to move. She smacked him in the back of the head with a folded magazine because he was in front of the television. Not hard enough to actually hurt, but hard enough to establish the tone.
After that she took a strange sort of liking to nudging him out of the way with whatever happened to be in her hand. Magazine, wooden spoon, remote, one time a half-empty pack of cigarettes. It was never the point of impact that bothered him. It was the casualness of it. Like he was furniture that occasionally needed rearranging.
—
School was fine. School was usually fine, as long as he kept his mouth shut about where he lived and never let anybody from guidance get too interested in him. He was good-looking in a way that made people decide things about him before he had to open his mouth and ruin it. Sporty, too, and quick enough to fold himself into the normal shape of a teenage boy when he needed to.
If anyone noticed his shirts were worn too often or his shoes weren’t quite right, they usually assumed money problems, which was easier to manage than pity. He had learned young that people were a lot more comfortable with broke than foster. Broke was temporary, understandable, almost respectable if you played it right. Foster made adults tilt their heads and classmates ask stupid questions and teachers watch you too closely.
He stayed after school most days because there was no reason to go back early and plenty of reasons not to.
Sometimes he wandered the halls until the building started to empty out and the silence turned awkward. Sometimes he stayed for basketball practice, which gave him a legitimate reason to be around and burned off enough of his temper that he was less likely to say something stupid on the walk home. He was not so bad , too, which helped. He liked the repetition of it, the blunt physicality, the clean logic of doing one thing with your body and either getting it right or not.
When practice ended he took his time leaving, drank water slowly, retied shoes that didn’t need tying, sat on the bleachers long enough for everybody else to go. Then he walked back to the apartment and killed time outside if he was too early, circling the block or sitting on the back steps where the cats didn’t bother him as much.
There were two kinds of foster families, as far as Frank was concerned. The kind that wanted an inventory of every minute of your day, where were you, who were you with, why were you late, why didn’t you answer, can you watch the kids, can you do this, can you help with that, and those were usually the ones where everything turned into a personal offense. Then there were the ones who would rather forget you were there as long as you did not interfere with their routines.
The Pritchards were firmly the second kind. If he came home on time, did his chores, and kept out of the kitchen, they barely looked at him. He preferred that. Mostly.
Dinner was usually canned vegetables, boxed starch, some overcooked meat, and television noise. Mrs. Pritchard ate facing the living room with her fork in one hand and the remote in the other, while Mr. Pritchard complained about work and half the time talked like Frank was not sitting three feet away. Then he went downstairs, did homework on the floor with his back against the wall, and listened to the two of them fight through the vents. They did not fight like people who might leave each other. They fought like people who had calcified together, mean in efficient, well-worn patterns. He fell asleep to that often enough that after a while silence felt less natural.
—
The fight at school was not his first and would most definitely not be his last. It started over something stupid, as they usually did. A comment made too many times by the wrong person on the wrong day, one of those boys who had figured out Frank was easy to needle if you acted like he was trying too hard, if you laughed when he got something wrong, if you spoke to him with that fake patience people used when they wanted a reaction.
Frank had never had much tolerance for frustration. If something did not work the first time, if someone criticized him, if he felt cornered or talked down to, it was like his skin stopped fitting right. He did not just get angry, either. He got mean. Mean in a way that aimed itself. He said one thing to the boy and then another and saw, almost immediately, that he had found the right nerve.
The boy swung first. Frank still got suspended.
The principal called Mr. Pritchard in from work, which seemed to irritate him a lot more than the fact of the fight itself. He sat in the office with his dusty boots spread too wide, nodding through the explanation with a face like he could not believe his afternoon had been wasted on this. He did not say much until they were in the truck driving home, windows down because the air conditioning barely worked.
“You got too much time on your hands,” he said, like he had just solved something.
Frank leaned his head against the glass and looked out at the traffic. “Sure.”
Mr. Pritchard glanced over, already annoyed by the tone. “You think this is funny?”
“No.”
“You want to act grown, you can work.”
Frank turned then. “What?”
“At the site. After school. Weekends too, till I say otherwise.”
Frank stared at him for a second, then laughed once because the alternative was probably worse. “Do you seriously think I’m gonna be your slave?”
The truck went quiet except for the rattling in the dash. Mr. Pritchard’s jaw set. When they got home and Frank made the mistake of repeating himself inside, Mrs. Pritchard smacked him hard behind the ear before he finished the sentence.
“How dare you,” she snapped. “We feed you in this house.”
He put a hand to the side of his head and looked at her, more surprised than hurt.
Mr. Pritchard, now fully committed to his own idea, said he would give him an allowance. Barely anything. A number so insulting it was almost funny. Frank looked from one of them to the other and understood very clearly that this was not a negotiation, just another arrangement adults would later describe as generosity. So he shrugged and said fine in a tone that made Mrs. Pritchard angry all over again.