Chapter Text
After 10 months in the PTMC emergency department, Dennis Whitaker has finally found his groove. His white boy funk, if you will. The unsteady, chaotic rhythm keeps him on his toes, and he rarely finds himself slipping into boredom. Apart from when he’s doing charting, of course. This shift is like any other. They’ve just had the influx of patients from the nursing home bed checks, and apart from two cosplayers with severe assault wounds from a fight who insist on shouting at each other across the north wing, it is relatively quiet. Dennis curses himself for thinking the ‘Q’ word and lightly taps his knuckles on the painted wood of the nurse station countertop.
“Anything for me, Dana?” He asks, leaning over the counter to talk to her.
“Central 7’s still waiting on a doctor. Perlah's been seeing her,” she responds, not even looking up from her multitude of clipboards and computer screens.
“What have I got?”
“Flaming marshmallow to the eye. There goes my summer camping plans, I am not risking that” she quips.
Dennis sucks in through his teeth. “Yikes… I’ll head out there now.” He pushes off the desk and makes his way over to the poor unfortunate soul, Perlah following him.
…
The marshmallow afflicted girl sits up on the bed, a dressing covering her eye, attempting to read something on her phone with the non-afflicted eye. Her friend, presumably, sits beside her, reading a book with her knees pulled up on the chair.
“Hi, I’m Doctor Whitaker, I’ll be looking after you today. You’ve met Perlah already I assume, what’s your name?” Dennis smiles at her, and she attempts a weak smile back.
“Evie. This is my girlfriend Celeste.” Girlfriend! Dennis has been out-woked with his assumption of just friends.
“Perlah's cleaned you up a bit and gave you something for the pain, right?”
“Yeah, I think it was some kinda numbing drop? S’helped a bit,” she responds. “This is so embarrassing, like - marshmallow to the eye? If I was gonna get an eye injury it could’ve been from, like, a fight or something."
Dennis chuckles lightly. “I don’t know, it’s still a pretty good story. Do you mind if I have a look?” She shakes her head and Dennis pulls back the dressing. She’s got superficial burns around her eyelid and below her eye, nothing too bad. The molten marshmallow is still crusted on her eyelashes, but none of them appear to be singed off. “We’re going to have to check the eye to make sure there’s no corneal damage. Perlah, could you get me a fluorescein stain test?”
“On it, boss,” she replies, heading out the curtained room.
“So, how exactly did this happen?” Dennis asks, shining a light into the afflicted eye. Evie winces slightly.
“We were camping and we were gonna have a morning snack, so we roasted marshmallows over our little gas stove. Celeste’s one caught so she shook it to put it out and… boom.”
Celeste grimaces. “Not my finest moment. I’m so sorry, baby.”
“I told you, it’s okay, I promise I’m not mad,” Evie smiles sympathetically at her girlfriend. “The only annoying thing was the hour drive from bumfuck nowhere to the hospital.”
…
The fluorescein eye stain test reveals only a minor corneal abrasion, which should heal quickly on its own.
“Corneas are pretty quick with that, don't worry. We’re just going to do a saline rinse with something called a Morgan Lens to flush out any remaining marshmallow or debris,” he explains. “It’s like a plastic contact attached to a tube which will go over your eyeball, under your eyelids, and should clear everything out.”
“Does it hurt?” Evie asks cautiously.
“No, you’re numbed up pretty good, it may just be a bit uncomfortable,” Dennis explains. “We’re going to flush a litre of saline, so I’m going to put a towel by your head so it doesn’t -” Dennis is cut off by a sudden buzzing in his back right pocket. “Excuse me one second.”
The name flashing bright on his screen sends a bolt of anxiety down his spine in a way that hasn’t happened to him since… Nebraska. Henry Whitaker. Dennis takes a beat and declines the call, putting his phone away and trying to scrub his older brother’s name from his retina. Pushing his emotions down in that well-practiced manner, he returns his attention to the patient. To her, it must appear as a one second lapse, but to Dennis, it felt like eternity.
“So sorry about that. As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted -” Dennis laughs a little, trying to make himself feel better, “- We’re going to put a towel by your head to soak up the saline so your clothes don’t get drenched.”
Once the Morgan Lens is in, Dennis heads out with a promise to return once the eye is flushed, and a referral note to ophthalmology.
Pulling the curtain behind him as he leaves, he allows his mind to race. What in the world could Henry want? They haven’t talked in pretty much thirteen years, Dennis hadn’t even said goodbye when he ran away, just packed up his things and left in the middle of the night. He got one call from Henry then, which went unanswered, and they never spoke again. The last thing he wants is any reminder of Broken Bow, and all of the memories he tries to suppress are flooding back in a tidal wave. He’s so caught up in his own head that he doesn’t notice Dr. Robby walking towards him until they collide.
“Christ, Whitaker! Trying to knock down an old man or what?” Robby exclaims, grabbing Dennis by the arm to steady him. So lost in his own head, Dennis doesn’t feel the heat emanating from Robby’s hand the way he usually does, his heart doesn’t skip a beat. Instead he straightens up and keeps walking.
“Sorry, Dr. Robby.”
“Ah, ah, ah,” Robby tuts, grabbing his arm again, firmer this time. “What’s going on, kid? You’re usually not so… I don’t know, out of it?” The look of genuine concern in Robby’s eyes does make Dennis’s ears flush, just a little.
“Genuinely, it’s nothing. Just some family stuff.”
“Okay. Well, just make sure you keep that home/work barrier up, yeah? But - come to me if you need anything, okay?” Dr. Robby looks at him over his glasses in that borderline paternal manner that makes Dennis’s stomach flip and Freud roll in his grave. “Go on, get going! You’ve got patients to see!”
“Y-yeah, thanks, Dr. Robby.”
As Dennis heads, he catches Trinity staring at him, signature smirk on her face. She comes over to him - no other reason other than to torment him about his workplace crush - but as she sees the look on his face, the smile drops.
“Christ, Huckleberry! Came to make fun of you but you look like you’ve seen a ghost. I know the emergency room is haunted but it’s only midday! Not even peak ghost-sighting time.”
Dennis doesn’t respond to her joke, no sassy response or even smile of acknowledgement. Trinity’s eyebrows crease in the middle.
“Seriously. You're gonna make me ask you what’s wrong?”
“Henry called.” Dennis averts his gaze.
“Henry… your -”
“Brother.”
“Brother. Yep. Shit.” Trinity’s mouth presses into a thin line, clearly calculating her next words. “Are you… okay? Do you know what he wants?”
Dennis shakes his head. “I don’t know. We haven’t spoken in thirteen years. Not since I-”
Trinity doesn’t need to say anything, just nods curtly in understanding. “Let’s get through the rest of your shift, you don’t need that weighing on you right now.”
There is no way in hell that this isn’t going to weigh on him, Dennis thinks. He spends the rest of his shift watching himself go through the motions of being an ER doctor, as if he’s watching through a window, trapped in a house he can’t escape from.
…
The ride back to the apartment is awkwardly silent in a way it hasn’t been since Dennis first moved in. Usually he fills the silence with pointless chatter, which Trinity doesn’t participate in, but he knows she secretly enjoys. This drive, Dennis sits with his head pressed up against the cool glass of the passenger seat window, consumed in his own racing mind.
When they get home, Dennis doesn’t eat dinner, doesn’t shower, just heads straight to his room and locks himself in. He kicks off his shoes and curls up into a ball in bed, the way he used to when it got too cold in his little room back at the farm.
Trinity doesn’t check on him. She wouldn’t, it’s not like her, and Dennis knows this. She doesn’t want to appear as if she’s intruding. But he quietly hopes she’ll knock on his door anyway.
Dennis doesn’t fall asleep for a long time, checking and re-checking his phone and staring at the call log. What possible reason could Henry be calling him for? It’s not like he would want to talk to Dennis - you know, chill catch up between brothers who haven’t spoken in over a decade… How are you doing? Up to anything fun recently? Dennis drags his palms down his face, hard. The next thing he knows, his thumb is pressing the button to call Henry back. The five rings it takes for him to pick up the phone stretch into an eternity, Dennis’s stomach twisting and heart thumping in his chest.
Click.
“Dennis?”
“Henry. I-” The million things Dennis wants to say hang in the air. Why didn’t you try harder to keep in contact after I left? Why were you complicit in everything that went on? Why didn’t you stop Dad when he- “What is it?”
“It’s Mom. She’s… not doing well.”
Dennis’s throat tightens. He doesn’t know quite how to react to that piece of information. On one hand, his mother was never outward in her negative feelings towards him. On the other, she was a shell of a woman, as he remembered, cowering behind the domineering figure of his father. She sat in the shadow of him at the pulpit, eyes lowered as he preached words that further bound her to that pew in the front row. Words that ripped Dennis’s soul in two like communion wafers every Sunday morning.
Henry continues. “You need to come home. It’s any day now.”
The word ‘home’ leaves a bitter taste in Dennis’ mouth. That house hasn’t been home in a very long time. Maybe it never was home. But Dennis can’t leave his dying mother in the hands of those who believe that medical care is against the will of God. If he’s there, he could at least do some good. And isn’t that all he craves? To be good?
After a long pause, Dennis replies. “Okay. I’ll be there soon. Thursday, probably.”
“Yeah. Alright then. It’s good to talk to you, brother. It’s been-”
Dennis hangs up the call. He doesn’t want to hear any more of his brother’s awkward, patronising bullshit. Thirteen years. He was a different man now, one who only thought about Nebraska when it got dark. He fiddles with his cross necklace, tracing the smooth silver metal with his fingers, feeling each practiced movement. He holds onto it until he slowly falls asleep, taking comfort in the sharp corners. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.