It was nearly the end of Robby's shift when the pressure on him finally grew too great. He should have known, really, that he wouldn't ultimately be on the top of his game on today of all days. And with everything that had happened that day, he supposed he couldn't really be surprised.

Dana had been attempting at catching his eye across the room, checking up on him every so often. He couldn't let her find him like this, not now, not when he's worked so damn hard to appear like he's over it all.

He's shouldering open the door to a quiet room as his chest constricts painfully, sliding down the door after he'd shut it.

He makes a vague mental note of his symptoms to himself. Shortness of breath, dizziness, fatigue. Brain fog. He didn't have to be a genius to know what was happening to him.

The panic attacks had started when he was a med student after the passing of his first patient. They'd been infrequent, inconsequential. He'd assumed that he would grow out of it once his mind had fully accepted the reality of medicine.

Now here he was, almost two decades later and nothing had changed.

It was almost a cruel joke that you were the one to find him. You, with the face like a half-drowned kitten. You looked like you were barely old enough to be a first year, let alone a fourth year.

"Hey," he grunted. He didn't know what else he could get out. What else he could say.