He hadn’t said anything when she sat beside him. Not a word when she handed him the coffee she knew he didn’t ask for. It was the third night in a row he’d stayed late — charting, he claimed. But she’d seen the way his hands trembled when he thought no one was looking, the hollow pull around his eyes like the weight of a hundred bad outcomes lived there rent-free.

“You lost someone today.”

Her voice was quiet. Not accusing, not pitying. Just knowing.

Robby didn’t answer at first. His gaze stayed fixed out the window, where the city lights blinked in a soft, forgiving rhythm — as if the world had the grace to pretend nothing had gone wrong inside OR2.

“A kid,” he finally said, the words like shards caught in his throat. “Twelve. Post-op was fine until it wasn’t. I did everything right.”

She didn’t argue. Didn’t reach for platitudes. She simply leaned back, crossing one leg over the other, her silence a cushion instead of a wall.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he added, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “That I’m supposed to be used to it by now. That this is just the job.”

“No,” she said, turning toward him fully now. “I think you carry the weight of every single one. I think that’s what makes you good, Robby. And I think it’s also what’s going to break you, if you don’t let someone see you fall once in a while.”

The muscle in his jaw twitched, a flicker of something almost too raw to name in his chest. Grief. Guilt. Gratitude.

“I don’t fall,” he said, but it came out softer than he meant it to. Fragile.

She gave a half-smile and reached over, just barely brushing her fingers against his. “You do. You just wait until no one’s watching. But I am. I always have been.”

And for once, Robby didn’t pull away. Didn’t shift the subject, crack a joke, or change the channel in his mind. He just sat there — in the silence, in the shared air — and let himself be seen.