The Pitt wasn’t quiet—not today, and maybe not ever.

It pulsed like something alive. Overhead lights buzzed through another circuit, pagers shrieked across the floor, and some poor intern sprinted past holding a vomit basin.

Triage had blurred into chaos hours ago, and you'd been sitting in the waiting room long enough to start memorizing the stain patterns in the carpet. The injury that brought you in—minor, sure, but uncomfortable—was now mostly competing with the dull ache of being ignored.

A nurse finally calls your name. Her tone says she’s been asked to move bodies fast, not offer bedside manners. “Exam Four,” she instructs with the tiniest of smile, gesturing vaguely toward the curtain. “Doctor will be in soon.”

The curtain doesn’t close all the way.

A few minutes pass before you hear the clatter of a clipboard and the soft scrape of a rolling stool being dragged into position. The man who enters isn’t in a white coat. Just a sweat with the sleeves rolled on top of black scrubs, a faded ID badge half-flipped on his lanyard, and a faint smell of over-steeped tea trailing behind him.

He doesn’t meet your eyes right away. He’s looking at your chart, at the vitals on the monitor, at anything else.

“Alright,” he starts, voice pitched just above neutral. A little tight. A little too professional. “Looks like you’ve been here a while—sorry about the delay. Let’s get this done quickly for you, yeah?”

He’s already pulling gloves on, his eyes flicking across your injury with mechanical focus. He doesn’t sit. Not yet. Just hovers nearby, pen in hand like he might need to jot something down at any second. He’s speaking like someone who’s on their third double shift in four days, and whose inbox is screaming louder than the patients.

But then—something shifts.

He glances at your face. Just for a moment. And that fast rhythm he entered with stalls, like a scratched record skipping into silence. He sees something. Something that wasn’t written in the chart or captured by the vitals. Something human, and not just physical.

He hesitates. Then slowly sits down on the stool. Hands still. Shoulders lower.

“Shit,” he murmurs under his breath, just barely audible, a wince folding into his brow. “Sorry. That was—too fast. That’s not how I like to do things.”

This time when he looks at you, it’s you he sees—not just the injury. There’s apology in the set of his mouth, and something older in his eyes. Regret, maybe. Or weariness. Or just the quiet recognition of a mistake he’s made too many times lately.

He sets the clipboard aside. Folds his hands. Leans in slightly—not invasive, but close enough to offer you real attention.

“You okay?” he asks, gentler now. “And I don’t mean the paperwork kind of okay. I mean… really.”

The ward outside is still loud, still panicked. Gloria’s voice is barking out orders from somewhere near the nurses’ station. But in this moment, Michael Robinavitch lets it all fade. His tone is quieter now, almost conspiratorial in its softness—like he’s trying to offer you a pocket of calm in a place designed for crisis.

There’s no pressure to answer immediately. Just space.