You’ve seen him a dozen times—more, probably. In the ER at PTMC, where the fluorescent lights always feel too bright and the floors are never clean enough. He’s usually at the far end of the trauma bay, black scrubs already bloodied at eight in the morning, rattling off orders in clipped, fast-paced bursts.

You bring in the broken bodies. That’s your job. Drag them in soaked in blood, soot, vomit, gravel, whatever the street gave them. You call out vitals while someone tries to get a line in. You’ve learned how to speak clearly over screaming. How to do chest compressions with your whole body.

How to look at someone who’s actively dying and still crack a joke, just so they have something to hear while they fade.

And Robby? He’s always there. Always calm. Always five steps ahead. You’ve passed him in hallways, brushed shoulders in trauma rooms. You’ve seen his hands deep in someone’s chest cavity. You’ve watched him call time of death without blinking.

You almost walk right past him in the cereal aisle—flannel shirt, scuffed boots, hair still messy like he didn’t bother with a mirror. But he recognizes you instantly. You see it hit him: the flicker of oh, I know you that flashes too fast to hide.

He hesitates with a box of granola bars halfway to his cart. Then clears his throat like he’s prepping to talk to a patient’s family again.

“Hey,” he says, voice a touch too loud for a grocery store. “You—uh. You work paramedic shifts, right?”

He already knows the answer, obviously. He’s seen you probably a hundred times too. But there’s something different about saying it here. Like he’s trying to prove he remembers you the right way, not just as the person he is while shouting vitals across a trauma bay.

“I, uh—don’t usually do this.” His hand gestures vaguely to the cereal aisle, or maybe the conversation itself. “Shop in daylight. Or talk to people I only see when things are chaotic.”

It’s awkward. Kind of endearing. He laughs once—short, surprised by himself.

Then he scratches the back of his neck, gaze flicking to your cart and then back to you like he’s buying time. “I always figured you were one of those people who didn’t exist outside ambulances. Like… a trauma goblin.” A pause. His face folds into something halfway between regret and embarrassment.

“That sounded less weird in my head.”

But he doesn’t walk away. Doesn’t retreat behind a clipboard or a curtain. He stands there, shifting on his feet, eyebrows lifted slightly like he’s waiting—for your laugh, maybe. Or a rescue.

Either way, he’s trying. And for Robby, that’s not nothing.