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If You're Not the One – 12
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And though I can't be with you tonight
And know my heart is by your side
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Robin pressed the volume button up on her Creative Zen Nano music player that was hooked around her arm and continued her steady pace on the treadmill. The loud sounds of the live version of "I Get Excited" by Rick Springfield could be heard by anyone close around her, but the doctor's work out room was empty at this time of morning so she didn't worry about it. She wanted the extra kick that the loud, fast music lent her steps. She had been running on the treadmill for forty minutes now and she was nowhere near worked out of the stress that had driven her from her bed early this morning and had her tossing and turning all through the night after Patrick had left her apartment.
After saying he needed her.
Her step almost faltered at the memory of him saying those words, which was why she had chosen to run on the treadmill rather than along the jogging path near the Lake. She was much too distracted to not end up hurting herself or someone else. She had visions of mowing someone down as she dwelled on the tender time they had shared the night before.
After his admission they had shared a sweet, but brief kiss and then Patrick had just held her for a while before going home. Her analytical mind was now trying to figure out what it all meant, what was going on between them. It was clear that he needed her friendship and her support with all that was going on with his father. It was clear that he had more than platonic feelings for her, feelings that were more than just wanting to get her into bed. But they had still not agreed to anything – dating or more. He was willing to be monogamous, but when? Right now? After a few more dates?
Stop it! She ordered herself and clicked onto the next song – The Fray's "In Over My Head" – which suited her mood perfectly. She kept running.
"Well, well, well," Patrick walked into the work out room to see Robin sweaty and pounding the rubber on the treadmill. He was clad in shorts and a tank top and carried his towel, ready for his own stress relief on the weight machines. "Good morning," he called out and walked over to her. As he got nearer he realized why she didn't greet him, he could hear the music coming from her ear buds. He walked around the treadmill and waved a hand in her face.
"Hey." She pulled the buds from her ears, the music blasting inaudibly around them.
"You're going to go deaf with it that loud." He leaned on the machine. The memory of their chaste goodbye was still sitting awkwardly in his chest as it had all night. Looking at her now, so sweaty and strong he wondered how he'd had the self-control to do it.
"Am not." She picked up the towel that was hanging over the handrail and wiped her face. She looked at him questioningly, not slowing her pace. She wasn't nearly done working out her stress and didn't feel like making conversation. Her mind was definitely not settled enough to deal with him. "Have a good work out," she finally said when he just kept staring at her.
Taking her dismissal in stride he winked at her and walked over to a weight machine right in her line of vision and settled in for a hard work out, putting on his Three Doors Down playlist on his iPod Nano.
For the next fifteen minutes they worked out silently in the room before anyone else came in.
"Hey, Scorpio." Dr. David Tyler walked over to Robin's treadmill where she was in the cool down phase. "Wanna spar?"
Still feeling stressed, Robin readily agreed, throwing Patrick a sideways look as she went to the mats and got ready. She was sort of embarrassed to be doing this in front of him, but thrilled at the same time. Maybe now, she mused, he'd try not to piss her off so much.
Patrick, working his thighs looked on curiously, ignoring the twinge of jealousy at seeing the young doctor approach Robin. Then his eyes widened as he saw Robin and David start engaging in an intense kung fu fight. Patrick forgot all about his work out, as did the other two doctors in the room. For the others it was an exciting thing to see the smaller, female doctor holding her own, indeed more than holding her own, against the beefy doctor who she had just taken down. For Patrick it was a strange combination of arousing and unnerving.
With big grins the two doctors pressed their hands together and bowed. Robin was shaking out the stinging in their hands where she had blocked some direct shots when Patrick walked over to the mats to look down at her.
"You continue to surprise me, Scorpio."
She chuckled and looked up at him. "Not hard to do since you painted a picture of me in your mind without asking any questions when we first met," she pointed out.
"True, but didn't some of it hit its mark." As soon as the words left his mouth he remembered with an unaccustomed prick of guilt the tears in her eyes as he rendered his opinion of the emptiness of her life and wished he hadn't pressed the point so that he could be right. Not that such a flash of self-awareness and unaccustomed guilt would stop him from rendering his god-like pronouncements on her or anyone in the future. But he would, eventually, learn to sometimes apologize for them and not be so righteous or just bite his tongue on rare occasions. Very rare.
"I'll concede that in a limited way you were right." She saw his unease and it erased any lingering hurt that his words had caused her at the time.
Patrick grinned and teased a sweaty strand of hair off Robin's cheek where it had been plastered. "I didn't want to leave last night." Robin ducked her head and looked down at her shoes. "Am I going to have to assume here that you didn't want me to leave?" He queried huskily.
"You're going to anyway no matter what I say." Robin looked up and smirked at him. "Have a good work out." She couldn't quite bring herself to give him bold once over, but she was tempted.
"Will do, Ms. Bruce Lee." Patrick stepped back a step, but stayed close enough that she had to brush him as she walked past. He watched her go, a bemused expression on his face.
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"How is he?" Patrick walked into Noah's room, his hair still damp from his post workout shower.
"Vitals are stable. The patient is suffering internally but refuses pain meds. Obviously, he's comfortable suffering." Nurse Epiphany's observation was astute. Suffering was what Noah had consigned himself to ten years earlier when he lost his beloved wife on the operating table. He was conditioned now, didn't know how to live without. It colored all his opinions, his choices, for good or ill.
"Thanks. You might want to rethink your position on pain medication. You're not going to go quietly into the night. This is going to get a lot worse before you get what you want and die. First, you'll turn yellow -- bright yellow like one of those smiley faces from hell. Then when somebody grabs you like this, you'll bruise. You'll start bleeding from your gums, then your nose. Then your kidney will fail, which of course you'll need…"
"Will you stop?" Robin walked into the room and put her hand on Patrick's arm.
"I'm just giving the patient his prognosis. Acting like a doctor," he bit out, pointedly reminding her that he was acting on her advice, frustrated that once again he was not satisfying her expectations.
"I was a doctor before you were even a thought in anybody's mind. I know what's coming. So if you think you're scaring me into a liver transplant, you can forget it." Noah crossed his arms, looking like the five year old Robin had labeled him the evening before.
"Whatever. If you're determined to die a slow, agonizing death, I'm not going to stop you." Frustrated and angry at both Robin and his father he stalked out of the room.
'How can you be so unfair to your own flesh and blood?" Robin accused Noah before turning and rushing after Patrick. "Patrick, wait!"
He stopped in the middle of the hall, closed his eyes and scratched at the corner of his forehead like he often did when he was frustrated. "Don't even start with your lecture about how I need to keep trying with my father, OK? I'm trying to follow your advice, but nothing I do pleases you, Dr. Scorpio. I'm getting really sick of you trying to hold me up to your standards of the compassionate doctor and familial devotion."
"Patrick…."
"My father is not going to take a transplant. He's not even taking his pain medication. If he's determined to die a slow and painful death, I don't...I don't care anymore."
"Will you just please hear me out?" Robin knew he didn't mean what he said, about his father at least and she didn't scare or give up easy. He might hate her in the end, but as he had said, he needed her. He needed to stay strong when he couldn't. Otherwise he will regret it for the rest of his life.
"Like you'll give me a choice." Patrick made a frustrated noise and put his hands on his hips.
"Fine. When I first caught the virus and it looked like I wasn't going to make it, you told me that if I died, I would be the patient that haunted you. The one that you would never forget."
"Ok, well, that was just something I said in the moment of exhaustion and weakness. It wasn't an invitation for you to start dictating my life."
"I'm just trying to warn you. If Noah dies, he will be the one that haunts you, and it'll be a lot worse than me."
He just looked at her, not confirming or denying her words, but they both knew that he'd go back for another round.
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"So there you go. Inject the tranq into the I.V. And go to sleep. What I brought you there is an all-purpose problem-solver. No more struggling with excuses to refuse the transplant that actually makes sense. No more explaining to people how the brilliant dr. Drake ruined his career. You won't have to deal with the agony of dying by inches, and you'll go out the way you've chosen to live -- as a coward."
Patrick turned and walked out, grimacing as he heard his father throw the needle across the room as he left.
"Patrick?" Robin rushed after Patrick as his larger steps carried him forward much faster than she could easily catch up to.
"You stalking me now?" Patrick complained hypocritically since most of the time it was he who chased Robin all over the hospital.
"In case you're wondering, yes, I did hear you offer Noah a lethal dose of tranquilizers. Trying to help your father commit suicide was an interesting way to save his life."
"You just do not stop, do you? You just keep lecturing."
"No lectures this time."
"Oh, wow." Patrick put a hand to his chest in a parody of shock.
"Your tactics were unorthodox, but you may have convinced Noah to put up a fight."
Patrick visibly sighs with relief, both at the news and the seeming end to Dr. Scorpio's hammering of him.
He knows that he told her last night that he needed her. He knows that he gave her permission to keep at him even when he tells her he doesn't; he's given himself the insight that she already knew, that it was just a knee jerk reaction when he butt heads with her over it, but that doesn't stop him resenting it in the moment. Just then he's grateful both for her approval and that she hasn't given up on him despite his striking out at her.
He reaches a hand out and she slips her hand in his and they stand silently in the hallway looking at each other.