If You're Not the One - 31
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Patrick wandered through the living room of Bobbie's apartment in the brownstone. Bobbie was still in the kitchen with Lucas cleaning up from their dinner and had waved away his attempts to help. As he wandered around the room he would periodically stop to look at yet another photo of friends and family. He was looking at one that was sitting on the mantle, it was Felicia marrying the man he guessed to be Tony's brother. It was a group photo that included a young Robin Scorpio. He felt something move in his chest as he looked at her. He frowned and put the photo down.
"That was a very happy day."
Startled, Patrick stepped back from the mantle and faced Bobbie. He shifted uncomfortably. Bobbie had this way of looking at him that made him feel like she could see through him. It was unnerving.
Bobbie walked over and picked up the photo and looked at it. "We were all so happy back then." She put the photo back down. "What has you so on edge tonight, Patrick?" He had been distracted and anxious over dinner. "Are you worried about your father or Robin?"
"I just called the hospital. They're both sleeping, believe it or not." He shared a smile with her about the uncooperative patients.
"Doesn't mean you don't worry not being there to watch over them."
"No, it doesn't." Patrick stood with his hands on his hips and shifted uncomfortably.
"Patrick. If there's something you want to share with me I'm more than happy to listen."
Patrick shifted again; wondering how he could speak past the knot that was lodged in his chest and had been since he watched Robin fall asleep this afternoon. That got tighter as he remembered the hours he spent waiting to see her after the explosion.
He remembered sitting there in bed thinking that she taking too long to show up and he just knew something was wrong. When Brenda and Brandon had walked into his hospital room for a moment he had thought she was dead and he was suddenly right back in the ICU waiting room ten years ago waiting for his parents to come out of the O.R. Neither of them did. He felt as if he was suffocating as he demanded to know what was wrong with Robin.
Once he found out it was a head injury, he jumped into action and became the doctor he was trained to be. He focused on scans, on data, on treatments, even though they the one he had opted to use was not the one he would have normally chosen; which in and of itself was something else that started crashing down on him as he prepared to leave the hospital today. It was as if he was leaving a safe zone and now he was off balance, out of whack and terrified that he was becoming everything that he swore he never would be. Because he couldn't help but wonder who would he be if Robin hadn't made it and imagining what would happen to him the next time she was in danger, which seemed inevitable in this town, or if the virus that lay dormant inside her decided to make itself known. What would happen then?
Or what if Robin was safe and he started connecting with his patients. Started imaginging their pain or their lives and he got distracted in the O.R. Or if he lost a patient he had connected with.
Would he become his father?
Which led him around to the question that had been eating at him since Lucas had driven him to the brownstone and he realized he was spending the night with the one person who could answer it.
"What is it Patrick?"
"I want to know about my father. About what he was like when you knew him."
The question arose inside the hope that maybe if he knew who Noah was he could avoid his failures. That he could make a different choice that wouldn't lead to disaster. Because as confused as he was, he knew that choosing to live without Robin was not a choice he wanted to make. He was looking for something to grasp onto. He would end up with more than he bargained for and just what he needed. At least to start to get where he was destined to go.
"Sit down, Patrick, and I'll do my best." Bobbie leaned back in her chair and smiled fondly as she thought back. It tickled her that she could think back to that time, to Noah with fondness. So much of what happened back then wasn't pretty and the fall out from it – the ongoing troubles with Tiffany Hill Donely, Lucas' biological aunt, had been painful for a long time until it wasn't. But then time had that miraculous way of easing wounds if you let it. The wounds that she could see the young Dr. Drake dealing with were ones that had not yet had time to heal, but he was obviously trying. And since she cared about Robin and Noah and now this young man she was going to help that along.
"Dr. Noah Drake was what we called back then a 'heartthrob'. He was gorgeous, rich, a talented surgeon, son of a prominent Senator and charming as the devil himself. And he knew it and he used it. He charmed everyone he came in contact with. He charmed the hell out of me, but Noah wasn't the settling down type in the beginning."
Bobbie watched Patrick take it in, saw him recognize himself in the description. Was happy to see at least in this he didn't resist just how like his father he was.
"Funny thing, though, is that I think that Noah wanted to settle down. He smiled, but he was searching. He was charming and humorous, but he wasn't happy. Not deep in the gut happy. He and I were pretty serious for a while, more than once. He was also seriously involved with Tiffany Hill."
"The movie actress?" Patrick interrupted in surprise. His mother and father shared a love for B-movies, he wondered if she knew.
"Yes. He went back and forth between the two of us for a while. He had stopped playing around for the most part, but he just couldn't commit to either of us. After that mess between the three of us ended we all found amazing love with other people. Your father with Mattie. He wrote to tell me about her right before he proposed and he apologized for how things went between us and Tiffany told me years later he wrote to her too. He told us that she was his match. But you know that, you grew up in a house filled with love didn't you?"
"Yes." Patrick's voice was barely above a whisper. He could feel the love in his house growing up. He never thought that it should be any other way – a husband, a wife, kids and deep abiding love. He thought that right up to the moment the assisting surgeon came to tell him his mother had died and his father didn't come home for days, leaving Patrick to plan the funeral, to notify friends and family, to pack up her things because his father was never sober enough to do any of it himself. His grandfather, the Senator, did what he could, but he was no substitute for the father Patrick had always looked up to and who was now, in his opinion, defiling his wife's memory.
With every item he packed up he became firmer in his decision that love had no place in his life. That no woman was going to be the ruin of him and that he was going right the wrongs of his father and be the best damn surgeon that Mattie Drake could be proud of.
But would she?
Or would she look at him like Robin had right from the start? Frustrated and disappointed that he refused to connect with his patients, that his priority was building his career and in his spare time building his social calendar and his reputation? That he really did think with his dick.
Patrick didn't notice when Bobbie got up and left him alone to his thoughts.
Who was he really mad at all these years? Who would Mattie have been more disappointed in? Was it his father for falling apart or Patrick for not being the man she had raised him to be?
Patrick stood up and again looked at the photo on the mantle.
That's when he realized the question now was not who his father used to be, the question was who was Patrick Drake going to be?