Chapter 3: The Blame Game
The harsh fluorescents buzzed like trapped flies overhead, the sterile air thick with disinfectant and the lingering tang of Johnny’s own fear-sweat. A new, sharper scent sliced through it – cheap vodka and stale cigarettes. Shannon Keene lurched into the waiting area, her long dark hair tangled, her large blue eyes bloodshot and unfocused, pupils dilated pools of fury swimming in vodka haze. "WHERE IS HE?" she shrieked, the jagged sound echoing off the linoleum, her gaze darting wildly before locking onto Johnny slumped against the wall, Robby’s crumpled suicide note still clutched in his filthy hand.
She lunged forward, unsteady on her heels, the reek of alcohol intensifying as she jabbed a trembling finger inches from Johnny’s face. "You!" she spat, the word dripping venom. "This is your fault! Always! You broke him, Johnny! Broke him just like you broke everything!" Her voice cracked, raw and desperate, echoing Robby’s written words about vanishing and screwing up. Johnny flinched, the accusation hitting bone-deep, the memory of Robby’s still hand dangling off the gurney flashing behind his eyes.
"They said… overdose," Shannon slurred, swaying, tears tracking mascara down her cheeks. "Brain damage? A coma? Because you couldn’t be bothered!" She leaned closer, her breath a toxic cloud. "Because you were too busy playing Sensei to other people’s kids, choosing him again!" The Cobra Kai incident hung unspoken but palpable. Johnny stared at the floor, at the crumpled Oxy slip near his boot, unable to meet her accusing eyes, the doctor’s warning about Robby never being his son again a cold dread in his gut.
"Where’d he even get pills?" Shannon demanded, her voice rising again, shrill with confusion amidst the rage. "He wouldn’t…" Her words trailed off. Her bloodshot eyes widened suddenly, horror dawning, replacing the fury. She fumbled frantically in the oversized purse slung over her shoulder, pulling out an empty orange prescription bottle. "My Oxy," she whispered, the sound hollow, broken. "He… he took mine." She stared at the empty bottle, then at Johnny, the awful truth crashing down – her own addiction fueled her son's despair.
Johnny’s head snapped up. He saw the label, the empty container, saw Shannon’s crumpling despair mirroring his own. The stolen pills, the note, the coma – the full, horrifying picture slammed into him. He pushed himself upright, ignoring the tremble in his legs, his voice low, rough, but vibrating with absolute, desperate conviction as he met Shannon’s shattered gaze. "Doesn't matter where they came from. Doesn't matter whose fault it was. He's my son. I will bring him back."
Shannon stared at the empty orange pill bottle in her trembling hand, her bloodshot eyes wide with dawning horror. "He stole... mine," she choked out, the reek of vodka thick around her. The accusation aimed at Johnny evaporated, replaced by a sickening wave of self-recognition that made her sway.
She crumpled against the wall opposite Johnny, sliding down to the cold linoleum, the bottle clattering from her fingers. "My baby," she whispered, a raw sob tearing through her, mascara streaking her cheeks like war paint smudged by defeat. "He took my pills."
Johnny pushed off the wall, the crumpled suicide note still clenched in his fist like a talisman. He stepped towards her, not with anger now, but a fierce, weary protectiveness radiating from his rigid posture and bloodstained sleeve. "He was drowning, Shannon," he stated, his voice gravelly but clear, cutting through her drunken despair. "He wrote that he was tired."
"Don't," Shannon slurred, covering her face, her shoulders shaking. "He wouldn't... he wasn't..." Her denial was feeble, shattered by the evidence in her hand and the boy in the coma.
"Stop it," Johnny commanded, his voice low but vibrating with intensity. He knelt stiffly in front of her, forcing her to meet his gaze. "Look at me. Blame me, blame yourself, blame the fucking universe. But right now? It's about Robby. He's alive. He's fighting." He pointed a grimy finger towards the trauma bay door. "And we fight for him. We both failed him. Now we fix it."
Shannon stared back, the fury gone, leaving only hollow devastation and the pungent scent of cheap alcohol. A fresh sob racked her body.
Johnny stood, towering over her for a moment, his jaw set. "He needs us sober," he stated flatly, the implication hanging heavy in the sterile air. "He needs us here." He turned his back on her crumpled form, his entire focus shifting to the glass separating him from Robby. He walked to it, pressing his palm flat against the cool surface, staring through at the still figure hooked to machines. His shoulders squared, a silent vow etched into the lines of his exhausted face as he watched his son breathe.
His shoulders squared, a silent vow etched into the lines of his exhausted face as he watched his son breathe. Hours bled into the sterile ICU room, the rhythmic sigh of the ventilator replacing the flatline’s ghostly scream. Johnny remained anchored to the hard plastic chair beside Robby’s bed, Shannon slumped in another, her head lolling, the sharp vodka scent gradually fading into stale sweat and despair. He traced the IV line taped to Robby’s unnaturally still hand, the same hand that had written the note crushing his heart. "Just wake up, kid," Johnny murmured, his voice rough gravel scraping the quiet hum of machines. "Please."
A sudden, harsh gasp ripped through the room. Robby’s eyelids flew open, wide and unseeing, panicked whites showing all around. His body arched violently against the restraints, a raw, guttural sound tearing from his throat around the ventilator tube. "Whoa! Easy, Robby!" Johnny surged forward, his own chair clattering back, hands hovering, afraid to touch the thrashing limbs. "You're okay! You're in the hospital!" The heart monitor screamed its frantic alarm, shattering the tense quiet.
Robby’s wild eyes darted, unfocused, taking in the blinding lights, the tubes snaking from his arms, the plastic invading his mouth. Confusion warred with primal terror on his pale, bruised face. He gagged against the tube, choking sounds escaping. Shannon jolted awake, scrambling upright, her bloodshot eyes wide with sudden, drunken horror. "Robby? Baby?" Her voice cracked, thick with sleep and booze.
His frantic gaze finally landed on Johnny’s face, inches from his own. The panic didn't fade. It deepened, twisting into something else entirely – a profound, gut-wrenching sadness that pooled in his dilated pupils. The violent thrashing ceased abruptly, replaced by a terrible stillness. A single tear escaped, tracing a path through the grime on his temple before soaking into the pillowcase. He stared at his father, the ventilator forcing air in and out of lungs that clearly wished they were still. The raw disappointment radiating from him was worse than any accusation Shannon had hurled. His plan hadn't worked. He was still here.
The ventilator hissed its relentless rhythm, forcing air into lungs that didn't want it. Robby’s wide, devastated eyes stayed locked on Johnny’s, the raw disappointment radiating like heat waves off asphalt. Johnny’s throat tightened painfully. "Kid..." he started, his voice cracking, rough as sandpaper against the machine’s sigh. He reached out, tentatively, his calloused fingers brushing Robby’s cold, restrained wrist.
Robby flinched violently, jerking his arm away as if burned. The movement was weak, hampered by the restraints and the drugs still fogging his system, but the rejection was absolute. Johnny recoiled, the sting sharper than any punch he’d ever taken. Shannon hiccuped a sob from her chair, the stale vodka scent intensifying as she buried her face in trembling hands. "My fault," she slurred, muffled and thick. "My pills... my baby..."
A nurse bustled in, her scrubs crisp against the room’s heavy despair. "Alright, Robby," she said, her tone professionally calm, ignoring the palpable tension. "Doctor says we can try removing the breathing tube now. Can you try to breathe slowly for me?" Robby’s terrified gaze flickered to her, then back to Johnny, filled with a trapped animal’s panic. He gave the tiniest, jerky nod. The nurse swiftly disconnected the ventilator hose. The sudden silence felt deafening, charged with awful potential.
She moved with practiced efficiency, gently loosening the tape securing the thick plastic tube snaking down Robby’s throat. "Big cough now, ready?" Robby gagged, his body convulsing weakly as she carefully withdrew the intrusive length. He gasped, a raw, scraping sound tearing from his abused throat, followed by frantic, shallow gulps of air. Tears streamed freely down his temples, mixing with sweat and grime. He choked, coughed violently, his thin frame shuddering with the effort of breathing freely again.
Johnny watched, fists clenched at his sides, knuckles white, every ragged breath Robby took echoing his own suffocating relief. The nurse checked the monitors, nodded curtly. "Good. Keep breathing slow and steady, Robby." Johnny couldn't hold back anymore. A choked sob ripped from him, harsh and unexpected, his shoulders shaking. Tears he hadn't shed since he was a kid blurred his vision, tracking through the dried blood and grime on his cheeks. He leaned heavily on the bed rail, his body trembling with the sheer, overwhelming force of seeing his son breathe on his own.
Robby blinked, his eyes clearing slightly, focusing blearily on his father’s face – the raw, unguarded grief, the trembling shoulders, the tears carving paths through the filth. It was a bizarre, unsettling sight. Johnny Lawrence, the gruff, distant figure who always seemed carved from stone, was crumpled, weeping openly beside his hospital bed. Robby stared, confusion momentarily overriding the crushing disappointment and the burning ache in his throat. His dad was sobbing. In relief. It was the weirdest damn thing Robby had ever seen.
Robby stared, throat raw from the tube, each shallow breath scraping like sandpaper. His dad wept, actually wept, shoulders shaking, tears cutting tracks through the dried blood on his own face – blood Robby now realized was his own. That weirdness cut through the fog of sedatives and crushing disappointment for a second.
Johnny swiped a rough, calloused hand across his eyes, smearing grime and tears. He looked wrecked, older than his years under the harsh fluorescents, the frantic desperation of the trauma bay still clinging to him. His gaze met Robby’s, red-rimmed and shattered.
"Kid..." Johnny rasped, his voice shredded, barely audible over the steady beep of the heart monitor. He took a single, jerky step closer to the bed.
Robby flinched again instinctively, bracing for the anger, the blame he knew he deserved, the familiar shutting down. He braced for the wall. Not this... this raw, broken thing standing over him. The disappointment churned heavier in his gut. Surviving felt like the ultimate failure.
Johnny stopped, his hand hovering uselessly above the plastic bed rail. He looked at Robby's thin wrists restrained by soft cuffs, at the bruises blooming on his temple from the skateboard impact – or was it? The crumpled suicide note felt like a live coal in Johnny’s pocket. His jaw worked, words failing him.
Shannon sniffed loudly from her chair, a wet, drunken sound. "Johnny..." she slurred, but he didn't turn.
The silence stretched, thick with everything unsaid – the pills, the note, the years of vanishing. Johnny took another halting step. His eyes never left Robby’s face, searching for something, anything, beyond the hollow despair reflected back at him. The machines hummed their indifferent chorus.
Robby looked away first, fixing his gaze on a water stain on the ceiling tile. Easier. Safer. He couldn’t handle the wreckage in his father’s eyes. He just wanted the numb silence back.
Then Johnny moved. Not with anger. Not with hesitation any longer. It was sudden, decisive, driven by a need deeper than thought. He leaned over the plastic rail, bypassing the IV lines snaking from Robby’s arm. His large, rough hands, stained with his son’s dried blood, slid gently, cautiously, around Robby’s thin shoulders.
JOHNNY EMBRACED ROBBY.
It wasn't graceful. The rail dug into Johnny’s ribs. Robby’s body went rigid as a board beneath the thin hospital sheet, shock freezing him. Johnny ignored the stiffness, pulling him closer with infinite, trembling care, one hand cradling the back of Robby’s head, fingers tangling in his sweat-damp hair, the other arm wrapped tight across his back. He buried his face against Robby’s uninjured temple, his breath hitching. Robby smelled antiseptic, dried blood, and beneath it, the faint, familiar scent of cheap motor oil and Old Spice that was just Dad. He felt the tremor running through Johnny’s entire frame, the dampness of fresh tears against his skin.
"Wasn't there," Johnny choked out, the words muffled against Robby’s hair, ragged with guilt and a desperate, guttural ache. "Shoulda been... shoulda seen." He held on, tight but careful, anchoring them both in the sterile, beeping room. Robby remained rigid, eyes wide open, staring blankly past Johnny’s shoulder at the stark white wall, his own breath shallow and fast, trapped between the suffocating weight of his despair and the terrifying, unfamiliar warmth of the embrace. He didn't pull away.
He didn't pull away. Robby remained rigid in Johnny’s desperate, trembling embrace, the sterile smell of antiseptic warring with the coppery tang of dried blood on Johnny’s sleeve – Robby’s own blood. Johnny held on, breathing the damp hair at his son’s temple, feeling the frail bird-like bones beneath the thin hospital gown, the terrifying stillness where resistance should be.
"You smell," Robby rasped. The sound was barely more than air scraping over raw vocal cords, wrecked by the ventilator tube. It wasn’t angry. It was flat. Hollow. An observation of profound, weary disgust directed at the man clinging to him.
Johnny froze mid-sob, the raw sound catching in his throat like broken glass. He slowly pulled back just enough to see Robby’s face. The kid’s eyes held nothing – no accusation, no anger, just empty exhaustion and a chilling detachment. The disappointment from earlier had solidified into this: utter revulsion at his father’s proximity, at the very fact of his existence.
Shannon surged forward, stumbling in her heels, the sour stench of vodka cutting through the room’s clinical sterility. "Don't talk to your father like that, baby!" she slurred, her mascara-streaked face contorted, grabbing Johnny’s arm with surprising strength. "He's trying! Johnny's trying!"
Robby’s eyes flickered towards his mother, then back to the ceiling. A flicker of something unreadable passed across his face – pity? Annoyance? He closed his eyes, shutting them both out. His breath hitched, a tiny, pained sound escaping.
"He doesn't need your excuses, Shannon," Johnny muttered, his voice thick with tears he refused to shed now. He gently but firmly pried her fingers off his arm. Her touch felt like contamination. "He needs quiet. He needs us not to be a goddamn circus."
Shannon wobbled, a fresh wave of drunken grief and nausea washing over her. She clapped a hand over her mouth, retching once, violently, before staggering back towards her chair, collapsing into it with a whimper. The smell of vomit threatened to join the vodka and blood.
Johnny looked back down at Robby, his own shirt sleeve stiff and dark with his son’s blood near the elbow. He remembered carrying Robby’s limp weight after the crash, the warm stickiness soaking through the fabric. You smell. The words echoed. They weren't wrong.
Without a word, Johnny straightened. His jaw clenched, a muscle ticking. He grabbed the grimy hem of his t-shirt and yanked it over his head in one rough motion. The air hit his skin, cool and shocking. He wadded the stained fabric into a tight ball, the dark patch glaringly obvious, and shoved it deep into the hazardous waste bin near the door with finality. Standing there in just his undershirt, exposed, he turned back to the bed. His eyes, red-rimmed but clear now, locked onto Robby’s closed lids. "Better?" he asked, his voice raw, stripped bare.
The air conditioner hummed, too loud in the sudden quiet after Johnny’s question. He stood there in just his sweat-stained grey undershirt, the faded Cobra Kai tattoo stark on his forearm, feeling the cold room prickle his skin. Robby’s eyes stayed shut, his breathing shallow and uneven against the starched pillowcase, smelling faintly of the antiseptic wipes they’d used earlier. Shannon slumped in the corner chair, head against the wall, breathing heavily through her mouth, the sour tang of vomit lingering near her.
Johnny didn't move. He just watched the faint pulse fluttering in Robby’s neck, visible above the hospital gown. He remembered the terrifying stillness in that alley, the slack weight as he’d lifted him. A shaky breath escaped Johnny, his knuckles white where they gripped the cold metal bed rail. He slowly reached out, fingers trembling slightly, and brushed the back of Robby’s restrained hand – the one without the IV line. It felt cold, fragile.
Robby’s eyelids fluttered open, bleary and unfocused at first, then slowly sharpening on Johnny’s face. He looked exhausted beyond measure, the bruise on his temple a sickly purple-yellow against his pallor. His gaze drifted down Johnny’s bare arms, lingered on the old scars and the faded ink, then flicked back up. His cracked lips moved, forming silent words before a hoarse whisper finally scraped out. "You should... keep the shirt off." A beat of heavy silence hung, thick with everything unsaid – the pills, the alley, the note. Then Robby’s eyes, still hollow but holding a sliver of bleak, unexpected awareness, met Johnny’s. "Chicks dig scars... right?"
The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting harsh shadows on Robby’s bruised face. Johnny stood frozen beside the bed, the cold metal rail biting into his palm, the echo of Robby’s bleak joke hanging like smoke in the sterile air. Chicks dig scars. It wasn’t funny. It was a gut punch wrapped in apathy, a dismissal sharper than any blade. Johnny stared at his son’s profile, the unnatural stillness, the way Robby’s eyes remained fixed on the ceiling stain, avoiding him. The crumpled suicide note burned like a brand in Johnny’s memory – tired of being alone. Shannon’s choked sob from the corner chair was a wet, ragged counterpoint to the heart monitor’s steady beep.
Johnny leaned closer, his shadow falling across Robby’s face. He smelled the lingering antiseptic, the faint metallic tang of old blood, the sourness of fear-sweat beneath the hospital sheets. Robby didn’t flinch, didn’t turn his head. Just kept breathing, shallow and deliberate. The silence stretched, thick and suffocating, charged with everything unsaid – the alley, the pills, the flatline scream Johnny couldn’t unhear, the devastating words on that cheap notebook paper. Johnny’s throat felt scraped raw. He swallowed hard, the sound loud in the quiet room. His knuckles whitened on the rail.
"Kid…" Johnny’s voice emerged rough, strained, barely louder than the ventilator’s ghostly sigh still echoing in his head. He cleared his throat, forcing the words past the lump of terror and guilt lodged there. He leaned in, his gaze boring into the side of Robby’s face, willing him to look, to see. "Why?" Johnny rasped, the single word cracking. He took a shaky breath, the air cold in his lungs. "Why did you think ending yourself short be better than having you around?"
Robby’s eyelids fluttered shut. A single tear escaped, tracing a slow path down his temple, disappearing into the pillowcase. His lips moved silently for a second, forming words that wouldn’t come. When his voice finally scraped out, it was a whisper so thin and broken it barely disturbed the air. "Wasn't short." He paused, swallowing painfully. His eyes remained closed, lashes dark against pale skin. "Felt like forever." Another tear followed the first. "Being… alone." The final word hung suspended, a devastating confession echoing the note’s bleak truth. Across the room, Shannon gasped, a hand flying to her mouth, her own tears flowing freely now, the empty Oxy bottle a stark accusation clutched in her other hand. A raw, guttural sob tore from her throat.