Archive of Our Own ^beta

When Frank was a kid, his mom kept an old book of idioms and proverbs on the coffee table.

He never understood why—it was always lost under car keys and video game controllers and laundry that got folded but never put away. They were not the type of family that hosted the type of gatherings that warranted coffee table reading material. They ate at the coffee table. Did homework there. Played cards and spilled beer and put their feet up.

It was there as long as he could remember. Through middle school, high school, med school. Frayed edges and a cracked spine, discolored by the west facing window in the living room. No one ever read it, really, besides Mom, but every time she’d use one in conversation—the early bird catches the worm, Elizabeth or you can’t have your cake and eat it too, Frankie—him or Dad or Lizzie would flip through the book until they found it and add a tally mark.

She liked the southern ones, the ones about mountains and molehills and greased pigs and a bunch of other shit that made no sense to anyone because they lived in Philly, for God’s sake, but there were a few that she used so much the tally marks bled together and ran off the edge of the page.

Like the one Frank thinks of now, as he stares at the ceiling. He can practically heat Mom’s voice, chipper and raspy and kind of grating: Time flies when you’re having fun!

Frank is not having fun. It must be why time seems to have stilled.

There are 38 ceiling tiles in his room at the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center inpatient rehab facility. He counts them—over and over and over—to keep his mind off the way his stomach keeps turning in on itself.

It’s not working. He hasn’t kept his breakfast down once in the three days he’s been stuck in this place.

Someone knocks on his door. He takes a deep breath and starts counting again. They don’t bother knocking twice. He knows the protocol—he didn’t answer, so they have to check.

It’s the grumpy orderly, Corinne—with whom Frank has unsurprisingly developed stellar rapport—and she looks like she very much did not care whether she found him dead or alive.

“You have a visitor,” she says flatly.

Well, he knows it isn’t his wife, because she made her stance on his problem very clear when she threw all his shit on the front lawn. Dad’s dead. Mom’s in a home back in Philly. Lizzie probably doesn’t even know he’s here, let alone that he has any problem at all.

Part of him hopes it’s Robby, because it would mean he maybe read one of Frank’s many frantic emails, and maybe he’s given some thought to this whole inpatient thing, that maybe he’ll let him come back to work and put this whole mess behind them.

The other part of him—the one that hates Robby for what he’s done—hopes it’s not.

“It’s a Dr. King,” Corinne says even more impassively, glaring at him over her tablet.

It takes him a second to remember. Mel. His resident—or, she used to be. Could have been. If the other one, fucking Santos, hadn’t stuck her nose in his shit and ruined everything—

Corinne sighs loudly. Really, he can tell they are going to be great friends. “Are you coming or not?”

He doesn’t know why, but he drags his sorry ass out of bed, tries and fails to smooth the wrinkles from his rumpled gray rehab pants, and follows Corinne out into the common room. She waves her hand limply at the occupied table to the left of the big window, but Frank recognizes Mel immediately—in her scrubs, sitting up straight, grinning at him like he’s not disheveled and strung out and in fucking rehab.

“Hi,” she says when he sits down, and she’s grinning—clearly excited—but then it falls, hardening into something concerned or embarrassed when he says nothing in response. “I’m Dr. King—Melissa,” she stammers. “We met, um—I’m a resident downstairs. I started last week. We did the STEMI—”

“Mel,” he says. It feels gravely and wrong. He’s barely spoken since he walked into this place and lost all his choices. “I remember.”

How could he not?

She grins again, shoulders falling with relief. “Right.”

The silence that follows is long and thick.

“Why are you here, Mel?”

He doesn’t know her well, but he knows enough that he’s confident she’s not here to rub salt in the wound.

“Oh. Well, I was doing this research when I was at the VA—that’s where I was before, but—right, you know that. Um, anyway—after, you know, Pitt Fest, I decided to finish it, and I wrote this paper, and—well, I thought you might be able to help me with it—you obviously know a lot about airway…management.” She must sense that she’s lost him, because she clears her throat and fidgets a little in her seat. “And, well. I thought you were going to be my—or, um…”

She doesn’t have to finish. He knows what she was going to say. I thought you were going to be my mentor. He was. He would have been. He hasn’t seen a resident as bright as her in the entire time he’s been at PTMC. She’s as quick and smart and talented as he ever was, and still everything he never thought to be: kind, sensitive, patient. It would have been an honor to be her mentor.

But here he is. In rehab.

Somewhere in the middle of her rambling she’s produced a small stack of paper, three hole punched and secured with binder clips. She keeps it close to her chest, protective, like she’s unsure if he’ll snatch it out of her hands and rip it up.

He’s just as unsure as she is. She’s sitting in front of him in clean scrubs—before her shift, he supposes—with her hair neatly braided and her fucking ID badge dangling in his face—Dr. Melissa King, Resident—and he’s on day three of withdrawal, crawling out of his skin, hospital socks twisted so the sticky side is half on top of his foot.

She wants his help, his input—but what’s the point? He doesn’t have much hope for getting his job back. What good does it do her to have his name as a contributor at the top of her medical paper? His career is over, his reputation is ruined. At this point, he’ll be lucky—like, really lucky—to land a job at a clinic somewhere far, far away, dealing with runny noses and split lips until he retires or overdoses, whichever comes first.

Thinking about overdosing makes him think about the pills, which makes him think about how he itches all over, the bile in the back of his throat, the pain, God, the pain, and he wonders, very briefly, if Mel would bring him some, if he asked—if he asked so nicely, calmly—she liked him, didn’t she? They had a connection, and if she knew how it would help him—just one, maybe—

No. No, no, Mel is bright, she’s got it, and she has a future, a strong one, and he won’t ruin it—he can’t. He’s already ruined his own career. Isn’t that enough?

But Mel has already gotten up. Awkwardly, he would guess, if he’d been paying attention to anything but the roaring white noise in his head. She’s halfway to the door—halfway gone—

“Mel,” he calls.

Lightning fast, she spins on her heel. “Yes?”

He reaches out. “I’ll read it.”

*

It’s good. She writes the way he expected her to: brilliantly. She even got Collins to contribute. It sends an unwelcome surge of anger through him. If he hadn’t fucked up, if he hadn’t been stealing pills, if he’d been getting them off the street instead, if he’d never hurt his back, if he never got caught, if it weren’t for fucking Santos—

She’d have come to him first for help. Instead, she’s bringing it to him in rehab.

He glares at the tiny pill in the paper cup on his bedside table, fucking taunting him. He doesn’t want to take it. It doesn’t help with the pain, or the nausea, or the tremors. It barely takes the edge off.

But doesn’t he want his name at the top of papers like this one? He wants to teach Mel about airway management. He wants to guide her through the procedures. He wants his name, right next to hers—Dr. King and Dr. Langdon and Decreasing Time to a Definitive Airway.

He fishes a pen out of the drawer in his desk, takes the pill, and gets to work.

*

When he finishes the next morning, the stack has nearly doubled in thickness with the addition of all his annotations, hand drawn diagrams, and sticky notes. It’s overkill, probably, and she gave him a first draft, anyway, but it’s the first time he’s felt useful since he checked in to this godawful place, the first time the pain has really numbed, moving to the very edges of his consciousness instead of burning bright and hot in the center.

He packages it up with Mel’s name on the front and takes it to Corinne, who looks as pleased as usual to see him, which is to say not pleased at all.

“Can you make sure this gets in the mail?” he says.

She raises a brow and curls her lip, but takes the envelope anyway. “This isn’t prison, you know. You’re allowed to email.”

But he doesn’t know Mel’s email, and he doesn’t know her phone number, and the thought of just sending it downstairs with some orderly feels embarrassing and potentially hazardous to her career, announcing to the pit: Dr. King, you have mail from Frank Langdon, the drug addict upstairs, anyone remember him? Robby would love that, surely.

All he had was the address at the top of the cover letter. It feels more professional this way, almost like he’s a respected colleague reviewing a peer’s work with what little free time he has. It makes it seem like he’s put together. Cool.

In reality, he’s desperate. For her response, for another case, another hit, anything but a fucking pill, which he is also desperate for, but in a much more pathetic kind of way.

Corinne takes the envelope with great disdain, and then Frank is left to his own devices. There are so many options in rehab, like group therapy or individual therapy, or laying in his bed and staring at the ceiling until he throws up or falls asleep.

Frank fucking hates therapy. He manages to keep his breakfast down until noon.

*

Frank’s sixth day in rehab starts the same as the five before it.

Early, counting ceiling tiles. He’s sweating, nauseous, hasn’t really been able to sleep. He’s somewhere about halfway through detox, which means it’s about to get a whole hell of a lot worse before it gets better.

There’s a pill in the paper cup on his nightstand. Probably even less potent than the one from yesterday. Today, he takes it without complaint. He has a feeling he’ll need all the help he can get.

It’s downhill from there.

First, Corinne returns, sometime around lunch, bored as ever. “You have a visitor.”

Frank moves much quicker this time. He still feels like he wants to crawl out of his skin, but there’s a tiny seed of hope blooming inside of him, because maybe Mel came back, and maybe she brought her paper to review, or maybe a new case she wants to talk about, or maybe she needs his help, yeah, that would be good—

It’s not Mel—kind, sensitive, trusting Mel—but fucking Robby. Judgmental, cruel, faithless Dr. Robinavitch.

Frank stops right in his tracks. “What the fuck do you want?”

Robby sighs, scrubbing his hands across his face. What did he expect? For Frank to crawl on his knees and beg for his forgiveness? “Good morning to you too, Langdon,” he mutters. He looks tired. His scrubs are rumpled and stained. Post-shift, then, which is odd, because Robby doesn’t usually do night shift, so that means there’s a personal issue in the pit or there was a mass casualty incident that Frank desperately wants to know about.

Reluctantly, he flops down in the seat across from Robby. “Are you here to rub salt in the wound?”

“What?” Robby levels him with a glare. “I just wanted to check on you, Frank. Because I care about you.”

Frank barks a laugh. “Care about me? You put me in this place—”

“I know you don’t see it right now, but I am trying to help you.”

“Help me? You took away my job, put me up here with a bunch of—of”—he stutters—“addicts. God knows if my wife will ever speak to me again, let alone allow me to see my children—”

“I could have reported you to the police,” Robby hisses. “You think it’d be better to have them come see you in prison?”

Frank suddenly feels like he can’t catch his breath. His leg bounces under the table. He can’t make it stop. “You could have—I was trying—I told you I was weaning myself off, Robby.”

“No, you weren’t.” Robby doesn’t look angry anymore. Just sad. It’s worse. “And I don’t know if you’re lying to me, or yourself.”

Counting the ceiling tiles doesn’t seem to help, and he can taste the bile in the back of his throat, so instead he counts his own heartbeats—way, way too fast—and prays and begs and pleads to any deity he can think of that he can keep the meagre contents of his stomach inside of his body for once—

Robby squeezes his shoulder. Frank doesn’t know how he missed him stand up.

“I know it’s tough, but I’m glad you’re here,” he says. “I’m proud of you, kid.”

Frank waits until the door swings shut behind Robby before he loses his breakfast all over the floor.

*

Next, a woman collapses at lunch. One minute, Frank is staring blankly into his mashed potatoes, and the next, a tray is clattering to the floor at his feet.

She’s young, barely twenty, he’d guess, pale and thin and convulsing right in front of him. He doesn’t think, he just does—rolling her onto her side and pressing two fingers to her wrist. Her pulse is weak, and he’s pretty sure she’s not breathing.

One of the nurses rushes over, falling to his knees beside them.

Frank flicks his gaze to the clock on the wall. “She’s been seizing for about thirty seconds. Pulse is thready—I don’t think she’s protecting her airway. She needs—”

He almost laughs. She needs Lorazepam. But before he can say it, he’s being hauled to his feet.

“Hey—”

“Get him out of here!” It’s the same nurse, who is not properly protecting the girl’s head, letting it smack uselessly against the ground.

“I’m a doctor,” Frank insists, even as the orderlies drag him away. “I literally work here!”

They’ve cleared out the whole cafeteria, and Frank is forced to watch from behind the glass while they take their sweet time getting the girl loaded on a stretcher to take her downstairs. Her arm hangs limply over the edge by the time they finally wheel her out.

After, they reopen the cafeteria. Like he’s supposed to be able to finish his lunch. She seized for over five minutes—he counted. Her prognosis is not great. He asks the orderlies, the nurses—anyone—but they either don’t know or won’t tell him what happened.

Hours ago, he’d have said he never wanted to see Dr. Robby again, but now he’d give anything for him to come back and tell him she made it.

It’s never been his job to know what happens to his patients after they leave his care. That’s part of the job—being able to let go. But if this girl died because he couldn’t help, because they wouldn’t let him—

If he can’t save anyone, what’s the point?

*

Frank’s mother always said bad things come in threes. The phrase in the book said death comes in threes, but Mom didn’t like talking about death, so she amended it, and then he and Lizzie got to fight over if they should add a tally to the death one or, as he suggested, add a new entry on the back page.

He should know, then, after the day he’s had, not to get his hopes up at the sight of the thick manilla envelope waiting for him on his desk. It’s already been opened, since they monitor his every fucking breath in this place, like they’re looking for ways to humiliate him. Making him pee in a cup multiple times a day, giving him that useless pill every morning, asking him—over and over and over—wouldn’t you like to join us in group therapy, Frank?

He would not.

But still—seeing the envelope, his name written in sharpie on the front—it gets his heart pumping a little faster. Adrenaline—sweet, sweet Adrenaline—courses through his veins, breathing life into the hollowed out carcass whatever’s left of his soul is currently stuck in.

Mel read his revisions. Maybe she’s given him a whole second draft, or, if there is a God, something entirely new and different for him to fixate on. Any case—weird or rare or completely normal—would be a gift in this place.

He thinks his holds his breath as he opens it, which is stupid, because he’s excited at the prospect of homework, but then all the air whooshes out of him and the room and the whole city of Pittsburgh because it’s not Mel’s overly professional cover letter that greets him, but a legal document, courtesy of Shipman & Richardson, Attorneys at Law.

It’s not a medical paper.

It’s the end of his fucking marriage.

He just sits there, frozen, staring at his wife’s beautiful looping signature on the blank space beside where his is meant to be.

Divorce. Divorce. Abby wants to divorce him.

All the air rushes back at once, and he takes a ragged gasp of breath. Not in his worst, wildest nightmares did he expect this. Their marriage wasn’t perfect. He knows it must be difficult, being married to an ED doctor. To an addict. But he’s working on it—isn’t he? He’s in fucking rehab in fucking sticky hospital socks and he smells like vomit and mashed potato gravy and he’s trying—for her, for them, for their family, for his job.

And it’s not enough. It was never going to be enough.

He lets the chair clatter to the floor behind him as he stands abruptly. He feels like he should be shoving all his shit into a bag, but he doesn’t have anything. Just a thick stack of paper outlining the dissolution of the past six years of his life.

It’s all he has when he marches from his room to the common room. What is the point? What is the point of any of this—doing it by the book, doing it right—if he can’t save his marriage, if he can’t save his family, if he couldn’t save that girl? Why is he even here if there won’t be anything left for him to return to when he’s done? He doesn’t need this. They keep telling him it isn’t prison. He has free will. He checked himself into rehab as a courtesy to Robby, to his wife, to his coworkers. He was already weaning himself off—he was—and now he’s halfway through detox and he is a doctor and he can do it himself.

He stalks through the common room towards the exit. He draws the stares of the visiting family members, but he doesn’t care, because he’s done. If Abby’s done, then so is he. He flings the door open, ready to leave it all behind, but—

Mel.

“Oh,” she says. She’s really in front of him, halfway through the door with an envelope of her own. Her eyes are wide and confused. “You’re…leaving?”

He just stands there. One foot literally out the door. His hand is still braced on the door handle, effectively caging her in.

But she doesn’t move. And neither does he.

“I, um—I finished my second draft.” She glances at the documents crumpled in his fist. “I thought…if you wanted…”

He does want. But it feels like his life is ending, just—shattering in his hands while he watches. Tears prick behind his eyes. All of this and he’s going to fucking cry. His breaths come in short little pants. His heartbeat feels like a bass drum inside his chest. The only sound he can manage to choke up is a strangled, “Mel.”

She mutters something as she ushers him towards a table but he has no idea what she says. He blinks and he’s sitting. He blinks again and she’s across from him.

He digs the heels of his hands into his eyes. They’re wet. “This can’t be real,” he says. “None of this is fucking real.”

Mel is quiet, but he feels her there.

“Like—fuck—my wife is leaving me. I haven’t seen my kids in a week. Fucking—fucking Robby was here earlier, looking at me like a fucking—” He presses harder, sliding his hands across his forehead and into his hair. “Like I was such a fucking loser.”

“You’re not a loser,” she says.

“And some girl—some girl died today, Mel. I don’t think she made it downstairs. And I couldn’t—they wouldn’t let me—what am I supposed to do? I’m—I was a good doctor. I know I was. I fucking saved people, and, God, now all I can think about is the pills. How can I—I was the doctor, I was supposed to—I really was trying, I swear to God, I was trying—” He’s sobbing now, gasping in desperate breaths of air, shoving the tears off his face with angry swipes, just like Tanner, and Mel is looking at him—God, he must look crazy, she must think he’s insane, why did she even come back—

Fingers brush against the back of his hand. Tentative, hesitant, then more sure as he presses into it, turning his palm up just in time to hold on.

“You’re a good doctor,” she says. “And a great teacher. I learned so much from you, that day, I—” She swallows, stealing her hand back, her brow creasing as she laces her own fingers together. “We need you back. We need you to get better.”

There’s something else Mom used to say, but it’s hard to remember when he’s trying so hard to breathe, to stay upright and alive in front of Mel, who looks at him so earnestly, so honestly.

He only remembers it later, alone in his room, staring at the ceiling with heavy eyes while he replays Mel’s words over and over in his head: it’s always darkest before the dawn.

*

Frank feels like shit in the morning. He can barely open his eyes, they’re so swollen and tender from the salt of his tears. His back hurts. His head hurts. He feels wrung out and empty. Hollow.

But the nurse that takes his morning blood pressure cocks her head and says, “You look better.”

He takes the pill. Pisses in a cup. Eats breakfast. Showers.

When Corinne barges in to ask him, just as rudely as she has every day, if he’d like to participate in group therapy, he says yes. She looks at him like he’s grown a second head. He follows her down the hallway, mostly ignoring her incredulous backwards glances.

The chairs are set up in a small circle in the middle of the room. It reminds him of college—the chalkboard, the old-school desks pushed back against the walls. There’s a rug, ugly and worn, in the middle, in a clear attempt to make this space seem less cold and clinical than it actually is.

There are seven people already sitting, and only three open chairs. Frank almost balks, because what was he even thinking, agreeing to this? But then the therapist or whatever just smiles and waves and then returns to his conversation with the middle-aged woman sitting next to him. No one looks at him sideways or tries to shove him in the middle of the circle so they can all point and shout shame, shame, so he takes the empty seat by a tattooed man in his forties or fifties.

There’s no preamble, really. They just go back and forth around the circle, introducing themselves and diving off into deeply personal anecdotes while the therapist just nods or smiles or frowns when appropriate.

The first one to speak is a small, quiet looking woman who finds some kind of power in divulging the details of her addiction: how it alienated her children, cost her her job, her marriage. She smiles at the end of all of it—strange, Frank thinks, because he certainly doesn’t feel like smiling—and then the therapist pats her on the knee.

Second is the tattooed man, Paul, and he talks a lot about his relationship with God, sliding the silver cross on his necklace back and forth on its chain the entire time. Third is a young woman deep in the throes of detox, trembling as she recounts being resuscitated in the ER. The fourth, a graying old man with a cane, mumbles about his fifth time in rehab, which makes Frank’s leg bounce anxiously against the chair for reasons he is unwilling to examine.

It’s very repetitive. The tears, the confessions, the stories. Squeezing hands and whispered platitudes. Franks wants to believe he doesn’t have anything in common with these people. He is—was—a doctor, for Christ’s sake. He went to work and did school drop off and took his wife on expensive dinner dates and saved lives, and it wasn’t like he was high out of his mind, or anything. Just a little bit here and there to take the edge off.

But the more they talk about missed chances and ruined relationships and failures and pain and lies and desperation—

“Introduce yourself,” the therapist says, and Frank belatedly realizes he’s addressing him.

Frank swallows. Everyone looks to him, but not with judgment. No finger pointing, no shame.

“I’m Frank.”

“Hi, Frank,” they all say.

He’s silent, but they wait.

He takes a deep breath. “And I’m…an addict.”

He thought it would hurt more. Like a crushing weight, an angry red brand he could never be rid of. Like the sky might open up and rain hell, like the earth might split and swallow him up. But nothing happens, and his next breath comes a little easier.

The therapist smiles encouragingly. “Share whatever’s on your mind, if you like.”

He’s not sure he’s ready to talk about the pills, or the stealing, or how he lost his job, or how he failed his family, but he wants to share something, he wants to be honest, and all he can think about is Mel’s tight grip on his hand and her quiet calm when she said we need you back, so he says, “I want to get better.”

*

He starts meditating. Or—he tries. He’s not sure if what he’s doing actually counts as meditation, but he sits cross legged on his bed every morning and closes his eyes and thinks of nothing for almost three minutes, and it’s better than he expected, the quiet.

He loses himself in Mel’s second draft. It’s not like she’s even written anything revolutionary, but he’s enthralled with the way she writes: meticulous but warm, data driven with personal experience to back up her hypotheses.

He starts individual therapy, which he hates. His therapist says it can be meditative to move your body too, Frank, and so at the behest of said therapist, he starts doing yoga, which he also hates. The first time he tries he’s wiped out in the first ten minutes, but his back does feel better the next morning, so he sticks with it, mastering his breath and engaging with his own body with a scowl on his face the entire time.

Mel returns with a third draft, which is nearly perfect, but she lets him read it anyway. She sits across from him while he flips through it, and then they just talk. She complains about the vending machine on the third floor (the worst one, no poptarts) and describes the meticulous road rash debriding she’d performed on her last shift (gruesome, very fun) and tells him a corny dad joke she must’ve heard from Dr. Mehta (What did the T cell say when it got an infection? Is there antibody out there?). He asks about her sister and her face lights up and she rambles a bit and it feels good. He feels good, light and weightless. Hopeful, even.

Then, Abby shows up.

She waits for him at a different table, not Mel’s table, with her chin in her hand and sunglasses on her head. She’s beautiful. Glamorous. And he can tell, when she looks up, that she’s not very happy to see him.

But he’s still running on that hope, Mel’s hope, and so he smiles at her when he sits down, reaching across the table to try and touch her hand.

She’s not wearing her ring. She slides her hand off the table and into her lap.

“Abby—”

“Sign the papers, Frank,” she says. Her lip quivers as she says it.

He shakes his head. “Hold on—”

“Don’t do this. Don’t beg, Frank. Please.”

“Abby,” he repeats. “You’re not even—aren’t you going to at least give me a chance? I’m trying, here.”

“Look.” She lowers her voice, wrapping her arms around herself. “Maybe I shouldn’t have served you like that. I was…angry, I guess, and part of the thought—well, maybe it would be better. While you’re here. While you’re…”

“What? Kicking a downed horse? C’mon, Abby, we haven’t even talked—”

“Frank,” she snaps, and for a moment she’s the woman he fell in love with, all fire and wit and snark, twenty-two and fearless.

But then she sighs, and that Abby is gone, replaced by a woman worn by motherhood and marriage and unrealized dreams. It’s his fault, he knows. He could have been better. Could have picked a better specialty, one with better hours. Could have matched better than Pittsburgh, if he’d really tried. But he didn’t.

“I had the papers drawn up in November,” she says quietly.

Almost a year ago. Before he even hurt his back. Before the pills. Was Millie even walking?

“November,” he whispers. “Abby.”

She wipes her tears with trembling hands. “You know it hasn’t been good. We haven’t been good.”

“You never said—”

“I thought it was obvious!”

She looks alarmed at her own outburst, folding her hands back in her lap and sucking in long, steady breaths. Frank isn’t sure what to say. He’s stunned and hurt and confused. He can’t even blame his addiction—the reason his wife is leaving is just him.

He tries to meditate, but it’s futile, as his mind keeps spinning through the moments he must have missed, half hidden behind the fog of the pills and the other half by his inattention. Any hope spills right out of him until all there’s left is the shell—just hollow, abandoned by his mentor and now his wife and, oh God—

“The kids.” It comes out more of a gasp. “Please, Ab, don’t—”

“I’m not going to take the kids from you, Frank,” she mutters, insulted that he’d even think that, apparently. “But—you can’t—not until you’re clean and sober. Not while you’re like this.”

“I’m clean now,” he says.

“For what, ten days?”

“Thirteen.”

Even though she clearly has no idea what a monumental feat that is, she sighs, softening at the edges. “When you’re really clean. When you’re better.”

He attempts to swallow the lump in his throat. “I miss them.”

“They miss you.” She looks at him with pity, and he hates it. “Tanner asks about you all the time, and Millie, well—she doesn’t know what’s going on. But I know she misses you.”

“What do they—what did you tell them?”

She almost grins. “You’re on vacation.”

“Okay,” he agrees. “Yeah, that—that’s good.”

There’s a long moment of silence. It’s awkward. Had it always been awkward? Had he just ignored it?

“I really am sorry,” she finally says. She stands up, and he really wishes she’d hug him, or touch his hand, or change her mind. But she doesn’t. “Sign the papers, Frank.”

*

Frank paces the length of his room. Back and forth, ten feet, turn. He doesn’t want pills. At least he thinks he doesn’t. What does he want? To break something, maybe. To scream. To crawl into bed and cry. For Mom to call him a baby and rub his back and say don’t cry over spilt milk even though there was never milk in the house because Lizzie was lactose intolerant and he’s spiraling over his divorce, not missing a field trip to the zoo.

He calls her anyway, which is probably against the rules at this hour, but it turns out Corinne does have a heart because she takes one look at him and unlocks the business center and lets him Google the phone number for Philadelphia Memory Care. He calls her even though she has no idea where he’s at or what he’s done or maybe, at this point, who he even is.

By the time he gets through reception and the orderly on the other end helps her use the phone, he’s managed to stop his crying and steady his breaths, shaking only when her raspy voice sounds through the receiver far too loud.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Mom,” he says.

“Frankie?” It must be a good day, then. “What are you doing? How are you?”

His eyes sting again, and it’s a struggle to get the words through the lump in his throat. “Not good, Mom. It’s not good.”

He doesn’t tell her much more than that, too afraid to scare her or confuse her, but it’s enough, listening to her yap about beating Miriam in poker and about how Lizzie had visited her just the other day, even though Lizzie lives in New York and Frank knows it’s not true. She asks him how he’s liking school, and he tells her it’s tough but he’ll get through it, and he figures he’s not lying much, since rehab feels a lot like a test.

It's enough, just hearing her voice. Knowing that someone somewhere still loves him, even if she’s forgetting.

“I gotta go, honey,” she says eventually. “They’re serving lasagna tonight.”

“Okay, Mom. It was good to talk to you.”

“You know what they say, Frankie! When life gives you lemons!”

“Yeah, Mom, I know.”

There’s a rustling as she hands off the phone, but then he hears her voice, still loud and ridiculous as she must be scooching her walker down the hall to the cafeteria.

“Make a damn margarita!”

*

Despite his generally dour disposition, Frank does want to make margaritas, or whatever. He doesn’t think there are actually lemons in those, but he likes the metaphor.

And so he goes to the therapy sessions and does his yoga and meditates and takes the pill that keeps getting smaller and smaller every day until they flat out disappear. He participates in the activities, even though he thinks they’re stupid and childish and a waste of his time. In art class, he weaves matching bracelets for Tanner and Millie. During the talent show, he demonstrates the Heimlich maneuver on a dummy he had to bribe Corinne to get for him. They said showing how intubation works would be too graphic.

He doesn’t make friends, per se, but he becomes familiar with the others. He likes to sit with Paul in the common room because he’s quiet and vaguely interested in the medical journals Mel keeps bringing. He sits with Angela at lunch because she doesn’t believe in carbs and always gives him her dinner roll.

He signs the divorce papers. Corinne looks at him with something in the neighborhood of empathy when she slaps the stamp on it. It hurts. He feels defeated, a little bit, like maybe he should have fought harder, but it’s what Abby asked for. The chance to fight harder flew right over his head while he was popping pills in their basement.  

He starts to feel better. Sleeps more, throws up less. Whenever he feels like he needs the drugs, he buries his head in a medical journal or braids another bracelet or sits through the agony of a therapy session until the roar fades to a quiet hum in the back of his mind.

Sometimes when Mel brings him reading material, she stays to chat. He always forgets how desperate he is for an intellectual conversation until she shows up. She’s kind and patient and funny and doesn’t look at him like some kind of charity case whack-job, and whenever she leaves, smiling and waving goodbye like she just had the time of her life at the fucking rehab center, he thinks maybe he can do this.

*

Some days you’re the windshield, Mom always said, sometimes you’re the bug.

Frank is definitely the bug. And the windshield is attached to a freight train that seeks to splat him once every thirty-six hours.

His next visitor is Trinity Santos.

Corinne had told him it was some doctor girl, which he just assumed was Corrine-speak for Mel, so he marched right to the common room with a pep in his step, only to be completely railroaded by the impassive glare of his arch nemesis.

He almost feels bad for thinking it. She was—and still is—barely a doctor, just trying to find her footing on a truly insane first day, eager and annoying, which—so was he. And she’d been right, which was the worst thing. He wonders, briefly, what would have happened if she never noticed. He’d still be working, saving lives, getting high. It’s a hard pill to swallow, pun intended.

But maybe she feels bad for ruining his life. Surely the rumors of his divorce have made their way around the pit, which would surely lead to anyone feeling guilty for kicking off that season of his life. Or, worse—they’ve completely forgotten him down there, and she’s here to tell him she’s reported him to the police, or, God forbid, the medical board.

He’s really hoping for the apology.

Instead, she leads with, “I’m not sorry.”

Awesome.

Then, “My dad was an addict.”

Frank knows, after attending about eight thousand therapy sessions, that there is only one kind of was when it comes to addicts.

“Look—I know you’re not a bad guy,” she continues. “An asshole, definitely. Like, to a degree I’ve never even seen. It’s honestly inspiring, how you can exude so much assholery—”

He sighs. “Santos.”

“—but you and I both know what you were doing was wrong. You could have gotten yourself killed. You could have gotten patients killed—”

“I was never impaired—”

“You were fucking with hospital medicine,” she snaps. “What if you weren’t there to make sure they pushed more of your diluted Lorazepam? Not to mention cross-contamination.”

She’s right, which hurts. He knew it, too. He tried to be careful—Louie never took his Librium. And the Lorazepam—it was stupid, he knows, but he was being careful.

“I’m not here to apologize, or embarrass you, or make you feel like shit.” She raises a judgmental brow as she looks him over. “It’s clear you feel shitty enough on your own.”

“How kind of you,” he mutters.

“I barely know you. But you’re a good doctor. And I didn’t—I don’t—want you to…die. I just…wanted to say that.”

“Thanks.”

She sighs, like a weight has lifted from her chest. “Well. Good talk.”

“Brilliant.”

She stands. “Good luck out there.”

He follows suit. “Don’t need it.”

“You’re an asshole, you know that?”

“Yup.”

He really, really does.

*

Day thirty comes faster than he expected. And better than he expected.

He feels…good. Alive. Barely depressed, given the circumstances.

His therapist had noticed the newfound exuberance and told him to lower his expectations, but Frank argued they couldn’t possibly be any lower. He’s seen rock bottom. Only thing lower than that is hell.

He’s finally switched over to email (Corinne was sick of mailing shit for him) and he’s successfully corresponded with Robby, HR, and a union rep. Getting his job back is finally more than just a pipe dream. Abby sends him a few pictures of the kids covered in mud—Tanner grinning, Millie wailing—which is more than he expected. Maybe more than he deserves.

Mel visits. Often. He often wonders how she has the time to be a doctor and take care of her sister and sleep, but he keeps his mouth shut for fear that she might have the same revelation and stop coming.

He’s never had a friend like Mel. Supportive, but not enabling. Empathetic and accepting. Always honest, but never cruel.

“I made you something,” he says on day thirty, swapping his new red chip for the braided bracelet in his pocket.

She looks genuinely surprised, biting down on her smile like she’s embarrassed by it. He can’t imagine why. He wishes she’d smile all the time. “Wow, it’s—my school colors?”

“Go Blue, or whatever.”

She laughs then, bright and outright. “Wow, I—thank you, Langdon. That’s…thank you.”

He suddenly feels nervous. He knows Mel doesn’t wear jewelry (not that his tragically made friendship bracelet even counts as jewelry) and she makes sure her clothes all fit a certain way (correct length, no frays, no tags) and it’s stupid, thinking she might want to wear a stupid string bracelet, but he wanted to thank her, wanted her to know how much her support has meant to him, and all he knows how to do is weave three strings together, just like her hair.

“You don’t have to wear it, or anything,” he says. “It’s stupid—just Arts N Crafts, you know? Like, fuckin’—I made a million of these, probably, for Tanner and Millie, and then I thought—you’ve been such a good friend, Mel, I—”

She shoves her arm in his direction, flipping her wrist and pulling up her sleeve. “I love it. Will you tie it on?”

He nods, fumbling with the ends a bit. “It took me awhile, but Angela taught me this trick—” He loops the end around itself and slots the other end through the hole. “There. This way, you can take it off. If you want. Without cutting it. So you don’t have to, you know, wear it all the time.”

She admires it, tightening it herself. “Thank you,” she whispers again.

Both of their cheeks are red. Frank feels like he’s on fire.

“I made one for Becca, too.” He pulls the other one out of his pocket. “You said she liked pink, so. Hot pink it is.”

Mel accepts the bracelet like he’s offering her the Hope Diamond, gingerly and with awe. He thinks she might cry.

“She probably won’t wear it,” she says.

“That’s okay.”

“But she does love pink.” She folds it carefully and tucks it in her pocket. Frank luxuriates in her smile as she does. “This was really thoughtful of you.”

Suddenly he can’t meet her eyes. He shrugs her off. “I have a lot of time on my hands. And it’s not like they’re any good.”

“Still,” she says. He likes that she doesn’t lie to him about the quality of his braiding. “It was kind of you to think of us.”

“Kind.” He scoffs. Therapy has taught him to be more realistic about who he is. Acceptance is the first step, or whatever. “I’m not—I’m an asshole. I’m an addict. I’m a liar and a thief, Mel. I’m not kind.”

“You were kind to me.”

He can’t help but look at her then, and she’s serious, so serious, looking at him so intently with big brown eyes, and it’s like he has no choice but to believe her. It was only one shift, but—she’s right. He did favor her. He did look out for her. He found himself softening when she was around, like even watching her work was a gift. If he had even half of her patience, her compassion—

“You’re still kind to me. Frank,” she says slowly, like she’s testing it out. Her hands disappear under the table, and he knows she’s wringing them together. “You…you saw me. And you didn’t think I was weak, or weird, or—or a worse doctor for all my…quirks—”

“You’re a good doctor,” he says dumbly.

“—and that meant a lot to me. I know it was, like, a really bad day for you, but, for me—despite all the, you know, tragedy and death—it was really good. The best, actually.”

He should tell her, he thinks, that she was the only good part of the worst day of his life. He should tell her, he thinks, that she’s been the best part of nearly every day since.

But he doesn’t. Instead he just sits there, half-frozen, trying to remember if he’s supposed to think about breathing.

“Anyway,” she says, shrugging her shoulders like she’s just been relieved of some great weight. “I have to go get Becca. It’s movie night.”

He stands when she does, following her halfway to the door like a lost puppy. “Elf?”

“Always.”

“Mel,” he says, just before she twists the handle on the door.

She pauses, waiting. What was he even going to say?

She takes pity on him. “I’ll see you soon, Frank.”

*

“There’s another doctor girl here for you,” Corinne says suspiciously.

Suspicious is an upgrade from bored, although Corinne knows who Mel is, and Frank is one thousand percent sure Santos has no reason to return, so he’s a bit confused about why Corinne is looking like him like he has a long list of doctor girls lining up to visit him in fucking rehab.

But it’s not Mel and it’s not Santos (thank God) and it’s not even Collins, who would have been his next guess, but McKay.

She gives him a wry grin as he sits down. “Hiya.”

He’s not sure what to make of her presence. He likes Cassie well enough, but they aren’t exactly friends, and it hadn’t even really occurred to him that all of his coworkers might know what he did. Robby and Santos, sure, for obvious reasons, and Mel was specifically looking for him, so maybe Robby told her, but Cassie? Heather? Abbott?

If it ever made its way back to Princess and Perlah—well, it’d be over for him.

He huffs. “Are you guys, like, drawing straws for who has to come visit me next? Or do you have to sign up for shifts?”

Cassie raises a brow. “Who else has been here?”

“Robby, Santos, Mel.”

“Huh,” she says, tilting her head. He’s not sure which one she’s surprised about, and he’s too afraid to ask.

His leg starts to bounce under the table. He shoves one hand in his pocket, fingering the red chip he worked so hard to earn. “What did they even tell you?”

“Bare bones. They made it sound like you went off to sleepaway camp or something.”

“And yet, you’re here.”

“I read between the lines.” She smiles, almost sadly. “The details aren’t important. The point is, Frank—can I call you Frank?—I know you’ll be out of here soon, and I also know that you think the hard part is already behind you, and I wanted you to know that you have someone in your corner when you find out it isn’t.”

Frank doesn’t know how anything can be worse than the first few days—the withdrawal, the misery, the despair—and he certainly doesn’t need or want a lecture from Cassie McKay about it.

Only five days separate him from his freedom. In five days, he gets to leave. In ten, maybe, he’ll see his kids. His daily drug tests will become weekly, then bi-weekly, then monthly, then maybe even none at all. He can get his job back. His dignity, if he’s lucky. Shit, maybe he’ll start running. Lifting. All the things he took for granted before his life blew up. He’ll take Tanner to a baseball game. Millie to the aquarium. He’ll take them both to visit Mom. He’ll take them to fucking Disney World.

He's going to be there. He can’t fuck this up again.

But Cassie said when. His fist tightens around the chip. When.

He’s clean. Thirty-three days. He feels good. He has a routine. He’s not going to relapse. He’s not. What the hell does Cassie know?

“I’m an addict,” she says quietly, but not sadly, not ashamedly. Like it’s just a fact. The sky is blue. Today is Wednesday. He’s an addict, and so is she. “Drugs, alcohol, you name it, I tried it. But I’m sober now. Six years, six months, four days. Don’t worry—the ankle monitor is mostly unrelated.”

“Oh.” He has no idea about any ankle monitor.

“Rehab is hard. But so is real life.”

He knows she’s right. Real life is what got him into this mess in the first place. Real life was burning through his prescription at two times speed to keep up with the pace in the ED. Real life was a pill before bed to help with sleep. Real life was stealing medication from patients.

Cassie bumps his bouncing leg with her fist. “Hey. You’re doing the work. Every day is a step. I’m sure they’ve been drilling you with that.”

He manages a small smile. “Yeah.”

She hands him a big piece of paper—a bulletin she clearly tore from the board at the front desk that says Chaplain Services in comic sans—and flips to the back, where she’s written her name, email, phone number, and address.

“All that’s missing is your social,” he mutters.

She snorts. “The grumpy chick at the front desk told me you guys aren’t allowed to have phones in here. What is this, prison?”

*

Frank finishes rehab in thirty-eight days.

They return all his shit in a clear bag: his clothes, his shoes, his wallet, Tanner’s beaded bracelet. It really does feel like being released from prison. He tells Corinne as much when she hands it over, and to his surprise, she laughs.

He’s also surprised by the crisp fall breeze that nearly bowls him over when he finally steps outside. It was still summer when he checked in. But time continued to pass—the air changed, the leaves turned, the world kept spinning.

Mel waits for him on the sidewalk. He had no right to ask her, especially when Cassie offered, but he wanted a familiar face. A friendly face. And that’s Mel.

“Hi,” she says, grinning. Her shoulders are shrugged high around her ears and her fingers pull at the end of the bracelet she still has wound around her wrist. Her hair is neatly braided, like always, but she’s dressed in a casual pair of jeans and a crewneck. It occurs to him then that he’s never seen her out of scrubs. “Congratulations!”

He clears his throat. “Thanks. And thanks for being here. I don’t know what I was expecting.” He glares up at the imposing shadow of the hospital. “It’s not like I haven’t been here a million times before.”

“It’s a big deal. It makes sense to be a little nervous.”

“Yeah.” He can’t look at her anymore. It’s like looking into the sun. “Walk with me?”

She falls into step beside him, and they wind their way away from the hospital, up a hill and around the bend. He doesn’t know where they’re going, just that it feels good to be on his feet, to feel the sun on his face, the wind in his hair. The swaying trees are bright and gold and beautiful, and he can’t remember ever thinking that or ever even stopping to look.

“What are you looking forward to most now that you’re out?” Mel asks.

“Seeing my kids,” he says easily. “Going back to work.”

“Have you heard anything new from Dr. Robby?”

“The hospital wants six months of sobriety and weekly drug tests. I think my union rep is trying to argue them down to three months. It’s not like there’s a surplus of doctors, so there might be a chance.”

She seems genuinely pleased by this. “You’re already a third of the way there, then.”

He sucks in a deep breath of air when they stop at an intersection. He doesn’t want to get his hopes up just yet. “Since when does Pittsburgh air taste so good?”

She looks skeptical, but her mouth moves like she’s swishing her last breath around. “Tastes…industrial.”

“Mm. Hitting rock bottom really makes you appreciate the mediocre things in life, Mel. Like—I could really go for a break room coffee right now.”

A breeze rustles the trees as they cross the street into a park. He’s never been here before, even though it’s so close to work. There’s a wide path through the center, lined with big orange trees and teeming with joggers and strollers and happy, drooling golden retrievers. Mel stops to pet one, laughing when it licks her face.

“You think that’s mediocre?” she says once she’s wiped the slobber from her cheek. “It’s…viscous. I don’t think coffee is supposed to be viscous.”

“I lost my job and ruined my marriage. I have a mountain of medical debt to match my mountain of student loan debt and now I have no income to pay for it.” He shrugs. “That coffee probably tastes like liquid gold in comparison.”

Mel sobers then, wringing her hands in front of her as they walk. “I’m really sorry about your…marriage. Did you—”

“Yep. Signed, sealed, delivered. It’s over.” He stops in the middle of the path, staring out at the untamed hill that slopes down to a murky green manmade lake down below. “That’s a Stevie Wonder reference. You’re not too young for Stevie Wonder, right?”

“I’m only two years younger than you. I think we’re both too young for Stevie Wonder.”

He laughs. “Yeah, you’re right.”

He is young. He’s only thirty-two. In that time, he’s finished med school, finished rehab, got married and divorced. He’d like to think he has at least another thirty-two years ahead of him.

When he first saw Abby’s signature on those papers, he thought his life was over. But here, standing on a footbridge in some park he’s never heard of next to Mel, overlooking a truly hideous lake, he thinks maybe it’s just begun. He takes a deep breath, steeling his resolve, and then—

“What are you—”

Frank yanks the band off his ring finger and chucks it has far as he can. It soars through the air in a gleam of gold before landing somewhere in a patch of mangled, dead weeds.

Mel watches it land with a grimace. “Weren’t you just talking about how broke you are?” He glances at her sidelong and she shrugs. “The price of gold is way up right now.”

He considers this. “I should probably go get that.”

“Yeah,” she agrees. And then, “It wasn’t that good of a throw anyway.”

He whips around to glare at her, one leg already thrown over the railing. “Joke?”

She wrinkles her nose. “More like a truth told in jest.”

“I appreciate the honesty.” He snorts. “Did you see where it landed?”

“To the left,” she calls as he marches down the hill. “And way, way down.”

It takes him almost half an hour, but when he finds it, they both shout in triumph, Mel’s hands raised high into the hazy afternoon sky, and it’s the happiest he’s felt in a long, long time.

*

Abby agrees to let him see the kids. Only for a few hours, she says, at the little park by their—now, her—house. She’s a little condescending about it, but Mom would say half a loaf is better than none, Frankie, so he keeps his mouth shut and agrees to meet her on Saturday morning.

He spends the entire week leading up to it preparing: doing his yoga, talking to his therapist, finding an apartment, filling it with Facebook furniture. He stays busy. Busy is good. Idle hands, and all that.

Abby insists she wants to see him first, like she’s looking for proof of some kind, so he gets there early, standing on the curb when she gets out of her car to assess him for an agonizing three minutes, her jaw clenched in such a way he knows she’s biting her tongue—trying not to cry, maybe—but finally, she nods. Three quick jerks of her head, then back into her car with a muttered, “Be back in five.”

She returns in just over eight minutes, but who’s counting? She pulls into the same spot, circling around to unbuckle Millie, but—

“Dad!”

Tanner leaps out of the car, and Frank hits his knees in the parking lot, catching his son and wrapping him tightly in his arms. Tanner’s own grip is so tight that Frank can barely breathe, but it doesn’t matter—suffocating would be well worth it.

“Hey, buddy,” he manages. He loosens his grip to get a better look at him, and can’t help the sting in his eyes as he assesses his son. “Look at you! I think you got taller.”

Tanner takes one look at him and bursts into tears.

“Hey, hey—it’s okay.” He rubs soothing circles into his back.

“Did you have fun on—on vacation?” Tanner asks.

Frank’s heart shatters in his chest, but he nods. “Yeah, I did. I’m sorry I had to be gone for so long.”

Tanner burrows back into his embrace. “I missed you.”

Millie, his shy child, still clings to Abby’s hand, watching them with a growing smile. Frank holds out an arm for her and she runs to join them, a bright giggle to Tanner’s quiet sobs. He sniffles as he squeezes them both, burying his nose in Millie’s wispy curls. She smells like goldfish and crayons and a little like dog food but it’s the best thing, having his children in his arms again.

“I missed you both.”

It takes a minute, but Frank and Tanner regain their composure (and Millie gets bored) and then they’re off to the races—running through the grass, hanging from the monkey bars, climbing up the slides. Tanner kicks a soccer ball back and forth with him while Millie chases it. They make a big pile of leaves and jump in it. They eat lunch on the curb by Abby’s car, just a mountain of goldfish and fruit snacks. It’s indulgent and ridiculous and he’s just so happy, even as the sun starts to sink, watching Tanner kick goals with Millie passed out in his arms.

“I have to get them back, Frank,” Abby says finally. At least she doesn’t sound smug about it. “They should probably have something that doesn’t come out of a plastic bag for dinner.”

Even though he agrees, he wants to ask for five more minutes. He needs time to properly commit this to memory: Tanner, covered in grass stains, abandoning his soccer ball because he found a worm in the grass. Millie, snoring into his neck, drooling onto the collar of his shirt. Had he taken it all for granted before?

Reluctantly, he follows Abby back to the car. Tanner insists he can buckle himself. Millie is mostly displeased about being strapped in, but only until Frank offers her a goldfish from the depths of her car seat, which she accepts gratefully and then immediately falls back asleep.

“Dad,” Tanner says when Frank circles around to the other side to check his handiwork. “Don’t go on vacation anymore, okay?”

“Okay, buddy.” Frank manages a weak smile. “I won’t.”

“Promise?”

His therapist has definitely given him a speech about making promises so early in recovery, but Tanner is only give and staring at him wide-eyed and had asked him, just hours earlier, if he’d had fun in rehab, and Frank doesn’t think he can stomach that feeling ever again, so he just says, “Promise,” and ruffles Tanner’s hair before he closes the door.

Abby waits for him on the curb. He doesn’t really know how to talk to her, now that their marriage is over and his wedding band was the security deposit on his apartment. He suspects she feels pretty similarly.

He settles on, “Thank you.”

She nods. “This was good. I’m…glad.”

He braces for the You were never like this before, but she bites her tongue. He’s grateful.

“When can I see them again?”

She doesn’t answer. Instead, she sighs. “I don’t know if this is the right thing to say, Frank, but—” Her brow softens as she watches the kids in the backseat. “I hope you remember this day. And I hope it always reminds you of what you have to lose.”

*

Frank returns to a quiet, empty apartment. All he has is a couch, a bed, and two folding chairs (was he expecting guests?), and so every footstep echoes as he paces back and forth. It was a good day. The best day he’s had in so long. But now—he’s alone. Coming down from the high. Crashing.

He knows, he knows, he knows what he has to lose. And he’s afraid.

So he calls Mel.

“Hey, Mel,” he says as soon as the receiver clicks, before she’s even had a chance to make a sound.

“Hi,” she says warily. He’s never called her before. “Are you—is everything okay?”

“Yeah, everything’s good. Everything’s great.” He plops down in one of the folding chairs, but then his leg starts to bounce and he’s back up and pacing. “I got to see the kids today.”

“That’s great. How’d it go?”

“Good. It was so good. I really, really needed it.” He squeezes his eyes shut, tries to focus on the faint sounds of her breathing through the phone. He can feel himself unraveling. “But now I’m home, and it’s so”—his voice breaks—“I really don’t want to be alone right now, Mel.”

She hesitates—only a fraction of a second—and he hears her breath hitch through the static. He’s such an idiot, always asking, always taking, never thinking about anyone but himself.

“Sorry.” He tries sitting again, this time on the edge of the couch, the fingers of his free hand digging into the meat of his thigh to keep it from bouncing. “I shouldn’t have—I know you just got off a shift, and it’s getting late—”

“Come over,” she says.

Mom would tell him not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“Okay,” he whispers.

“I’ll send you my address.” Then, quietly, “I’m glad you called, Frank.”

*

Mel lives in a cute duplex on the quiet side of town, a two-story brick building with empty flower boxes on the windows and two matching jack-o-lanterns flickering beside her where she sits on the front steps. He means to just take the spot beside her, but she stands when he walks sheepishly up the path, offers her hand, and leads him inside.

All he can think about as he follows her up the stairs is the warmth of her hand, the smoothness of her skin, the sureness of her grip. It feels wrong when she lets go. He shoves his hand in his pocket to keep from reaching for her again.

She takes her shoes off outside the door, and he follows suit. She takes a seat at the far end of the couch, and he trails behind her like an obedient dog. It’s dark aside from the candle burning low on the coffee table, and she doesn’t push him to speak, just waits patiently, curled up on her half of the couch, spinning his blue bracelet round and round her wrist.

“I didn’t even want—” He stops himself before he can even finish the lie. He’s not supposed to be lying anymore. “That’s not true. I did want. Or I do. I’m not even sure.” He sighs, burying his hands in his hair, tugging at the root. “But it’s not like I had a plan. Or, like, access. I know the stealing was bad, Mel, trust me, I know, but—Jesus—we see people dying every day from the shit they get off the street. I wasn’t—I never—I wouldn’t. I always knew it was clean.”

“I understand.”

She’s always so good with her words, never sugar-coating things for him, but never making him feel bad about it either.

“And today, it was—honestly, Mel, I think I was a better dad today than I ever fucking was, and it’s like—” He holds his hands out in front of him, curling them into fists, grasping for he doesn’t know what. “It was good. I felt good. And now it’s over, and—what am I supposed to do? Just go to sleep and wake up and wait?” There’s wetness on his cheeks. He’s crying again. Fuck. “I’m trying not to spiral.”

“You’re doing a very good job,” she says. “Definitely no spiraling.”

A watery laugh escapes him. “That was a joke.”

She presses her foot against his thigh. “Was it good?”

Frank finally tears his gaze away from his clenched fists to get a good look at Mel. Her hair is wet, but still woven in its always-neat braid. She wears a Michigan crewneck, faded and old, with regular gray sweatpants and long, polka dotted socks. She leans her cheek against the back of the couch, smooshing one side of her face, and she looks so soft and warm.

“Yeah, Mel, it was good.”

“I wasn’t sure if it would be insensitive.”

“You? Never.” He presses back into her foot. He feels like he can breathe again. “Where, uh—where is Becca?”

“Sleeping.”

The clock on the microwave blinks 10:41 at him. “Jesus, Mel, it’s late, I’m sorry—”

“Don’t. Will you tell me about them?” she asks. “Tanner and Millie?”

“Well,” he says. “Tanner’s five. He has this collection of baseball cards—something Abby’s mom found him at a garage sale, or something—and he memorized all the names. Kid’s never seen more than, like, one inning of baseball. Took him to a Pirates game last year and he threw up all over my shoes before Skenes even threw a strike. Too much ice cream.” He smiles at the memory. He’d been sober for it, but he was checked out. Millie wasn’t sleeping, so neither were he and Abby, and his third year in the pit was kicking his ass. “Millie is only two. She’s shy, but she’s a wrecking ball. I think she went down the slide forty-six times today. Upside down, backwards, you name it.”

He talks about Tanner’s first loose tooth and how Millie’s first word was fart and how they only just started playing together, only a little bit when Tanner is feeling generous. It feels good to talk about them, and it feels good to listen, too, to Mel’s tales from the VA, stories about Becca, and a frighteningly detailed recounting of how she delivered a baby earlier today.

At some point, the candle flickers out, but he pays it no mind. Moonlight streams through the sliding glass door, dousing them in silver, and he feels himself slumping into the couch, so warm and content, eyes heavy, Mel’s feet tucked under his thigh.

He isn’t sure which one of them falls asleep first.

*

He dreams of the pit. For so long, he’s been too tired to dream, so it feels strange on many levels, moving around the ED. It’s mostly normal: rounds, charting, an MVC. The work is effortless, even though his limbs don’t feel right, don’t move right. He resets a broken ankle and the patient gets up and walks out with a smile on his face. Robby congratulates him for another perfect patient satisfaction score.

He rewards him with a bottle full of pills. Frank thinks he probably shouldn’t take it, but Robby presses it into his palm with a smile. Great work today, he says, and then he pushes him through a door, but it’s not South 3, it’s his room upstairs, his room in rehab, and when Frank tries to turn around and leave, the door is locked.

He can hear Millie crying on the other side. Tanner calls for him. Dad, he wails. Frank tries the door again, but it won’t budge. He throws his whole body into it, or at least he tries, but his movements don’t make sense. He feels weak and unbalanced, like he’s wading through molasses.

Santos sits on his desk. Laughing at him. She has his divorce papers in her lap, thumbing through them like a Seventeen magazine. He lunges for them, but she raises them out of his reach, and when he looks up, it’s not Santos, but Abby, and when she speaks it’s Mom’s voice, rasping, You reap what you sow, Frankie.

Something shifts beneath him, and then he’s falling through the floor, through space, just plummeting, fast-tracked to shatter at the bottom, nothing to grab onto, nothing to stop it—

He wakes with a gasp.

“Frank?”

He tries to take stock of his surroundings. He fell asleep. On the couch. On Mel’s couch. On her hip, actually, like he just tipped over right where he was sitting.

He sits up. “What time is it?” he asks. Or tries to. It sounds like garbled nonsense to his own ears.

Mel shrugs, squinting past him at the microwave clock. He glances over his shoulder—12:26—and when he looks back, he realizes she’s taken off her glasses. There are creases on her cheek from where it was pressed against the couch cushion, and long strands of hair have escaped from her braid.

He should go. He knows he should go.

Mel stands, sleepy and unbalanced, and he steadies her with his hands on her shoulders. And then he keeps them there. She’s as warm and soft as he imagined.

“Come on,” she mumbles.

“What?”

“You can sleep in my room.”

“What?” He only knows she shrugs because his hands are still on her shoulders. His eyes have already fluttered closed.

“I have a trundle.”

He blinks. Mel’s eyes are closed too. “Why?”

“You can’t sleep on the couch, Frank,” she whispers. “Your back.”

It’s not what he meant, but he doesn’t correct her. He doesn’t tell her he could go home, either—back to his cold, empty apartment—especially when she’s nearly tipping over in his grasp, and he’s pretty sure he’s about to fall asleep standing up.

So when she trudges down the hall to her bedroom, he follows. He gets on his knees to help pull the trundle out from beneath her bed, just enough for him to fit, and then she tosses him one of her pillows and one of her blankets and he knows it’s something that would be awkward if they were properly awake, but they aren’t, so he just crawls in, jeans and socks and everything, mumbles, Goodnight, Mel, and then promptly falls asleep.

*

Frank’s sobriety—and thus, his life—relies on the strength of his routine.

He wakes at the first sounds of birds outside, which is unfortunately five fucking a.m. He clears his mind and meditates for what he hopes is about three minutes. Then, quietly, he slips out of Mel’s very strange rollaway bed and sneaks into the living room to suffer through his ten minutes of yoga, gets pissed off by the third sun salutation, and cranks out fifty pushups instead. He taps the button on his app to mark another day sober. Forty-four. Next, he checks his email—no news from Robby about his job.

After that, he usually reads a medical journal, which he figures he could go home to do, but Mel has so many on the bookshelf beside her TV—all new to him, and thus far more interesting—and he thinks it might be a little weird if he Irish-goodbyed their impromptu slumber party, so he makes himself comfortable on the couch.

It takes him all of thirty-six minutes.

Mel’s alarm sounds from down the hall—the duck quack one, which is objectively funny—and Frank attempts to smooth down his bedhead (futile), rinse his face in the kitchen sink (where does she keep her towels?!), and start something for breakfast. It’s the least he can do, considering he cost her at least three hours of sleep.

There are eggs in the back of the fridge, and he sticks his whole head in, stupidly, in an attempt to grab them without moving all her shit around, since he doesn’t think she’d particularly like that.

“Who are you?”

He smacks his head on the bottom of the freezer. “Jesus—”

Becca stands in the kitchen, looking at him suspiciously. He recognizes her from Mel’s screensaver.

“I’m…Frank,” he says, rubbing at the knot forming on the back of his skull.

“Oh!” Her face lights up and she spins around, showcasing the thousand and one things handing off the strap of her backpack. One of them is his hot pink abomination of string. “You made my bracelet!”

It makes him feel funny, but in a good way (or maybe a concussed way), that she kept it. He doesn’t even know her. But she’s important to Mel, and Mel is important to him, and—

“How does Mel like her eggs?” he asks before he can start spiraling again.

Becca makes a face. “She doesn’t.”

“Oh.” Frank looks at the carton he’d nearly killed himself to retrieve.

“But I’ll take pancakes,” says Becca.

She grins at him in a way that suggests he has no choice but to oblige. He fishes through the pantry for flour and sugar.

“What about her coffee?” he asks while he stirs.

“She doesn’t really drink coffee.”

He’s never heard of a doctor that doesn’t drink coffee, but he keeps that information to himself. “Well, what does she normally eat for breakfast?”

Becca shrugs. “A granola bar, sometimes.”

Frank sighs.

Mel comes rushing down the hall a few minutes later, shoving things into her backpack. “Sorry, Becca, I snoozed my alarm too many times—oh!” Her eyes widen when she sees him in her kitchen, covered in flour and flipping pancakes. “You’re still here.”

“Yeah.” He’s not sure what to say. “Yeah, I—yes.”

“Oh, I thought you…”

“I didn’t want to, uh—it was really early, so…”

Mel nods as if she understands perfectly. “Right. No, yeah, I—that makes sense.”

Becca watches them volley their non-conversation with raised brows and a conspiratorial grin.

“I, uh—I made pancakes.”

Mel grimaces at the stack on Becca’s plate. “We have to get going, Becca.”

Becca frowns. “But he made pancakes!”

“Yes. I made pancakes,” he repeats. “Think of the pancakes!”

Mel’s eyes widen again, this time in shock, as if he’s somehow betrayed her by making her what was honestly quite an involved breakfast. He even made a smiley face out of the butterscotch chips he found in her cabinet—which, weird, and he wants to ask, but senses there’s something more urgent afoot.

“I have a shift,” she insists, and Frank frowns at the 6:03 on the clock.

“You have, like, an hour.”

“But I have to get Becca to the center,” she says, huffing, and he can see it as an invisible map unfolds in front of her eyes. She gestures wildly with her hands, fingers pointing in opposite directions. “And it’s two different bus routes, and if we miss the first one the next one doesn’t come for another fifteen minutes, and then I’ll miss the transfer, and then—”

“Let me drive you,” he says.

She starts wringing her hands. “I can’t ask you to do that.”

“Why not? I owe you.” A lot, he thinks as he pulls out the second stool at the counter and gestures for her to sit in it. “Now, can you please eat these pancakes and let me drive you to work? Great news: I know exactly where it is.”

She plops down, and he catches the hint of a smile that plays on her lips. “I guess. Thank you.”

Mel and Becca eat their pancakes—Becca wants to do it Elf style, which Mel forbids but Frank is incredibly interested in—while he cleans his mess, and then he eats their leftovers, which they both think is weird, but he just shrugs and says, kids. Once they’re in the car, Becca takes the aux, and they listen to lo-fi beats as Mel quietly navigates him to Becca’s center.

“Thanks for driving, Frank,” she says as she climbs out. “Are you going to be sleeping in Mel’s bed again tonight?”

Mel chokes on her water. Becca only giggles.

“See you later, Mel!”

*

After that, Mel sometimes lets him drive her to and from work, like when it rains or he’s bored or it starts getting cold. He likes having something to do, something to get out of his apartment for. Something to look forward to.

He likes the King sisters. He likes starting his morning with Becca’s lo-fi beats and then Mel’s dream analysis, and he likes talking medicine on the way back to the center in the evenings, and then talking mostly about Justin Bieber after that.

He only sleeps over at Mel’s once more, when he calls her in a panic after getting his gold chip—sixty days—and she holds his hand from her spot above him on the bed while he whispers his fears into the dark. Her hand is still dangling over the edge of the mattress when he wakes at the crack of dawn to start his routine.

He doesn’t understand why big, happy moments—milestones—send him into a spiral, but he handles things like Thanksgiving at his ex-wife’s mother’s house with ease. He’s mostly unbothered by their comments—I thought your issue was with pills, Frank, be a man and have a beer—and doesn’t even crack at Abby’s dad’s disappointed stares. Maybe it’s because he knows they can’t be any more disappointed in him than he is with himself, or maybe it’s because he gets to sit at the kids’ table and watch Millie spill cranberry sauce onto their white carpet. Who can say?

Either way, Abby lets him tuck the kids into bed that night, and then he still makes it over to Mel’s place in time for dessert, and he’s just happy, ending his night on the couch between the King sisters, watching Elf (again).

Abby lets him see the kids more after that. Once a week, only at the park, then twice, then as it gets cold, she lets him come to the house and build legos in the basement. He thinks she’s dating someone but trying to hide it. He wonders why he doesn’t care.

For his ninety day chip (green, which seems worse than gold, to him), he decides to skip the breakdown, and lets Mel take him (he drives) to a movie (not Elf, much to Becca’s dismay) to celebrate, followed by a secondary celebration with cheeseburgers and milkshakes at the diner down the street from their house when he gets and email with a date for his return to work: December 15.

It’s this night—when he stops in the middle of the movie theater parking lot to read it, when Mel throws her arms around his neck in excitement, when he feels her heart beating against his palm where it’s splayed against her ribs—that he first thinks about how easy it would be to tip her chin up and kiss her.

He’s barely ninety days sober. She’s about to be his coworker again. It would be selfish, he knows, but so, so easy.

Good things come to those who wait, Mom would say, but Frank has never been very good at waiting.

*

His first day back in the pit is about what he expected.

Robby handles him with kid gloves. Santos ignores him. Mel is very excited, but very professional. Gloria gives him a glare that suggests they will not find his body if he screws this up again.

Princess and Perlah yap about him in Tagalog, not even really bothering to avert their gaze as they do it, so he starts the morning off by shouting, “Whatever they said about me, it’s true!” and then follows a gurney into South 1 to help with an over-eager decorator who fell off a ladder. He’s pretty sure he hears Santos’ laugh echo behind him.

He keeps getting bumped from the good cases, which is frustrating, but still expected. He sets four broken noses, stitches two split lips, runs, like, forty-six flu tests, and assures a first-time mother that yes, even babies sneeze. All before lunch.

“How’s it going?” Mel asks when he sits down to chart it all.

It’d be an annoying question, if it were anyone else. But it’s Mel, and Mel is always genuine. Still—he should be the one asking her, should have been there on her second day, her third day, asking her how it was going. He sighs.

“Sorry,” Mel says.

“Don’t be. It’s just—honestly, it’s a little boring.”

She nods in understanding. “It’s my turn to do chairs.” Then, with a little grin, “Wanna see who can get through more?”

He snaps his fingers, already standing to follow her into the waiting room. Charting can wait. “I like the way you think, Dr. King.”

“We go in order,” she says. He should have known she’d have rules. “Obviously, no cutting corners or discharging people who shouldn’t be discharged. I know you wouldn’t,” she says, glancing sidelong at him, “but it has to be said.”

“What do I get when I win?”

“When?”

“I am so good at chairs.”

Her grin is contagious now, big and beautiful and untamed. “I can be good at chairs, too.”

“I don’t doubt it, Dr. King, but you’re looking at a man in desperate need of a win.”

“Are you being serious, or are you saying that to make me feel bad and go easy on you?”

“Ah,” he says, side stepping her to get to the door first. “She’s cute and clever.”

She narrows her eyes. “Joke?”

He opens the door, only to be met with projectile vomit hitting him at the knees. “Oh.”

“Well, you can take that one,” Mel says, and then she flits off to get the check in list from the front desk.

In the end, she wins, if only because Frank loses so much time swapping out his scrubs because he keeps getting vomited on, so many times he ends up in baby blue high-water pants that show his mismatched socks. Santos laughs and calls him Huckleberry Two, which is a joke or an insult he doesn’t get at all, whereas Robby pokes his head in the locker room and gives him a thumbs up for his patient satisfaction score, which has him convinced he’s caught whatever stomach bug he’s been doused in and is now suffering from a fever induced hallucination.

As soon as night shift arrives for hand-off, he’s back in his street clothes, moving slow through the pit on his way out in order to give Mel ample opportunity to gloat about her win.

But it’s Cassie that finds him first.

“Hiya,” she says, snickering as he stuffs his last pair of dirty scrubs into the machine. “How kind of you to come back at the height of flu season. There was a pool for how many pairs of scrubs you’d go through—over-under six.”

“Twelve,” he says, defeated.

She whistles.

“You at least win some money off my misery?”

“I do not gamble,” she says. She eyes him speculatively, and he feels small under her gaze. “You know, I was expecting to hear from you a lot more, Frank. It can be hard, handling all this alone.”

“I’m doing NA,” he says defensively. “And therapy. I have a routine.” He can’t look at her and her raised brow, so he stares at his vomit-crusted shoes instead. “And I’m not alone.”

Just then, Mel comes skipping across the pit, grinning widely in her own perfectly clean scrubs. “Ah, there he is! The biggest loser. I decided what I’d like as my reward for kicking your ass in chairs.”

He rolls his eyes. “You beat me by two.”

“A win is a win, Dr. Langdon. And since I won, I would like for you to give me a ride home.” She says it like it’s a loss for him. Oh, no, Mel, please don’t make me drive you home! Ten minutes is so far! “It’s raining,” she adds, “and I really don’t want to take the bus.”

He snorts. “I was going to offer to do that anyway, Mel.”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s my prize.”

Cassie, who Frank had forgotten was even there, huffs an amused laugh. “Did you win the over-under?”

Mel jumps slightly, like she also forgot Cassie was there. “What? Oh, no—I discharged more chairs than Dr. Langdon. There was a bet?”

“That was me,” Santos says as she walks by. “You won me two hundred bucks, Huckleberry Two!”

“Do either of you know why she keeps calling me that?”

“Something to do with Dennis, I think,” Cassie says.

“Who the hell is Dennis?”

Both Mel and Cassie look at him with concern.

“Are you ready?” Mel asks. “The longer we wait, the more time Becca has to Google Justin Bieber facts.”

“I’ll have you know I have been Googling Justin Bieber facts. Did you know he can solve a Rubik’s Cube in under two minutes?” He moves to follow Mel to the parking garage, but spares one last glance for Cassie, who has her lips pressed together like she’s trying very hard not to laugh. “See you tomorrow, Cass!”

“See you,” she says. “I’m glad you’re not alone.”

*

Contrary to what the rest of the pit might believe, Frank very much enjoys teaching. Well—he enjoys teaching Mel. Whitaker is alright, Javadi is afraid of him, and Santos he could take or leave. Mostly leave.

It’s probably why she starts buffering when he tells her that she can place the chest tube. She looks over her shoulder, like there might be another Dr. Santos who has been begging for months to place a chest tube standing right behind her.

“Quickly, Santos,” he barks, and suddenly she’s moving, gowned and gloved and scalpel in hand, which should unnerve him, honestly, the way it went with Garcia all those months ago.

She counts the ribs to the fifth intercostal space, and then she makes her incision with confidence. Not that he expected any less. Then, with minimal instruction, she clamps the tube and guides it into the tract. A few stitches and it’s done. Seamless. Perfect.

“Alright,” he says. The patient is stable. There’s no scalpel in his foot. Overall, a win. “Let’s get him upstairs, please.”

The nurses wheel him away, and then it’s just him and Santos, ripping off their gloves and gowns in awkward silence. Or as much silence as Santos usually allows, which is none.

“Where’s my gold star?” she says, staring at him like he’s just stolen her lunch money.

“What?”

“If Mel had just placed a perfect chest tube, you’d be leading her parade.”

He ignores her pointed look. “Well, I like Mel better than you.”

She snorts. “You like Mel better than anyone.”

True. He shrugs. “You did a great job, Santos. Perfect chest tube. Is that what you wanted?”

She makes a face. “You’re right. I hated that.”

He sighs, drawing it out to properly showcase how irritated he is by being forced into this conversation. “You’re a good doctor. I know you know that. You’re driven, talented, kinda crazy. All good things to be here.” She’s more like him than he’d care to admit, even, but he doesn’t say that. He doesn’t think it’d go over well. “You’re a quick study. Very…observant.” They share a brief glance at that one.

She looks like she’s holding her breath. “But?”

“No but. You’re doing a good job. Just—keep doing a good job.”

“Wow.” She nods, considering his words. “Okay. Thanks, I think.”

He should thank her, he thinks, for turning him in. Even in ruining his life, she saved it. He doesn’t know where he’d be now, how far he would have gone, how low he would have sunk. He should say it. He knows he should say it. But his mouth just hangs open, and nothing comes out.

Santos stares at him in horror. “Don’t.”

“What—”

“Don’t. You’re about to get all sentimental, aren’t you? I can smell it. Don’t you dare.”

“I was not,” Frank insists.

“Look. Let’s just call it even, okay? I saved your life, you let me do a chest tube—”

“Okay, that’s not—”

“—and now we can go back to the way it was before. Icy and antagonistic.”

“Perfect,” he says.

“Excellent,” she agrees.

Collins pokes her head in the door. “Sorry—are you guys agreeing on something in here?”

“No,” Frank says. “Ew.”

Santos shakes her head. “Absolutely not.”

*

Frank spends Christmas Day in the pit. He’s not supposed to be there, but he is, because only a few days ago Abby called him—he should have known, then, that it couldn’t be good. She always texts—to let him know that she, and thus the kids, would be going on a cruise. On Christmas.

“Abby—what—you can’t be serious. Christmas?”

“It’s a Disney Cruise, Frank,” she said, her sigh loud and crackly through the receiver. “It’s my mom’s gift to them this year.”

Of-fucking-course it’s a Disney Cruise, he thought. He didn’t say that, though, because he wanted to be reasonable about it. He could tell Abby was trying to be reasonable about it too, but it actually wasn’t reasonable at all—telling him that if he wanted to see them, he should just tag along!—like he didn’t just get his job back, like he’s not walking on a fucking tightrope with zero PTO, like her fucking parents didn’t do it on purpose, just to remind him of everything he ruined.

So Frank’s in the pit on Christmas Day. Not halfway to Mexico, tossing back margaritas with a cartoon mouse.

He tries not to think about it. He focuses on the work—on the full family brawl (two broken noses, thirty-six combined stitches), on the crazy head lac on a kid who tried to climb the Christmas tree (looked worse than it was), on the MVC involving a church van out caroling (everyone lived!). Otherwise, it’s a mostly quiet day. Dana plays Christmas music over the intercom. Robby orders donuts.

By the time five p.m. rolls around, Frank is already thinking about a quiet evening on the couch, reading his medical journals by Christmas tree light, and maybe even getting a good night’s sleep. He’ll call Mom. And Lizzie, this year. Not just a text. And then, as he checks his phone for the text she’s already sent (merry xmas, loser), as Robby shouts from the other end of the pit (OD, male, thirties, not responding to Narcan), he thinks, there’s an idiom for that, something about counting chickens, but he just can’t remember what it is.

Santos and Mohan are busy with a psych case. Whitaker got pissed on again and still hasn’t come out of the locker room. Mel is attempting to console an inconsolable mother whose child likely just has the flu. Cassie’s off. Javadi is wide-eyed and frozen. Collins is nowhere to be found.

Which leaves him.

It’s not a big deal. Frank has handled more ODs than he can count, before and after admitting he was an addict himself. It’s not a big deal. He’s a doctor.

But this one—

He’s not responding to anything. His pulse is thready at best when they get him into a room. Breaths are shallow. Blood pressure is tanking. A second dose of Narcan and he still doesn’t improve, so Frank goes through his pockets until he finds it: a prescription bottle. Xanax. Empty.

The patient crashes. Robby starts compressions. The movement jostles a phone out of the man’s pocket, and it’s ringing, vibrating across the floor, lit up with a picture of a woman smiling with two children. Emily, it says. It stays like that for about a minute before the screen goes dark for one second, two, then lights up again. Emily.

Frank knows that this man is as good as dead. Frank also knows that this man is him. Was him. Could have been him.

There is some version of Frank that doesn’t get caught, that fateful night in September. There is some version of him that doesn’t stop. There is some version of him that ends up here, dead, gone, while Abby calls and calls and calls and Robby does compressions on his lifeless body until someone calls it what it is: over.

It’s quiet, after. He can feel eyes on him, Robby and Donnie and Princess, but he can’t stop staring at the empty orange bottle in his palm.

“Hey,” Robby says. He takes the bottle from him, slowly, gently. “Why don’t you take a few minutes.”

“I don’t need—”

“Take a minute, Frank.”

He just nods. It’s like nothing even happened when he steps outside the room. Dana’s Christmas music is still playing. Santos and Whitaker are giggling like schoolgirls, huddled around her phone. Why does Frank feel like he’s going to fall apart?

He sits at the bottom of the stairs. He doesn’t think he can make it to the roof. His breaths come fast, and he stares at his hands (clean, ringless), at Tanner’s bracelet (the colors are starting to fade).

He can hold it together. He’s always been able to hold it together. There are tough cases—the kid ones are always hard—but he handles them. This, though. This—

He’s going to fall apart.

But then Mel is there, joining him on the bottom step. “Hi,” she says as she sits down.

All he can manage is a rattled exhale.

Mel doesn’t poke, doesn’t prod, doesn’t make him relive the last ten minutes of his life in vivid color. She just taps the toe of her shoe against his and says, “Do you want to use my lava lamp?”

“What?”

She hands him her phone, opened to an app of a lava lamp, golden globs gently rolling round the screen. Then she puts her headphones in, and he can hear the soft roar of the ocean. It helps, but it has more to do with the warmth of her shoulder against his than any lamp.

When he’s sufficiently wrung out, Mel removes her headphones and returns her phone to her pocket. He thinks about begging her not to leave him, but decides that’s too desperate.

“Are you doing anything tonight?” she asks, like it’s any other Friday night, and not fucking Christmas.

He shakes his head.

“You should come home with me and Becca. I have a frozen lasagna, and a whole tub of cookie dough, and—well, you already know what we’re going to watch. We’d love to have you.”

“Okay,” he says.

“And…you can stay,” she adds. “If you want.”

He does want. So badly, he wants, and not on her stupid trundle, just out of reach, but in her bed, wrapped around her so he can feel her breathe, so he can smell her shampoo, so he can just hold onto something. He’ll never say it, but he wants.

“I don’t want you to feel like you always have to take care of me,” he whispers. He lets his forehead fall until it hits her shoulder, and she lets him stay there for a long moment before he feels the weight of her own head atop his.

“I like taking care of you,” she says just as quietly. And then, “You take care of me all the time.”

“Someone has to.”

“Well, I’m glad it’s you.”

He tilts his head in an attempt to properly look at her, but all he can see is her pinking cheek, the drag of her lower lip between her teeth. Her watch says 7:02. Their shift is over, but he wants to stay here, if even just one more minute, with her.

“Me too, Mel.”

*

Frank gets his six month chip in March. He does not have a breakdown.

Instead, he is very fine and normal and chill about it. He’s been sober for six months. It’s a remarkable achievement—something he didn’t even think was possible, back when he was in single digit days—but still just another rung in the ladder. Or so his therapist says.

Things are looking up. Work is mostly normal. He gets to see his kids a lot more. Mel still lets him drive her to work, even though it’s not so fucking cold anymore.

The day he gets the chip, he gets to celebrate by keeping the kids overnight. It’s not the first time, but it’s still weird, staying in the guest bedroom of what used to be his house, while Abby takes the opportunity to stay overnight with some guy named Jared, who has apparently been around long enough to meet his children.

He doesn’t love it, but not for any real reason. He trusts Abby’s judgement. If she thinks Jared is good enough to be around Tanner and Millie, then he must be. It makes Frank think about introducing Mel to the kids, which would not be the same as this Jared guy, because Mel is not his girlfriend, even though he sometimes thinks about kissing her, about pulling the elastic from her braid and running his fingers through it, tilting her head, trailing his lips across her jaw, down her neck—

Regardless. His kids are important. Mel is important. Therefore, by the transitive property, or whatever, they should know each other.

He imagines it like this: he makes dinner (in this fantasy, he’s a better cook), and Mel comes over to his new house (he’s also rich, apparently), and they all sit together at the table (Tanner eats his vegetables), and then they watch a movie together on the couch (not Elf). Sometimes, when he lets his imagination run wild, Mel stays, this time in his bed, and he kisses her, pulls the elastic from her braid and runs his fingers through it, tilts her head—

Etcetera.

Of course, how it really happens is nothing like his imagination.

It starts with a phone call. One he barely gets to in time because it’s buried beneath a mountain of toddler laundry. Mel’s on the screen—a photo of her posing with a plastic skeletal foot, holding it kind of like the douchebags on the internet with their fish—for only a split second before he swipes to answer.

He doesn’t even get the chance to speak before he hears her breathless sniffles on the other end of the line. “Will you come get me?”

The way her voice trembles is like a lance through his chest. “Yeah, Mel, of course,” he says automatically. “What happened? Are you okay?”

“I missed the bus by, like, thirty seconds. Becca is probably freaking out, I couldn’t even text her until just now”—her next breath stutters, and he knows how hard she’s trying not to cry—“and the app says the next bus is delayed, and an uber is going to be an hour. Is there something going on downtown? I—I don’t know—”

“Mel. Where are you?” He checks the time on his phone. 8:49. Way past the end of her shift, and also—bedtime. “Are you still at work?”

“Handoff was a mess. I had this patient, and I wanted to see it through, and…” Her voice breaks as she trails off.

“Are you at the bus stop? Or the hospital?”

“The bus stop,” she says pitifully.

He’s already pulling socks from the mountain of laundry, searching for three sets of matching shoes. “Do you want me to get Becca first, or you?”

“Um. Becca’s on your way.”

“Okay. Can you call them and let them know I’m picking her up?”

She sniffles. “Yeah.”

“And can you head back to the hospital? So I know you’re safe?”

“Okay,” she mumbles.

“Okay,” he agrees. “I’ll be there in twenty, Mel.”

He leaves out the fact that Tanner and Millie will be joining them on this late night adventure, because he knows she’d feel guilty and try to refuse his help. So he just loads them into the car—they’re pretty pumped about getting to leave the house in their pajamas—and heads straight to the center. Becca is clearly annoyed about the change in her schedule, but gets on board pretty fast when he suggests ice cream, which is both good for the soul and also small children up way past their bedtime. Obviously.

She sits in the back between the car seats and makes fast friends with Millie by showing her all thousand and one things hanging off the strap of her backpack and describing each one of them in great detail. She calls Frank’s attempt at a friendship bracelet avant-garde (you probably don’t know what that is, Millie, it’s when something is ugly but cool).

When he finally pulls up to the hospital parking garage, Mel is waiting by the entrance, hugging herself around the middle like her arms are the only thing holding her together.

“I hope you’re hungry, Dr. King,” he calls out the window, aiming for levity, distraction—anything to get her to smile. “We’re getting ice cream.”

She moves like a zombie, practically crawling into the passenger seat, but her eyes widen comically when she glances to the back. “Oh. Hi.”

“Hi,” says Tanner. Millie just waves.

“Gang’s all here,” Frank says weakly.

Only Becca giggles. At least she appreciates his references.

“I didn’t know you had them,” Mel says. “I wouldn’t have—”

“And that’s why I didn’t tell you.” He looks at his backseat passengers in the rearview mirror. “Now, who’s excited for ice cream?”

All three of them shout, “Me!”

They end up at the Dairy Queen, three out of the five of them sporting ice cream mustaches (he won’t say who). Millie has long since passed out in his lap, and Tanner, who has eaten his own ice cream and Millie’s leftovers, is bound to be a bear at bedtime (whenever that may be).

But he’s giggling at Mel’s jokes, and Mel herself is smiling, and Becca is watching it all with a knowing grin. It’s not what he imagined, this intersection of all the important things in his life, but it’s real, and that’s better than anything he dreamed up alone in his room.

Back in the car, the kids fall asleep almost immediately, slumped over in their car seats in a way that Frank would worry about if he weren’t a doctor. Becca sits between them with her headphones on, periodically pushing Tanner’s head back into a position compatible with having a spine.

“I lost a patient today,” Mel says quietly. Although she’d sloughed off most of the weight of her shift when Tanner had attempted to lick ice cream off his nose, she still leans against the window, watching sadly as headlights pass by. “I thought—we tried—” She sighs. “She went septic. She had two little girls.”

Frank reaches across the console for her hand. She squeezes back tightly.

“I thought I could save her,” she whispers.

“You did everything you could,” he reminds her, and he knows it’s true.

“Thank you,” she says. “For this. For everything.”

“Anything,” he says. For you.

The whole way home, she does not let go of his hand.

*

In April, Frank gets put on night shift, and there’s a whole week where he only sees Mel in two minute intervals, in scrubs and blood, flashing quick smiles at handoff. It takes forever for their schedules to align, but now he’s off (and decently rested), and she’s off (he thinks), and he just misses her.

He knows it’s an unreasonable hour, texting her between his ten minute yoga session and the part where he gets angry and does pushups instead, but he does it anyway.

are u off today? he types.

Yes, she says.

wanna go to the aquarium w me and the kids?

Yes, she says immediately. Then, about two minutes later, like she sat there staring at her phone the whole time, Duh.

He picks her up at ten. Tanner and Millie both squeal when they see her bound down the steps toward the car, delighted by the presence of Dad’s friend that knows a lot about fossils and is really good at the monkey bars, as Tanner had previously described her to Abby. Every time Abby has tried to bring up Mel in conversation since then, Frank just invokes Jared, and the conversation promptly ends. It’s wonderful.

It’s chaos the moment they arrive—because there is truly no rest for a toddler with a death wish and a five-year-old who uses shark week reruns as bedtime material—and Frank ends up hauling them inside kicking and screaming to prevent them from getting drilled by a car in the parking lot. After that, they spend thirty seconds at the penguins, three minutes at the penny press machine, and twenty-five minutes in line for snacks, which all end up in various states of crumbled on their shirts or shoes or the floor.

Reprieve comes in the form of the nearly empty tank in the back corner, surrounded by raised seating that several children are using as a jungle gym. Frank watches as his own heathens join the fray.

“This was supposed to be fun,” he says to Mel. “I didn’t mean to drag you into the circus with my monkeys.”

“I’m having a great time,” she argues. “I got to pet a stingray.”

One of the raised blocks is too tall for Millie to climb onto, so Tanner stops to help her, which is objectively very sweet, but Frank calls for them both to get down, anyway. He does not want to deal with a cracked skull on his day off.

“When’s your next shift?” Mel asks hopefully. Or at least he hopes it’s hopeful. Maybe he’s projecting.

“Tonight,” he grumbles. “I hate night shift.”

If the reason he hates night shift is because Santos is there, whining about how surly he is because Mel isn’t there to level him out, he doesn’t say it out loud. He fears that would make it true.

“How much longer are you on nights?” She doesn’t even blink when Tanner sprints over to present her with his pressed penny (willyouholdthisitkeepsfallingoutofmypocketandidontwantmillietostealit comes out in a single breath), she just tucks it in her own pocket for safekeeping as he sprints away. “It’s not the same without you.”

“Just until Shen gets back from Costa Rica, or whatever. Thursday, I think. But, uh—I’m actually taking some time off, after that.”

“Oh?”

“Just a few days. I’m going back to Philly to see my mom.”

Mel’s brow creases with concern. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Well, no. I don’t know. She’s in memory care. It’s a toss up whether she’ll remember me or not.”

Mel must sense there’s more, because she doesn’t say anything yet, just turns toward him, inching closer and looking up at him with her full attention, eyes so wide and earnest he almost forgets what the hell he was even talking about.

“She doesn’t know about the divorce,” he continues. “She doesn’t know that I’m sober. Shit, Mel—she doesn’t know about the pills at all. For all she knew, I was out here saving lives and doing the whole white picket fence thing the whole time.” He scrubs a hand over his face. He’s said too much. They’re at the fucking aquarium, for Christ’s sake, they should be eating pizza and buying stuffed penguins in the gift shop. “Sorry, I just—”

“I think she’d be proud of you. With or without the picket fence. I know I am.”

She says it with conviction, just like anything else she ever says to him. He doesn’t know how she does it—how she knows exactly where he hurts and how to heal it. Frank, unfortunately, is not so good with words, and so he just stares at her, kind of blankly, really, trying to figure out what heroic deed he must have done in a past life to deserve this: her trust, her faith, her compassion.

Mel flushes and averts her gaze. “I mean, she’s your mom, so…I’m just assuming—maybe I shouldn’t have—”

“Mel—”

“My mom died when I was in med school,” she says in a rush. “She was sick for a while, so I knew it was coming.” She clasps her hands together tightly in front of her. “I loved her. I miss her. But part of me resents her for leaving everything on me.”

He realizes, then, what she’s offering: a piece of her soul in exchange for his. A tit for tat.

“You’re doing a great job, Mel.” He offers his hand and she takes it, squeezing tight. “Honestly.”

She nods, her breath leaving in a jagged exhale as the tension deflates from her shoulders. He’s close enough that their shoulders brush, and he resists the urge to pull her even closer, because, once again, they’re at the fucking aquarium. And also, Millie is barreling toward them.

She nearly bowls them both over, the wrecking ball that she is, but Mel doesn’t object when Millie wedges herself between their legs, clinging to Mel’s knee for comfort. Frank follows her tiny little finger to the tank, where a single, albeit large, fish floats by the glass.

Mel, who generally doesn’t prefer being sticky or covered in crumbs, crouches down to Millie’s height, letting Millie cling to her with sticky, crumby hands. “That’s a big fish, isn’t it?”

Millie nods.

“He’s just swimming,” Mel says. “He’s not gonna hurt anybody.” Then, she offers her hand. “Wanna go look at him with me?”

Millie nods again, and then Mel guides her back to the tank, hoisting her up on her hip for a better view. When the fish swims by, Mel convinces Millie to press her palm to the tank, and then they smile at each other, and then Frank is smiling too, wondering how long he’s supposed to be able to last with his heart beating outside of his body.

*

In June, Mel’s paper gets published.

Santos was right. He does want to throw her a parade.

It’s not even her first time being published (though it is her first as the primary contributor), but there’s something special about this one, at least to him. And to her, it seems.

She moves around the pit with more energy than anyone on their third double of the week should have, handing out copies of it to anyone with a free hand to accept it. He doesn’t get his until almost halfway through the shift, when he ducks into the break room to refill his mug with the brown sludge they advertise as coffee.

“Hi,” she says, bouncing on her toes a little in her excitement. She’s smiling so big, her eyes are so bright—Frank contemplates fishing out his phone for a picture.

“Hi.”

Her cheeks are pink as she shoves the journal in his direction, already flipped open to the right page. First-Pass Emergency Airway Management: Decreasing Time to a Definitive Airway, it says, which is not a string of words that would normally make him feel anything, but then, just below: Dr. Melissa King, Dr. Frank Langdon. There are other names there, too, but he ignores them. His heart feels like it’s going to burst out of his chest.

“We did it!” she says.

“We? This was all you, Mel. You know—we should frame this.” He grabs a thumbtack to stick it to the wall above the microwave, but it’s too heavy, crashing down and knocking over his sludge. “Ignore that. We should celebrate.”

“Yes!” Santos slips into the break room, likely summoned by the sounds of joy she’s hardwired to exterminate. “Let us take you out, Melly!”

Frank frowns at the use of the word us.

Mohan peeks her head in the door. “We’re going out?”

Frank frowns some more. “What is this we shit—”

“Out where?” Now Matteo has joined, and Collins and Dana listen in from the nurses’ station.

Even Abbott shows interest. “I’m in. Where we going?”

*

For some reason, Mel agrees to this heinous idea of a group outing, which means Frank agrees, naturally, but it also means they have to find a day where at least some of them are off work or at least on nights, and it has to be before seven, since Becca can’t stay overnight at the center without a lot of planning, so they end up bowling. On a Wednesday. At noon.

It’s Frank’s worst nightmare. It smells like stale beer, everything is sticky, and they put him in fucking clown shoes. When he finds his colleagues, Abbott is already a couple deep (Frank figures it’s basically midnight, for him), Mohan is plugging their names into the console (mel, samira, jack, frank, trinity, and someone named dennis), and Whitaker is chowing down on bowling alley shrimp. Frank sticks to a fountain Pepsi that tastes like it’s gonna give him weird dreams later.

It's not exactly how he wanted to celebrate Mel’s achievement, but he picks a ball and throws it at some pins anyway. He’s godawful, but so are they all, and it ends up being a little fun, cheering for whoever does worst (it’s also how he finds out that Dennis is Whitaker).

Before rehab, he never really hung out with his coworkers. He always had something to go home to: a wife, children, pills. Now, he’s wifeless, pill-less, and only has his kids a couple days a week, which leaves him with a void he’d normally try to fill with something relaxing, like watching an entire season of Survivor in one sitting, or waiting for Mel to get off work so he could describe said season of Survivor to her in great detail. But here—wedged in between Abbott and Mel on a sticky bowling alley bench—it’s not so bad.

Abbott somehow convinces Mel that bowling with her off hand would improve her score, and then he ushers her up to the front to demonstrate. It’s amusing, the way she lines herself up in the lane, tongue peeking between her lips, eyeing the pins over the ball she holds in her shaky left hand. Abbott is giving her very serious instruction, and she’s listening to it very seriously, cranking her arm back and letting it rip.

Even though the ball sails high through the air until it thumps halfway down the lane, she manages to knock down five pins, which is certainly a cause for celebration in this group, and she jumps up, raising her hands over her head to high-five Abbot. Her shirt rides up too, just a bit, just a sliver, revealing a few square inches of Mel that Frank’s never seen before, and he can’t help it—he wonders what it would be like, pressing his palm to her waist, sliding his fingers across her skin, up under the hem. He imagines, pathetically, pressing his lips there, just inside the margin between the top of her jeans and the bottom of her shirt, darting his tongue out, just a little taste—

“Pick up your jaw, loverboy.” Santos presses two fingers beneath his chin, and his teeth clack closed. “You know you’re, like, the least subtle person on the planet?”

Frank smacks her hand away. “Don’t touch me.”

“Are you ever gonna say anything, or have you resigned yourself to staring at her with those puppy-dog eyes forever?”

“I—” He glares at Santos. “What does it matter to you?”

“So you admit it.”

“No.”

“Isn’t there something in NA about lying?”

“You are the worst,” he mutters. “Like an evil witch.”

This does not bother her. “I’m just being observant.”

He sighs. “I just got divorced.”

“Like, six months ago.”

Seven, but he doesn’t correct her. “I just got sober.”

“See previous.”

“Doesn’t she deserve better?” Frank can’t believe he’s saying this to Santos, of all people. “Than me?”

“Yes,” she says easily. “But, in case you haven’t noticed, she makes those same moony eyes at you. You guys are like a fucking golden retriever puppy and a baby deer, following each other around like you’re looking for your mommy.”

He blinks. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Plenty. I’m just trying to help out a friend.” She gets up, searching for the next ball she’s going to throw into the gutter, but before she does, she turns to him, neon green monstrosity resting against her shoulder. “Just to clarify—Mel is the friend. Not you.”

“Yeah,” Frank says. “Perfectly clear.”

He means to glare at Santos for a lot longer, but Mel takes her seat, grinning at him with a flush on her cheeks.

“Hi,” she breathes.

Oh, he is so fucked. “Having fun?”

She nods, pulling her lower lip between her teeth. He knows he’s staring, but he can’t stop.

“What are you doing tonight?” she asks.

“No plans.”

“I was thinking that we should go out to dinner tonight. Me, you, and Becca,” she clarifies. “There’s this new Italian place by my house, and I thought it would be nice to celebrate. Just…us.”

He presses his knee into her thigh. She presses back. “I can think of no better way to spend a Wednesday.”

*

That night, he stays, and that night, the trundle remains tucked away as he climbs into her bed. He doesn’t even ask, but she doesn’t protest, just scoots over to make room.

That night, he reaches over to pull the elastic from her braid, watching it unravel slowly as he runs his fingers through it. She hums contentedly, sleepily, as he traces his fingers around the curve of her ear, the slope of her jaw. He watches her lashes flutter, her lips quirk, the blush rise in her cheeks. She is so beautiful it hurts.

“I like when you look at me like that,” she murmurs. He continues his outline of her face, and her eyes fall closed.

“How am I looking at you, Mel?”

“Like you see me,” she says. “Like you know me.”

He remembers that very first day—the best and worst day of his life—when she showed him that she could be competent and capable but still compassionate and empathetic and good, and he thought who is this girl, the one who somehow managed to imprint herself on his soul within the first few minutes of knowing her.

How could he ever unknow her now?

His finger trails a path over her brow, down her cheekbone, dragging over her lower lip. He feels her shuttered exhale on his cheek. He could kiss her. He knows she would let him. The desire is so strong it burns him from the inside out, and he’s afraid, he thinks, of burning her, too.

That night, she falls asleep in his arms.

*

There’s something buzzing about the pit, a thickness to the air that suggests drama, the lingering scent of gossip, hot off the press so early on what should otherwise be a normal Thursday morning.

Frank stiffens when he senses it. For so long, the hottest gossip has somehow always come back to him: a nasty drug habit, an even nastier divorce—once, the rumor had gotten so twisted around by the time it made it back to him that half the nursing staff thought Abby had tried to kill him, and that he’d spent a month in witness protection, not rehab.

And today, he walked in with Mel. That’s not unusual, no. But today, he came in his street clothes, the same ones he wore to the bowling alley yesterday. One could draw some conclusions. Even though they’d be wrong—they did nothing but sleep. Fully clothed. Very wholesome.

He’s ready for the onslaught of it. There’s no telling what they’ll say.

But, in fact, they say nothing. They don’t even look at him, or Mel.

“Something’s weird,” he says to her, and she frowns, tilting her head at the scene in front of her.

Robby greets them with a single envelope. “Good morning, you two. Thought I’d get this out of the way before it gets going in here.”

“What is this?” Frank rips it open. “You write me a love letter?”

Inside is a piece of cardstock with flowers and glittery shit all over it. Frank reads it aloud: “Michael and Heather invite you to celebrate their marriage—Robby, what the hell is this?”

Robby blushes.

“You’re getting married? Heather Collins?” Frank turns to Mel for reinforcement. “Mel, did you know about this?”

Mel seems equally as confused. “Why is there only one?”

Robby’s eyes light up as Dana yells about an incoming trauma. “Thought we’d save some paper.” He claps them both on the shoulder and jogs towards the ambulance bay, shouting over his shoulder, “See you there!”

*

In the spirit of saving paper (whatever the hell that means) Frank also suggests saving gas, or saving the environment, or saving Mel some trouble—really, anything to get her to agree to let him drive her to the wedding. Luckily, she doesn’t take much convincing.

The truth is he just wants to see her. Just her and him and whatever minutes he can get before they have to watch their coworkers (who Frank did not know were together) commit their lives to each other on a stage in front of all their other coworkers (who all at least suspected they were together).

He’s early to Mel’s, so he sits in the driveway, fiddling with the gold coin in his pocket. He doesn’t know why—Mel is usually early herself, and it’s the thought of her on the other side of the door, fidgeting just the same, that forces him out of the car and onto her front step.

He nearly falls over when she opens the door.

“Hi,” she says.

She’s wearing an olive green dress that ripples around her thighs when she moves. Her hair spills over her shoulders in soft waves that he desperately wants to run his fingers through. And the legs—

“Is it too much?”

“No,” he chokes out. “No, I—You are—You look—Yes. Wow.”

She flashes him an amused grin. “Thank you, I think.”

“Yes,” he agrees dumbly.

“You look nice yourself,” she says, running her fingers along his tie. “We match.”

He looks down. He forgot he was dressed, let alone what color tie he grabbed, but she’s right. They do match. They stand there like that, Mel’s hand on his tie, his eyes glued to the lip she’s pulled between her teeth, for what is probably a long time. He wouldn’t know—he’s forgotten how to count.

“Right.” She clears her throat. “We should—”

“Yes,” he says, sticking to one of the only words he knows.

He can feel her eyes on him in the car, and it takes all his willpower to keep his own gaze straight ahead, his hands on ten and two, lest he get distracted—by her undone hair, the curve of her shoulder, the legs—and crash the fucking thing. He’s never been like this—captivated to the point of incoherence. There was a point in time that he had game, but Mel King has reduced him to a blithering idiot, scandalized by the sight of an ankle.

“It’s a beautiful day for a wedding,” she says.

Yes, he thinks, a safe conversation. He can handle the weather.

“Yeah,” he agrees, and then stupidly, he adds, “It rained on my wedding day. Go figure.”

“Rain is actually supposed to be good luck.”

“If rain is good luck, and good weather is also good luck, then what weather is bad luck?”

Mel considers this. “A natural disaster, maybe.”

“Ah,” he says. “Well, I’ll be sure to be on the lookout for a hurricane at the next one.”

“You’d get married again?”

“Of course. Would you?” He chances a glance at her to find her watching him carefully. “I mean—not again, for you, but—the first time. Only time. You know.”

“Yes,” she says, and he feels kinda breathless.

The ceremony itself is short and sweet, under a big oak tree in a small park at the edge of the city.

Frank sits in the back with Mel, folding the paper program into an airplane to throw at Santos if she starts exhibiting any witch-like behavior. It’s strange, seeing people he’s only ever seen in scrubs and nitrile gloves dressed up in gowns and suits. Especially Heather Collins herself, radiant in a simple white gown, makeup all done with a long veil trailing down the aisle behind her.

Robby cleans up nicely, too. Frank thinks he must have trimmed his beard.

What he can’t get over is how happy they both look.

“How did I miss this?” he mutters to Mel.

She leans in close, and he can smell her shampoo as her hair brushes his shoulder. “You were focused on other things.”

Frank scrubs a hand over his face and silently recites the Krebs Cycle to keep from ogling her as the skirt of her dress shifts up her thigh. Yeah, he supposes that’s true.

At dinner, Frank sits at a round table in the garden with his arm slung over the back of Mel’s chair. It’s a humid July night in Pittsburgh, but it’s nice, sitting under string lights and lightning bugs, sipping on a Coke and watching his mentor and friend schmooze and smile and dance. There was a period of time Frank had thought that the trust he’d broken could never be mended—that he would never be able to rebuild the bridge he burnt with Robby on that day in September, but now Robby just pulls him aside, arm slung over his shoulders like there was never any love lost between them at all.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Robby says.

Frank rolls his eyes to keep them from stinging. “Yeah, well, you make my schedule. Where else would I be?”

Robby levels him with a somber stare. “I’m serious, kid.”

Frank always hated when Robby called him kid—he’s not even ten years older than him—but he lets it slide this time, because his face visibly brightens when Collins heads his way, and as soon as she’s within reach, he pulls her into his side. It’s cute, but kind of sickening. Like seeing your parents kiss.

“Hey, Langdon,” she says warmly. Then, to Robby, “The photographer needs us.”

“You know,” Robby says as she drags him away, “the HR paperwork wasn’t even that bad. Way easier than all the shit I filled out to get you your job back!”

Frank narrows his eyes.

Robby laughs. “Just saying!”

*

After dinner (and cake, and speeches, and a toast of really shitty sparkling grape juice), Frank lingers by the bar with Mel and Abbott and Mohan (who—is she standing too close to Abbott? Frank doesn’t know how to sus out workplace relationships anymore), sucking down another Coke while he fiddles with the chip in his pocket. All he can think about is HR paperwork and Mel’s smile and Mom’s raspy voice telling him You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, which Lizzie tried to add to the back of the book but Frank fought her on, because it was just a sports quote—not even a good one—and the logical equivalent of saying there’s a 50% chance doing homework was fatal because it either killed you or it didn’t.

Still, it’s what echoes in his mind when he interrupts whatever war story Abbott is telling Mel to offer her his hand.

“Will you dance with me?”

Mel looks at his hand with wide, panicked eyes. “I—I don’t really know how.”

“Me either.” He shrugs. “But maybe we can figure it out together.”

She takes his hand, and then he drags her out into the middle of dance floor, not even sparing a glance for Abbott or Mohan, who yells, okay, bye! Frank is good enough at plenty of things, but dancing is not one of them, so he mostly relies on just jumping around mixed in with some of the classics: the sprinkler, the scuba, the shopping cart. He grabs Mel’s hand and twirls her, dumbstruck (as he so often is) by the way her dress fans out in an arc around her, the way her hair falls across her shoulders. Then, she tries to twirl him, and the laugh that escapes him is such a surprise he can’t help but let her.

It’s fun and it’s easy and he feels free, even just for a moment, in a way that he hasn’t in a long, long time.

Suddenly, the song fades and slows. He knows they could vacate the dance floor like most everyone else, but he doesn’t move, and neither does Mel.

Bravely, he offers his hand again, and Mel, in all her endless faith, takes it.

He pulls her in, one arm snaking around her waist, the other holding her hand just over his heart. Frank’s life may be one long series of mistakes, but here, with her, swaying softly to the music—he’s never felt more right about anything.

She fits perfectly. His chin rests comfortably on top of her head where it’s tucked into his chest. The ends of her hair brush against his hand where it presses into her back. He can feel her breaths, in and out, slow and easy, and he knows, where her ear is pressed to his shirt, that she must be able to hear the way his heart beats for her.

So long ago he sat on the floor and told her I need you, but how could he ever have known it would be like this?

“Hey,” he murmurs, pulling away only enough to be able to see her face. “Walk with me?”

She nods, and so he leads her off the dance floor, past the edge of the party, away from the string lights and music and up the path to the hill that overlooks the city. He’s always loved Pittsburgh like this, sparkling bright against the black backdrop of night, the inky river reflecting the lights of the cars as they speed back and forth over the bridge. He loves it even more, now, standing there with Mel’s hand in his.

“If I still had my ring,” he says, “do you think I could throw it all the way into the river?”

Mel considers this very seriously. “Have you been practicing?”

“Not really.”

“Then no.”

“You look beautiful, by the way,” he says—kind of suddenly, judging by the way her eyes widen in surprise. “You’re always beautiful. I didn’t say it right before because sometimes when I’m around you, I can’t remember how to speak.”

“Frank.”

“It’s like—do you have any idea what you do to me?”

“Frank.”

“Mel, please,” he says. She’s looking up at him with her lower lip pulled between her teeth, the city lit up behind her like an ethereal halo. He’s waited so long. “I want to kiss you so badly.”

“I know,” she says, because of course she does. “Why haven’t you?”

He tilts until his brow rests against hers. He can smell her shampoo, can feel her unsteady breaths ghost across his cheek. “What if I mess it up?”

“You couldn’t.”

“You deserve better,” he whispers. “I’m a mess.”

She tugs a little on his tie. “Don’t I deserve to have what I want?”

“Yes.” He means to steady himself with his hands on her hips, but he ends up pulling her closer. “Whatever you want.”

“Frank, please,” she murmurs. “I don’t want to wait anymore.”

How could he ever deny her? He presses his lips to hers, softly at first, then more insistent as she melts into him, pushing up onto her toes, carding her fingers through his hair. It feels like a promise, the way she kisses back, with confidence and conviction, like she’s never believed in anything more than this moment, here with him.

His hands map the shape of her body—her hips, her waist, her ribs. He counts each vertebrae in her spine with his fingers. He traces the outline of her jaw with his lips, nips at her neck with his teeth, tastes the thrum of her rapid pulse with his tongue. It thrills him, the sounds she makes, the knowledge that she’s just as undone by all of it as he is.

“I think this begs the question,” he says when he remembers he does have to breathe,” why haven’t you kissed me?”

“Um,” she starts, tilting her head as he slips his hand into her hair, giving him better access to her neck as she considers the question. “You’re too tall,” she decides. “What was I supposed to do? Jump?”

Frank snorts into her shoulder. “Joke.”

“Was it good?”

He kisses her again. He just can’t help it.

*

In mid-September, Frank receives his bronze chip.

That same day, he sits on a bench in the park by his old house. Tanner has found a friend, and they chase each other back and forth up the slide. Becca is sitting in the grass with Millie, showing her how she weaves a flower crown out of the clover.

Mel sits beside him, sprigs of purple bright against her braid. “One year,” she says.

In one year, he: went to rehab, got divorced, lost his job and got it back again, met the girl, got the girl, cried and laughed and fell in love.

“One year,” he repeats. “Time flies.”