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6:00 am
It’s probably a testament to how magnetic Dr Langdon is, but it feels like she’s seen a ghost—her next breath punched out of her chest, the world around them slowing dramatically—when she walks out one of the patient rooms, half an hour left of this night shift that feels like it’s never going to end, to make direct eye contact with him hovering by charge desk. Return paperwork folded up into an envelope that’s all crinkled from how tightly he’s grasping it. She assumes he thought it would be best to get in as early as possible, even if he doesn't start until the afternoon, to run into as few people as possible. Feels a little bad about accidentally messing up his plan until she realises that he's looking over at her with an expectant smile.
It feels better to look around and figure out that she’s not the only one affected. It feels like everyone in the space is holding their breath, like they’re waiting for someone to say something wrong or to look at him in the wrong way, and for him to just vanish into thin air. She turns to sanitise her hands, counting to five in her head, and when he’s still standing there when she’s done, she decides to make her way over. “Hey,” he smiles, but it’s cautious, like he’s worried about scaring her off. Like he has any reason to fear that she’ll disappear on him when, historically, things have only played out the other way around. She pushes the bitter feeling swirling in her chest at that as far down as she can stomach it, taking the liberty to get as close to him as she can, buzzing with the need to feed off some of that magitism, the rubber tops of their tennis shoes knocking together. “Hey, you’re looking at me like you can’t believe I’m real.”
“I barely can,” she returns, trying to keep her tone light and airy. Biting at the inside of her bottom lip on the realisation that it doesn’t land. “I was starting to think that I’d just made you up.”
He nods, pouty lips pushed up, turning away from her to grin at the ceiling. “Joke?”
“Joke,” she easily confirms. Watching him pause to hand over his papers to Dana when she comes rushing over, letting her take his hand, holding it close before she’s gone again. “Still,” he says, “I’m sure it kind of felt like that, yeah? Here one moment, then poof… gone the next ten months.”
She wonders if her expression is as incredulous as it feels. A sick part of her brain wonders if he’s testing her or something. “It’s not about me.”
Langdon looks down at her like she’s got three heads. “Sure… but that doesn’t mean that it didn’t affect you. Some people,” he starts, before thinking it over, wincing. “Robby said that you took it pretty hard.”
Getting called out so directly probably should hurt, but it doesn’t, because it’s true. There’s no reason for her to get defensive when she found herself feeling his phantom presence hovering behind her, praising and guiding her through it as she works on a patient, had felt him there almost every shift since she started. Has tried so hard to be okay with him just not being there, there’s no reason for her to still feel it so bad, but even she can admit that it still stings a little.
“No one would tell me what happened. I left that night thinking I would see you the next day. It was… hard when that wasn’t true.”
His eyes are a little glassy when she looks up at him, spinning his wedding band around and around, so loose it looks like it’s about to fly off.
She doesn’t want to make it worse and she really doesn’t want to make it about her, but she can’t stop her brain from wanting answers from him. “I don't know," Mel sighs, not wanting to come across as needy. "You could have told me you weren’t going to be here anymore.”
“I get why you feel that way,” Frank reasons, tucking his cap down, looking uncharacteristically nervous. Like he didn't expect her to want any explanation. “But it was a mass casualty event, Mel. We barely had time to breathe.”
“You had time to compliment my technique on the patient with the deaf son.” She reminds carefully. “I don't think it really matters that it was an MCI. You knew it didn't matter how well you did that night. How you performed didn't matter to him, there was no way he would have changed his mind. You should have told me.”
He’s pulling a sour face, expression reeking of regret, which is how she knows that he knows she’s right on this one. Lets the little win simmer under her skin as she thinks, wanting to keep them on the right foot.
“It was other things too,” she says, “that made me miss you. Not just the bad things or the hard shifts. Whenever something went well with a patient, I wanted to tell someone. I tried a few times at the start, trying to engage with whoever was around, but it didn’t feel like anyone else wanted to hear it.”
“But I would’ve?” Frank whispers, even though it’s something he probably holds the responsibility to clarify. He still looks less sure of himself, and maybe that’s just a part of him now. Totally possible that the full frontal impact of his pain, with nothing blurring it at the edges, may make him less certain in general. Second-guessing everything. The carelessly great part of his personality that had radiated in how he'd interacted with everyone else but her just gone. It makes her chest ache a little.
“I mean… in my head, at least,” she says, fiddling with the stethoscope slung around the back of her neck so she doesn’t reach out to touch him instead, “yeah.”
“Mel,” he groans, shoving his hands into the tight front pockets of his jeans like he’s having to hold back from the very same impulse. “I would have. I want to listen, whenever, yeah? Whatever it is. Please.”
9:00 pm
He’s seven hours into his shift when she gets there for her the start of her own. Running on four hours of sleep and a shitty cafeteria coffee. Grimaces delicately when McKay hands her a heat pack and spins her around in the direction of the staff lounge, knows what’s in there waiting for her. Frank’s leant back against the ratty couch in the far corner when she walks in, eyes closed, hands propped up behind his head. Not noticing she’s there until the microwave beeps, startling out of his half-sleeping state, pressing a dramatic hand over his heart. “Fuck, Mel.”
“Sorry to scare you,” she says, peeking over at him from the half-wall blocking out the kitchen. “Back hurts?”
“Yeah,” he grumbles, wincing as he sits up properly. “I knew it would be tough, obviously. But this shit sucks.”
She gets it, getting sober was a necessity for him, but that of course doesn’t mean that the reason why he was prescribed the pills in the first place magically disappears once he’s weaned off them. Forcing himself through lifting patients, bending to thread stitches and feeding tubes down people's throats with nothing to take the edge off.
It’s hard, she’s sure that it is so hard, but she’s also sure that he can get through it.
“You can be hurt and still do your job,” she can’t help but remind him, walking over and gesturing for him to arch up, slipping a pink wheat heat pack to his lower back, and passing him a strawberry and cream lollipop she’d nicked from the candy bowl near Paeds. Sitting back on her heels in front of him to watch the relief cross his face as the sugar slides over his tongue and he settles back against the heat. “It’s not a weakness, it’s a setback. More importantly, it’s one that doesn’t stop you from being a good doctor.”
“But does that even matter?” He asks, cheeks hollowing around the lolly as he thinks, before chewing down on it, even though she’s super sure that he gives his kids shit for doing the same stuff, half-hearted warnings about chipped teeth and cavities. “I am a good doctor, but I was a good doctor when the benzos were shutting my brain up for a couple of hours at a time.”
“You’re more alert now.”
“That’s not the point, Mel.” He stresses, mouth twisting. “I’ve always been good at this, so if this is all I’m good at after all this work on myself, then I’m still failing. Being a good doctor doesn’t make me a good father… or a good man.”
She nods, shifting her weight back and forth for a few seconds before deciding to be brave and settle in next to him, legs tucked up between them. “Being an addict doesn’t make you bad.”
“I know that, believe me. That was beat into me at rehab.” Frank snarks, chewing down on the lollipop stick, swinging it around his mouth with his teeth until she reaches for it herself. Folding it into her fist, not at all deterred by the fact that it was a little sticky and wet with his saliva. “It’s not the pills that I’m stuck up on. It’s everything else, what trying to keep it from everyone uncovered.”
“That’s part of the dependency,” she promises, keeping her voice carefully steady. Recalling the language and reassurances all the textbooks and pamphlets she’d pored over once she heard the news about him swear by. “The addiction.”
“No,” he swears, shaking his head, eyes lit up when he turns back to look at her properly. “No, Mel, it was me. I can be like that. I can lie and cheat and keep things from the people who are important to me. I’m selfish, I can shove other people aside to get what I want, I’ll put myself first almost always.”
“You were hurting.”
“That doesn’t mean that those behaviours didn’t already exist,” he mutters, “they did, I’m telling you they did. Which just made it so much easier for them to rear their ugly head when stuff got rough. Throwing Santos under the bus, giving Robby shit for his attachment to Adamson. Hurting people to try and save myself, I’d do that a lot.”
She’s sure that he’s right, that he’s been through enough mandated group therapy to be able to pick up on his own toxicities with the hopes of reversing them, but she can see right through him. Back to self-sabotaging. Has done it with pretty much every relationship he’d been keeping stong about a year ago: Abby, his kids, Robby. And now, apparently, Mel too.
“Are you trying to get me to change my mind about you?”
“I don’t want to leave you hanging, Mel,” he groans, hand reaching out to wrap around her ankle. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to not let you down.”
She nods, mouth pulled tight with disappointment, covering his hand with her own. “I’m a big girl, I can handle it.”
“You shouldn’t have to.”
“Maybe,” she concedes, feeling out the veins popping from his hand, his knobby fingers, tracing the curve of his thumb under hers. “But I’m so good at taking care of people, you should let me take care of you too.”
He chuckles at that, shoulders shaking, their twin scrubs ruffling with the movement where they’re only just pressed together. “You were right this morning, I should have told you.”
“Thank you for saying that,” she mutters, twisting her grip on him so their fingers are twisted together again. Loose enough that he can pull away if it’s too much. “Can I ask why you didn’t?”
“Ego, probably,” he relents, squeezing her hand. Her stomach twists in a good way when he doesn’t drop it. “Maybe I was just reading into it, or my memory of the good parts of the day are a bit rose-coloured, but Mel, you liked me. I could just tell. It wasn’t just wanting to learn from me or looking up to me or whatever. You really liked me.”
Of course I did. “I have addicts in my family. We aren’t close and it was mainly street drugs, but still. I wouldn’t have thought any less of you.” She promises, “I don’t think any less of you.”
“I liked you too,” he admits right back. “When Whitaker lost his first patient, and we were all huddled, I just remember looking over at you. Watching how your face changed, how you twisted up your hands, how you dealt with hard things. I wanted to see what made you happy, what made you tick. Wanted to try and look out for you. To try my best to stop you from having to see too much of the bad parts so early on.” He laughs to himself, “of course I tragically failed at that endeavour.”
She sniffs, something in her — pretty sure it’s also an ego thing — forcing her to hold back from telling him the truth, pushing up to stand instead. “Let me reheat that for you.” But Frank doesn’t let go of her hand, pulling her close again instead, one of her knees landing between his legs, the other pressing into the edge of the body of the couch. Lets Langdon’s free hand come up to stabilise her, bleeding warmth into her hip through her clothes, stopping her from falling face-first into his shoulder.
“Frank,” she breathes, feeling a little uncoordinated and a lot desperate, letting his responding groan wash over her, toes curling up in her runners. This isn’t smart, her brain reminds her. “Mel,” he mutters, knocking his head back to stare at the fluorescents above them, and it makes her want to close her eyes, not sure she could stomach watching him change his mind about her in real-time. “This is… this wouldn’t be smart.”
No, of course it wouldn’t be smart. Good to know they are on the same page about this too, but she figures that whether or not something is a good idea doesn’t really matter when she’s half in his lap and his breath flutters through her flyaways on each exhale.
“So?”
He’s gazing up at her like he can't believe that word just came out of her mouth, shifting to something more desperate in seconds, looking like he’s almost begging for her to decide for him. So clear that he wants her to guide him. So, for once, she does. Keeping eye contact for as long as possible as she dips to mouth at chin and kiss his jaw, kind of hating him for tugging her this close if he wasn’t willing to take it seriously — to take her seriously. She pulls back, ready to whine about it, but then he’s smoothing a hand up over her cheek, thumbing at her chapped bottom lip before pulling her closer, kissing her tongue first. Guiding her when she melts against him, legs stretched out into a proper straddle now, groin pressing into the tight muscle of his thigh, gasping into his mouth at the contact. Hands running down her back when she pulls back to push his hair up off his forehead, her own tucking up the front of his top layers to graze her palm over his stomach. Rocking down into him when he feels her out properly, carefully learning her upper thighs before squeezing her ass.
It’s way too fast for this to be happening, sirens blaring in her head as well as this little snarky voice calling her a total idiot, and yet she has no time for it. Not when she feels like she’s almost absorbing his thoughts through osmosis: I want to be good for you, but what if that isn’t enough?
It makes her think of the last time they were both in this room just the two of them. Back before she knew about his injury, before she knew the nuiances of his choice to sink down onto the floor next to her, way to caught up in her own head and toxic thought spiral about not being good enough. She regrets it now, wishes that she had the brain space to track how slow he moved, how his hands shook, how his face contorted. How he swallowed it all down to reassure her of her importance, that the E.D. needed her, that he needed her. Knows now that was Frank betting on her, investing in her and all she could become. It only feels fair that she does the same for him now.