Chapter Text
Robby greets him at the lockers several moments after he steps foot into the ER.
He’s given his first drug test within hospital walls which sure, is embarrassing, but is arguably nothing compared to having to hand it over to Robby. He’d gotten scarily used to pissing in a cup but something about his former mentor holding it while trying to avoid direct eye contact makes him wish he had just stayed home today.
“Guess you drew the short straw, huh?” Frank tries to joke, and it doesn’t land because he’s pretty sure Robby still hates him, which is understandable since he still kind of hates himself too these days. There were no visits in rehab, no calls or texts before he had reached out on his own about the status of his job. He knows Robby talked to Abby several times though, so Frank tries to hold onto that knowledge that maybe one day there would be a chance to rebuild their relationship.
“Get to work, Dr. Langdon.”
Right, so today is definitely not that day which is fine, it’s fine, everything is just fine.
It’s jammed packed as always and he gets several uncomfortable looks as he navigates back into the pit. Nurses have always been a little hypercritical but thankfully no one is outright glaring at him yet. He's not sure what he expected, balloons and a cake that said 'Congrats on the rehab!' in disgusting blue frosting? Someone spitting on his face to remind him what a horrible person he was? Or maybe just Gloria and her HR cronies telling him they changed their mind, that he was in fact fired and needed to get the fuck out of the hospital.
The cold shoulder is kind of worse, dismissive in a way that makes his stomach roll, but then Dana gives him a smile and pats his hand, telling him there’s an ambulance en-route. There’s no one around for him to grab to come with him, so he latches on to what little motivation he has to still be here and sanitizes and downs a pair of gloves. It’s muscle memory despite the time off and something inside of him jitters and settles as he finds just enough footing to lead him to the ambulance bay.
There’s no way to ease into the emergency department and within the first twenty minutes of his shift he’s performing CPR on a thirteen year old drowning victim. Leading a case alone, because he’s still a senior resident, but out of practice and exhausted already, half wondering if he’s going to kill this girl.
Wouldn’t that be something.
“Let's push another round of epi,” he orders. He’s pretty sure he cracked one of the kid’s ribs and there’s a thin line of sweat forming on his brow. Already, he’s contemplating why he decided to return to work. Maybe Robby was right; he should’ve given it another month, maybe just quit altogether.
“Are you even allowed to do that?” someone asks. He barely glances up, they’re new, green, judgemental. Definitely a med student.
“Epi’s in, move,” this time it’s Santos which really almost makes him laugh and he wonders if she's here to put the final nail in his coffin, but she just bodies her way in across from the patient. “Do you need me to take over?”
Her tone isn’t condescending, she’s not trying to prove something and as he feels each lifeless push under his hands, he's reminded that he's not either.
“Yeah, yeah,” Frank agrees. “Switching in, three, two—”
Frank gets off the girl and Santos takes over, “How long has she been down for?”
“Twenty en-route with compressions, shocked, uh, twice then, five minutes with me, shocked her once, one round of epi,” he tells her. He watches the monitor, shakes his head when it looks like hieroglyphics for a second, but then nods, “Okay, let's shock her again.”
Santos gets off the patient, hands in the air, meeting Frank’s gaze for the first time. There’s no apology there, or anger, and despite the severity of their situation the tension in his shoulders loosens.
“Clear.”
The girl’s body jolts off the table and the monitor beeps, the entire room sighing out.
“She’s got a rhythm,” Santos says, lip quirking upwards. The med student, a pudgy white boy with thick black glasses, is still standing to her left and Santos glares at the poor kid. “Jesus, Dr. Kevorkian, go check on north three, that geezer better still be alive when I get there.”
The student flushes head to toe and scurries away and Frank fights the urge to laugh.
“Body temps up to 91 and oxygen is 83,” Frank says. The girl twitches on the table, her eyes fluttering wildly. “I think she’s waking up — hey, sweetheart, my name is Dr. Langdon, you’re in the hospital, can you hear me?” he listens to her heartbeat with his stethoscope, and glances up at Santos. “Dr. Kevorkian?”
She snorts, checking the girl’s pulse ox again, “Idiot ordered 200 of propranolol instead of 100 and almost killed some guy on his first day.”
“Jesus, where do they find these people?” Frank asks.
“I don’t know, they did let you back in here,” Santos smirks. He meets her eyes and finds them teasing, an olive branch, “Must be a real hiring shortage.”
“Yeah, I'm pretty sure Presby just threw out my application," he retorts, which isn't even a lie, and had been super fucking depressing, but for some reason he finds himself smiling slightly. Her brash honesty was almost refreshing and after being the victim of such tentative looks this morning, he felt like a person for a second. He wants to say more to her, to ask her why she wasn't biting his head off or to ask why she even came in here at all but the patient’s eyes finally open and she moans. “You’re okay, take it easy, can you tell me your name?”
“It’s good to have you back,” Santos offers and she’s gone before he can reply or decipher whether or not she was being sarcastic. He’s not sure she was.
“Where am I?” the girl asks.
Frank just shakes his head to himself and does the one thing he knows how to do; work.
***
His first attempt at rehab had lasted all of six days.
In the middle of his detox he had this revelation that this wasn’t jail, that he could leave whenever he wanted, so he did just that. His case manager tried to get him to stay but he packed up the few belongings he had, caught the bus, and ended up back home. He still had a stash of pills in the glove compartment of his truck and took three before he could rationalize just how bad of an idea it was.
Abby had found him a few hours later, bleary eyed and high, sitting on the floor of their bedroom with the dog he had impulsively bought a few weeks ago snoring on his thigh.
He was just glad the kids were at her mom’s house that day.
When he came to, he remembered Abby crying, which never made him feel good, but instead of comforting her like a good husband would’ve, he bargained with her in the midst of her distress. He could get clean at home, they just had to get rid of the medication in the house. This was a one time thing and he'd never do it again. He could get himself better here. He was a doctor after all.
Frank barely remembers that day but he knows he begged and knows at some point he threatened leaving her if she didn’t help him.
Sometimes he wishes that she did leave him right then, if only to spare the heartache he put her through in the following months as she continually tried and failed to get him sober. She was always a better person than he was, loyal to a fault, hoping she could help him fix himself. He resented her for trying to help him, but the hatred he felt towards himself was just shy of enough to actually get him to stop using.
For weeks he weaned himself down only to fall right back into it. No job left more time to himself, more time to just take another. Never with the kids around, told himself he was managing things just fine, that he wasn't actually hiding anything from them, lying. He found himself by the park by their house a lot, sitting on a bench staring out at the little pond, watching the water ripple as the ducks swam by. Sometimes he would wander for hours, phone off, hoping to just feel something. Abby would scream and cry when he got home after disappearing and in turn he would say horrible, awful things back to her that he knows he'll regret for the rest of his life. She cared about him but it didn't matter, because he didn't think anything would ever matter more than the feeling of being high.
It took Tanner finding his stash for him to go back to rehab again.
Frank thought he was being smart, hiding the pills in the downstairs half-bathroom they never finished remodeling. That door always remained closed but the kids were playing hide and seek and Tanner’s an inquisitive kid, he gets that from his father. His son had found the small bag of pills he had shoved under the sink, and he’s just grateful Tanner brought them to Frank directly with a quiet ‘Daddy what’re these?’ rather than fucking taking them.
He’ll never get the screams and cries of the parents who have lost their children out of his head and with the realization that he could cause this within his own family, he tells Abby that night he needs to go back to rehab for real this time.
Frank never tells her about the drugs Tanner found, he’s not sure he’ll ever be able to tell her.
His second attempt at rehab is the worst experience of his life. His detox is significantly worse - his usage frequency had increased and his tolerance had only grown. Quitting cold turkey had led to shakes and sweats and stomach pains that he still shudders at the memory of. He remembers begging a nurse for a hit of anything, just to take the edge off. He remembers wanting to die.
After the detox from hell, his desire to be a perfectionist finally got put to use. He’s always been good at things; he maintained a 4.5 GPA in high school despite nearly not graduating for excessive absences, he could pick up just about any sport if he gave it half his attention, learned how to play the piano in less than a year, and was almost proficient in ASL. He got a 513 on the MCAT, excelled in medical school and was at the top of his residency before he had to leave the hospital. If there was ever a time to get good at something, it was for this, and between detox and group counseling and individual therapy, he leaves rehab thirty days later with five gold stars, clean, and ready to go home.
At home things are harder, because he has a car and he still has a medical license and a prescription pad and too much free will.
He doesn’t act on anything, and Abby helps him flush the remaining drugs he had access to, most of them coming from inside his car. He gets a therapist that's a little too judgemental and goes to NA meetings three times a week. Sometimes four. At one of them he sees a nurse from radiology that he’s not sure recognizes him fully but meets his eyes across the scruffy church basement room enough times that Frank finds another group to fall into.
Five months post rehab, mid-therapy, new-discussions of divorce, he calls Robby and asks if he can come back to work.
It takes another two months for the logistics to be worked out - Robby never told anyone about the stealing which he’ll owe him a debt for the rest of his life for, but he can’t touch medications indefinitely (fine), he’ll be repeating his 4th year (also fine), and he’s been put on mandatory drug tests and a probationary period (expected).
By the time he’s able to step foot into the hospital, he’s been nearly eight months clean, the divorce papers have been signed, and just last night, Tanner told him he hated him.
At least Abby was letting him keep the dog.
***
Frank’s had worse shifts but at multiple points throughout the day, he finds himself staring at the exit. He bounces between patients and has stilted awkward conversations with several of his coworkers. McKay gives him a quick hug and ruffles his hair like he’s a kid despite her being only slightly older than him. Mohan squeezes his wrist and says he can always talk to her about anything, which he knows is true and he doubts he’ll ever take her up on. Whitaker, who Frank only remembers as the boy who killed a rat in the middle of the ER, forgot what Frank’s name was and Santos laughs so hard at him he’s worried she’s pulled a muscle.
All in all it could be worse; a part of him expected the cold shoulder or for outright hatred for what he did. But he realizes only Robby and Santos know about the stealing, which somehow she’s already looked past despite being so adamantly anti-asshole, a confounding factor since he knew he was. Her response to him is the most confusing, but he’d take that over the uncomfortable looks from new faces. He can only imagine the horrible things they’ve heard about him, but surprisingly it’s not all bad. A female nurse he’s never met even comes up to him and invites him to join their little hospital group for recovering addicts. They get pizza on Thursdays. He says yes.
Frank’s chugging a red bull, eyeing the board when he hears her.
“You’re here!”
Frank turns in time to be met with blonde hair pressed into his mouth and glasses against his cheek, a tiny ‘oof’ passing his lips. He doesn’t have time to return the hug, as quick as she’s there, she’s gone, the scent of strawberry shampoo a phantom in his nose.
“Sorry,” Mel laughs, adjusting her stethoscope around her neck. “I’m just so glad you’re back! I really missed you.”
Frank blinks and leans his back against the nurses station. He hasn’t seen her in months but she looks at him like no time has passed at all.
“You did?”
“Yeah,” Mel replies with a smile. “You’re a good teacher and you know,” she shrugs, lowering her voice slightly. “What you did was very hard and you’re here, which is very admirable.”
“Oh, well, um,” he rubs the back of his neck awkwardly but smiles slightly. “Thanks, Mel, I appreciate that.”
“Of course,” she says. “Well, I have a patient in south 13 with two broken wrists, five broken fingers, and a broken toe,” she points over her shoulder with her thumb, her smile unwavering. “Gymnast. I could use some help?”
He blows a breath and nods, pushing himself off the nursing station to trail after her.
“So, how have you been?” he asks, sanitizing and gloving before he enters the room with her. The patient, a college kid, muscular and miserable, has both his arms elevated on pillows with ice bags on top of them. His eyes are red rimmed and Frank feels for the kid, knowing an injury like this might’ve just thrown a wrench in his career.
“This is Dr. Langdon, our senior resident,” Mel introduces far too easily, “We’re going to set these fingers while we wait for orthopedics to set your wrists, how’s your pain level?” she asks, sitting next to the patient who just grunts, she looks back at Frank and shrugs. “I’ve been good. I did a month rotation with ortho actually so I could probably set his wrists,” she laughs lightly but then looks at the patient with a grimace, “Uh, but I can’t technically so we do have to wait. I’m so sorry about that.”
“Whatever,” the kid mumbles.
“But you’re back here?” Frank questions, sitting on the other side of the bed. He inspects the hand on his side, one finger definitely broken, the other most likely just a jammed knuckle.
“Oh, yes,” Mel responds, “You’re going to feel a small pop, Andrew,” she tells their patient, setting the finger. Their patient swears and Mel makes a humming noise. “Let’s up his morphine.”
“You have to do it,” Frank reminds her gently. Mel gets up and does it immediately, settling back down into her chair. He’s struck by how much more sure of herself she seems, not that she was timid during her first shift, just new. It makes sense that she’s gained some confidence in the past few months, she was good at this, no wonder she returned to emergency medicine.
“I did a month with internal medicine too,” Mel continues, setting the final finger on her side. Frank hasn’t even started and the college kid has that fluttery eye look that tells him he won’t feel a damn thing. He’s jealous. Pops the finger on his side. “It was just kind of…” she waves a hand, putting a splint along the fingers, “Well, boring, frankly.”
“Who knew you were such an adrenaline junkie,” Frank jokes, finishing up on his side. He probably shouldn’t be making jokes like that, but Mel isn’t fazed, just continues working. He forgot that he liked that about her. He lifts the ice on his wrist to make sure there’s no blood compartmentalizing and sets it back down.
Mel does the same on her side and she only shrugs again.
“I like the triage, and I like that I can handle a crisis,” she tells him, “And someone once told me that the ER needed sensitive people so…” her lips twitch like she’s trying not to smile but she loses fairly quickly. “I feel like I’m needed here.”
“You are,” Frank says immediately. He remembers every detail of his last shift with agonizing clarity and even though there were parts of it he wanted to forget desperately, he was glad he could recall the cases they worked together that day, glad something he said had even stuck with her.
This time she doesn’t try to tamper down her smile and she stands, stretching her hands over her head briefly.
“I heard there’s donuts in the lounge,” she states. Then looks at the patient, “Your fingers are all set and orthopedics should be here within the next few hours. How’s your pain level?”
“M’all good, lady,” he mumbles, shutting his eyes with a content smile.
“Lower the morphine?” Frank suggests and Mel nods, lowering the drip and disposing of her gloves. Mel doesn’t check to see if Frank’s following her to their break room but he’s right behind her anyway, fiddling with the empty space where his wedding band used to be.
There’s two nurses in the lounge when they enter and it’s clear they don’t realize who’s entered the room since they’re both able to catch the tail end of the conversation.
“...early for someone like that to come back, what the hell was Robby thinking?”
“It’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.”
Mel’s hand twitches on the box of donuts and she coughs uncomfortably to let their presence be known. The nurses don’t bother to look embarrassed but thankfully they both leave before Frank does something stupid like cry… or throw up… or cry and throw up.
Mel nibbles on a glazed donut and slides the box towards Frank wordlessly and he finds himself one with chocolate frosting, Tanner’s favorite. As he takes a bite he remembers the angry tears in Tanner’s eyes the other night when Frank was trying to tuck him into bed.
He didn’t understand why his daddy wasn’t sleeping in mommy’s room anymore or why he was starting to pack his things up. Erin was younger so she had less questions, but Tanner didn’t do well with change as it was, and his father moving out was practically world-ending.
“People still talk about me being kind of… off putting,” Mel offers, “If it makes you feel better.”
Frank frowns, swallowing, the sugar heavy in his throat.
“It doesn’t,” Frank replies sincerely. “You’re not off putting, what is wrong with them?”
Mel shrugs, unbothered.
“You get used to it,” she admits, “Between me and my sister, I’ve never been exactly, well, popular. But you get good at finding people who like you for you, and who don’t judge you for things you can’t control.”
“Some would argue I could control my addiction,” he says quietly.
“Well, they’d be wrong,” Mel says simply. He’s struck again by how sure of herself she seems and he wonders just how much she’s been through in these past few months during her residency, how many patients she’s lost, how many victims of abuse she watched return home with their abuser, how many kids she witnessed get torn from their parents. She’s remained empathic, but it’s accompanied by a harder shell than when he first met her. It’s admirable and he finds himself envious.
She finishes her donut and cleans her hands with a napkin.
“Come on, we should go pick someone up from waiting before Robby finds a clever nickname to call us slow,” she says.
"You don't have to do that, you know," he finds himself saying and she just looks at him with a frown, "Work with me. I don't want you to feel like, obligated."
"Why would I feel obligated to work with you Dr. Langdon?"
She sounds genuinely confused and he takes another bite of his donut, grimacing as he chews.
"Because, like," he says, mouth full. He swallows and sighs. "I'm the drug addict charity case and you're too nice to let me suffer out there alone. Even though I fucking deserve it."
"I'm not that nice," she tries. "Trinity asked me for a chocolate pudding cup the other day and I told her the cafeteria ran out but I really had the last one," her cheeks flush slightly at her admittance, and she holds her hands up in mock surrender, "I had a bad shift that day. A patient threw up on my shoes."
"Pudding hoarding was definitely warranted then," Frank concurs, then sighs again. "But Mel—"
She holds up a hand at him so he'll stop, "I think we work well together and this isn't out of pity. You're a good doctor and you listen to me when I talk. Or at least you did. Are you still going to?"
So at odds with the girl he remembered but months in the ER would do that to the right person. He didn't even really know her and yet he was proud of her.
"Yeah, yes."
Mel grins.
"Then let's go."
She motions for him to join her and Frank throws the remaining bit of his donut away and wipes his hands on his pants, following after her yet again.
He finds himself sticking to her side the remainder of their shift; she is easy to work with and for the first time in a while he feels like himself again. He was good at being a doctor, in some ways he knew he was better at this than being a father. And Mel’s presence is soothing; she’s so calm it forces the parts of his brain that are ready to bounce between six different streams of consciousness at once to settle. He can tell she choosing lighter cases for them but he doesn't care, doing CPR first thing this morning was enough for him on his first day back. He'd gladly help her do sutures, give two teenagers a safe sex talk, and remove a tick.
Before he knows it the night shift is rolling in where he gets a ‘Yo, Dr. Langdon, I thought you died!’ from Shen and a ‘Dude, you look like shit, glad you’re back’ from Ellis. Abbot just grunts at him but claps him on the back during the handover so all-in-all it wasn’t a bad first day.
At the lockers his hand tenses slightly when he tries to open it, remembering the last time he collected his things. He reminds himself that this is different and Mel’s by his side before the spiral can ever truly start.
“Are you working tomorrow?” she asks, leaning against the lockers next to him. She’s got her hair out of her braid and a hoodie on, comfortable in a way that’s at odds with the archetypes he’s created for her in his mind.
“Um, yeah,” he replies, sliding his own jacket on, “I’ll be in tomorrow.”
“Mel!” Santos calls out near the exit and they both turn. “Trivia?”
Mel’s nose scrunches and she shakes her head.
“Not tonight, sorry, Trinity.”
Santos groans and hikes her backpack up on her shoulder.
“We always lose when it’s just me and Huckleberry,” she complains lightly but then she waves a hand. “But yeah, see ya tomorrow,” she says, then meets Frank’s eyes. “Garcia said our drowning girl’s gonna make a full recovery.”
And then she’s gone out the doors before he can reply, instead he just nibbles on the inside of his cheek.
He’s surprised Mel waits for him to finish at his locker and more surprised when she walks quietly next to him out of the building. The sun is fighting to stay out as the last bits of winter cling on to the blooming changes of spring but the air is still chilly so he shoves his hands into his pockets.
“Where are you parked?” he asks, because his mother didn’t raise him to be a complete asshole and the least he could do after she was so kind to him today would be to walk her to her car.
“Oh, I take the bus,” she says, shrugging. “Nothing really beats the metro but it’s not that inconvenient.”
He doesn’t really believe her and raises an eyebrow.
“You’re from New York?”
She shakes her head, “No, here actually, but I went to Georgetown.”
“Oh, Abby’s from Ashburn,” he finds himself saying and Mel’s eyebrows draw together in confusion, “My wife, ex-wife,” he cringes, “Anyway, do you, uh, I can give you a ride?”
“You don’t even know where I live,” she replies, clearly amused. It’s not a ‘no’ and he just sighs, waving a hand for her to follow him to his car.
His truck is kind of a mess but Mel doesn’t say anything about the various take-out wrappers littering the floor, only moves her feet so she’s not touching them. He’ll have to clean that out tomorrow morning.
He hands her his phone to plug her address into (an 'awe, cute kids!' at his homescreen of Tanner and Erin smushed together in what he referred to as forced sibling get-along-time) and asks her what kind of music she listens to which turns into a light-hearted argument over her surprising taste in what Frank dubs ‘frat basement music’.
“I’ve never even attended a frat party!”
“Now that I believe.”
He pulls up to Mel’s house, a house not an apartment, with a clearly hand painted pink mailbox and tulips that are sprouting too early in the season. It’s small and victorian, with a huge porch that’s cluttered with bikes and gardening tools, the light above the door flickering a warm amber. It looks lived in.
“I hope this wasn’t too out of the way for you,” she says as he idles.
“It’s actually pretty close to the hotel I’m staying at.”
It’s out of his mouth before he can take it back and Mel frowns so deeply he wants to reach across the console and smooth it with his thumb.
“You’re staying at a hotel?” she asks gently. It’s the voice she uses when she’s talking to a patient that’s been crying, he heard it just a few hours ago when they were sitting with a girl that tried to OD on a bunch of pills. He’s not sure he likes being on the other end of it.
“Yeah, uh, just until I can find somewhere,” he says awkwardly. “It’s fucking criminal how much they’re charging for a one bedroom in this stupid city.”
Mel hums and she opens her mouth to say something that will no doubt be the nicest thing he’s ever heard so he interrupts her before she can say anything. He doesn’t deserve anymore of her kindness today.
“It’s fine, Mel, really,” he tells her, even though it’s not and it’s embarrassing and he hates his life, “Just, uh, could you not tell anyone about this?”
“Of course,” she replies earnestly. He can tell she wants to say more but she shakes her head slightly and then just smiles at him. “Thanks for the ride. It really is great to have you back Dr. Langdon.”
“Thanks for today, Mel,” he tells her seriously. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”
She nods and gets out of his car, turning and giving a little wave as she goes. He waits until she’s walked through her front door to pull away and heads straight to a meeting.
***
Mel knew he was returning today but seeing him there had floored her.
That shift was still burned into her memory and revisited her often like a livewire. It was riddled with the worst moments of her life and some of the best, a conundrum she was still trying to work out with her therapist.
Finding out he was a drug addict had been upsetting, finding out he wasn’t in rehab and there was no way to contact him had been impossible. She didn’t know what she would’ve said anyway, they didn’t know each other, not really. But she wanted to, had journaled about it too much, these things that tangled around her brain far too often.
Thank you for supporting me that day.
Did you only do it because you were high?
She had only found out he had gone to rehab when she overheard Dr. Robby telling Dr. Collins that he might be returning to PTMC. Mel had sat in the lounge for a very long time until Santos found her and dragged to help with a MVC. She had pushed that odd excitement and nerves she felt into a neat little box until it was re-opened a few months later when Dr. Robby officially announced to the staff Dr. Langdon was returning.
That day was horrible. Most people either didn't care or were close enough to Dr. Langdon that they were happy for his return, but too many people were far too vocal in their discomfort with an addict working with them. She remembers finding Dr. McKay crying in a stairwell and offering her a tissue. Dana had threatened to switch several people to night shift and Dr. Robby was so frustrated by the entire ordeal he left halfway through his shift. She hated that day.
The anger faded by the time he did actually return, which she was beyond grateful for. She’s glad he’s back, she’s glad she gets to work with him again and hopefully to become his friend, in the same, surprising way, she had become friends with Trinity and Dennis and Samira. It had always been difficult for her to meet people that tolerated her, let alone liked her. She was hoping Dr. Langdon would be one of them too.
As Mel walks around the house to dispose of her work bag she's met with the sound of her own echoing footsteps and her hands start to shake slightly.
She's not to due to pick up Becca for another hour but she leaves the house anyway and decides to walk; it’s only fifteen minutes but there’s a bench outside that’s not filled with so many memories and the absence of her mother’s laughter.
Mel would give anything to fill the silence again.