Chapter Text
Mel skimmed another falling leaf underfoot. She liked fall; the orange of it all. The crackle of September. The cold meant she could wear her favourite fleece again. Her red scarf.
Princess had picked up knitting back in July and had circled the ER with a tape measure during her breaks, picking them off one by one. Gloves for Abbot. A red ribbed hat for Langdon.
‘To keep all that hair dry,’ Princess smiled. Frank ran a hand through his hair and the new nursing interns giggled.
Santos rolled her eyes, ‘Someone needs to shave him. Would do everyone a favour.’ Princess handed Mel a bundle of rust wool over the desk. She was still catching up with charting, bored out of her mind on the spinning office chair.
‘It’s soft - I made sure not to use anything too scratchy for you.’ Mel beamed and wound it around her neck.
‘I love it, thank you.’ Her chair spun around, flanked by two strong arms either side of her shoulders. She gripped the handles, steadying herself.
Langdon grinned down at her, ‘Look, we match.’ He made her dizzy. It was the chair. Probably.
Mel wound her scarf tighter and pulled it over her ears. It was too early in the morning for the sun to have warmed yet; that would come later. She wondered if Langdon was wearing his hat.
In the locker room, she prepped herself for what the day might bring. It might seem strange to arrive so early, but that’s how she liked it. Langdon’s locker sat below hers. She remembered their last full shift together in July, with the fireworks and all the mess with her deposition. He’d asked her about her day. No one did that often, it was unfamiliar for someone to genuinely want to know how she was. Not many people wanted to be genuine with her. That was okay, she didn’t mind. But this startled her all the same. It was new. He’d taken the summer to work things out with his divorce, she found out, and he’d moved to a new place in the city. It meant he’d picked up less shifts, which Mel hadn’t liked. Not that she missed him. She wouldn’t admit that, not yet.
She wanted him to ask her how her day was again. This time, she’d ask him about his. And if she was feeling brave, and his hand still shook with nerves, maybe this time she’d hold it.
‘Come here often?’
Mel jumped. That voice. Langdon took off his coat, shivering. He knelt to unlock his locker, a pink beaded bracelet bumping against the lock from his wrist. He looked well, if a little tired.
‘Do you always arrive early?’ he said.
‘I liked to get in before the rush. Clears my head,’ she said. He nodded, pulling his scrubs over his clean white t-shirt. ‘How was the time off?’
‘Constructive. Figured stuff out, you know, I probably needed it.’ He rose to meet her, crossing his arms over his chest. ‘But now I’m back for good.’
Mel grinned up at him. For good. She was a stickler for routine, and he’d been a part of it. Having him gone had shifted paradigms far greater than she could comprehend in her head. It would be nice to get back to familiarity.
Dana marched past, clipboard in hand. She halted and cocked a knee, ‘You back for more, Robinavitch?’
Robby bundled past them, all crumpled and with a faint odour of milk. A man on a mission. He handed the baby, tucked neatly under his arm, to Dana. He wasn’t supposed to be back from his sabbatical yet. Mel noticed him popping up every now and again in the ER, perfecting accidental jumpscares from behind curtains when she was with patients. He couldn’t resist that place. Mel knew the feeling well, the ER was becoming somewhere she was wanted. It was nice to feel needed.
‘Just getting more supplies. The kid goes through diapers like a hailstorm.’
Dana bounced the baby on her hip. ‘That’s the Jane Doe I know. ‘Atta girl.’
Jane waved her balled fist at Mel. She gave a quick wave back. She didn’t know babies, but this one seemed like a good one.
Dana leant warily into the supply closet where Robby was rootling around, throwing things in all directions. ‘So what’re you planning with our miracle baby, hmm? Hey, Robbie.’ She threw an empty bottle back at him that he’d launched from the cupboard. He rubbed his head.
‘I’ll call in later, I’m taking her to the motorbike rally downtown.’
Langdon kicked at a diaper on the floor, ‘Gotta raise them right.’
Robby stared at him, forgetting he’d been allowed back inside, like a dog shut outside in the rain. He still didn’t trust him, not quite. Mel rocked on her heels and sucked her lips at the awkwardness.
‘Okay. Good talk.’ She slipped out from behind Dana, dodging Jane’s spit-up. Robby sighed, wiping it away with his sleeve. He took the baby under his arm again.
‘You’ll sort that, won’t you Langdon.’
Langdon eyed the mess of supplies spilling from the supply closet.
‘Sure, yeah. Whatever you need.’
Robby nodded and walked away, Baby Jane Doe grabbing at his ear. Dana sighed, ‘That baby ain’t going nowhere, is she.’ She rested a hand on Langdon's shoulder. ‘First day back, kiddo. Do me proud.’
He picked up a few of the tumbling supplies. ‘This looks like it hasn’t been sorted in years.’
‘It hasn’t, we ain’t got the staff these days.’ She swivelled in calculation. ‘Mel can help you.’
Mel looked up from the spot she was eyeing on the linoleum. ‘Me?’
‘Who else, King?’ Dana patted her on the back. ‘Or if you’d rather finish charting…’
‘This is fine- great! This is…I’ll do this.’ Langdon handed her a bottle. He opened the closet door for her and gestured inside.
‘M’lady.’
They sat with their knees bunched up amongst the piles of bottles and blankets, clean scrubs and caps, all out of size order. Mel liked the order of things, when they aligned in satisfaction. Clouds stacked neatly in the sky. Books arranged in colour order. She liked when Langdon’s undershirt matched his socks. The little things.
‘Did you do anything this summer?’ she asked.
‘Uh, yeah. Took the kids to the waterpark, things like that. I was mostly sorting through paperwork - shitty divorce stuff.’ Langdon dropped his gaze. ‘It’s been…’
‘Messy?’
‘You could say that. Yeah.’ He shifted his weight and leant against his hands, his arms strong and taut beneath him. Mel dragged her eyes away from the vein beating by his wrist, favouring the intricacies of the ceiling vent instead. Much more interesting.
‘However tough it was, I’ve missed this. The ER. I guess I like that the chaos is expected, you know? I know what I’m walking into. With Abby, I can never guess.’
Mel lined the surgical glove boxes in a row.
‘I missed you,’ he said.
She knocked the box askew, sending it spiralling into his calf. He stopped it with his hand. She didn’t think he meant her. He missed the ER, yes. Arriving at 7am and leaving at 10, on a good day. Time away from his kids, and his strange new dog that he showed her photos of on his phone, that looked too much like a beaver for her liking.
Mel smiled, ‘I missed you too. Talking with you. No one asks me questions like you do.’
Langdon handed her the box. She watched how his knuckles bent, each one roughened from all the harsh antibacterial hand wash. He itched them a lot.
Talking about the divorce unsettled him, or at least, he seemed unsettled. He wasn’t organising things like she was, distracted. He put the caps in the wrong order. Maybe seeing Robby again had rattled him. She wanted to help.
To stop herself reaching out and clasping his hands, Mel scooted back a little.
‘I’ve got my second deposition, later in the fall. Sucks.’
‘Do you want to talk about it?’
‘I wouldn’t know what to say. The last one, I don’t know - I think I said all the wrong things, and it was really hot in there, and-’
Mel tried to find something to fixate on that wasn’t the man across the closet. She felt her shoulders begin to rise to her ears. She knew Langdon saw.
‘Look at us, a pair of shaking idiots,’ he said. The deposition really was getting to her. The apprehension. She felt Langdon take her hands in his. The roughened skin, holding her slim fingers.
‘I find this helps,’ he said, joining her hands together and guiding her to squeeze her smallest finger. She felt for the blood pulsing through to the nail, counting the beats. It was grounding. She let her breath settle and she eased, matching him. She looked up. He was scanning her face, and smiled once she’d leant back against the shelves.
‘Learnt that in rehab. Redirection, or whatever it’s called. Finding something else to think about when your mind’s cloudy. Something to touch.’
‘Touch has never worked well for me. Sometimes when I’m already overwhelmed, it just gets too much,’ she said. ‘I don’t see how it would help.’
‘Maybe no one’s taught you how to use it the right way,’ Langdon said. Mel blinked. She couldn’t delineate what he was getting at, was he asking to touch her? She glanced down at his hand once more. Maybe that would be okay. She wanted to. It did seem a little forward, though. No, he was teaching her to ground herself and that was that. Breathe in and out. She watched his Adam's apple move against his neck. His lashes flickered. Her chest felt impossibly tight.
She stacked the last box and hastened to her feet, unstable. He furrowed his brow.
‘It’s getting warm- very warm in here,’ she said. He joined her standing. There wasn’t much space between them; she hadn’t noticed before. He stuffed his hands in his pockets, nodding.
‘I could help you with the deposition. Later. I mean it,’ he said, ‘I want to help.’
‘I’d like that. I’m not good at answering questions,’ she said.
Langdon squinted slightly, playful. ‘I’m a good teacher.’
Mel needed to leave, it was too much. The warmth in her stomach was boiling over. She pushed past him into the door and dashed out, ‘I’ll catch you later.’
‘I’m serious,’ he said. ‘I’ll find you at the end of shift? We’ll get a drink, you up for it?’
She nodded and hurried away. She needed to cool off. He was saying all the right things, and it was overwhelming. She’d played over what she might say to him in her head, in those absent days without him. He wasn’t following her script. She swallowed, a hand against the wall. She wasn’t stupid. He was being friendly, this wasn’t like those times in medical school when she’d failed to take the hint from the nice guy at the bar, and her classmates had jested her. Friends went out together, got drinks. Friends helped each other.
Perhaps time away had mellowed Langdon. He seemed looser, more amiable. She slipped on her gloves with a twang to scare away the image of his hands on hers, replaying over and over. She gripped her little finger like he’s instructed. He was a good teacher. She turned. Dana was pointing him to a bay. He knelt for his charting information at the desk, and the curve of his back pulled taut against his shirt. There was more definition than she’d remembered - moving boxes into his new apartment must have toughened him.
‘King, are we on for karaoke tonight?’ Santos sauntered past to the lockers, just arriving. She paused. ‘Who’re you staring at?’
‘No one. Nothing.’ Mel squeezed her arms to her sides and joined her at the lockers.
‘Good, ‘cause I can’t have you running awry with pitt patients, not when I’ve got enough on my plate.’ She glanced at Whitaker running in from the ambulance bay, mopping at his brow and attempting to hang up the phone to Amy.
‘No, nothing like that. I’m actually busy tonight. I think,’ Mel said.
Santos leant against the locker, ‘Okay Mel, I see you. Got yourself a date. Nice work.’ She rummaged in her locker.
‘It’s not a date. Just friends helping friends.’
Santos followed her line of sight to Langdon in one of the bays.
‘Really? Langdon? You can do better, anyone could.’ Something deep in her locker piqued her interest. ‘Hey, who left their towel in here?’ She held the door open in offering. The nurses shook their heads. Garcia swooped in from above, snatching it up.
‘I’ve been looking for that,’ she said. She turned on her heel, winking at Santos. She rolled her eyes.
Whitaker dropped his bag on his farm boots, still a little dirt crusted. ‘Has anyone dropped a hat?’ He played with the tiny knit hat in his hands. ‘It was in the ambulance bay.’
‘You sure it’s not farm baby’s?’ Santos raised her eyebrows. Mel watched Whitaker get real red, real quick.
‘You know I don’t go over much anymore.’
Mel took it from him, ‘Is it not Baby Jane Doe’s?’
Whitaker shook his head, ‘No, hers are pink striped. Cotton.’
Javadi peers over, ‘How would you know that? It’s not like she’s your baby.’ Whitaker got even redder, which Mel didn’t think was possible. She thought of the colour spreadsheet Becca had filled out for her to file. Yes, he was deep crimson. Any more, and he’d be pushing night bordeaux. Interesting.
‘He’s still staying at Robby’s place,’ Santos said. ‘I said he could move back, but he’s enjoying shacking up with the ‘buds in babyville.’
‘Early parenthood's hard for anybody. I’m just staying until Robby’s more settled,’ Whitaker said.
Santos studied him, ‘Are you now.’
Princess pulled the hat from Whitaker’s grasp and clasped it to her chest. ‘Found it! It’s for Jane, then we can all match.’
‘Oh! Is it party time at the pitt? Didn’t think so! C’mon people,’ Dana swooped through their gaggle like a mother goose, barking orders. ‘These poor souls won’t help themselves, heaven forbid.’
Mel readied herself. Across the room, Langdon stood, rubbing his back. He smiled from behind the glass of South 15. Nodded. She warmed again. The kind of warmth she could only question without all the eyes on her, after the shift’s over, that’ll keep her questioning late into the night.