Chapter Text
July
“C’mon, Mel, I’m going to die of boredom charting if you don’t keep me entertained,” Santos whines, thrusting her bottom lip out into an exaggerated pout and making her eyes wide. “Huckleberry’s on nights this week so it’s not like I can tort- I mean talk to him while I’m doing this.”
Mel’s still not sure whether she can call what she and Santos have a friendship, not really, but she thinks they might be halfway there. At least, the R2 has been making an effort to use her actual name recently instead of whatever medical term starting with the same three letters pops into her head, so she’s decided that’s close enough. “Okay, sure. Um, I could read you this article about-”
“Ugh, lame. You ever play ‘fuck, marry, kill’?”
“I did go to college, Trinity. And Med School.” And okay, perhaps her version of playing the game looked less like joining in with the raucous laughter of her peers and more sitting on the sidelines giving careful thought to the options presented to others and then never daring to verbalise them for fear of making the wrong choice, but Santos doesn’t need to know that.
“Relax, Melanoblast, I was just checking,” Santos responds, and while the nicknames seem to have made a return there’s no malice in her tone. She spins lazily in her chair, eyes scanning the floor, and Mel’s starting to regret this already. “Okay, so, fuck, marry, kill: Abbott, Robby, and…” One final spin and a strange look comes over her face as she says the final name, distracted by something behind Mel. “Langdon.”
“Well,” Mel begins, brows knitting together in concentration as she starts to think. “Dr Abbott still intimidates me a little bit, but I’m also fairly certain he’d survive any attempt on his life anyway, so I think I’d try to kill him and just not do a very good job of it? Robby is, well, Robby. He’s like our ED dad, and I’d rather not have that mental image in my head, so I’ll marry him and we can live perfectly happy, separate but legally entangled lives. Which I guess leaves me to…y’know…Dr Langdon, I guess?”
The strange look is still on Santos’ face, but there’s also a hint of something that Mel recognises as amusement as well now, and she starts to get a sinking feeling in her stomach as she considers that perhaps the final name on the list wasn’t chosen quite so randomly as she initially assumed. “He’s behind me, isn’t he?” she says with a wince.
“Process of elimination, Dr King? Talk about a blow to the ego.”
She turns around, slowly, to see Langdon himself standing there, one hand clenched dramatically over his heart. Behind her Trinity mutters something about hearing the patient in North 12 calling for her before she darts off, charting abandoned, and Mel has just enough time to think about how odd that sounds seeing as the last time she checked the patient in North 12 was on a vent waiting for an ICU bed to open up before Langdon’s closing the distance between them and leaning down to rest his forearms on the desk next to her.
“I, uh, I didn’t - that is, Santos was bored, and, we, uh - I didn’t realise you were on today?” She’s scrambling for something, anything, to move the conversation on to safer topics, hoping he’ll take the hint and start talking about anything other than what he just overheard.
There’s a small smile playing on his lips though as he looks at her, eyes softening as he seems to take note of the fact that she’s uncomfortable. “Relax, Mel. I was just messing with you. Besides, with the divorce and everything it’s been a while since a beautiful woman even considered…y’know…with me, so it’s a compliment, really, even if I was your last resort.”
And there’s a lot to unpick in that sentence, a lot that she knows the bright lights and near-constant noise of the ED won’t give her the opportunity to process any time soon, but he’s still looking at her, smile starting to falter with every second that passes without her saying anything in response, and while she’s never been great at reading most people somehow she’s never had any trouble reading him, and she knows he just needs something from her, something to prove that they’re on the same page, as always, that if there’s any joke to be had here it’s one they’re both in on.
So she shakes her head, rolling her eyes as she lets out a laugh that’s really not a lot more than a sharp exhale of breath and says, “If it’s an ego boost you’re after you should spend more time around the nurses up in the ICU, ER Ken.”
Which turns out to be exactly the right thing to say, if the 100 kilowatt grin he flashes in her direction is anything to go by. But before he can respond the doors to the ambulance bay are flying open and two patients on gurneys are being wheeled in, covered in blood, Jesse kneeling over one to perform CPR as Dana directs the EMTs to Trauma One and Two, and it’s back to work for both of them, anything else temporarily forgotten.
***
ten months earlier
A few hours after they’ve all been sent home, a message comes through from Robby ordering everyone who had been on shift during Pittfest to take at least 48 hours off and only report in whenever they’re next scheduled after that. She has no idea how he’s managed to swing it with Gloria, whether the hospital has enough attendings and residents and nurses she just hasn’t had chance to meet yet to cover the next few days, but nobody else seems to question it, and Becca has been pleading with her for a trip to the zoo ever since they moved to Pittsburgh and she’d spotted the sign from the window of their rented U-Haul as they drove past on the way to their new apartment, so Mel decides to just go with it.
She walks back into the pit a few days later with a bounce in her step, anxious to get back to work, glancing around the floor to check for familiar faces and trying not to feel too disappointed when she fails to pick out a mess of brown hair and blue eyes amongst the crowd of people. She had checked her upcoming schedule during a quiet moment on that first day, before everything had turned to chaos, and she’s sure she remembers seeing Dr Langdon’s name against most of the same shifts she was due to work, but perhaps this wasn’t one of them, perhaps while trying to keep patients’ statuses and treatment plans straight in her head during the rest of that day everything else had been pushed to one side, destined to be misremembered.
The first couple of hours of the shift are fairly uneventful, or as uneventful as the emergency department of a trauma centre in a major city can be, at least. She stitches up head lacs for two college students who had been involved in a bar fight the night before, resets a dislocated shoulder for a dad who had been a little too overenthusiastic when demonstrating his pitching skills during a baseball game with his kids, and orders labs on a 36 year old office worker who says she’s been falling asleep at her desk recently and doesn’t know why.
At some point mid-morning she’s pulled in to help Robby and Collins with a trauma, suctioning blood from the back of the patient’s throat so Robby can place an airway and jumping in to start compressions when the heart monitor shows asystole. They manage to get him back, somehow, after two rounds of epi and what she thinks is a muttered prayer from Robby, and before she knows it the bed is being wheeled away to surgery by Dr Walsh and she can finally strip herself of the blood-soaked gown and gloves that have started to feel heavy on her skin.
“Good job, Mel,” Robby says to her, removing his own gown and balling it up in his hands. “That was a tricky one, but you kept your cool. Not everyone can do that.”
“Thanks, Dr Robby.” She beams with pride, grateful for any small scrap of praise directed her way, especially from a senior attending. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, have you seen Dr Langdon around today? We worked together a lot on my first shift, and I was hoping I could talk-”
She can see the moment shutters come down behind his eyes and he grimaces, shaking his head and staring down at the floor. “I guess I should have known someone would ask, eventually,” he begins, then cuts himself off, leaning around the trauma room door and letting out a sharp whistle, gathering the attention of everyone nearby. “Anyone whose patient is not currently critical, Trauma One, now,” he calls, stepping back slightly to allow people to slowly filter in. “Might as well say it once and get it over with.”
It’s a tight fit, even without a bed taking up the centre of the room, and Mel finds herself squashed between Mohan and Whittaker as Robby waits for the last person to enter and closes the door behind them, taking a deep breath in before addressing the room.
“Thank you, everyone. I’ll try not to take too much of your time. Some of you may have noticed that we’re currently short one senior resident,” he pauses as people glance around, noting that Dr Collins is very much present and by process of elimination determining who is very much not. “Due to personal reasons, Dr Langdon will be taking a leave of absence from PTMC. We do not yet know how long that leave will be, but you should assume that he will not be returning any time soon.”
Mel hears Santos scoff somewhere to her right, and watches as Robby’s eyes seem to fix on her as he continues.
“I’m sure you’re all aware of a little something called HIPAA, which means that this is all I am permitted to say on the matter, and, frankly, all I care to say as well. I trust you all to be equally professional, and if I catch any sniff of speculation the consequences will be…well, let’s just say they won’t be pleasant, and leave it at that.” He lets that statement hang in the air for a second and then claps his hands together, making Mel jump. “Now what are you all waiting for? Let’s go save some lives.”
Despite Robby’s warning the whiteboard in the security office steadily fills with post-it notes during the course of the day, a sheet hastily thrown over it any time he stalks past, and Mel risks a glance the next time she finds herself nearby. She doesn’t want to join in on the guessing game, feels it would be a betrayal, somehow, despite the fact that she’s only known Dr Langdon a matter of hours at this point and she’s not even sure he’ll remember her name the next time they do see each other, although she hopes she’s wrong on that, hopes that their time working together made as much of an impression on him as it has on her, but she is curious to know what other people are thinking. Whether there’s something she missed, that day.
“Divorce” features heavily across the board, as does “mental breakdown”, neither of which would be unexpected in their line of work. As she’s standing there Dr Garcia appears with a new post-it, stark white except for a smudged thumbprint in the corner that she hopes is just ketchup rather than blood, “moved to England to be the next 007” scrawled across the note in her looped handwriting.
“He’s got the jaw for it, don’t you think,” Garcia comments idly as she attaches the post-it to the board before heading back the way she came, leaving Mel no chance to respond.
***
July (again)
The two traumas are soon joined by four more, all part of the same multi-vehicle collision where a family of five travelling in a minivan were t-boned by a long-distance lorry driver who fell asleep at the wheel.
They stabilise the driver pretty quickly, manage to get dad and their twelve year old son straight up to surgery, but there’s nothing they can do for mom and their eight year old twin daughters.
Mel knows the odds were against them from the beginning. Knows that you can’t save them all, that part of this job is knowing when to fight on and when to let go, but it doesn’t make it any easier. She’s relieved when Robby tells them all to take ten and she doesn’t have to think of an excuse to sneak off to a quiet part of the hospital before moving on to her next patient.
She heads to the break room, blessedly empty for the time of day, and sinks down to sit with legs outstretched, closing her eyes as she leans her head back against the wall. She keeps them closed as the door clicks open and then shut again, steady footsteps making their way across the room to her. As someone slides down the wall to sit beside her, letting out a brief huff as they reach the floor, shoulder briefly knocking into hers, slow and deliberate, before settling a few inches away, close enough that she can feel the warmth of another body but not so close that she feels caged in.
When she does eventually open her eyes she chances a glance to the side, watching as Langdon uses his thumb to twirl a gold ring around the third finger on his left hand. She must not be as subtle as she thinks because without even looking her way he breaks the silence by saying, “It’s okay, you can ask.”
It’s somewhat mesmerising, watching the glint of the metal, almost as good as her lava lamp app for taking her mind off the horrors of the day. “It’s just earlier, you mentioned ‘the divorce’? But then, a couple of weeks ago I overheard you say that your wife had only threatened, so…”
“I did,” he says, simply, still not looking her way. “And, uh, she did, too. Threaten to divorce me, I mean. I just…might have missed out the part where Abby followed through.”
“Oh.”
“Oh,” he repeats, and this time he does turn to face her, resting his head against his knees where they’re pulled up against his chest. “It was my first day back, you know? Everyone was already walking on eggshells around me, ‘don’t spook the addict’. I couldn’t bring myself to give them something else to pity me for. Plus, wearing this,” he gives a brief wave of his left hand, “makes some things easier around here.”
“Easier?” She must sound like an idiot, unable to offer anything other than single-word sentences, but Langdon either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care because he just smiles at her again, that same small smile from earlier, edged with something like fondness that makes her stomach twist in a not entirely uncomfortable way.
“Yeah, like, some of the parents who come in here seem to find it reassuring somehow, having their kid treated by a fellow family man? Or female patients, I guess it feels less awkward sometimes if they know their doctor isn’t going to be looking at them like that because he’s already got a wife at home? Just, easier. Sometimes.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Mel muses, gratified that her brain seems to have remembered basic vocabulary at last. “Maybe I should get one, might help ward off some of the drunks that roll through here on a Friday night.”
His smile vanishes at that, eyes narrowing, and she feels foolish for even attempting to make a joke without someone else setting it up for her first. “What do you- has someone-”
“It’s fine, Dr Langdon,” she rushes to reassure him. “Nothing I can’t handle. Drunken ramblings, that’s all. There’s always extra security on those shifts anyway, if anyone did try anything.”
Security and usually Santos, she thinks. She knows which one she’d find more of a deterrent.
“Hmph. Well, I’m talking to scheduling and getting myself on your next Friday night. Just to make sure.”
“And what? Spending the whole shift with me? I’m sure there’d be patients who need you more than I do.”
“Uh-uh. We’re a package deal, Dr King, I thought you knew that. Mi patient es su patient.”
“Your Spanish is terrible,” she deadpans, and this time she’s the one leaning to one side to knock their shoulders together, a brief victory note chiming in her head when the action brings the smile back to his face. She likes that he thinks of them in that way, as a team. Finds it validating, almost, the thought that he had recognised it as well, the way they easily fell into a rhythm whenever they worked on a patient together.
They sit there in companionable silence until the rest of the Robby-mandated ten minutes is up, something she wouldn’t have thought possible during that first shift together almost a year ago now. She remembers thinking, then, that Frank Langdon was a man incapable of simply being. Then, he was constantly in motion: gliding effortlessly from patient to patient, skipping towards incoming traumas (managing to stay just within the permitted boundaries of Robby’s “we don’t run in the ED” rule), bouncing on the balls of his feet when circumstances conspired to keep him in the same spot for more than five seconds.
She knows better now, of course. Knows that much of what she saw that day wasn’t him, not really. So she’s spent the last few weeks re-learning him. Adjusting the mental image in her head to fit the man sitting next to her. The man who, it turns out, is capable of stillness after all. Responding to traumas doesn’t count, she reasons, when every second matters. Nor does it count when he’s just downed his second Red Bull in as many hours, sending caffeine and adrenaline coursing through his body. But most of the time, she thinks. Most of the time he can be like this. A steady, comforting presence at her side.