Chapter Text
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Rehabilitation institutions aren’t new to Mel.
Every Sunday from when Mel was six years old to when she was ten, her mother dressed her and Becca up in pink bows and fluffy socks in the morning and drove them in her rickety sedan two hours across state to whatever facility took their insurance. Mel remembers butter yellow walls and tired-looking nurses and the tight smiles of the orderlies who led them to their dad. Their dad, blue collar welder, strongest man alive, who always looked a little more worn, a little smaller, a little closer to giving up with every visit in his tiny, cell-like room. He would pick them up in his arms and put them on his lap for as long as Becca would tolerate it (she hated most forms of physical touch, hugs included). He would ask them about school and Becca’s dance recitals and if they’d done anything fun that day. Mel would show him her finds of the week: the pretty pebbles and rocks and leaves she diligently collected from parking lots, the garden at church, a crop of trees in the elementary school schoolyard. Becca wouldn’t talk about anything except Star Wars Episode IV and the nitty gritty differences between pirouette and fouetté.
They would leave him after an hour in that strange town and wait for him to come home. He always would – twenty eight days later. Sometimes more. And then there was a good stretch of time where he was back, he was him.
And then he was gone.
Dr. Langdon, Mel tells herself on the bus to his facility (a mere twenty two minute commute), is not her father.
This place is different from the places in her memories. A sleek modern building of glass and steel, she’s buzzed through a huge steel door with what looks like a bullet-proof glass pane. Behind the glass is a pleasant-looking woman with a warm smile and a strawberry-patterned clipboard.
“Mel King to see Frank Langdon?” she says in a frighteningly calm voice.
“Um, yes, that’s me.” Langdon’s first name hits Mel like a truck. She doesn’t know why—across cafe tables, Mohan is easily addressed as “Samira” and McKay is definitely a “Cassie” in the Subway adjacent to the hospital. But she can’t wrap her mind around Langdon being “Frank”. That just doesn’t work.
“Have you brought a Pennsylvania state-issued form of ID?” asks the woman very warmly.
“Um, yes,” says Mel, who had immediately struggled through the Pittsburgh DMV system two weeks into her move with Becca. She hands over her hard-won driver’s license and anxiously twists her hands together as the receptionist evaluates it with a hawkish look in her eyes.
“Hmm,” says the woman and then picks up a phone. A security guard appears and rummages through Mel’s backpack. Book, wallet, iPad, a pack of spearmint gum, all of it is laid out on a table for review. Her water bottle is confiscated, but the receptionist with the warm smile assures her she can pick it up once visiting hours are over.
A nurse is then summoned. He’s tall and young, maybe her age, with purple scrubs that are too short on him and a friendly open face that puts her at ease despite herself.
”I’m Ben,” he says, offering his hand and she shakes it automatically. “Few things to go over here. Cross my heart it won’t take long. Are you his wife, an intimate partner, a friend, family?”
“Friend,” says Mel, even though she’s not sure if they’re past the term ‘colleagues’. But then she remembers they worked a mass shooting together. And he did ask her to visit. Maybe friends isn’t so much of a stretch after all. “Um. All the information should be in the form I filled out…”
”Gotta go over it one more time. Protocol. You know how it is.” Ben scans his clipboard, mindlessly tapping with a pen. “So. You ever been to a rehab facility before?”
”When I was younger,” says Mel vaguely. She doesn’t like drudging up her stuff with her dad with just anyone.
“Alright. So here’s how it goes. We’re going to lead you to our introductory room. He’ll already be there.” He grins. He has a tooth gem, Mel sees. It’s bright and glittery and winks at her with every word he speaks. She stares at it instead of his eyes. Eye contact is hard for her. “It’s a pretty nice place. TV, cards, big table. There’s a camera in there documenting your visit, just in case things get weird. And they might get weird. He’s in a strange place with strange people and he’s trying to come to terms with his addiction. That would put anyone on edge, you feel me?”
Mel nods, stomach twisted up like a pretzel.
“Yeah, so, there’ll be a security guard present outside the room. Basic rules. No hanky panky, absolutely no sharing of outside drinks or food, and no yelling or physical violence. You can hug him, you can talk to him, you can socialize. If we see a hint of any of the no-nos, you won’t be allowed back. Capisce?”
“Capisce,” says Mel, nervous all of a sudden.
“Wait, sorry, I forgot one.” He looks at her uneasily. “Look, you seem like a nice girl. So I mean nothing by it. But we’ve had a few visitors try and sneak their loved ones drugs and alcohol. Obviously that’s a huge reason for being barred from our center forever.”
Mel nods. She has the sudden irrational fear that she actually does have drugs on her person with intent to give them to Langdon—even though of course she doesn’t.
“If you’re caught, you’re out. Don’t make me put your name on the black list, Miss King.”
Mel doesn’t correct him on the inaccuracy of the title ‘Miss’. Right about now, she feels about a foot tall at most.
There’s a long walk through a pristinely clean corridor, absolutely covered in art. Mel blinks, surprised—pops of Cubism, realistic charcoal sketches of women and dogs and children, insanely large oils of fruits in bowls. It’s an assault of colors. Finally, there’s a door that opens into an inoffensive blue room with a boring couch and a boring table and Dr. Langdon.
Seeing Langdon out of scrubs is another strange shock to the system. He’s in a soft white sweater and gray sweatpants and slippers. It’s like seeing a bird with no wings, in a way. His hair is longer, swooping into his icy eyes, feathering at his ears. He looks, for lack of a better phrase, really good.
“Mel,” he says mildly, as if she’s caught him in the doctor’s lounge eating lunch. “Glad you could make it.”
Mel actually thinks he means it. He has a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, as if he can’t help himself. “Hey, Langdon,” she says, the way she practiced it in the mirror this morning. Casual, but friendly. She hopes it doesn’t come off as too eager. Santos hasn’t given her a demeaning nickname like Javadi or Whitaker, but the other day she made a passing comment that stuck in Mel’s craw: “You’re such a goody-two-shoes, Mel. Waiting for someone to tell you you’re a good girl?”
“Hey yourself,” says Langdon. He runs his hand sheepishly through his hair. Mel notices the gesture’s attractiveness, emphasizing the lean line of his jaw, the largeness of his hand, but doesn’t linger on it. The sky is blue, Langdon is handsome. Patients say it, nurses say it, it’s just a fact of life. “I would offer you a beer, but sadly the only fun thing I have access to right now is apple juice.”
There’s no chair. She has to sit next to him on the couch. That feels oddly intimate to Mel. Grow up, she thinks to herself as she perches beside him tentatively. She’s hung out in college dorms with boys before. (Langdon is a lot of things, but he is definitely not a college boy, and this is definitely not a college dorm).
“That’s okay,” she says instead of any of her mixed-up thoughts. “I like apple juice.”
Langdon snorts as he reaches with one long arm and unhooks the tiny minifridge Mel missed by the wall. “I wish I did. I’m more of an IPA man myself.”
He hands her a juice box she nearly fumbles, but she manages to slot the bendy straw into place without making a fool out of herself. She takes a fortifying sip. “Not me. I hate beer. That’s Becca’s thing.”
He’s visibly surprised at this. “Your sister drinks?”
Mel is used to this kind of thing, so she smiles blandly. “Yes, autistic people can drink.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Langdon says, discomfited, before backtracking, “yeah, actually, maybe I did mean it like that. Sorry. I’m not—”
“It’s okay,” says Mel. “You’re allowed to be a jerk. You’re in rehab.”
Langdon stares at her a moment before laughing. It’s a deep laugh from the chest and he rubs his forehead. It’s good to see him smile—a real smile, not one of those plastic ones he uses when scanning chairs for something interesting. “That was a joke. A really good one.”
She feels warm and fluttery inside. She squashes it with another drink from her juicebox. “Of course it was. I’m hilarious.”
He stares at her with those eerie blue eyes as she drinks and Mel refrains from squirming or tapping or fussing at the intense eye contact, even though she really wants to. “I’m really glad you’re here,” he says and she puts down the apple juice on the table so he doesn’t see how that makes her strangely emotional.
“I’m glad to be here,” she says once she thinks her voice won’t crack. “It’s, um. Granted, I only worked with you for a day, but I can tell that Dana and Robby and the rest really miss you.”
Langdon coughs into his fist. “I don’t know about all that. But I’m glad I made some kind of impression. In one day.”
“Felt like more. But yeah. I like to think we’re friends.” Mel means it. Friends don’t come easy to her. Never did. Even in undergrad, when she was more self-actualized and confident in herself, before the spirit breaking hard work of med school, she could count her friends on one hand. But she likes Langdon (in a strictly platonic way, she reminds herself). She likes the clear and articulate way he talks, and how firmly he handles patients, and how his bad jokes land flat until they suddenly make sense, and how the only photos in his phone are of his kids, and she even likes how when Robby found out about the drugs, he came back for the MCI. She likes him.
“Good. I need a friend right now,” he says plainly. There’s no joke falling out of his mouth this time. He rubs the back of his neck like it hurts. “You know, I didn’t realize it before this morning, but all my drinking buddies and weekend people—they haven’t visited me once.”
Mel wilts. “Oh.”
“I mean, I always knew they were more Abby’s friends than mine, but I didn’t think they’d close ranks so quickly.” He scowls, but the expression is brief and fleeting. “Then again. I’d probably pick Abby over me in a divorce too.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Mel says because she doesn’t know what to say. All she can think is that the security guard Marvin owes Princess a lot of money—for some reason he insisted Abby would stick it out for at least six months in the betting pool.
“Yeah, well, it’s not official yet,” says Langdon, waving off her condolences like they’re flies in the air. “She’s graciously waiting for me to bust out of here before dealing with the paperwork.”
“You make it sound like prison.”
“Only the most annoying prison in the world,” he says. “They have me doing art therapy, Mel. Me. Painting watercolors. For eight weeks.”
“Well, studies have shown that people suffering from substance abuse disorders greatly improve their long-term ability to remain sober if they stick to the skills learned in rehab,” says Mel.
Langdon looks at her blankly.
“You’re here for a reason,” she rephrases. “I think it’s great to give things a try, even if you feel stupid doing them.”
“I’m so bad, Mel. I tried painting a tree, it looked like a mangled leprechaun.”
Mel laughs, surprised that she can actually laugh in a drug rehab facility. “You’ll have to paint me something,” she says and then feels bad for presuming. “I mean—that is—”
“Sure, Mel. I’ll sign it for you too. But you’ll have to pay me for a photo.”
“You would be that kind of artist,” says Mel, relaxing automatically.
“Hey, next time you come—” (Mel has to hide her enthusiasm, he wants her to come back!) “—you should bring your sister. I need to get her opinions on my body of work.”
“If you want brutal honesty, sure.” Mel tries to imagine taking Becca here. She’s been bugging Mel about meeting her “new friends” anyways. She’s a worrier like that—worrying about Mel not getting enough sun, not drinking enough water, not having enough friends. About finding a boyfriend to kiss. “She’s very particular about art.”
“Oh yeah?” Langdon splays his fingers in a twitchy movement on his knee. He’s less jittery off the pills, Mel thinks. She remembers sitting next to him at lunch and seeing his leg bouncing up and down, a constant movement inside him at all times. He was all go-go-go. Now, he’s not less sharp or intelligent, but less snappy, less bursting out of his skin. She thinks she likes him better this way. “Well, bring her on over. I need the company.”
Mel hesitates. “Has… Abby brought—?”
“The kids?” Langdon shakes his head and she sees under the veneer of dry humor a well of actual human misery. “I get to FaceTime them once a day. I tried to tell her this place is really nice, you know—not exactly an underpass with dirty needles and trash cans—but she said she doesn’t want the kids around It.”
Mel winces. “I’m sorry.” She hasn’t told this to any of her other coworkers, but she finds herself talking, for the first time in a long time, about her dad. Langdon sits up when she says the words “alcoholic” and “father”, and by the time she’s blabbing about the several in-patient facilities he was pushed around in the Buffalo area, his arm is brushing against hers and she can hear his breath hitching a little with emotion. “… so, I was around it a lot as a kid. And getting to see my dad sober and clean, well, it was the highlight of my week. Sure, I didn’t fully understand what was happening until I was older. But no kid wants to be apart from their dad for so long. I hope—I hope Abby comes around. I really do.”
There’s silence for a time.
“And where’s your Dad now?”
Mel clears her throat. “Oh, he passed when I was a freshman in high school. He beat it, actually. The addiction. He was sober for five years. But, um, he had liver problems. From all the drinking. And eventually he just got sick and didn’t get better.”
A beat. Suddenly, a big hand—soft, warm—envelopes hers—small, cold. Their fingers interlock perfectly, like one of the jigsaw puzzles that Mel and her mother used to do together. Mel stares at their hands holding each other, feels Langdon squeeze once, twice, as if to say I’m here. A warm glow settles in Mel’s chest, tender and throbbing.
“I’m sorry,” Langdon says in a throaty voice. “That must’ve been hard.”
Mel nods quickly, doesn’t speak in case she breaks the moment. They sit like that, silently, holding hands until an orderly (not Ben) knocks politely on the door. They stand and only then do their hands fall away from each other, Mel’s fingers tingling as she waves goodbye and walks down the long hall and collects her water bottle and boards the bus. She still feels his fingers laced with hers when she goes to sleep that night, a heavy weight that makes her feel safe for reasons she can’t understand.