Archive of Our Own ^beta

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.

Chapter Text

Becca likes Langdon. Then again, their mom always called Becca an “easy customer”. She can get along with pretty much anyone—except Francine, a member of her cohort at the day center. She hates Francine with a passion. (The reason why is still a mystery to Mel).

Langdon likes Becca, too. Mel can tell from the way his eyes crinkle when Becca whips out a chessboard and demands they play a match within their first ten minutes of meeting. Mel didn’t even know he liked chess. Somehow Becca sensed a fellow competitive spirit in him. Or maybe Becca just wants to play chess (an artifact from their childhood). Either way, Mel sits back and watches them—board games and card games aren’t her thing. She doesn’t like winning that much. It always feels like arguing somehow.

“Play nice,” she says. “No trash talking, Becca.”

“He can take it,” Becca complains.

Langdon makes a move that Mel assumes is good since Becca makes a hissing sound of frustration. “Don’t hate the player, hate the game.”

“I can do two things at once,” says Becca and that gets a bark of laughter out of Langdon and Mel is completely relaxed. This is going great! She wishes distantly there was a nurse she could high-five. (Ben doesn’t count).

They’ve been upgraded to Langdon’s room this time. This is her third visit, Becca’s first, and she was surprised when Ben let her know Langdon had requested to have their meeting outside of the common area. Langdon’s roommate (“Jeremy, twenty-eight, heroin addict,” as Langdon introduced him) is at the center’s cafe with his brother, so it feels a little private, even though it definitely isn’t. Ben stands in the door as per facility policy, still in his too-short scrubs and ever watchful, and Mel wonders if he’s going to report on their visit to Langdon’s faceless therapist, if she signed a waiver to that effect. Ben didn’t mention it when he led them to Langdon, just the regular rules, which she’s memorized already.

Ben winks at her when she looks up from where Langdon and Becca are at war. Mel smiles back.

There’s a mini-fridge in Langdon’s bedroom too, like in a college dorm. She opens it and helps herself to a juice box as per usual, not bothering to ask since she knows both Langdon and Becca don’t like juice. She’s happily sipping when Langdon insistently nods at her to sit down.

Ben helpfully brought in a folding table for the chessboard and a comfy-looking chair for Becca after Langdon asked. Mel finds herself smushed next to him on the bed, trying not to think too hard about it, that she’s sitting where he sleeps. He’s got that furrowed look of concentration on, forehead crinkled, heavy eyebrows low and drawn. He keeps fiddling with his queen, dwarfed by his long fingers, and Mel looks away because staring feels inappropriate. She lays back on her elbows to create a bit more distance, but that doesn’t help because she smells him on the sheets—powdery laundry detergent and the sharply expensive smell of his deodorant (“We do all our normal chores ourselves,” Langdon had said in passing. “Not exactly a five star resort,”).

She shivers.

“Are you cold?” asks Langdon, razor-sharp as ever. “They keep it pretty chilly in here.”

Before Mel can protest, he’s standing and striding over to his closet (very well-organized, she notes with bewilderment). He procures a thick gray hoodie and hands it over to her in a demanding way she wants to resent, but she can’t argue. It is actually freezing in her short yellow tee and white cotton shorts.

“I told you to put on a jacket,” says Becca scoldingly.

“It’s eighty degrees outside,” says Mel, trying not to sulk when Langdon shakes the hoodie at her. She takes it begrudgingly and slides her arms into the wide sleeves. It’s too big on her, sagging at the neckline, but she zips it up and it’s soft and smells like winter pine and soap, so she just sighs and tells him, “Thank you.”

He’s still standing there looking at her with inexplicably warm eyes, hands empty, when Becca cries, “Check!” and he whips around.

“No way! No way!”

“Yes way! Yes way!”

There’s a flurry of movement on the board that Mel doesn’t care to decipher, but Langdon manages to get himself out of whatever tight position Becca built up, to her displeasure.

“You’re good,” she says, like this is an insult.

“Not good enough,” says Langdon when the dust settles and he turns over his king. Becca flaps her hands happily in triumph before holding her hand out to Langdon solemnly for a handshake, which he grants just as seriously. “Round two?”

“You bet.”

They’re off again, but this time Langdon keeps shooting Mel glances where she’s lying on the bed. She catches him a few times when she looks up from her book (kept sequestered in her backpack for emergencies like these), his glacial eyes sliding over her, an expression of I can’t believe you’re here actually. Like he thinks she’ll disappear if he doesn’t keep her in direct view. She smiles and waves at him and this seems to calm him so he can focus on beating Becca solidly, making her groan and then asking him to explain the move set over and over again. He’s a good teacher—patient, explaining clearly what he did, letting Becca reset the board. It reminds Mel of their one and only shift together. How he made her feel heard and not stupid. He’s not talking to Becca like she’s a child, Mel notes with approval. Many people make that mistake. So she leaves them to it and absorbs into her book (a god-awful football romance that Mel can’t put down for some reason), and when she resurfaces, Langdon has busted out his pitiful collection of watercolors.

“Is that a roach?” Becca is asking undiplomatically.

“Um, excuse me, that’s my new dog.” Langdon looks deeply offended.

In the door, Ben is trying to hide his smile behind a closed fist.

“Looks like a bug.” Becca shuffles through the papers, giggling. “Even I could do better than this and they threw me out of studio art last week.”

“Why’d they throw you out?”

“Stupid Francine. Don’t want to talk about it.”

“Fair.” Langdon looks startled when Mel sits up and looks over his shoulder. “You wanna judge me too, Jane Austen?”

The blotchy mess on the sketchbook pad does look an awful lot like a bug. She tries to be kind. “Why’d you make the legs so skinny and the body so round?”

“The paint was too runny. Also, I’m bad at art.” Langdon sighs. “I cannot give this to Tanner. He would make fun of me until I died.”

“Your son?” probes Becca. “Mel mentioned you’re a dad.”

This makes Langdon bust out his iPhone and talk about his kids for a solid five minutes. Mel can tell when Becca’s attention starts waning. While tiny Maya in a pumpkin costume for her second Halloween is very cute, no one is as enthusiastic about Langdon’s kids as Langdon is.

“... I miss them so much.” He sighs real loud before looking up. Mel can’t change her expression of concern fast enough, so he clears his throat and straightens his back and says, “So, Becca, Mel tells me you’re a Star Wars fan?”

They get through half of A New Hope (which Langdon got loaded up on the cable-less TV with some intense tinkering), just beginning Luke Skywalker’s first encounter with Hans Solo when Ben clears his throat and announces that visiting hours are over.

Mel is flustered when Becca groans in disappointment. “Already?” she says. Interruptions in Becca’s comfort films and TV are the number one trigger of her meltdowns, but surprisingly, crisis is averted. Becca is adequately soothed when Langdon gives her a fistbump and says, “We’ll finish the Episode next time, swear it.”

Becca grins. Mel sees a mild twitch in her eyes, but she takes a deep breath before talking. “I’m keeping you to that promise. Once we’re done with the Trilogy, I think you’d like a few other sci-fi movies on my list. Ever seen It Came From Outer Space?”

Langdon wrinkles his nose. “Isn’t that a grandpa movie?”

“All movies are for everyone, Frank, even grandpas,” says Becca seriously before excusing herself to use the restroom. (Mel wonders if she really needs to use the restroom or needs some alone time to regulate her body. She’s been getting better at that at the center). Ben leaves with her to show her where the bathrooms are. Without their presences distracting them both, it’s oddly quiet. Mel shuffles things around, throws out her empty apple juice, and retrieves the well-loved DVD of A New Hope from the video player while Langdon watches her, hands in his pockets.

“You had fun?” Mel finally asks, looking up.

Langdon’s eyes, as always, are beautiful and sharp. “Oh, yeah. Loads. She’s really good at chess. Does it run in the family?”

“My dad,” says Mel fondly. She fiddles with the sleeves of Langdon’s hoodie, a gesture of self comfort. “He was a real champ. Even competed a few times regionally. Then he got busy with work and, well…” Drinking went unsaid between them. “But Becca’s the only one of us who plays. I never liked games like that. Too much conflict, I guess.”

“Huh.” Langdon doesn’t look away. “Mel?”

“Yeah?”

“This might be kind of a strange ask, and feel free to say no, but… do you think I could give you a hug?”

A frisson of surprise and want licks down her spine. She should say no, right? But he’s her friend, not just her mentor, she thinks, and he’s alone in rehab, and he’s standing in front of her and looking so, so desperate. And it’s not like they’re at work (would it be appropriate to hug at work? She should really read the HR rules and guidelines again, for when he comes back). She nods silently, finally, and opens her arms, and, oh. He’s a lot taller than her. She’s forgotten this, somehow. Her nose and glasses squish into his chest—not giving—so she turns so her cheek is against his pectoral, and his shirt is thin, so she can hear the hard beat of his heart against her ear and feel just how warm and solid he is. His chin nestles against her hair, his arms locked around her shoulders, and her arms around his waist (surprisingly small considering the width of his shoulders). Tingles, like when they held hands last time, flush warmly through her body. She feels him breathe against her, chest swelling and falling. He hugs her tighter for a moment, and it’s like being under her weighted blanket at home, but a million times better. Her eyes flutter and she sags into him and his cheek is against her forehead, the faintest prickle of his barely-there stubble, and she feels his breath ruffle her baby hairs. They sway for a minute, almost like a slow dance with no music, before Langdon finally unfurls and releases her.

Her cheeks are on fire as she looks up at him. “Good?” she asks.

“Really good,” he responds in a throaty voice. For a moment, his eyes look wet. Then he blinks and Becca has come back from the bathroom and they all say goodbye and make promises to visit next week and Langdon says, “Get home safe, okay?” and Mel agrees. They make their way down the long hallway, but Mel still feels him watching them, so she turns and he’s outside his room in the open door. Alone. He raises his hand and opens it for a wave goodbye and she turns the corner and loses sight of him.

It’s only when they step out into the shock of the summer heat that she realizes she still has his hoodie on. She shifts her weight from one foot to the next. She could run back inside, she thinks, waffling, return it to the receptionist or Ben without needing to physically hand it over to Langdon—

“Mel? The bus is here.” Becca is looking at her expectantly.

She finds a seat under a vent blasting AC and puts up the hood of Langdon’s hoodie. The wintry smell of pine trees and the clean fragrance of soap fill her nose. She doesn’t take it off when they get back to their apartment. She only does to shower and even then, she puts it back on over her sleepshirt, slides under her weighted blanket, and falls asleep, thinking of that hug, of his hands on her back, his arms around her shoulders, his heart against her ear, his voice murmuring: “Really good.”

Chapter Text

The call comes after one of the hardest shifts of Mel’s life.

It starts off normal. An older man with the sniffles is discharged with instructions to hydrate (and gentle advice to go to urgent care next time). A twelve-year-old girl with a late menses, a negative pregnancy test, and a hyper-imaginative mother—not much can be done there. A college student with alcohol poisoning and projectile vomiting given IV fluids, a night in observation, and pamphlets on the local community center’s weekly AA meetings.

Some might say a calm morning.

“Wow,” says Whitaker. “It’s been a calm morning.”

“Maybe don’t say that so loud,” Dr. Mohan slowly cautions. “It’s like the ambulance bay can hear us.”

“I don’t know,” says Whitaker, lounging at a monitor and clacking away on his charts. “Chairs isn’t nearly as packed as usual—only half the seats are full.”

“I’m more of a glass half empty kind of person myself,” says Mohan before looking at Mel. “By the way, have you seen Santos?”

Mel is about to answer no, she was with McKay, when a gurney screeches past with Santos on top of an unresponsive man giving perfectly timed, vigorous CPR, driven by two grim-faced EMTs.

Perlah rushes past. “Two GSWs, Trauma One and Two!”

Just like that, they’re off. Two GSWs turn into five shooting vics in the span of ten minutes. Mel hears later from two security guards that it was a drive-by at a local strip mall. It explains the range of patients. The most dramatic moment of the day is when a nineteen year old with a wounded foot gets tackled by security after trying to grab the weapon shoved down the back of his pants. He’s handcuffed in behavioral after that.

The saddest is Paola Guzman.

She’s a tiny thing, only seven, with huge soulful eyes, and extensive injuries to the lumbar and thoracic spine. It’s bad. Collins is running point. She allows Mel to intubate, though Mel has never done so on a patient so small, and the procedure goes flawlessly, despite the horrific screams of the mother in the adjacent room (penetrating injury to the lower right arm, little risk of hemorrhage). Princess bags, vitals level, and they’re running her upstairs to an OR with a promised bed in PICU after surgery. It’s all over in fifteen minutes. It went as well as it could’ve gone.

Mel is trembling, shaking, covered in sweat.

That little girl, in all likelihood, will never walk again. If she lives.

“Children are resilient,” says Collins, but even Mel can see the doubt in her expression. There’s pain there, a dark and eating fear, and after a moment, Collins tears off her PPE, throws them on the floor, and speed walks away. Mel watches her blankly. She distantly processes Dr. Robby running after her and hopes that Collins is alright. But somehow she can’t make the words come out of her mouth.

“Hey.” Princess is at her side. “You okay, honey?”

“Um. Um. I think so,” says Mel in a voice that is higher and tighter than usual.

Princess unties Mel’s protective coveralls herself. Mel realizes, suddenly, that she’s covered in a child’s blood.

“Hey,” says Princess. She snaps her fingers and Mel is back in her body. “Mel. You did great back there.”

“Yeah?” says Mel shakily.

“You’re also not a neurosurgeon,” says Princess. “You don’t know what’s gonna happen in the OR, but you did all you could do today for that little girl.”

“Mm.” Mel nods shortly as she slips off her gloves from her shaking hands. “You’re. You’re definitely right about the neurosurgeon thing.”

“And everything else all the time,” says Princess proudly. “Trust me. Dr. Onayemi does incredible work. She has a good shot.”

Mel smiles a frail smile and mechanically moves to wash her hands in the bathroom. She can’t bring herself to call Becca or even open her phone to her lava lamp simulator. It’s all she can do to run cold water over her hands mindlessly.

She wishes she was more like Santos. Or Robby. They’re able to bow their heads and nod and move on to the next patient on the board. Meanwhile, she’s still here blowing snot into toilet paper and trying to remember how to EFT tap her way back into a normal breathing rhythm.

She staggers her way through the rest of the shift and updates her charts as well as she can for the night crew. She gives a tetanus shot to a mouthy fifteen-year-old, eats a granola bar, and feels mildly better. Mateo bumps her shoulder with his on the way out and calls her a rockstar. She tries to carry a good feeling with her as she begins her trek to the bus stop. It fails when she remembers today is Becca’s night at the care center. Sleepover Day, when Becca’s cohort gets to watch movies and eat popcorn as late as they want before heading to sleep with the boarders. Mel thinks it’s an infantilizing way to refer to it, but “adults can have sleepovers, too, Mel,” so she lets it go.

The prospect of going home to a dark, empty house after this shift—not knowing if Paola is going to be okay—makes her stomach churn.

It’s just as she’s wishing that Langdon had late night visiting hours (she would give anything for a repeat of that hug last week) that her cellphone brrring, brrrings. She takes it out. A FaceTime call. From Langdon. She freezes. She stupidly thinks she can’t answer, she looks like hell. Her hair is half falling out of its signature plait, her glasses are filthy, her lips are bitten up and red from crying. Then she remembers he’s seen her before after worse and clicks the green button.

“Hey.” Immediately Mel notices he looks bad. Worse than her maybe. His eyes are bloodshot, five-o-clock shadow encroaching into an almost beard, and his face is pale in the low lamplight of his room. She also tries not to freak out when the camera dips a little and she realizes he’s not wearing a shirt. “Hey. I, uh, I know it’s right after your shift. And this is kind of a douchebag move, and if I could call anybody else, I would. But I honestly don’t have anybody else who’s willing to talk to me right now. And I could really use some help.”

Just like that, Mel’s spine straightens. Langdon needs help. “What can I do?”

It’s honestly simple once Langdon explains. He’s already called her an Uber (which is a little crazy and presumptive, Mel thinks, but she immediately forgives him since it means she doesn’t have to take the bus) to take her to his house (house!! His house?? His house!!!) to care of his dog for the night.

“Your dog?” asks Mel incredulously as she swerves for the Taxis and Rentals driving lot, which she has never needed to visit until today.

“My dog,” repeats Langdon grimly.

“Well, who was taking care of him before?”

It’s a guileless question, but Langdon’s silence is full of deep shame.

“… you don’t have to answer that,” says Mel, bag hooked over her shoulder, phone hooked under her thumb as she walks.

“No, it’s nothing bad. It’s just… I bought the stupid dog the day of PittFest.”

The day it all fell apart for him. The day Robby found the drugs.

“Oh,” says Mel.

“Yeah, for some fucking reason I thought a puppy would solve my failing marriage and get my ex-wife to ignore my escalating benzo problem.”

There is nothing she can say to that except: “Bad timing?”

“The absolute worst. So I ghosted the woman I got the dog from on Facebook Marketplace because I’m in rehab. Stupidly, high-as-a-kite me gave her the money already, so she’s been harassing me ever since. For some reason addiction plus divorce means nothing to her, I guess. She finally managed to find my address, I have no clue how, and apparently dumped the stupid dog on my front step.”

Mel stops dead in her tracks. “Are you kidding?”

“I fucking wish.”

Mel’s blood freezes and then immediately boils over. “She left a dog alone in front of a house? With nobody to take care of him?”

“Yeah. She’s a psycho.”

Normally Mel would try and navigate a conversation to politely ask Langdon to use less demeaning language, but in this case she can’t find it in her to defend such a vile woman. “Where did you even find this person?”

“I don’t know. Puppy Happy Home or something online.”

“Facebook Marketplace,” says Mel, aghast. “I bet you anything it’s a backyard breeder, Langdon. You really shouldn’t have given her your money.”

“Yeah well, guess I was too busy stealing pills to remember ‘adopt, don’t shop’,” he says caustically. Then, after a beat, “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to snap. You’re one hundred percent right. I just feel really shitty about the whole thing. And Abby didn’t even bother to return my text.”

Abby. The wife. Mel clears her throat. “No harm done. Look, Langdon, when I get to your place, is there a chance your wife and kids could be there?”

“No, Mel, it’s my place, not hers. It was my starter home in my name only. I moved back in after the breakup because I needed someplace to put my shit when I left for rehab,” he says with bone-deep exhaustion. Then, “Ex-wife.”

“Hmm?” She thinks she sees the Uber, a sleek black luxury sedan with too-bright headlights. Did he splurge for Uber Comfort?

“Ex-wife, Mel.”

“Oh. Sorry. Hey, the car’s here, call you back when I get there.” She clicks off the call and slings herself into the backseat. She’s not the greatest company for Mark, the chattering driver who keeps commenting about how he never gets to go to this neighborhood, are you a doctor at this hospital? Hey, that’s a cool gig, he’s a student at UPenn, going into academia. Not nearly as steady a field. Alright, here now, bye-bye!

Langdon picks up on the first ring. “How was his driving?”

“What?” Mel stops, the question throwing her.

“He took a few wrong turns there. And he was breaking the speed limit on Jefferson Ave. He didn’t make you feel uncomfortable or anything, did he?” He was watching her travel on the app?? Mel feels her cheeks flush. She hears Santos’ voice in her head in her horrible Sir David Attenborough imitation. Weird male behavior, typical of the species.

“He was a perfectly nice young man. Give him a good tip, okay, Langdon?”

“Bleeding heart.” She hears him sigh loudly. “Okay. Head up the stairs. Check behind the hydrangea plant next to the door. There’s a fake rock there with a spare key inside.”

“That doesn’t feel very safe,” says Mel, but she’s silent otherwise because she looks around and thinks, Wow. Langdon lives in a very nice, very suburban neighborhood of Pittsburgh that she thinks, actually, probably barely counts as Pittsburgh. It was a thirty minute ride that she barely noticed, but now, looking at the sloped roof and the huge windows and the wide green yard, she realizes with a jolt that Langdon has money. Actual money, not fourth year resident money.

“Yeah, yeah, grandma,” says Langdon, oblivious to her revelation. “Alright, call me when you get him settled. I owe you big time for this.”

Mel hears the poor puppy before even seeing the crate. He’s veritably yowling. It breaks her heart into bits. The shift from hell starts to feel very far away when the smell hits her. He defecated in the cage. She peeks inside and, yep. That is a poop-covered puppy.

First things first.

She snags the key from the rock where Langdon told her, and she opens the door, feeling very much like an intruder breaking in. She manages to get the puppy to urinate on the hydrangeas (sorry, hydrangeas) before gently picking him up and carefully navigating through the house until she finds a bathroom with a tub. Thus begins a very unhappy hour of hosing down a very unhappy puppy. The heartless woman who dumped him had enough grace to include a grocery bag full of doggy shampoo, brushes, wee-wee pads, and a collection of puppy food. After scrubbing him down until he smells like clean soap and clean dog, she fluffs him out with a white towel that was hanging on the door.

“Good boy! Good boy!”

He’s affectionate, rolling on his back for belly rubs and leaving him vulnerable for more toweling. Underneath the fecal matter, he’s a pretty copper color with riotous curls. Probably some type of poodle doodle something whatever. It’s obvious the stress has taken it out of him. He laps up water too eagerly for her comfort and eats his food with gusto. She barely gets a nest of blankets set up for him before he collapses into them and starts snoring.

She stares down at him in the too-bright hallway light, which reminds her too much of the ER, smelling of sweat and dog and hospital, and suddenly the day crashes into her.

She taps out a plea to Langdon.

Mel: hey, can i use your shower? Long day

Mel: btw, puppy is good. Sleeping

[sent picture]

Langdon bubbles his reply for a very long time before it comes through.

Langdon: My home is your home. Go for it.

Langdon: wow, he’s cuter than expected. Thank you Mel I really do owe you

A warm little light flickers in her stomach. She squashes it—he’s her friend and also in rehab and also has two children and a wife—before finally looking up and taking in the house. The very beautiful, very soulless house. The rooms are large and lofty and empty. She can’t tell if one room is supposed to be a living room or a bedroom or (rich people word) a den. Her footsteps echo, unnerving her. The kitchen is glossy and cold with too much marble and blinding white cabinets and the largest steel fridge she’s ever seen. It’s covered in pictures of his children and scrawling handmade drawings in wax crayon. His wife, notably, is not included in the photos, except for a blob of brown and beige that Mel assumes was rendered by Tanner. Her phone beeps while she’s poking through the second floor.

Langdon: more clean towels in linen closet next to kitchen

Langdon: I mean it, make yourself at home.

Langdon: I know you’re off work tomorrow

Mel double-taps and leaves a pink heart on the last message. She discovers the aforementioned linen closet and gathers a big cotton towel for herself. She tip-toes to an unused bathroom (she’ll have to disinfect the first one properly to prevent the spread of giardia, or, god forbid, heartworms) and promptly takes the best shower of her life. The water is boiling hot, the shower pressure is godly, Langdon’s shampoo and body soap are deliciously fragrant. She doesn’t want to leave. But when she comes out, wrapped in nothing but a towel, there’s a text on her phone.

Langdon: You said your fav pizzeria was Vocelli’s. Eat your heart out

Langdon: contactless delivery made two min ago. Don’t let it get cold

Langdon: wine in bottom cabinet. Cups above microwave. If not, water is filtered. Wish I could send you a juice box

She pokes her head out the door and there is indeed a steaming hot pizza on the step all for her. The box says La Bella. She scoops it up. There’s paper plates and seasonings provided, but she ignores it all and eats the first slice savagely, standing up, completely naked in Langdon’s kitchen, scalding her tongue, towel crumpled at her feet. The air is so cold, her nipples hard and pebbled, her thighs covered in goosebumps, but she can’t make herself care. She’s sad to admit. It’s better than Vocelli’s. Once the sugar and cheese hit her bloodstream and she’s chugged a glass of water, she gathers her courage (and her towel) and ventures into the place she’s been avoiding: Langdon’s bedroom.

Unlike everywhere else, this place feels like it’s been lived in. There’s a huge bed with a big puffy white comforter and ridiculously large white pillows. There’s no actual bed frame, which she was expecting (divorced, after all), but somehow that makes the bed that much more tempting. It looks like a cloud, a tempting cocoon on the ground. She licks her lips and forces herself to look into his closet. She doesn’t dare pick through his boxers, but she finds a college t-shirt (University of California-Berkeley), faded and ripped a little at the collar, that she guiltily slings on over her head. She also procures a pair of sweatpants that look like tents on her legs, but she ties up the waist and it’s doable. She tries not to think about how she’s panty-less in his clothes, in his house, in his clothes!!!, eating food he’s bought her.

She can’t get it out of her head.

The puppy has lumbered sleepily after her up the stairs, drawn by the smell of pizza. Upon spying the bed, he yawns and toddles over and whines until she picks him up and puts him on a pillow. (She thinks about him whizzing on Langdon’s nice expensive bed and wonders why he ever thought getting a mother of two under four an untrained puppy was a good idea).

She’s debating sleeping on the bed or the floor when her phone brrrring brrrings.

Langdon’s face fills the screen. For a moment, he looks startled. “Mel,” he says.

“You win,” she says. She can’t bring herself to be self conscious. Her hair is loose and dripping wet and her face is surely bright pink from the shower, but she needs to eat and sleep and she has no shame. “If you let me sleep in your bed with your new dog, I’ll say it.”

Langdon’s mouth flops open and closes. “… say what, exactly?”

”La Bella is better than Vocelli’s.”

Langdon clicks his mouth shut and swallows audibly. “Are you in my college t-shirt?”

“Are you rich?”

Langdon makes a strangled sound as she collapses onto the bed. Her tiny picture in the corner of the screen is far from flattering. Her hair looks like a bedraggled mess. She resents how even when he looks bad, he looks good. ”I, um. Wow, uh—”

”Don’t answer that,” she says. “I will probably regret asking tomorrow. Tell me about it the next time I visit you, if you want.”

Something imperceptible shifts in Langdon’s expression. His eyes go very gentle, his mouth begins to smile. “Mel. Please sleep in my bed with my dog. Eat the pizza and go to sleep. That’s all I need from you for now. You did a good job.”

It’s the same words Princess said, but somehow, outside of the hospital, with a snoozing dog by her side and pizza in her stomach, it means the most it’s ever meant.

Chapter Text

She wakes up and for a second doesn’t remember where she is. The bed is so soft, the sheets cool against her skin. Like a hotel. Then she feels the dog rolling over in the sheets and jolts awake. He’s small and wriggly, so it’s easy to snatch him up. He manages to make his mess outside, which she picks up in a plastic bag and tosses and thinks: what am I going to do with you?

They’re staring at each other in the empty living room, bewildered, when Mel gets a text from her sister.

Becca: i know you said you were coming at 11 but can you pick me up later please please please

Becca: Mariyah finally agreed to watch The Mandalorian with me

Becca: 5 PM?

Mel laughs. Her morning is suddenly all clear. She texts Becca an affirmative and knows she’s going to have to fill her in about the dog, Langdon’s dog.

“Still,” she tells the dog, who is growling and gnawing on his own tail determinedly. “I don’t know how I’m going to get stuff done and also babysit you.”

The solution is, apparently, McKay.

“Are you kidding me? This is like Harrison’s ultimate dream,” she says, an angelic vision in a tank top and khaki shorts on the steps of Langdon’s house. “I jumped out of bed when I got Frank’s message. A free, guaranteed no responsibility puppy doesn’t just fall out of the sky everyday.”

“Apparently they do, only on random Thursdays,” says Mel groggily, rubbing her eyes with a fist as Cassie McKay rummages through the puppy supplies and begins gathering it all into a bag. “Are you sure you’re good to take this on? He’s not house trained. Or anything trained. I don’t think.”

McKay nods her head emphatically, red ponytail bobbing with the movement. “Even better. Chad has been bragging about getting Harrison a puppy since forever. Well, there’s a puppy right here. And he’ll pee all over Chad’s house with Little Miss Perfect watching and he won’t even be able to blame it on me this time. It’s like Christmas came early.”

“So you think he’ll actually adopt—?”

“God, no, but he’ll stick it out for a week or two before caving and admitting he’s incompetent,” says McKay. “Or that’s what he did when I was pregnant, haha.”

Mel doesn’t laugh.

“Ah. Bad joke. No, the dog will be fine. More than fine. Trust me.” She tilts her head at Mel, suddenly alert and not totally absorbed in her plans of revenge and chaos. “Is that… Langdon’s shirt?”

“I didn’t bring a change of clothes,” says Mel weakly.

“Ah. No judgement from me. Pinky swear. Plus, he’s in rehab. Nothing fun can happen until he’s out.” McKay winks exaggeratedly.

Mel does not know what that means. She thinks it’s a sexual innuendo because of the wink. She decides not to ask.

After that, McKay and the dog blessedly leave. Not that Mel dislikes McKay or the dog. It’s just that it’s her day off and now she has a lot more to do than previously anticipated. She nibbles on a slice of cold pizza for breakfast (nutritious) before she gets to work. She strips the bed of the sheets and tosses them into Langdon’s very fancy, very complicated washer which is rather humbling. She has to look up a YouTube tutorial for how to put detergent in, like a spoiled high schooler. Then she gets started on disinfecting the gross tub downstairs. There’s a host of cleaning chemicals and latex gloves in the laundry room. A whole separate room for laundry. She’s thinking about friendships between members of different social classes and a 2004 Yale study on their dubious longevity while scrubbing the drain when her phone dings. She ignores it for now, but once the tub is sparkling and she snaps off her gloves, she sees it’s from Langdon.

Langdon: McKay swing by yet?

Mel rinses her hands and wipes her forehead of sweat and stares in the huge mirror over the sink. Behind it is a cabinet with nondescript face wash and thankfully a pack of unused toothbrushes. She washes her face and brushes away her morning breath and slaps on some face moisturizer for “combination skin” before she finally sits down in his bed and texts him back.

Mel: yes, she has the dog

Mel: she says Chad will take the dog for a week or two maybe. whats the plan after that?

No answer from Langdon. She sees that it’s barely 10 AM — start of group therapy, she remembers vaguely. He probably won’t text back for awhile. His mornings are busy in rehab. But the afternoons are left open for self work and family-friend visits.

She stands and stretches. Toe-touches and hip swivels. She slept like the dead last night. Somehow, after taking care of an untrained dog in an unfamiliar place and cleaning vigorously all morning, she feels settled. Calm. Not shaking out of her own skin like the previous night in the hospital ambulance bay. She can breathe without thinking about it, without crawling through that dark place of: why did I take this job? Am I even good enough? Could I have done more?

Frank Langdon, doctor, fourth year resident, addict, never fails to get her out of her head.

—

A bus and a short ride on the T and another bus, and Mel is back at her place. She’s still wearing Langdon’s clothes. The Berkeley tee, fabric worn from many washes and many wears, his fluffy sweatpants. And his butter-soft hoodie, stolen from their last rehab visit, is still unwashed in her rumpled bed sheets. That’s unlike her. She’s very clean. Anything worn once gets run through the washer. But she doesn’t want to admit to herself she sleeps with the hoodie for reasons she can’t, or won’t, understand.

She keeps collecting things from him, she thinks with a small twinge of embarrassment. She really should return them. She’s not a thief.

Mel stands there in the entry hall for a moment, acclimating to familiar surroundings. For the past twelve hours, she was somewhere else. Maybe she was even with someone else. Surrounded by Langdon, in his home, with his voice in her ear.

For some reason, going back to just Mel King alone right now doesn’t feel very appealing.

It’s a shoddy thing, her place, a row house with leaky pipes and a busted up window in the back and a slanted floor, but it’s hers. It has a small sunny kitchen with flowery curtains and two bedrooms, one for Becca, one for Mel. She used what was left of her dad’s pension after med school for the down payment. It’s hard to compare it to Langdon’s suave bachelor pad—she hears his distant laughter at her calling it that when he’s got two kids and a pill problem. She’ll casually mention it in passing the next time they meet.

After seeing how down he was on FaceTime last night, she aches to see him smile.

She undresses and redresses in a ribbed white tank and some black cotton shorts. Practical in the summer heat, more than the hoodie would be. Why does she still feel naked? She hacks away at her hair with a brush and tries to ground herself by methodically braiding and re-braiding her hair. Even the mild weight of the plait down the nape of her neck, normally inoffensive, makes her itch. The fragrance of Langdon’s shampoo rises from her hair, woody and dark and masculine, and somehow she feels soothed and bothered all at once.

Mel closes her eyes. When she takes in a breath, she can feel his arms around her, like a ghost.

Becca has never liked physical contact, could never stand hugs or kisses even as a kid. Mel was (and is) the opposite—and that’s perfectly okay, Mel gets to show Becca affection through other means. When they were younger, Mel had her mom and her father and her cousins and a few playground friends to hug and cuddle and hold hands with. Her mom fondly called her a “level three clinger” most days. And when the world got to be too much, too loud, too uncomfortable, Mel could always climb into her lap and escape.

But after her dad passed when she was little and her mother died from cancer when she was eighteen, there wasn’t a lot of room in her life for many people besides Becca. Definitely not a lot of moments where it was appropriate to engage in physical contact with others. She had a romantic fling or two in college, but that all died away when she got to med school—and she knows without needing to try that one night stands are decidedly not for her. Making friends got harder. Old friends left for different states. Mel headed to Pittsburgh. So now she’s used to pushing away that quiet longing for anything more than a celebratory high five and keeps it close to her chest.

Now, after their hug, after saving his dog, spending the night in his bed, and the shift from hell, Dr. Langdon has cracked open that longing and dialed it up ten times more than normal.

She puts away her things, tries to put away those thoughts. She busies herself by tidying up her kitchen, wiping down the counters and rearranging her overflowing cabinet of mugs. She forces herself to dump Langdon’s clothes into a load of laundry, even his hoodie, even though she doesn’t want to, because the detergent will take his scent away. She clicks open a lecture on her laptop and takes half-hearted notes, even though the topic is interesting and Dr. MacReady is a great teacher.

Something inside her still feels itchy, restless. Not like how she feels when she’s overstimulated by loud sounds or scratchy fabric. But like how she feels when Becca leaves the house for too long. Like when the night gets so quiet, she can hear a buzz in the air.

Lonely.

Her phone dings.

Langdon: we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it

Langdon: Are you still at my house?

Mel swallows as she reads the texts come in. Even when she was in college and had her first boyfriend, she never related to that feeling other classmates would describe, waiting for their lovers to text them all day long, annoyed and aggravated by being left unanswered, thrilled when their person responded.

She thinks she might understand now.

Mel: no, went home to clean up and get clothes

Mel: how are you?

Bubbles, bubbles, bubbles.

Langdon: I’m fine

Langdon: Actually no I feel like shit. Is it weird to ask you to come over? Visiting hours start in 30.

Her heart swells up ten sizes, like in the cartoon Grinch movie her mother would put on the TV every Christmas.

Mel: not weird

Mel: be there soon

—

She vibrates all the way to the rehab center. On the walk to the bus station, on the bus itself, in the receptionist area under the critical gaze of the smiling receptionist. (Mel doesn’t think the front desk lady likes her all that much. She tries to channel Santos when she tells herself ‘not everyone has to like you’.)

Ben greets her in the hall. “Hey, Dr. King!”

She looks at him, flushed and tingly and overly excited. It takes her a minute to realize he got her title right. “Um, yeah, that’s me. Hey, Ben.”

“Frank overheard me calling you ‘Miss’ last time and made sure to correct me. Real cool, you both being doctors and all.” He gives a bright grin, his tooth gem as glittery as ever. It fades a little when he says, “Keep your head up, okay? I saw him earlier. He’s not looking too hot.”

Mel has to suppress the urge to launch a thousand questions at him. Because what the fuck does that mean? “Oh.”

“No harm, no foul, but a visit this last minute, it’s an exception, not the rule,” warns Ben. “We still like having appointments booked out a week in advance. You hear me?”

Mel nods shortly, chest tight with worry. It must be bad if someone was going to bat for her to be here against regulations—his therapist, maybe? A group counselor? Worst scenarios start bubbling up in her thoughts, making her head spin. Has he relapsed? Gotten a hold of pills somehow? Hurt himself?

Ben must see her concern in her face. (She’s never been great at masking what she feels). His squeeze to her arm in sympathy isn’t entirely unwelcome. “He’ll get through it, Dr. King. He’s doing the work. The people we see here have both good days and bad days. It’s all a part of the process.”

Mel swallows and she tries to hold Ben’s words with her as she’s escorted through the facility. This time she’s dropped off in a yellow room with huge windows, wide and open. Her eyes land on him immediately, and take in nothing else. Langdon is sitting, leaning on his knees, head cradled in his fists like it weighs an immeasurable amount. His hair is scruffier than usual.

“I’m here,” Mel says softly.

Langdon doesn’t reply.

Mel isn’t sure how to respond to that. She doesn’t think he’s ignoring her on purpose. He asked her to come. She tentatively sits next to him in a red-backed chair, close enough to touch if he wants. He’s not shaking, she observes. Normal color. His breaths are deep and even. Probably not a panic attack.

“We can just sit, if you want,” she offers after a long moment. That’s what Becca likes, sometimes, after a meltdown. Mel will sit on the floor of her bedroom, doing nothing, while Becca rocks herself, sniffling, into a state of calm. “We don’t have to talk, if that’s too much.”

A shudder goes through Langdon. Hunched over like that, she can see the jagged shape of his shoulder blades through his thin gray Henley. He’s too skinny, she realizes. He’s lost weight. Then she feels a deep flush of shame because she’s a doctor and these past three weeks, she hasn’t noticed. Of course he lost weight. Langdon was weaned off the benzodiazepines only a few weeks ago. She flips through the withdrawal symptoms in her mind: weight loss, anxiety, depression, nausea, vomiting. A plethora more for more severe cases. By the time she first visited, he must have been over the largest of the symptoms. But the weight loss will linger.

“Or I can talk, if you want,” she says without thinking. “I like that sometimes. When I’m overwhelmed, I’ll put on really loud music and just listen. It helps.”

“Yeah?” His voice sounds clogged and gargled, like he’s speaking to her from underwater. He doesn’t move from his closed-off position. She imagines him poking his head out, peeking up at her like a turtle testing to see if the world is safe.

“Yeah,” says Mel, a little encouraged. “Would that be—?”

His next breath is ragged. “Talk to me. Tell me about last night. Your shift.”

Oh. “Are you sure? It was pretty bad.”

He nods decisively, still doubled over. His knuckles are white where they’re clutched around his head. “Helps. Thinking about other people. The Pitt. It helps.”

So she talks. She tells him about the alcohol-poisoned college student, the overprotective mom and her definitely-not-pregnant tween. How it felt good, normal, clearing out rooms, discharging beds. How for a moment, she felt competent. And then she haltingly describes the drive-by shooting. No warning, just suddenly bodies in gurneys with GSWs. The blood on the floor, on her feet, on everything. How she floated between patients, cutting, suturing, suctioning. And then Paola. Her intubation. Her spine. How Mel is so afraid that even if she lives, even if she walks, she’ll be incontinent—or her muscles will atrophy, or there will be unseen nerve damage, or she’ll develop early on-set osteoporosis in her teens. Her quality of life, damaged forever. How Mel fears that Paola will carry around that horrible night in her bones until she dies.

Childishly, she even admits she didn’t want to go home alone in the dark.

Her voice peters out. “Then you called. And you gave me something to do.”

His head tilts up slightly. Through his thick bangs, his piercing eyes glint at her. “And me asking you to babysit my dog—that helped you?” His voice is still thick and strange, the words halting and slow, but he sounds better.

“Yes,” she says simply. “You needed me.”

He stares at her for a long moment. Mel doesn’t like prolonged eye contact, but somehow, when it’s Langdon, it’s not so bad. She feels her cheeks start to warm under his gaze.

“I did need you,” he finally says. “But…”

And she knows he’s going to say something along the lines of it’s okay to rest, Mel or maybe you should take some time off, like Becca does on Mel’s worse days. Somehow, coming from Langdon, she knows it will hit her worse. Mean more. So instead, she interrupts:

“You should let me know how much the pizza was. And the Uber.”

“Absolutely not.” He sits up immediately, a motion so fast that she’s startled. He’s looking at her very intensely. “Mel, it’s important that you let others take care of you,” he says. “Do you understand what I’m saying? You did me a huge favor. The very least I can do is take care of how you got there and what you ate.”

Mel swallows, breaking eye contact and staring at her hands twisting in her lap. She’s supposed to be the one taking care of him, she thinks. Of everything. That’s how it’s always been. Instead, she says, “Your dog still doesn’t have a name, you know.”

Langdon huffs softly. There’s a moment, full of tension, that she knows he could push on it. He doesn’t. The moment fades and he allows the change of topic. “You would care about that.”

Mel feels offended. “What does that mean?”

“Does it really need a name, Mel?” There’s a twitch at the corner of his lip. She sees deep dark rings under his eyes. He looks really tired, really sad, and really beautiful.

“I think so,” she says. She tilts her head, considering him. “I can’t keep calling him The Dog. That’s not very practical. How else is he going to learn to come when called? Or fetch?”

“Okay, then. His name is Dog. Because I’m an asshole. And I don’t even have room enough in my brain for sobriety, let alone anything else.” He doesn’t sound angry when he self-degrades. He sounds tepid, neutral. Like this is just how the world works.

“You’re not an asshole,” says Mel. “You’re having a hard time right now.”

“Massive understatement, Dr. King. Massive.” He splays back in the chair. His head tilts up and he’s staring at the ceiling numbly, his face in sharp profile. “You know, I thought withdrawal would be the worst thing to happen to me here. It would all be uphill from there if I could just get through it. The sweating and the insomnia and the fucking weird bowel movements. One night I actually dreamed that I was back in the ED. Trauma One. And I couldn’t find a scalpel. Except I wasn’t dreaming. It was a hallucination.” He slits his eyes at her, without turning his head. “I didn’t know the body could feel like that.”

Mel stays quiet. She watches the slightly crooked slant of his nose, the thinness of his face. She should’ve seen it. She should have noticed.

“I thought I was prepared, going in here. I read all the literature. Fucking forgot the first rule of med school. It’s one thing to read about something. It’s another thing to go through it.” He licks his lips slowly, thoughtfully. “And then the therapies.”

She waits. When nothing else is forthcoming, she prompts: “Helpful?”

“Weird. Every group session, we start with, you know… Hi, I’m Frank Langdon and I’m an addict.” He raises one hand, massages his temples with his two forefingers and his thumb. His nails are neat and clean, clipped short, veiny wrists. Doctor’s hands. “Only, until today, I never really believed it. I didn’t think I had a problem. I thought I was just… I believed, truly, that I had it under control. That I could stop at any time and I was only here to humor Robby and get my life back and then I’d keep doing the same old shit. That I can’t stop because the pills made me a better doctor.”

Mel’s stomach lurches. “That’s not true.”

“Isn’t it?” He’s still staring at the ceiling. “You never met me before the pills, Mel. They make everything so much fucking easier. Like I’m me, but with no pain. No air resistance. I’m all glide. I can do anything, save anyone.”

“Getting high at work doesn’t make you a better doctor,” says Mel slowly. She remembers reading a book on addiction a few years after her father passed. A line stuck out to her. Addiction is a disease. You cannot reason with a disease. You can not make it see sense or logic or argue with it. A disease does not hear or feel or respond to emotion. She tries anyway. “You know that if you keep doing this, you’re putting people—your patients and your coworkers—in danger. It makes you hard to work with. It makes you angry. It makes you a worse parent. And it’s destroying your body.”

Langdon is staring at her like she’s grown three heads. “Wow, Mel,” he says venomously. “Don’t pull any punches for my sake.”

Mel flinches. She said the wrong thing. She’s always saying the wrong thing. What is she supposed to do—?

His hand is on her shoulder. It’s a big hand, hot and desperate and grasping. She looks up. “I’m sorry, Mel, fuck, I’m really, really sorry. I-I’m all fucked up right now.” He’s trying to smile, but there’s tears welling in his eyes, and seeing him cry makes her want to cry, because Frank Langdon should not be crying. He should be grinning at her and letting her show him pictures of Dog and complaining about the nasty food the center serves and laughing. Frank Langdon should be happy, always.

“It’s okay,” says Mel instead of falling to pieces. She swallows all the hard feelings, promising herself she’ll let them out later when she’s alone, when she doesn’t have to be strong. “You’re upset.”

“No reason to take it out on you.” He swipes at his face, wiping away tears that haven’t fallen yet. “You’re the nicest person in my life and I’m yelling at you for telling the truth. I’m a douchebag.”

Mel feels a stab of inappropriate delight (the nicest person in my life) and shoves it away, because it wouldn’t be nice to smile right now. “You can yell a little. If you want. People have yelled at me before.”

“I don’t like that, that’s not funny,” says Langdon, shaking his head. He drops his hands. He’s looking at her fiercely. Intensely. “People shouldn’t yell at you. And if they do, you should come find me and tell me.”

Mel can’t help but laugh. “And you’ll do what? Yell at them back?”

Langdon’s mouth is a thin line of displeasure. “Just promise me. In the future, if anyone yells at you, I want to know. Because that’s not okay. And you shouldn’t just let me yell at you just because I’m…” He gestures erratically at himself and their surroundings. “Okay? If I’m being an asshole, tell me I’m being an asshole.”

Mel, warmed, nods. “Okay. I will.” Then she tilts her head. “Did something happen, Frank? To make you feel this way?” It’s the first time she’s ever called him Frank. Somehow, now, here, it makes sense.

Frank presses on his eyes with his palms. “Robby happened. He asked if he could visit.”

“Oh,” says Mel.

“And it freaked me out. Bad. He’s coming over next week. And I was just talking out of my ass in group therapy and for the first time I was actually being honest. I can’t imagine going back without the drugs. But if I want to be a doctor… If I want to get my life back… I have to actually be sober.”

Mel absorbs this. “That makes sense.”

“Well, that integral part of rehab didn’t occur to me until today, until he wanted to see me.” Frank sounds very tired. “And all of it is my fault. If I had just hired someone else to move my dad’s stupid fucking boxes.”

“Frank.”

“And I wouldn’t be thinking about the pills all the time,” he croaks. “And it’s all the time, Mel. When I wake up, when I go to sleep. I just think about how I’d feel so much better if I had five milligrams of diazepam in my pocket. Just one. It’s a nightmare.”

There’s a tissue box on the table. She takes one and hands it to him preemptively, because she sees his face begin to twist.

He doesn’t use it, crumpling it in his fist. “Ah, fuck. Not my hard-ass reputation going to shit.”

“I won’t tell anyone.” She crosses her heart with a finger. “Cross my heart.”

Frank blinks rapidly at her. His eyes are red-rimmed and his face is pale, but he’s a pretty crier. Not like her, who gets all swollen and blotchy and hiccupy every time. “For real?”

“It’s something I do with Becca,” she says. “But you have to make a promise too. And actually mean it.”

“Okay,” says Frank easily. Too easily. He crosses his heart clumsily. “Anything.”

“Have you ever been to the Pittsburgh Botanic Garden?” His hand is fisted on his thigh. She reaches over without hesitation and puts hers over it, linking their fingers as easily as taking a breath.

Frank pauses, as if he has to recalibrate. His hand unfurls, enveloping hers and his eyes close, as if in relief. She doesn’t blame him. It feels good. Right. “A few times, when I was a kid. On a middle school field trip maybe? I, uh, I don’t really remember much.”

Mel smiles. “It’s, um. It’s my favorite part of Pittsburgh. Is that cheesy? I grew up in and around upstate New York and we had this park I’d go to sometimes, before my dad went to rehab. There was this huge fountain that looked like it was made out of seashells. I don’t remember the name of it—I tried Googling it and nothing came up. Anyway, I would sit there while my parents walked around with Becca and I would just look at the water. How it moved and smelled.”

Frank’s eyes open with that intensity that makes her hairs stand on end.

“Sorry, I’m blabbing,” she says, flustered. “My point is that the Lotus Pond in the Botanic Gardens is the most relaxing place for me. It reminds me of that fountain, a lot. Especially in the winter. There’s no people around because nothing’s in bloom, so it’s just you on a bench and nature. And when the snow falls… it’s freezing and the grass frosts over. And all you can do is watch the birds. No distractions.”

Frank adjusts her hand into a more comfortable position. He holds it loosely, as if he’s an 18th century gentleman about to kiss it in greeting. It makes her heart pound, stutter, like she’s out of sinus.

“That… that kind of sounds boring, when I say it outloud,” she stammers.

“No, not boring.” His mouth twitches. “Peaceful.”

“Well,” says Mel. “When you’re better—and you will get better—come with me?”

Frank looks down at their intertwined hands. His thumb traces over her pinky, brushing over the little nail. The sensation shoots tingles up her arm, into her head. She feels dizzy for a moment, for how intense just that little touch is. “I swear,” he says in a slow steady rhythm, “When I’m better, when I’m sober, I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”

“That’s a big promise,” she says (because what else can she say?).

“It’s one I’ll keep,” he says. “Even though right now, all I want is pills.”

“Cravings are a normal part of the process,” she says. “Like me and pizza.”

She doesn’t think it’s very funny, but Frank still tilts back his head and laughs.

“So, did you mean it? That La Bella’s is better than Vocelli’s?” he asks slyly. She likes this smug-Langdon better than the turtle-Langdon hiding from the world, she thinks, but she would take either one over anyone else.

“I might have been delusional from lack of sleep,” Mel evades. “Who knows what I said?”

“You asked me if I was rich,” he says with deep amusement.

“That might’ve been rude,” she allows. “Um. Are you?”

Frank sucks his teeth audibly. “You wore my college t-shirt, so you know I was in Silicon Valley for a while. And yeah, I went to Berkeley with a fuck ton of assholes. I just so happened to befriend the right one and gave him a thousand dollars because he talked a big game. I thought I’d never see any of that money again. Then he dropped out to fund a startup that just so happened to get big. So yeah. Rich. Enough to retire my parents anyways. But out of sheer dumb luck, so it’s not like I did anything that impressive. I just rolled the dice and got a good score one time.”

“That explains the bachelor pad,” she says.

He shakes his head. “Oh, Mel. You are the gift that keeps on giving.”

She doesn’t go home right away after that. She sits with him until the hour is up. They fill it with other things, lighter things—Becca’s continued one-sided war against the mysterious Francine. Mel’s current thousand piece jigsaw puzzle which is slowly driving her into a psych ward. Langdon’s last call with his kids, a late “sweet dreams” FaceTime last night, and Abby’s slow thaw towards the idea of them visiting. This book he’s been working his way through, a rehab gift from Collins—The Mind Electric, a book by a Boston Medical neurologist about the weirdness of the brain.

It’s easy, for a little bit. It’s always easy, talking to Frank, even when it’s hard.

All the while, her hand is curled warmly in his. Fingers slotted perfectly in place. Like they’re meant to be together.

Chapter Text

6 months later

Mel was right. The Botanic Garden is empty.

Frank sits on a wooden bench, dedicated to a Thomas Robb, 1982-2005, loving brother and son, and knows that he did not dress warmly enough when he peeled himself out of bed this morning. His ass is frozen on the cold hard bench. Dog, on the other hand, is very comfortable in a woolen sweater perfectly his size: a belated birthday present from Dana, who definitely snickered while wrapping it. Frank watches with some amusement as Dog snuffles around in the dirt, tugging at his lead. Apparently something smells really good in the sloping path to the pond. Probably goose shit.

It’s an awful day. The clouds churn overhead in a gray hazy film. The wind stings his face and shoots through the thick denim of his jeans. And the Garden is depressingly empty. He walked the long way to get here from the parking lot. Through the wilted pollinator garden, a frayed and yellow meadow surrounded by stark trees, an unnervingly quiet woodland trail. Dog had fun marking every piece of foliage he saw. But nothing stirred, except for dead leaves pushed around by the wind and the sound of their footsteps crunching through dead leaves. He saw a few workers in the Welcome Center through the glass doors, sweeping floors and managing the front desk, but other than that, it’s a ghost town.

But for some reason he wants to be here more than anywhere else in the world right now.

It feels colder by the water. Frank sees dark reedy plants framing the pond, swaying in the blistering wind. A pamphlet from the welcome center tells him that lotuses only bloom in June through August. Their flat, boat-like leaves move weightless on the surface of the water. And then—

A robin, chest a brilliant flag of red, flutters down to drink.

His breath catches. Dog, maybe sensing the change in the air, starts quietly chewing on a stick.

In the freezing water, it dunks its head down over and over, its little body fluttering. Beads of water flinging through the air.

“Pretty.”

Frank turns his head and there she is.

She’s much more prepared for the weather than he is, he sees. Wrapped up in a big pale blue puffer coat, the hood is up, concealing her hair. He can still make out her nose, bright pink from the cold. Her eyes, slightly watering from the wind behind her glasses.

She is beautiful.

“Yeah,” he says, not about the bird. “Very pretty.”

Dog is delighted. He pounces at her feet, his tail going a million miles a minute. She kneels in the cold damp earth without a care—woolen tights, he sees. A skirt?—and kisses his head with a loud smack. “Hello, boy!” She looks up at Frank, her fingers sinking into the fluff around his neck fondly. Her smile splits open on her round, pale face, wind-chafed and bright. “He got big!”

“And smart,” he says. “He's house-trained now.” He smirks. “Just like me.”

“Haha. Good joke.” She spies the silver tag around his neck engraved with Dog and Frank’s address and her laugh is giddy. “Good Dog!” There’s a moment where they just look at each other and smile.

“Hello, Dr. Langdon,” she says. Her voice, soft, carries over to him.

“Hello, Dr. King,” he says back. She stands and moves to sit beside him on the rock hard, ice-cold bench. Suddenly he feels at least ten degrees warmer. She pulls down her hood, and there she is in all her glory, two braids this time, dark gold from the glaring sun.

It’s strange seeing her outside the walls of the rehab common room. It’s strange, he thinks, seeing her at all. When he was released, rather than a newfound sense of freedom, he found himself buried in paperwork. Balancing his three Narcotics Anonymous meetings per week and his supervised visits with his children. Reviewing waivers and signing agreements faxed over from the hospital, requisites to keep his job. Scrambling to find a therapist who specializes in addiction in active healthcare workers.

Divorce attorney meetings.

It’s a lot. They haven’t spoken outside of text for about six months.

And then, him running on courage he didn’t knew he had, sending a text at a too-late hour:

Hey. Are you free tomorrow by any chance? Would love to go to the botanic garden as promised

“Been a long time,” he says, because the pills have definitely dented his intelligence and all he can do is state the obvious now.

“I’ve missed you,” replies Mel. She says it without shame, with her heart pulsing on her sleeve. “Dana mentioned you’ve been doing well. Better.”

The sound that bursts from him is half-air, half-wheeze. “You could say that. I missed you too.” He dips his head. It’s hard to look at her a little bit. Like trying to squint at the sun, but all you can see is its colorful impression when you close your eyes.

Adrienne, his therapist, says he idolizes Mel too much.

“Just because someone is a good person, doesn’t mean that they have no flaws,” Adrienne told him very sternly during their last meeting. She even removed her readers, so he’d know she meant serious business.

Frank knows that. He’s not a twelve-year-old with a crush on Teacher. He also thinks Adrienne is frankly full of bullshit. At least when it comes to Mel. Because the idea that anyone could look at her and think that she has any kind of flaw at all—that’s beyond him. Yeah, she can be awkward, he allows, miss a social cue or two. But inherently, at the very core of her, in the least cliche way he can possibly say it, she has a heart made out of gold. He just knows it. In the time that they’ve known each other (thirteen hours before he went to rehab, and seven months after that), she found every wall he’s ever had carefully bricked around his heart and burst through them with the gentlest sledgehammer. Just by being her.

“Sorry we couldn’t meet up sooner.” It’s all he can get out, like the air is too thick to handle at times.

Her smile hasn’t shrunk at all during their conversation, even though Frank feels like his tongue is leaden and stupid. Her lips are bright red from the cold. He has to keep staring at her eyebrows, how her nose moves slightly when she speaks, so he doesn’t feel like a creep.

She shrugs. The fabric of her coat crinkles. “It’s okay. I know you need time and space for your recovery. And it’s good you have other people there for you, not just me.”

“Still.” Frank slips his hand inside his jeans pocket, feeling for the penny he’s kept there for a long time. He finds Lincoln’s well-worn grooves, slides them between his thumb and index finger idly. “I wanted to keep our promise.”

Her eyes, big and brown, gleam like a dark pond. “You did.” She looks him over, eyes going from the top of his head to the bottom of his pants. “You’re doing it right now.”

“I’m glad I am.” His heart feels swollen and hot in his chest.

“Your first day of work is tomorrow.” She can’t hide her excitement. It’s obvious from how she fidgets, the lightness in her voice. Frank, who for the past year has been lying to everyone who matters to him, hiding the most grotesque parts of himself, finds this both refreshing and terrifying.

“7 to 7,” he says, and his stomach lurches as the words leave his mouth. The world starts spinning a little, so he has to put his head between his knees and take a second to just feel like shit. “Oh, fuck. I don’t know if I can do it, Mel.”

A warm, small hand, on the middle of his back. He feels it through the thickness of his coat, a calm pressure that begins to rub in circles. “Just breathe,” says a disembodied voice. It’s Mel, he knows it’s Mel, but in his panic, he thinks it might be an angel. “Come on, Frank.”

Two minutes, or maybe twenty years, go by. He forces himself to sit up, regulating his breathing. He’s not having a panic attack, but it feels like more than just nerves. He can barely parse his own thoughts. “It’s going to be fucking awful. I’m going to kill someone. Or steal meds. Or both.”

“Okay…” Her hand pauses in its circles. “Hey. If you don’t want this, if you’re really not ready, you don’t have to.”

It’s a way out. He knows it. He knows he can phone Robby and request an extension and it would be granted, no questions asked. He could check himself back into in-patient. He could pack all his things, empty his savings account, and move to Costa Rica with a new name.

He could do a million things.

“No.” He decides. “I need to be an Emergency Medicine doctor.”

“You are one.” She says it with such certainty. Her hand still presses against his back. It feels good, an anchor, so his head doesn’t fill up with stupid thoughts and he can’t float away on bullshit. “But not if you don’t try.”

Her sweet way of saying grow some balls. “You always know what to say. Like you’re a human Roledex of ‘things to say to people in crisis’.”

“No I’m not.” She sighs. “Yesterday, Dr. Mohan asked me if her date night outfit looked too slutty and I said yes. That was definitely the wrong thing to say.”

“No way.” The laughter catches him by surprise. It always does when he’s around her. He’s not sure why. He knows she’s funny—intentionally. He sees it in the sly way her mouth moves when she speaks. Sometimes it feels like a secret: that no one is supposed to know she’s actually hilarious. “You’re lying. You’re just trying to make me laugh.”

“It worked,” Mel says, smugly pleased. Then she sighs. “But no, sadly, not a lie.”

“You’re really something, Mel,” he says, and means it. He looks at her and sees, suddenly, clearly, the future spread out in front of him. Her hand in his, holding tight, for the rest of their lives. It’s similar to how he felt that awful day, the day they met. He hadn’t understood back then why he was drawn to her. Why he circled her like a planet being pulled into a star’s orbit. They barely knew each other. He didn’t know about Becca yet. He didn’t know her preference for black tea over coffee. Or that she wakes up each Saturday and does a crossword with an old fashioned pencil and eraser. Or how incredible she looks in his bed, exhausted, wet tangled hair around her shoulders, in a FaceTime call, wearing his college t-shirt.

He didn’t know how precious she’d become to him. But somehow, as strangers, they meshed. And Frank just couldn’t bare to look away. Even in the heights of his addiction, he couldn’t pull his eyes off of her.

Frank chocked up the strange consideration he had for her at the time to finally meeting a person who he could teach, impart wisdom on, a blank sheet waiting for color.

He knows now that she has a lot more to teach him than he could ever teach her.

“How many days?” She asks. There’s no morbidity to her question. Just a light in her eyes, like headlights in a dark tunnel.

He pulls out the penny. He doesn’t particularly like the chips they hand out at NA meetings, plastic, with no weight to them, and it feels grotesque searching for similar offerings on Etsy. Like buying his own coffin at a flea market. “180 days tomorrow,” he says and places the penny, warmed from his skin, into the center of her hand. She’s wearing white woolen mittens, he sees with some incredulity. Like a tiny baby lamb. “Uh. When I hit 200, I’ll have two pennies.”

Her mouth is a quirked thing, about to wobble into laughter. “I like that,” she says. “But shouldn’t it be 200 pennies? Or two dollars? Or eight quarters? The numerical value of a penny doesn’t really make sense in this kind of situation.”

He shrugs. “I like pennies,” he says and he knows that reasoning bothers her. But her smile breaks free regardless, and he watches as she reverently hands back his penny. He slips it back into his pocket, where it belongs.

”Is it a lucky coin?”

”I don’t believe in luck.” Frank isn’t really lying. He’s not religious or spiritual. His parents are strict Irish Catholics and Frank was stuck in a pew from ages one to eighteen. When Abby accidentally fell pregnant during his first year as an intern, two forms of contraception failing them, it was no wonder Anne and Matthew Langdon pressured them both down the aisle. It was a makeshift wedding ceremony with little fanfare. So, no God. No devil. No luck. But maybe he believes, in a tiny corner of his black cynic’s heart, that he was fated to meet Mel King. “But it could be a feel-good coin. Just… a coin full of good feelings.”

Mel’s expression goes all soft and gooey, like when she talks about babies being delivered in the ER and the fifty-year-old respiratory therapist who is nice to her on night shifts. “Your good feelings?”

”Sure,” he says, because he’s never really thought about it. “Or the universe’s. Namaste and all that.”

”You don’t believe that.” Mel reads him like a book. “You just don’t want to admit you think about good things while holding your feel-good penny.”

”Well, that doesn’t exactly help my badass reputation at the Pitt, does it?”

There’s a beat. Both of them are thinking about tomorrow, he knows. Her with anticipation. Him, with both excitement and dread.

“I’ll be there with you,” she says.

“Yeah,” and he doesn’t say that the moment he got his schedule, he hunted down her name, hands shaking, hoping that she would be there his first day. “Get ready. I’ll be bothering you all twelve hours.”

“You don’t bother me.” She’s heartbreakingly sincere before she finally gets it’s a joke. “Oh, I forgot. You have a bad sense of humor.”

“It’s actually a great sense of humor, you just need to get used to it.”

“Hmm. Dog’s name tells me otherwise.” And she buries her hand in Dog’s fluffy coat again where he’s panting between her legs under the bench.

“Well, me and Dog have a special understanding,” he says. “He’s seen me at my worst after all.”

Mel shakes her head. “I think he’s seen me at my worst and I still would’ve given him a better name than that.”

“What, tired after a shift?”

Mel thinks for a moment. “Well, that night I rescued him from your house. I ate a slice of pizza naked in front of him. I just got out of the shower and was kind of losing it from hunger. So I think that’s pretty bad.” She looks down at Dog. “Though I don’t think dogs really care about human nudity. They’re nude all the time.”

Langdon stares at her. His brain makes an aborted attempt at imagining—her naked, hair wet, eating a slice of pizza in his house and then sleeping in his bed in his college t-shirt.

“You win,” he says faintly.

Mel frowns. “Are you okay?”

“More than,” and if his voice is a little gruff, she’s kind enough not to mention it.

They sit together after that quietly. The robin moves on. A small group of geese take his place, launching themselves like sturdy boats into the water. The pond isn’t frosted over, he wants to tell her. There’s still life under the surface, waiting to stir when spring arrives.

“Thank you, Mel,” is all he can say. “For being here.”

And she smiles at him. “I like being here with you.”

He knows today isn’t the time. The penny burns in his pocket. 200 days? 300 days? The one year rule? He’s not sure when it would ever be a great time. But when the sky breaks open, white and cold, and the snowflakes catch in her eyelashes, and her breath hitches, he knows that someday—some incredible, unbelievable day—he’s going to kiss her.

And if she kisses him back, he vows to himself that he won’t fuck it up.