Chapter Text
Frank didn’t make it an hour into his first shift back from his stint at rehab. Well, not without a break.
He walked through chairs, his outside clothes still on, still somehow separate from work. Those scrubs and the clean drug test folded primly into a letter in his hands were the only things left for him to do. And he had to do a lot—he practically clawed his way back to the ED in record time. His ten months were nothing to the years some of the other guys had on their belts. He watched their sunken faces, hope crushed in their eyes, and he could just feel how difficult it would be. Some guys were really trying, putting in the work. Others just laid back, didn’t participate in groups, and accepted that they’d have monitored bathroom visits for the rest of their lives.
Frank particularly didn’t want that, even if he didn’t think he had a problem at first. He walked in, a fresh haircut, skinnier than he should have been, and thought that his title as a doctor meant that he was inherently superior to every other person there. His detox beat that spirit out of him pretty quickly.
And ten months later, he stood in chairs, wanting to wring his hands of the past and simply get to work. But it was never that easy.
Despite trying to keep his head low, Penguins cap shading his eyes, a frequent flier still identified him. Louie called out to him, an IV strung arm beckoning him over, and the guilt pooled in his chest immediately. He was suffocating, by all the words he wanted to say—the apologies he wanted to give, and the condescension he wanted to sling at Robby despite it all. Instead of walking over, greeting Louie and answering his obligatory question of where Langdon had been, he just pivoted, making a beeline for the stairwell.
He crouched down at the base of the staircase and winced. His back was still killing him. He felt slightly bad for ignoring Louie, but what was he supposed to say? “Hey, remember me? Yeah, well I was stealing your medication to feed my own addiction to benzos. Sorry about that, it happens to the best of us. You’d know about that, wouldn’t you?”
Frank wanted to vomit.
And it wasn’t just Louie. He could feel the air was different when he walked in. It was like, everyone had passed him by ten months, had gotten better, had gotten smarter, and he was right where they left him, not paying him any mind. He probably deserved it, he thought. No, he definitely deserved it. He’d gone about everything wrong. Well, except for one thing.
His back was still killing him. And he felt like a failure. And he knew the second he saw Robby he’d turn right around. And he was still mustering up an apology for Santos. And Samira had taken his place as Robby’s next of kin. And his back was still killing him. And he craved something deep down that was unintelligible to his brain but he knew his hands could just make their way over to the med station and fix him up something.
His head was spinning and every bad memory of that day came flying back to him all at once, a giant, jumbled mess. The cacophony left a ringing in his ears and he thought that if he just sat there crouched for much longer he could just crumple up and die—
“Dr. Langdon?” a voice echoed through the stairwell, and Frank recognized it instantly. The soft, low tone of Mel’s voice had a sultriness that he knew he shouldn’t be thinking about, a wedding band slightly loose on his ring finger. But he couldn’t deny that her voice, that melted like sweet honey, was the light at the end of the tunnel for the low-grade panic attack that he was having.
“Mel,” he said, soft, like she was a small animal he didn’t want to scare away. Hell, he never wanted to scare her away. He stood up, meeting her eyes, and she looked different. She was wearing scrubs, a green tee underneath, and her sneakers were different. Maybe he shouldn’t have picked up on that.
He repeated her name in his head, a melodic incantation. Her face was the same, albeit a little more emotionally drained than the last time he saw her. Her eyes were like those of a doe’s, and he could see a hint of pink in her cheeks. He wanted to see more—a full blossom concentrated in the apples of her cheeks, and he wanted to be the reason she blushed. God, he was really good at getting off topic when it came to her.
Mel walked over and sat down next to him. “I haven’t seen you in a while,” she said, her voice hesitating. She studied the linoleum floor in front of her. “I thought you might have left for good.”
She’d been left in the dark, Frank realized. She didn’t know why he left, or for how long he’d be gone for. He wanted to explain it all to her, to be the first person to not leave her alone and confused, but he froze at the thought of her thinking less of him. He’d been one great disappointment to her, after all, hadn’t he? He had left her in the dark, too. After a while, “I’m here now,” was all he could muster up.
A hopeful look flooded into Mel’s eyes.
“Mel,” he said again, but he wasn’t really sure why he had said it. He had nothing to follow it up with; he simply wanted to say her name.
A moment’s pause, and Mel looked at Frank. Really studied him, this time. She stared at him like there was something that she understood about him that even he didn’t get. A shared secret neither would ever verbalize. “We don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want to.”
Frank nodded, a rueful smile on his face. He wished he had met her earlier.
“But,” Mel said, a second thought on the tip of her tongue, “I really like working with you. You’re a great doctor.” Her nose scrunched with a small smile. “I hope we can be friends.”
Friends. Frank’s heart panged at the thought. That Mel would still want to be around him, after all he had done. She was the only one at that. Robby ignored his calls, Dana avoided his gaze, and his own wife walked on eggshells around him. But Mel still wanted to be his friend.
“Thanks Mel,” was all he could say, because if he let out every thought running in his brain he surely would scare her away. Because when someone gives you the graciousness that you definitely don’t deserve, you owe them for life. And Frank knew intuitively that he’d be owing Mel indelibly.