Chapter Text
9:09AM
By the time he circles back to check on her, Mel is gone from her observation room.
There’s a pit in his stomach in her absence, and he has to swallow the panic in his throat because of it. She’s fine, I checked her myself, she’s okay to go back to work.
He turns the lights on long enough to tidy up the room before returning to the hustle and bustle of the rest of the hospital. He does a cursory glance along his field of vision, and he almost doesn’t see her, but he catches a glimpse of the back of her head while she’s in a trauma bay with several other doctors.
She’s okay.
So why is he racked with anxiety over it?
He considers heading over to check on her one last time. He actually takes a step forward before Robby walks by ahead of him, so Frank instead turns on his heels quickly and beelines back to his exile in Triage.
Not without a quick glimpse over his shoulder for good measure.
9:37
Later, he catches himself spinning his ring on his finger uncomfortably. He doesn’t realise he’s doing it at first; it becomes a nervous habit in lieu of other fidgeting. He is waiting for the computer to download a patient’s prescription orders when he starts to zone out so intently, he spins the ring right off his finger and into the palm of his hand.
He looks at the gold band, confused. In more ways than one.
He hasn’t told anyone that his marriage imploded after he was sent to rehab. He hasn’t told anyone that Abby took his son to her parents and hasn’t come back. He hasn’t told anyone that they’re in the middle of a custody dispute. He hasn’t told anyone that he’s terrified she’s going to get sole custody and he’s going to lose his kid.
He’s terrified and he has no one.
The sound of the patient’s orders downloading to his computer jolts him out of his own spiral and he clears his throat before pocketing the ring in his scrubs before scrolling through the file.
11:20
It is almost two hours of back-to-back triaging before he slips away to find a sense of normalcy again within the confines of the ER walls. He is careful; he tries to keep an eye on Robby at any given time so he knows when to not be seen, and he also makes an honest effort to avoid Dr. Santos.
There is a conversation that needs to be had, but it’s much too early in their days for it.
He finds himself often interrupting the med students’ learning, which is both boring and an accident every time. He sometimes hangs out by the board to survey what cases are in the ER at the moment, but then Princess and Perlah start to gossip in Tagalog and he feels very exposed.
The closest he feels to normal is when he tries to start a conversation with McKay and she just leaves him on heard as she walks away, engrossed in a patient file.
Maybe Triage isn’t so bad.
He’s on his way back to his new home when a commotion to his left grabs his attention.
It’s a fast, loud, bullet through a glass door sort of commotion. He jumps in surprise. The ER erupts in screaming and yelling.
To his left, a young, scrawny man suddenly has one of the new med students flush against him with a knife to his neck. Frank takes in what he’s seeing. Dana, Robby, Jesse, and Whittaker standing around the man in a semi-circle with arms outstretched as they try to de-escalate the sudden situation.
Frank looks around carefully with slow movements, swallowing nervously. He’s close enough to a desk that he can call security, but he has to do it slowly. With deliberate movements, he inches closer to the phone. It feels like it takes centuries.
“Stay back!” the man shrieks erratically.
The med student, whose name Frank cannot remember for the life of him, looks terrified. He is gulping anxiously, and even from here, he can see the way the knife presses firmly against the man’s neck as his Adam's apple bobs when he swallows.
“You need to calm down,” Dana tells him coolly, ever the voice of reason in a storm. “Don’t make this any worse than it needs to be.”
“All I need is to get out of here,” the man barks, but it wavers, which makes him overcompensate and drop his gaze long enough for Frank to dial out for security and put the phone down.
Robby speaks in a firm, yet calm voice. A voice Frank knew too well. “Look, Mr…” he tries, waiting for the man to fill in the blanks for everyone.
“Sanders,” the man answers desperately, as though against his will.
“Mr. Sanders,” Robby repeats levelly, “if you want out of here, we can do that. But you have to let Dr. Ogilvie go.”
Ah. Ogilvie.
“I can’t,” Sanders croaks, his voice climbing an octave. Everyone recognizes the behaviour.
Frank can feel the palpable tension in the room. He tries to move back to his place and starts assessing the staff in the department with him. Other than the ones surrounding this guy, he can see Perlah and Princess way off to the side glued together, plus Javadi and Dr. Mohan peering out from a bay with a patient inside.
On the opposite side, Nurse Donnie body blocks the new nurse protectively, whose name he hasn’t learned yet, but she looks more horrified.
A handful of other personnel makes up the rest of the space intermittently, but Frank would admit he doesn’t know a lot of names. He isn’t sure if it’s because the pills that he swore didn’t impact his job actually did and he lost a lot of important information, or if it’s because he never bothered to learn.
Either way, he feels like an asshole.
There’s no time for self-reflection.
“I’m gonna leave,” Sanders tells them as he starts to side-step, dragging the med student – Ogilvie – with him.
“You have to let Dr. Ogilvie go,” Robby tells him seriously.
“Not until I’m out of here,” Sanders snaps. Another step.
“Mr. Sanders,” Dana interjects, a sharp voice in the fuzz. “The second you leave this building with a person, you will be arrested for kidnapping.”
“Please,” the med student begs quietly, his voice trembling.
“SHUT UP,” Sanders screams in his ear, making him flinch.
“Hey!” Robby yells, his voice nearly triggering a fight-or-flight response in Frank. “We’re not going to hurt you, Mr. Sanders. You can walk out those doors with a head start on the police right now,” he bargains. “All you have to do is let Dr. Ogilvie go.”
Frank steps closer as the circle begins to tighten slowly. Robby motions to the automatic doors to the ambulance bay, trying to entice the man to let the med student go. For a second, Frank thinks it’s going to work.
But not everyone got the memo about the hostage situation, and through the very double doors in question, Mel appears, head down and in her own world.
He shouldn’t have said anything, but life happens both in slow motion and fast forward. “Mel, no-” Frank whisper-yells to the girl.
She looks up to meet his eyes, but sees Sanders first, who decides to launch Ogilvie into Robby and Dana like human dominoes, then grab Mel by the upper arm and shove her into the nearest trauma bay. Frank tries to sprint toward them, nearly hurdling anyone in the way and almost running over an entire nurse in the process.
Mel isn’t the reactive type, Frank knows this. Thankfully, her surprise at the situation coupled with her fear helps slow Sanders down just enough for Frank to do the dangerous thing and tackle the guy inside the trauma bay.
He full-body throws them both to the ground while Mel scurries away and presses herself against the wall, sliding down to the ground to get as far away as she can from the madness.
Sanders fights back.
It doesn’t take long for the other doctors to pile in to help Frank, and he can hear that security is there now, too, but nothing happens fast enough to stop Sanders from scratching him through his scrubs near his collarbone.
“Fuck!” he exclaims, wincing.
Sanders clamours to his feet, crawling over Langdon to get his knife.
The bastard is quick and nimble. He bolts out of the room faster than Frank can even process it, and then he hears the sounds of half a dozen footsteps retreating quickly as they chase after the armed man.
Frank clutches his chest while he hisses, getting up from the ground to his knees.
Robby storms in, already beet red. “What the fuck is the matter with you!?” he demands, so angry that Frank can see a vein in his neck at attention even in the dark. “Why the fuck would you run AT someone armed, Dr. Langdon!”
Frank blows air he’d been holding from the pain, then nods toward Mel. “He was about to lock himself in here, with–” he winces, “with her. I didn’t want him to have a hostage!”
“He had a fucking knife, Frank,” Robby snaps. “You could have been killed!”
“So could have Dr. King,” Frank yells back, imploring his former mentor to understand the stakes.
The stakes being the life of possibly the only person on the planet that doesn’t hate him. The stakes being the life of the only person that sees him.
Robby shakes his head, tongue pressed against his lip in a thinly veiled attempt at suppressing his rage. He looks at Mel. “Dr. King? Are you alright?”
She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t even look at him.
“Dr. King?” he tries again softly. His voice cuts through then and her head snaps to look at him, her expression alarmed, as though she was just realizing where she was.
“Mm” she hums idly, looking on. Her eyes look empty.
“Are you okay?” Robby asks again, his voice softer now.
“Oh, uh, yep. Mhm,” she nods. She turns back to staring at the wall, disconnected.
He cocks his head as he looks at her, then returns his attention to Frank. He crosses his arms and takes a step closer and nods curtly at his shirt, wordlessly telling him to show him the scratch.
Frank pulls the scrubs down at the collar to reveal the gash on his chest and Robby looks at it from over his glasses. “It looks superficial,” he decides. “Get someone to look at it.”
“I’m fine, Robby," Franks insists, stepping backward.
“Frank,” his voice rises again, “you do not want to do this with me. Not today.”
One of the officers from this morning appear in the doorway then. “Excuse me,” he says from behind them. “We’ll need you to fill out a report on what happened,” he tells them all. “And Dr. King.”
She flinches at her name but stays quiet. Frank waves with his free hand. “Okay, yeah,” he agrees. “Just… not right now. I need to get cleaned up. New scrubs, all that.”
The officer nods. “That’s fine,” he agrees. “You both need to stay somewhere we can keep an eye on you while the suspect is at large. Especially Dr. King. We’re gonna have an officer stationed wherever you are. It would be easier if you weren’t on the floor, but I understand that you’re doctors and have patients. Just… stay out of the main area as much as you can. Stay together or with others. Stuff like that. The officer will follow you.”
Frank gulps, nods. Robby takes a deep breath. “Go to the Family Room,” he tells Frank. He can tell he’s making a very conscious effort to be calm for Mel’s sake. “Have Dr. King look at the wound. I’ll have the social worker find you in a bit to fill out the incident reports. No patients until I come back to check on you both. Understood?”
Frank nods. Robby spares one last look at Mel, frowns, then glances back at him as though to ask him with just his facial expressions if she would be okay.
He looks over at Mel himself then back to Robby, nodding. “I’ll make sure,” he whispers.
Robby leaves then, returning to the central area of the ER where everyone is reeling from the kerfuffle. Frank can feel a few pairs of eyes on him, but he just ignores them, turning to crouch next to Mel as close as she’ll allow him without pulling away. He’s careful, cautious.
“Mel,” he murmurs gently, hand still holding his chest tightly, applying pressure to his wound. “Mel.”
She looks over at him, almost surprised to see him. Her breathing is more rhythmic now than when he fell into the room with Sanders. Gratefully, she got herself through the panic she was feeling. “Mm,” she hums.
“Are you alright?” he asks, his voice low and unassuming.
She nods, her fingers fidgeting. Then she notices the blood-stain beneath his hand. “You’re hurt,” she says. It’s a statement of fact, but he feels the unease in her voice.
He nods. “I’m okay,” he promises, “but I need your help. I can’t treat myself.” It’s partly true, because he can’t self-diagnose or treat (especially given his fresh history). It’s also to help distract her.
“Oh, uh,” she starts to get to her feet. “Let me, um. I’ll find some gauze and-”
“Wait,” he interrupts. “We have to go to the Family Room. We can bring what we need there.”
“Okay.”
11:52
They get settled into the Family Room with ease, and Frank is pleasantly surprised to see all the stuff they’d need in it waiting for them. He turns to look out into the central area and sees Dana and Samira watching expectantly. He nods a silent ‘thank you’ to them before he lets Mel lead him to a couch.
He doesn’t expect it to hurt as much as it does, considering it’s a shallow cut, but the more time that passes since it happened, the more it starts to hurt. Adrenaline is a hell of a drug.
She’s quiet while she gloves up and prepares what she needs, and Franks finds comfort in the silence for the first time in months. She turns to face him and her train of thought derails. “Okay, I’m just going to – wait, you need to take your shirt off.”
He doesn’t mean to turn beet red, but he also wasn’t prepared for Mel to tell him to strip. He quickly pulls his layers over his head and discards them on the floor together. He feels extremely exposed here, but he tries to ignore it.
After a little while, she’s cleaned him up and is now preparing the dressing.
“I’m sorry,” he tells her earnestly, cutting the silence.
“What are you sorry for?” she wonders, stopping to look at him.
“I know how difficult all of this is for you. I’m sorry everything is overwhelming right now,” he explains.
She methodically lines up the bandage over his wound, assessing its size. “It’s not so bad,” she tells him, warm and awkward. “You make it easier.”
His heart swoops, then he dares to ask what he’d been waiting to know. “Are you okay?”
She stops and looks at him, contemplative. Her eyes are distant, but her expression is thoughtful. After a moment, she replies, “he didn’t hurt me that time.”
He stills. She doesn’t notice as she refocuses her attention to the bandage. He waits for more, but there isn’t more, because that’s not how Mel is. She answered him and that was that. Instead, he swallows. “How’s your head?”
She reaches up to feel her developing goose egg from this morning, gently prodding at it. “Yeah, it, I-I’m good. I’m okay. It’s a little sore,” she answers.
The room is nearly dead silent other than the ambient sounds of their breaths, as well as the occasional sound from Mel working. He feels vulnerable as he sits before her, shirtless, and tries to think about where the nearest scrub dispenser is.
She finishes bandaging him up, and he can’t help but think it’s a lot of fuss over what amounts to a bad scratch. But when he moves to stand up, he feels the skin around the wound stretch with him and he winces.
“Are you okay?” Mel stands quickly, hands instinctively meeting his arm and shoulder to steady him.
Her hands are warm despite the clinically cold hospital setting.
“I’m fine,” he assures her. “Just a little sore,” he echoes her with a grin.
That makes her smile, and she turns back to clean up the area. Frank pulls his ID from his pocket, and raps lightly on the window of the door, getting Dana’s attention from across the room.
She nods in acknowledgement and slides her pen in her front pocket, retrieving the new nurse as they head in his direction.
He opens the door enough to not oversaturate the room with noise and sound, and keeps his voice low. “Hey,” he greets quietly.
“How’s our resident madman?” Dana teases warmly, leaning on the door frame.
Frank ducks his head, a little embarrassed. “He’s really mad at me, huh?” he wonders, referring to Robby.
“Eh,” she shrugs, “no more than he was this morning.” She’s joking, but it helps.
He nods. “Look, I know that you’re really busy and I don’t want to take you away from your job,” he starts nervously, “but I need a new scrub shirt because mine are covered in blood. Would you be able to get me a new one? Or, stay here with Mel while I go?”
Mel spins on her heels behind him, alarmed. “The officer said you need to be followed until they find Mr. Sanders,” she reminds him pointedly.
“I’ll be quick,” he promises her softly.
She’s about to argue, he can tell, but Dana clears her throat. “We’ll go,” she offers, volunteering the new nurse to join her. “Gimme,” she nods toward the old top in a ball behind him.
“Thanks, Dana, I really appreciate it.”
“No problem, kid,” she smiles before hauling her shadow away.
He turns back to sit on the opposite side of the couch to her and they fall into a comfortable silence as he settles. He mirrors her position, back against the armrest, knees tucked to his chest. She fidgets with her fingers, and he does the same.
After a minute or two, she breaks the silence. “What happened to your ring?” she asks gently.
He stops, looking at where the ring should be on his finger, and he tucks his hands in his lap instead. “I didn’t want to lose it,” he lies. He can feel the ring in his pocket then, as though burning him through the fabric.
“You were wearing it this morning,” she hums. There’s nothing accusatory about her tone – he isn’t sure she could be malicious if she tried – but his story falls apart in seconds.
He crosses his legs and, after thinking about it for a second, pulls the ring from his pocket. “I wasn’t sure if I should wear it,” he admits. “Abby – my wife,” he clarifies, “left me the day of the shooting. The day Robby told me to get clean or don’t come back.”
Those weren’t exactly the words he used, Frank knows this. But it’s basically the same thing.
Mel looks sad for him. He continues. “I betrayed my family. I put them at risk. Every day that I didn’t tell the truth, I made it worse. So, she left me. Took my son. We’re in the middle of a divorce right now.” He looks at the gold band as though it contained the answers to all of his questions. It doesn’t. “I thought wearing the ring today would help me have a normal first day back,” he admits. “But the truth is, it’s been weighing on me. So I took it off.” He puts it down in front of him on the couch cushion.
To his surprise, she picks it up and inspects it. “It’s beautiful,” she smiles idly. “How long were you married?”
Somehow, it doesn’t hurt to talk about it with Mel. “Five years. We found out she was pregnant with Tanner the morning of the wedding. We were so excited,” he muses, watching as her fingers dance around the gold band. “But, we didn’t have a lot of room. So, we scrounged and saved after the honeymoon in order to afford a two bedroom before our son was born.” He sighs, ducking his head in shame. “I was too cheap to pay for movers. I didn’t want to spend any more on moving. I tried to do it myself. Abby couldn’t help because she was seven months pregnant, so her brother helped us. But, I wasn’t careful. I hurt my back badly enough that I was prescribed medication that should have helped me through it. But then the prescription ran out and I was still in pain.”
“So you took from patients here,” she finishes for him.
And for the first time, someone speaks to him about it without judgment.
“Yes,” he answers.
She looks like she’s going to say something else, but then there’s a light knock on the door as Dana and the new nurse come in, bearing a new scrub top and the spare shirt from Frank’s locker. “Here you go,” she greets. “I took the liberty of breaking into your locker for you.”
Frank snorts, standing to take his stuff. “Thanks. I mean it.”
“You two doing okay?” she asks, ducking her head to look at Mel. “How’s your head, Missy?”
Mel smiles, because you can’t not smile when Dana is around, and she nods. “Yeah, I’m okay. I’m good. Have they caught Mr. Sanders?”
“Not yet,” Dana tells them. “But I have been told to tell you that you can’t leave here.”
“What?” Frank jumps. “Why?”
“The officer said we could go check on patients as long as we have someone with us,” Mel reasons.
“He sure did,” Dana nods in agreement, “but on our way back just now, Robby and security stopped us to tell us that they’re mobilizing SWAT.”
“SWAT?” Frank echoes incredulously, getting to his feet. Mel follows suit, fear sewn between her brows. “The guy has a knife, not a bazooka,” he says.
Dana lowers her voice carefully. “Apparently he has a gun now,” she tells him. “I don’t know how, I don’t know why. But I was told you two have to stay in lockdown here until officers secure the hospital and move you both.” She looks at the new nurse and nods her head. “So, Emma here is going to go help the guys with the mystery baby and stay as far away from the ER as she can, yeah?”
Emma, he notes.
The girl nods nervously. “O-okay.”
“Good,” Dana gives her a double thumbs-up, then peers her head out of the room. She whistles. “Donnie. Take Emma with you back upstairs.”
“Got it,” Frank hears from outside.
“Go.”
Emma leaves without a word before Dana redirects her attention back to Frank and Mel.
“Why aren’t they locking down the whole hospital?” Mel asks nervously.
“They are. You two are just being locked down separately. They’re supposed to come move you as soon as SWAT gets here,” she explains. “Don’t know when that’ll be. So just, stay in here, stay away from the door. Lock it behind me. Lights off-”
A distinctive hum that they didn’t realize they were hearing stops all of the sudden, and the clear absence of sound is deafening.
“What was that?” Mel asks, looking around.
“It better not have been-” Frank starts but Dana interrupts him.
“The damned air conditioner.” She turns on her heels and starts to storm out. “Close the door!”
And then it’s just the two of them again, so Frank quickly secures the room and, with the gentlest touch he can manage, ushers Mel into the corner of the room, making sure she is more protected. He sits down next to her on the ground. He’s reminded of her panic attack all those months ago with the dog. He wishes he had the dog right now, actually. Anything to distract her.
12:16
If it were anyone else other than Mel, it would be aggravating how she can just sit there in total silence for an indefinite stretch. His anxiety makes him want to babble and overexplain things and talk at length but he doesn’t. His desire to keep her comfortable overrides his own need to make noise.
He plays on his phone (with the ringer off and the brightness low), stuck on some level of Candy Crush for longer than he’d care to admit.
At some point, he notices her watching him play. He is about to offer to let her try it out as a way to pass the time, but then his phone tells him his battery is low, so he puts it away. It’s so quiet between them he can hear distant sounds of people outside in the center area, but it’s all indistinct. He looks at her, assessing her. “Are you okay?”
“Yep,” she nods. He can see the way a bead of sweat forms on her forehead as it glints in the low light of the room. It’s getting warm in the hospital now. He doesn’t know what possesses him to do so, but he carefully, and not too quickly, reaches around to wipe her forehead with his thumb gingerly.
“Hopefully, they figure it out soon,” he says of the A/C.
She doesn’t recoil from his touch as he half-expects. In fact, she leans her head against his shoulder and pulls the ring from her pocket. He forgot she’d had it. He watches as she fidgets with it again.
Some time elapses between them, but he doesn’t know how much. Could be seconds, minutes. An hour. They sit together in their silence until she finally speaks, her voice gentle and forgiving.
“How’s your back now?” she asks.
He’s startled by her question. “What do you mean?”
“You took the pills because you were in pain,” she says. “You went to rehab. But now, you don’t have the pills anymore. How are you feeling?”
It might possibly be the first time anyone has asked him that in that context, and he has to take a minute to sit in the emotions it invokes within him before he answers.
“Better than I was,” he admits. “But I still feel it. I don’t know that I’ll ever not feel it.”
“Hmm.”
“Thank you for asking,” he almost whispers.
“Yeah.”
He realizes she’s started to doze off against his shoulder when her breaths become rhythmic. Against his better judgment, he reaches his opposite arm around to hold her head softly, and fights the urge to kiss the top of it. They fall asleep against each other in the warm, quiet room.
12:49
The door is unlocked and opened, startling them both awake. Light pours into the room, making Frank squint as he looks to see who is there.
SWAT, led inexplicably by Dr. Abbott, files into the room. “Are you guys okay?” he asks seriously.
“Abbott,” Frank wonders, getting to his feet. He then leans down to offer his hand to Mel, who takes it as she stands as well. “You’re SWAT?”
“Ish,” the man answers. “This kid is dangerous. We need to get you guys out of here.”
“Where are we going?” Mel asks worriedly.
“Safe zone,” Abbott explains. “C’mon.”
Frank can’t even begin to explain how much he feels like a child in kindergarten in a line for recess while he follows Abbott and the SWAT (or SWAT-adjacent? They’re uniforms are vastly different, he notices) team to wherever the designated safe zone is. But then Mel reaches behind her to feel for his hand and when he gives it to her, whatever he was thinking about takes a swift back seat.
Turns out the safe zone is, in fact, just the lounge, which almost makes him laugh. But they are secured inside and Abbott remains as Robby joins them.
“What the hell did you guys do?” he greets them jokingly, looking between the three of them.
“I swear, we did nothing,” Frank pleads seriously. “I can’t figure out why we’re the only ones on lockdown.” His hands are on his hips, but they still buzz with electricity from Mel’s touch.
“Because this guy hasn’t been caught, and we’re told he specifically liked Dr. King,” Abbott explains, softly cocking his head to the side to look at her. “Then you apparently tackled the guy, so that makes you both potential targets.”
“Oh, I don’t know if I would say he liked me,” Mel objects innocently.
“We got a couple nurses that said he was flirting with you,” Abbott retorts seriously.
“Flirting!?” Frank and Mel yell in unison.
“I-I definitely don’t think he was flirting,” Mel protests. “People don’t flirt with me. He was asking what I liked to do for fun and asked if I liked coffee, but I don’t really drink coffee, actually, because caffeine doesn’t agree with me, and-”
“Mel, it’s okay,” Frank interrupts her spiral gently. He can’t explain the way his stomach somersaults at the idea of this guy, this random guy hitting on Mel just to nearly concuss her and then try to take her hostage later.
She frowns, but she doesn’t seem sad. She seems annoyed at the notion that someone would flirt with her.
Robby moves the conversation along. “As soon as we locate the guy, you two will be let out. I promise,” he adds. He looks at Frank and there’s a dissolved anger in his eyes, and he just seems weary. “If I’m not the one who comes for you, let me just say it now. Stick together today. Frank, you’re free from Triage Island, I think that’s what I heard you were calling it.” Frank’s cheeks redden. “You can come back to the Emergency Room – unless, of course, they need help. Sound good?”
Frank and Mel both nod. “Yeah, yes. Thank you. Thanks Robby.”
He shakes his head, turning to walk away. “Don’t thank me yet,” he warns him. “The A/C is still broken and there’s a lunatic on the loose. You could be in here until tomorrow.”
Just as he’s out the door, Mel calls him. “Dr. Robby?”
He spins back on his heels for her. “Yes, Dr. King.”
“If…” she gulps nervously. “If we’re not out of here by tonight, someone has to get my sister. She can’t-” She stops, but the anxiety is radiating from her visibly.
He thinks about it, and then his eyes soften. “If you’re still in here at the end of my shift, I will get her myself. I promise.”
She relaxes at that, but he continues. “But, between you and me, Dr. King, I think she’d much rather her sister.”
He’s gone in an instant and Abbott follows behind him. The door closes and locks, then a uniformed officer (again, of sorts) stands squarely in front of the small window.
Then it’s just the two of them again inside another room.
She sits down at one of the round tables and sighs. He looks around, unsure of what to do. “Do you want the lights off?”
“No, I’m fine,” she says easily.
“Are you hungry?” He opens the staff refrigerator and leans over, surveying the options. “We have half and half cream, a box of baking soda, and…” he picks up a container and scrunches his nose when he peeks inside, “what looks like Chinese food from before I was here last.”
She laughs. “I’m not hungry.”
He frowns dramatically. “You sure? I think I saw a single heirloom tomato in there, for some reason. You could eat it like an apple,” he offers.
She just shakes her head. “Maybe Captain Scurvy wants it.”
“Might be a good idea,” he chuckles. They fall into a comfortable silence for the umpteenth time.
1:16
He makes a sincere effort not to overwhelm her by talking and lets her guide any conversation that arises. As a result, they go over ten minutes without talking. She looks lost in thought for a while, and when she finally does speak again, he startles.
“Do you think… Do you think I’ll lose my medical license?” she asks.
He’s surprised by the question. He waits a moment to answer, and his voice is tender. “Are you worried about the deposition today?”
She nods. “I’m being sued by a parent for giving their son a spinal tap that the other parent consented to,” she explains. “I thought it would be okay because the father was in the room the whole time. Now he’s pretending he didn’t consent,” she frets.
He sighs. “Honestly, Mel, doctors get sued a lot. It’s not necessarily a reflection of your ability to be a doctor,” he tells her earnestly. “In fact, I can tell you with 100% certainty that it’s not a reflection of you at all. You’re an excellent doctor. Miles ahead of me.”
She beams, but shakes her head. “I’m not that good. But one day.”
“Sooner than you think,” he promises. Then, seriously, “But anyway… Take the lawsuit with a grain of salt. You can’t lose. If one parent consented and was in the room when you did it, the hospital’s defense lawyers won’t even have to try that hard. That’s what consent forms are for.”
She nods. “I know that you’re right,” she shrugs.
“But you’re still scared,” he infers.
“I’m still scared,” she agrees.
“It’s okay,” he promises. “You can be scared.”
2:02
The door unlocking jolts them awake from their half-slumbers at the round table. They sit up quickly, rubbing their eyes as Robby and Abbott are let in by the guy outside.
“Did you guys find him?” Frank asks, moving to stand next to Mel, who looks on expectantly.
“No,” Abbott admits, clearly annoyed about it. “But, we’ve done a thorough sweep of the hospital. Every nook, every cranny, every supply closet. He’s not here,” he decides.
“So, you both can go back to work,” Robby adds gratefully. “They’re securing the hospital so that no one can just walk in. Before you guys work together, though, can you both please just close out whatever individual cases you’re working on? Dr. Langon, I know the med students were dealing with Louie, but if you could go check on him, please. Whittaker is doing his best with them, but they’re, uh, something else,” he finishes politely.
Frank snorts. “Yeah, of course,” he agrees with ease.
He bumps Mel’s arm with his own to get her attention. “See you in a bit?”
“Yep!” she agrees excitedly, before she almost runs from the room like a bat out of hell.
Frank grabs his bottle of water from the table before turning back to the others after she’s gone. “No update on the A/C?”
“Only that we don’t think Sanders is the reason it’s off,” Robby answers irritably. Frank could cheer about the fact that it’s not his fault this time.
“I didn’t know we thought that,” Frank admits, the hair on his neck sticking up.
“It was an avenue we were pursuing,” Abbott tells him. “But the HVAC people said it could just be the heat. July 4th and all.”
“When it rains, it pours,” Robby offers lamely, turning to leave.
Frank beelines for where he last saw Louie, but it’s been hours and he’s been moved. He does, however, accidentally find himself the only doctor in a room of nurses when Dr. Santos walks in looking for one, and he sort of freezes.
There’s a conversation to be had between them, and he was hoping for a little more time.
She looks at him, and looks around a few times, then sucks her teeth and turns back on her heels.
He speaks before he can stop himself. “Dr. Santos,” he calls calmly.
She freezes, winces, he thinks, then turns to look at him. “Uh, Dr. Langdon,” she tries to say nonchalantly. “Welcome back.”
He half snorts, but it’s genuine. “Yeah, thank you. Are you, uh… are you okay? You look like you’re looking for someone.”
She purses her lips while she considers telling him anything (which is fair, he supposes). Eventually, she concedes. “I was looking for Dr. Robby. I have a patient he’s helping me with.”
“Oh,” he nods, looking around. “Well, I think he’s with Abbott right now because of that kid and the A/C and all that.”
She frowns. “No problem. I can handle it.”
He steps forward as she starts to walk away, but he mirrors her. “Hey, uh- is there anything I can help with?”
“No, I’m good,” she says firmly.
“Okay, wait,” he calls, already regretting this. She turns back to him again. “Look,” he starts. “I didn’t know when I was going to do this today, but since I could be locked away at any given time again, I want to do it now, if you’ll let me.” She doesn’t say anything. He clears his throat. “I’m sorry that I put you in a position all those months ago to report me. You’re smart and observant and I had been getting away with what I was doing for far too long. Your first day, you figured it out. It was aggravating. And I got scared. So I lashed out. I think I thought that if I caught any of your mistakes, you’d second guess mine, and then I wouldn’t get caught.” He folds his arms across his chest, as though to protect himself. “You did everything right, Dr. Santos. Absolutely everything. And I hope that you continue to do the right thing, even if it gets people in trouble. I got clean in rehab. I’m doing better now,” he promises. “I don’t even itch for it anymore. I’m still in pain all the time but the detox helped me realize that the pain is preferable to the numbness. I know that I was supposed to be an example for you when you came here; someone you could trust, and I let you and everybody else down. And I know that I betrayed that trust, so I don’t expect this apology to fix everything, or anything for that matter. But I hope you know I am truly, truly sorry for everything I did, and that I thought about it every single day I was in rehab.”
She dissolves a bit then. “You’re not mad anymore?”
He actually chuckles. “I was so angry then,” he tells her, “but any anger I feel now is toward myself. I’m actually really grateful to you in some ways. I needed to get caught.”
“Then, I’m glad you’re doing better,” she tells him honestly.
“Thanks.” There’s a lull between them, but unlike the silences between him and Mel, this is largely uncomfortable. He takes a deep breath. “Okay, so, if you need anything, let me know.” He starts to walk past her on his hunt for Louie, but she calls him.
“Wait.”
He spins. She continues. “Can you help me with my patient?”
Her face almost instantly contorts into one of regret, but he pretends to ignore it. “Are you sure? Just because I apologized, doesn’t mean I expect-”
“No,” she interrupts him. “I don’t trust Dr. Al-Hashimi’s opinion on this case. You were Dr. Robby’s second for a long time.”
“What’s the case?” he wonders, starting to follow her away from the central area.
“I have a little girl,” she starts. “Kylie. Nine years-old. Came in this morning after falling down the stairs. She has a ton of bruises but only some of them are new. Gross hematuria in the sample we collected this morning, but her lungs sound good, there’s no internal hemorrhage. Presented with a chin lac and a fractured tooth. Her CBC was typical.”
“Ultrasound?” he interrupts, curious.
She sighs. “Backed up right now. I’m waiting to get her up there.”
He shakes his head. “Of course they are,” he sucks his teeth. She stops them a little ways away from Kylie’s just to let him see her from afar. “Okay,” he says. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
She takes a deep breath. “Her dad still isn’t here,” she explains. “I left a message for him hours ago. His girlfriend brought her because he had to go to work early.” She pauses.
He ducks to look at her. “You don’t believe that?”
She frowns. “His job isn’t really the urgent kind,” she tells him. “It feels like an excuse to not be here with her.”
“You think there’s more to what’s going on.”
She hesitates to nod, but she does. “I do.”
He takes a breath. “Okay. Let’s go.”
He lets her lead him to the girl’s side of the curtain, where she greets them all politely. They sanitize their hands quickly and she introduces them to Frank. “Kylie, this is Dr. Langdon,” she smiles.
“Hi, Kylie,” he tilts his head to assess the girl’s body language. “How are you feeling today?”
“I’m fine,” she murmurs. It seems sad and heavy, but the woman next to her (he assumes the girlfriend) doesn’t seem to know what to make of it one way or the other.
“Can you tell me what happened?” Frank asks the small girl.
“Do we have to go over this again?” the woman asks. “We already told you what happened.” She isn’t hostile, but she does seem stressed and irritated. Fair.
“I’m a new doctor to the case, so we try to relearn the situation from the patient before we look at the chart,” he explains.
“I fell down the stairs today,” Kylie says simply.
“Okay,” he nods. “Were you running? Did you trip? Did you lose your balance?”
“She was running up the stairs,” the woman answers.
He looks up at her from his spot on the chair to acknowledge that she’s spoken but doesn’t say anything. He waits for Kylie to answer.
“I was going upstairs to get my backpack…”
2:53
Frank isn’t prepared for the look of disdain and horror that spreads across Robby’s face when he approaches him with Dr. Santos at his side.
“Today is not the day for whatever issues you two are having,” he warns them (though Frank can tell that’s primarily targeted at him, which is fair).
“No,” Dr. Santos shakes her head. “We’re okay. We’re,” she looks at him, nods her head. “We’re good, actually.”
Robby squints, looking between the two of them suspiciously. “Really…”
Frank nods, too. “Yeah. I was… I was actually helping Dr. Santos with a case before I checked on Louie.”
“Oh?”
“My little girl,” Dr. Santos clarifies. “I couldn’t find you and needed a second opinion.”
“So you chose Dr. Langdon here,” Robby notes. He’s almost amused.
“Yes.”
“Okay, I’ll bite,” he says, crossing his arms. “What’s going on? Did you get your labs back?”
“Still waiting for the ultrasound,” she admits. “They said they’re backed up. But the labs are normal. Only obvious issue is the hematuria.”
“Okay, so what are you thinking?”
“Her dad’s still not here. He only works an hour away.”
“When did you call him?”
“Before 9AM this morning.”
“What did Social Work say?”
“They said they’re comfortable moving forward with reporting while an official exam is done.”
Robby cocks his head, taking in Dr. Santos’ expression before he looks at Frank. “And what did you observe?”
His hands are in his pocket, nervous that the energy between the three of them could fuel nuclear weapons, but he answers clearly. “I saw a clear disconnect between the child and the situation, and if the labs showed decreased platelets, I’d be concerned about clotting factors due to the bruising, but there’s nothing abnormal. I think, given the situation, and the fact that Dad hasn’t shown up, there is reasonable grounds to suspect abuse.”
Robby nods again and redirects his attention back to Dr. Santos. “Okay. Do it. Let me know how it goes.” He starts to walk away, but pauses. “I just want you both to remember that we are not detectives; we’re doctors. We have a duty to report, but it’s a dangerous game to make assumptions. Dad could have been in a car accident on the way here for all we know.”
Frank levels his tone. “Do you really believe that?”
“It’s not about what I believe, Dr. Langdon, it’s about the fact that there are certain bells we can’t un-ring. If you’re confident in your decisions, go ahead. Just tread lightly.”
Dr. Santos takes a deep breath. “I’d rather ring the wrong bell than fail to ring one that needed to be rung.” She turns and walks away and, even though she doesn’t see it, Frank catches the way Robby smiles appreciatively and with respect for her choices.
3:20
He finally has the chance to check on Louie, but the guy is living his best life with Whittaker and the med students. Even the grumpy one with the oxymoronic name seems to be enjoying herself, so Frank touches base with Whittaker and tells him to find him if he needs help.
Which means he gets to find Mel.
Turns out finding her is like following a north star, and she is somehow the first person he sees in a room full of doctors and nurses. She’s focused, in her zone when he appears next to her, and he waits a full minute before he tries to get her attention.
She’s charting away at a desk when she clears his throat behind her. She startles, throwing her head back to look at him. “Hey!” she beams.
“Hey,” he grins. “You want in on an incoming MVC? The guy’s got glass in a thousand places and you’ve got the best hands in the hospital.”
Her eyes light up like it’s Christmas morning and she jumps out of seat. “Absolutely!”
He offers her a high-five (a point of contact that’s minimal but meaningful) and she takes it excitedly.
Then she hugs him.
And God, she fits him like a glove.