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When she gave him a quick shy look and the gold sparks flashed in her eyes, he read devotion there, and the fire of imagination; but no invitation, no appeal. In her companionship there was never the shadow of a claim. On the contrary, there was a spirit which disdained advantage.
Willa Cather – Lucy Gayheart
One thing her sister did not seem to understand was the idea of being happy with only loving, instead of being loved.
Becca not only wanted her feelings to be shared; she wanted her love to be doubled. She needed to know how much Mel loved her, every day. And she needed to say it just as often. I love you and you love me.
Mel happily obliged. But she wouldn’t have minded if Becca had just said, you love me.
Mel loved loving. She loved devoting herself quietly to someone and expecting nothing in return. Not out of a sense of martyrdom. Not out of a hope that, in the end, the loved subject would appreciate her sacrifice all the more.
Mel would have abhorred such an outcome.
She simply loved loving. In peace. In solitude. In the innermost part of herself.
She did not feel guilty about developing feelings for someone who was unavailable, because she knew she would never inopportune the person with those feelings. She would keep them to herself, nurture them, only give them expression in small gestures.
So, she was quite content to love Frank Langdon not in secret, because it was not a secret to her, but rather in absence.
He could be gone for months. Maybe even years. She would cherish his presence, his words, his manner, even his mistakes.
And it would feel complete to her. This small devotion. She did not need anyone’s permission.
She never wanted him to see anything in her beyond warm friendship.
That was enough.
The trouble with Mel’s carefully confined garden of feelings was that a starving person – a beaten down man whose pride had been blunted, whose wounds were still half-open – would not care that her little oasis was walled.
He would catch reflections of it in her words, in her smiles.
And he would, with very little encouragement, climb those walls in search of more.
In her make-believe games, she pledged her loyalty to kings and queens. She knelt down before their gilded seats and promised to protect them with her small body. The intrigues of court were too complicated. She would cut through them with her usual inability to deceive. She would be honest to a fault.
And that would make her amusing too.
That would make her a fool.
There was a seventeenth-century French woman who had been a fool, but she had saved a king.
Mathurine de Vallois, or Mathurine the Fool. She had been a jester at the courts of three kings. Had entertained them for so many years by acting slightly out of her mind.
During an attempt on Henry IV’s life, she had blocked the door with her body, preventing the would-be assassin’s escape. She had arrested him herself.
The funny, mad little fool, Mathurine.
Mel had not been able to stop the bicycle patient from running away. In that act, she had not been as quick, as perceptive as Mathurine. Her slightly swollen head was proof of her failure.
When Langdon came back to check on her, she was already sitting up.
“Hey. Your ten minutes aren’t up,” he told her softly, waiting a moment before he turned the light back on. As if he had time to spare.
“Well, I figured eight minutes would be enough,” she mumbled, forcing herself to smile. “Thank you for remembering.”
“Remembering?”
She looked down at her dangling feet. She did not usually lie. It made her stomach clench painfully. She was unable to deceive. Yet she lied. “Remembering to come get me.”
“Of course. Hey, are you all right?”
He tilted his head. Tried to meet her eyes.
She nodded. “Yes. I think – I think I should be asking you that, instead. How is your first day back going?”
She looked up at him, but not into his eyes. She felt bad about the lie.
Frank’s mouth quirked. “Oh, you know. Like it’s the first day of my residency. I have to basically win back everyone’s favor. Prove myself all over again.”
“I’m sorry. That can’t feel good. But you’ve done it before. So you will do it again. And you will be better for it by the end.”
His sigh ended on a wearied laugh. “You think so?”
“I know it.”
He shook his head. “At least I don’t have to win you back, huh?”
She did not take his meaning as a deprecating joke. She did not notice the murk of self-loathing in his otherwise clear blue eyes. She merely nodded. “Yes. You don’t need to do that with me.”
Frank swallowed. He held out his hand to help her down.
She did not need his help, but she took his hand.
He did not let go of her fingers after she was vertical.
“I – thank you, Mel.”
“For what?”
“For having this much faith in me. Anyone else in your position might not,” he winced, “give me so much grace.”
She smiled up at him, a smile not meant for him, a smile meant for her own idea of him. “It’s really nothing. I just know I’m right about it and about you.”
And she could not explain it to him in better words, nor did she care to. It was something ensconced inside her. It was enough.
Frank eyed her for a long moment. Then he told her to bend her head slightly. “Let me check it again.”
She did not mind his hand on her braid. She liked the way he cupped her hair. In fact, she almost wished she could be that hand – his right hand.
She felt happy to receive this touch from him, because it counterbalanced her earlier enthusiasm, when she had gone up to squeeze his arm.
They had returned to status quo. She was content to stay here, in this neutral, friendly space.
Langdon let his hand slide down her braid. It rested on her shoulder.
“I guess I’ll go back to Triage.”
“I’m sorry I can’t join you.”
Frank’s eyes crinkled. He removed his hand. “Me too.”
Mathurine de Vallois would have enjoyed the joke, she thought, as she handled the still erect phallus.
That was how Langdon found her later when he popped his head in the exam room.
She was massaging the penis.
“Oh.”
Mel looked up. “Hi, Dr. Langdon. Do you need anything?”
“No, I – I was looking for Robby.” His eyes flitted from her friendly face to her hands on the shaft. Followed the slow, slightly slicked movements, pumping gently. He cleared his throat. “Are you okay in here? Would you like me to take over?”
Mel shook her head. “No, thank you. I’m fine. This is actually kind of soothing.”
She glanced down at the male patient who eyed her in helpless disbelief.
“Soothing for me, I meant,” she murmured apologetically.
Langdon chuckled, wiping his mouth. “Forgot how funny you can be.”
Mel frowned. “I’m actually really bad at being funny.”
He snorted and shook his head. His eyes brimmed with fondness.
He looked at her as if she was the court jester, Mathurine the loyal, the tireless. Mad little fool.
A part of her wished she had known about his drug problem sooner, so she could have helped him. Addiction was a lonely thing. You could make it less lonely if you broke it down into habits. You could create systems of support.
A person, no matter in how much trouble, was always more than one thing. And he was so many things to her – things which she had not yet named, which she was content to let lie.
Another part of her knew, however, that she would have never intervened without his consent.
That was what she liked about being a doctor. The patient, most of the time, had to give clear consent. I want your help. I need you. The patient then relinquished himself to her professional care. Care that was personalized and full of meaning, but which did not cross certain boundaries.
Devotion without the need for reciprocation.
It was the form of love Mel had always sought. Kept seeking.
People often misunderstood her. It wasn’t their fault, precisely.
They thought, for instance, that she was worried about the deposition because of her squeaky-clean record. They thought she was a very conscientious rule-abider who dreaded any moral ambiguity.
But that was not it.
Inside her, inside the garden of feeling, there were so many little pathways, so many leafy places where her conscience could rest. Where she did not resist the ambiguity.
Frank Langdon being married and possibly still in love with his wife was one such ambiguity.
She would have never considered getting involved with a married man. But she could make space in her mind and heart for loving him. Because the feeling was hers alone.
What she feared now was not moral clarity. She dreaded the lawsuit interfering in any way with her care for her sister. There was only the two of them left. And she was the protector. She couldn’t fall apart the way she’d done today.
She leaned her slightly sore head against the stair rail as she went over her notes for the deposition.
She had not noticed she was banging her head against the rails until Langdon bent down and placed his hand between her head and the bars.
Mel jumped.
Frank stepped back.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you. I just wanted you to stop hitting yourself.”
Mel felt the faint warmth of embarrassment. “Oh. I wasn’t doing it on purpose. I swear. I was just very focused on – something.”
He nodded. “I know…I heard about your deposition. I’m sorry. That sucks.”
Mel smiled a pinched smile. “Yeah.”
“I get it now why you reacted that way to the cops. I’ve been involved in a few of these lawsuits myself. They’re really not so bad. But well. I guess my track record is already pretty shot.”
Mel shook her head. “Any advice you could spare would be much appreciated.”
Langdon smiled. “If you’re sure.”
He sat down on the same step, right next to her.
Mel was too distracted by his presence to question how he’d found her in the stairwell.
She listened to him go over past lawsuits. They seemed trivial to him in comparison to rehab. Maybe it was the fact that the worst thing had already happened to him, but his matter-of-fact descriptions comforted her. He was a survivor, sharing precious information from the future.
At one point, he cocked his head, looking at her. A few strands of hair fell across his forehead, almost into his eyes. “You’re worried about your sister, aren’t you?”
It was such a simple question.
But no one had thought to ask it.
Mel felt her face break. Her mouth trembled. She would not cry. But her lips quivered. She gave him a strange, brilliant smile.
Frank blinked.
“Thank you for asking that,” she said quietly, intently. “I am really worried.”
“Of course you are,” he mumbled. “It’s normal. You’re the only family she’s got, aren’t you?”
She sniffed slightly. “You remembered.” Just like he’d remembered everything else.
Frank flexed the palm resting on his knee. Gripped bone.
“You’re a good friend,” she added, staring at his knuckles, almost white against his knee, making the silver of the wedding band look a shade darker.
He exhaled with a laugh. “You gotta stop doing that.”
She frowned. It was suddenly cold in her little garden. “Oh. I’m sorry. I didn't mean to upset you.”
“You didn't. God, you couldn't - I just. I need you to hold me accountable, Mel.”
“For what?”
He ran a hand over his face. Pulled more hair into his eyes. “I’m not a good friend.”
“That’s not for you to decide,” she told him gently.
“Yes, it is. I was a shitty friend and a shitty doctor and a shitty teacher, too. Maybe not in that exact order, but that’s the truth.”
Mel hesitated. She placed a hand on his wrist. “I’m sorry. That just wasn’t my experience. I can’t lie to you about that. And maybe I’m wrong. But to me, you are none of those things.”
Frank looked up at her.
There was something eerie about her words, about their unvarnished honesty.
There was something almost selfish about them.
Undiscerning. But true.
Addictive, if he scratched a little deeper.
Mel heard her beeper going off. She awkwardly tried to reach for the handrail.
Langdon placed a hand on the small of her back.
They both rose.
She turned in his arms. “I’m sorry if I was weird –”
Frank suddenly pressed his face against her cheek in a half-embrace. That was how she interpreted it.
It was the hug she hadn’t managed to give him that morning. She placed her arms around him.
His mouth spoke warmly against her throat. “I was doing really well, you know?”
“Um. You still are –”
He pressed his lips against her jaw in a way that made her recognize something different in his embrace.
She did not stiffen. But she was suddenly afraid that the walls of her garden were coming down. That he could see inside. Mad little Mathurine and her mad private loves.
He lifted his face. Pale blue eyes like a naked sky.
“Say it again.”
Mel stared at him. It was a matter of seconds. But she somehow knew. She knew exactly what he wanted her to say. It spooked her how well she knew.
“You never let me down,” she said into the still empty stairwell.
Frank’s lips parted. His face slackened with relief and the familiar hit of endorphins. The approval coming from an external, pure source.
He could have groaned.
“Please, could you say it again?”
Mel licked her lips. She slowly shook her head. She sensed danger ahead. Sensed an opening she could not afford. Their faces were too close.
“Fuck,” he whispered with a fractured smile, his breath hitting her forehead. “Fuck, I was doing really well.”
You still are, she wanted to repeat. But she couldn’t. Because she knew, in that moment, that she was doing something to him, something he couldn’t afford.
She could get him to fall back into old habits.
Mel felt the sudden pain of requital.
They never tell you it hurts when someone wants you back.
She disentangled herself gently.
He let her.
She stepped down on the landing. Looked down at her comfortable shoes, cradling an elbow. “You’ll be okay, Dr. Langdon. We’ll be okay. Won’t we?”
She could see Langdon from the corner of her eye, still standing on the steps. Hair in his eyes.
When she dared to look up at him he was rubbing his jaw. Trying to regain the sense of self he’d lost.
She could suddenly hear Becca’s voice, chanting in her mind. I love you and you love me.
Impossible and implausible, but also right in front of her.
“Dr. Langdon?”
He lifted his head. His eyes were filled with fondness and deception. “Yeah. Yes. We’ll be okay.”
She could both see and hear the lie.
But she nodded and pretended it was not there.
This was a new thing. It hurt, but it made her heart go faster too.
“I’ll see you out there, Captain Scurvy,” she muttered awkwardly, turning away, spinning on her heels like Mathurine, the jester, running from her feelings with a bad joke. Keeping herself safe inside the garden.
Frank stood staring at the garden walls long after she was gone.