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If she were somebody else, she would be a towering football player at an all-you-can-eat buffet after working up an appetite. Cassie had a lot on her plate. A slice of financial strain, a side of criminal history, and a generous serve of still showing up to save lives. Cassie McKay lived to help, but she herself did not need a second helping.
When Cassie’s phone vibrated in her pocket, her mind strayed to Dad? or Chad?
Neither of those names accompanied the call and she, with relief, settled on Glad. She tucked her phone away again. She hadn’t recognised the number, didn’t have it saved, and didn’t have time to investigate. If it were important they would leave a voicemail.
They left a voicemail.
Cassie was on her last hour of a double shift. The extra hours on the Friday evening would be a small price to pay for a work-free weekend with Harrison, and her mind was already wandering with the things they could do together. He had asked about a Lego exhibition and mentioned Go-Karting with his friends on Sunday morning. Cassie would have preferred breakfast at their – or her – favourite café, but she would inevitably meld her weekend into whatever made Harrison happiest.
Chad had, reluctantly, agreed to drop Harrison off at Cassie’s parents’ house earlier in the evening. Cassie knew when she went to collect him he’d be buzzed off sugar and a little unruly. It was the version of him that always surfaced after being spoilt and doted on by his grandparents.
Cassie was confident that the voicemail had nothing to do with Harrison, and the flicker of panic that always accompanied the first ring of her phone had long since dissipated. Still, between patients, her thoughts circled back to the alert until curiosity took the crown. She slid into the doctor’s lounge and pressed play.
“Hey, Cassie. It’s Frank,”
Cassie scrambled to pause it. Her mobile felt like a megaphone and the crackly speaker sounded like it was shouting a secret. She glanced around, wondering if the entire ER had heard the worry broadcasting through her phone, and noted that the only one alarmed by this development was her.
She toggled off the speaker, restarted the message, and raised the phone to her ear.
“Hey, Cassie. It’s Frank… Langdon. I need- I know you’re at work. I know this is weird, I-You- You said I could call, if I needed anything. Can you just- If you could call me back, please. I’ll explain.”
Absently, Cassie tapped the screen and saved the number. She didn’t know whether to save it as ‘Langdon’ or his full name, which was a trivial problem to face, and an excuse to remain oblivious for another moment longer. It was only after ‘Frank Langdon’ was nestled between ‘Edna Williams’ and ‘Fred’s Pizza’ that Cassie’s plate piled a little higher.
She didn’t know why Frank was calling. She did know he sounded worried. She didn’t know why he needed her specifically. She did know she had offered. She didn’t know if she’d regret hitting redial. She did it anyway.
“Cassie, hey, thanks for calling back. It’s Langdon. I’m sorry, I know you’re at work.” Cassie listened to the remix of the voicemail and wondered if Frank had even expected to get further than that.
“Hey, Langdon. That’s okay. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?” She felt her patient-voice infiltrate each word, felt a little patronising for it, but realised she really didn’t know Langdon well enough for anything else.
“It’s crazy. It’s gonna sound crazy. I’m just – I’m really freaking out right now and I know you don’t owe me anything. No one owes me anything, if anything I should be the one making up for all of the- anyway, you’re the only one who offered. I could use some help.”
Above the distant beeps of the monitors and the chatter of passing hospital staff, Cassie could hear several things. She could hear adrenaline as it sent splits through Langdon’s voice. She could hear desperation as it dripped through the phone speaker and over her fingers. She could hear the jittery uptick of panic snatching at each of his words.
“What do you need?”
Langdon released a shaky breath, and Cassie could have almost sworn it was a laugh. “I think… I need a doctor.”
Cassie’s eyes squeezed shut and she tilted her head back. Maybe if she stretched it far enough, Langdon’s words would escape back out through her ears, stream to the floor, and scatter beneath the fridge. Instead, they grew. Into impressions and inferences and the realisation that this, that Langdon, was not okay.
Years of sideward glances and raised eyebrows shaped the way Cassie viewed the world. For all the times she was judged unfairly, her resolve to do the opposite amplified. Cassie did not jump to conclusions. Cassie assessed a situation, gathered all the evidence, then applied her understanding.
Maybe Langdon had relapsed. It was possible – probable, even. The statistics aren’t kind to people like Langdon. Maybe Langdon was overdosing. Maybe when Cassie had disclosed that she was sober, he’d read the footnotes and realised that she’d be well versed in the opposite. All possibilities, but no evidence.
“Frank, are you safe? Do you need an ambulance?”
“No!” Langdon’s voice tumbled through the phone, “no, it’s nothing like that. I-”
“McKay trauma two, now!” Someone’s voice leapfrogged over Langdon’s as the owner of it darted past the doorway. Cassie thought maybe Abott, or it could have been Shen.
“I have to go. Text me your address, I’ll be there soon. Frank, are you alone?” Cassie had so much she needed to know; blank boxes on a quiz she’d circle back to at the end, but that particular one demanded an answer.
“Okay, sorry. Thank you. I’ll see you soon.”
Cassie ended the call and, despite the deflected question, scribbled yes in the box.
If her hands weren’t immediately on and over the trauma patient, she may have called an ambulance anyway. Though her hands would be too bloody to type in the number. She might have instead asked the trauma’s paramedics to swing by Langdon’s place on their way back out. Though she didn’t have his address. Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Okay, maybe she did.
But she still didn’t have evidence. Cassie helped stabilise the patient as they waited for surgery referral. Between the rhythmic beeps of the monitor and the mechanical inspirations of the ventilator, Cassie’s eyes cast upward at the clock.
Beep. Inhale. Tick.
As the minute hand crept skyward and the patient drifted further from her scope she felt something settling deep and sticky in her gut. With a sloppy, hurried handover, she stuffed her water bottle into her bag and headed for the exit.
She needed to pick up Harrison. She had told him they could detour to an ice-cream place on the way home. She had told her parents she wouldn’t be late this time. She had told Langdon she’d be there soon. Cassie was confident in triage. This wasn’t chairs.
After screeching a little too haphazardly into her parents’ driveway, Cassie rushed through a greeting and a goodbye. The kiss she planted on her dad’s cheek was sharp as she ushered Harrison towards the car. She threw her dad a thank you which he caught, puzzled, and stood by the door like he always did to wave them off. Harrison climbed into the back seat and Cassie pulled her phone out.
“Are we still getting ice cream?”
Cassie opened Langdon’s message to copy into her GPS. “Of course, Bud. We just have to make a quick stop along the way.”
Harrison huffed in objection, “What, where?”
Cassie had read the address. It wasn’t far. She could probably even find it without GPS. That wasn’t what her eyes were snagging on, though. Cassie reread the next sentence once, twice, three times.
Can you bring a bag of 1L Ringers?
Cassie wondered if this was evidence. She wasn’t jumping to a conclusion. She really wasn’t. But a drug addict requesting a bag of IV fluids left little room for differentials. The sticky feeling in her gut bubbled. Cassie felt dread.
“Mom?”
Cassie’s eyes snapped from the phone and to the rear-view mirror. She met Harrison’s gaze and willed her own expression to soften. She shook the alarm bells quiet and began reversing.
“A friend’s place, it’s not far. It’ll be quick, promise.”
“Mateo?” Harrison offered, hopeful.
“No. Not Mateo.” Cassie answered.
For a moment she wished it was Mateo. Easy, predictable, reassuring Mateo. She wished he’d asked for a favour instead. Mateo’s favour would be simple. It would be safe. It would be repaid and reciprocated and really, realistically, it wouldn’t be at 10 o’clock at night.
Was she putting her son in an unsafe situation? Would helping Langdon make her a bad mom? Langdon never struck her as a steady person, but he was a dad. She tried to convince herself that was enough to justify this.
Still, as she pulled into the dimly lit driveway, she felt unease tugging at each corner of her.
‘Five minutes. Stay in the car, okay?”
Harrison nodded but didn’t look up from his iPad. Cassie stepped out of the car and locked the door, glancing around the street. She’d feel much better having him with her, but she didn’t know what they would be walking into. She didn’t know which option was safer. She decided it was neither. Guilt settled in her bones. Five minutes she thought to herself.
She managed a single knock before the door swung open. Langdon stood square in the hallway; eyes wide, hair recently raked through, and in scrubs. Cassie’s heart sank. Langdon hadn’t worked a shift in two days.
“Thank you so much for coming, Cassie.” His voice was live and breathy with urgency.
Cassie could only follow as he disappeared down the hallway, gesturing vaguely for her to follow. She stole a glance over shoulder at the car in the driveway. Four minutes, she thought, hand on her phone within her pocket.
“Did you bring the fluids?” Frank’s voice was almost pleading.
“I’d already left the hospital when I read your text.” Cassie would not have brought it anyway. “Langdon, where is your family?”
Why are you alone like this?
“Shit. I mean, no that’s okay.” Langdon says, “The kids are meant to be here but Abby got tickets to some Disney cruise thing, so I gave her my weekend.”
Cassie’s mind sifts through what he’d just offered her. Her eyes scan the living room they’d just walked into. The coffee table has a sticker with a bar code wrapped around a leg. There’s a cardboard box by a small bookshelf, and the books stacked inside are patiently waiting to meet their new home. The book on top has a bright blue cover with a cartoon dinosaur on it. The whole place screamed not-quite-home-yet. Three more minutes.
Hey eyes moved back to Langdon, more specifically to his left hand, but her search for a ring was cut short by what his hand was newly resting on.
“There’s something really wrong, Cassie. I didn’t know who else to call.” Langdon was crouching by the wall of the living room. There was a blue blanket on the floor, the same shade as the book, but on it was something much more realistic than a dinosaur.
“I’m not following.” Was all Cassie could muster.
“I did try, before I called you. I feel nuts. They all said nothing was wrong, but I know – I know that there is. I can’t explain it. And I’m too freaked out to be a doctor about this. Everything I know has left the building.”
“Frank.” She decided this required first-name basis. “That’s a dog.”
“Yes.”
“You called me here for a dog.”
“Yes. A sick one.”
The scruffy yellow dog was curled up on the blanket, head resting on the ground as it peered, tragically, up at Cassie. Frank’s hand was buried in the fur between its shoulders. Their expressions matched.
“You’re not high?” Cassie felt cruel for asking.
Frank’s eyebrows knitted together and the confusion was genuine. “What? No, I’m not high.” There was hurt in his voice.
“Frank, you’re wearing your scrubs.” Cassie couldn’t tell if she was frustrated or relieved, but her tone came out short.
“Yeah, we’ve been to three vet clinics tonight. When the first two told me nothing was wrong with him I – I thought proving I know about medicine might change things. If they could see that I’m not just some clueless, panicked owner, then maybe they’d take it seriously.”
“And ‘I’m a doctor’ wouldn’t have done the trick, you don’t think?” She tried, and failed, to reel in the tone.
Frank shrugged feebly. “When patients tell me that, I usually write them off as arrogant.” His voice had shrunk as he sensed the conflict.
Cassie wouldn’t give it to him, but she understood the logic. The I’m A Doctor, Too patients were often synonymous with I Know Better Than You. She wasn’t sure if that translated to vet med. She was sure that she didn’t translate to vet med.
She sighed and clasped the bridge of her nose between her pointer finger and thumb. “So let me get this straight. You called me over at 10pm to diagnose your dog? That has already been examined by three actual veterinarians?”
Frank kicked over into damage control. “They all said he was fine, he perks up when we get there – acts all normal. I don’t know if it’s the adrenaline or what but as soon as we get home again he’s not fine. He’s never like this, he’s insane. He should be jumping all over you. He never got any training or anything. They did bloods but they won’t do X-Rays ‘til morning and I’ll take him back as soon as they open but God, Cass, if anything happens to him, the kids…”
His mouth clamped shut but Cassie heard the break in his voice before he could catch it. There was a new shine to his eyes, made obvious by the reflection from the ceiling light. Cassie spoke up so he didn’t have to continue.
“Okay. Okay, I’ll look at the dog. Let me bring Harrison in.”
Frank’s eyes snapped up in alarm. “Your son is here? You should have said so – I wouldn’t have… Yes, bring him in, please.”
When Cassie opened the driver’s side door Harrison didn’t look up. “That was quick.” He acknowledged through his game.
Cassie reached over the seat and picked up the stethoscope on the passenger’s side. “Not quite. I could really use your help, H. I’ve got a sick patient if you’re up for giving me a hand?”
She could tell he’d considered whether to be frustrated or intrigued. Fatigue hummed behind his eyes and he almost objected, before muttering a “Sure, I can help.”
Cassie placed a hand on his back and guided him up onto the porch and through the hallway. “Who’s house is this?” He asked.
They rounded the corner into the living room and Cassie answered, “Harrison this is Dr Langdon from the hospital. He’s a friend of mine. And this is-”
Her introduction was drowned by Harrison’s sharp inhalation. “A dog!” He exclaimed in excited disbelief.
The dog lifted its head gingerly, the first real movement Cassie had seen it make, and its tail thumped twice in lacklustre succession at Harrison’s enthusiasm.
Cassie never understood the hype. She could admire a cute puppy from afar, but she’d been nipped, chased, and cornered by too many dogs to feel anything other than sceptical. Granted, most of her canine interactions had been with dogs trained to guard some important, and dangerous, people.
“This is Trip.” Frank said to Harrison.
Cassie threw a lasso over each eyebrow and willed them, begged them to stay in their assigned seats. Despite her best attempt at a poker face, she stole a glance at Frank and he found the question in her expression. As Harrison bent down in front of Trip Frank continued:
“He was a trip hazard when he was a puppy. Really got beneath your feet. Then he got bigger and just started knocking you off your feet. He’s usually such a bad dog.”
Frank strained a smile as Harrison roughed up the scruffy fur on Trip’s head. There was a fondness to his voice that confirmed, albeit subtly, that he did not think Trip was a bad dog.
“Are you a Bad Trip?” Harrison cooed at the dog, echoing what Frank had shared.
Cassie threw a third lasso over her mouth. Frank’s expression transformed into something sheepish, and he half nodded in resignation.
“Yeah, the irony’s not lost on me.” He directed at Cassie.
Harrison ignored the comment, and Cassie knew he was too young and too shielded to understand such a reference. She’d worked her whole life to ensure it.
“I think you’re a sad Trip.” Harrison corrected. His rough tousling of Trip’s fur slowed to gentle strokes.
“Yeah, he’s a sad Trip.” Frank confirmed, concern etching back into his voice.
Cassie snapped herself out of the stuttering plot twist she’d found herself in and crouched down by Harrison.
“We’re going to see if we can make Trip better. I’m going to listen to his heart, do you think you can hold his head still while I do that? Or maybe you could feed him some treats while I examine him?” She glanced at Frank to see if he agreed.
Frank shook his head. “He’s refused to eat and drink all day. It’s why I was hoping to have some fluids on standby.”
He directed his attention to Harrison, “He hadn’t wagged his tail before just now, though. He must really like you.”
Harrison didn’t look at Frank, but a coy smile blossomed over his face.
Cassie performed the physical exam as best she could on something that was starkly non-human. She didn’t know the parameters for a dog’s heart rate or respiratory rate. She didn’t know how to gage canine affect. She did know that Trip wasn’t dying.
As she leant back on her heels, Harrison asked when the ice cream shop would close. She wanted to tell him that they were almost done here, but didn’t want Frank to feel dismissed, and she faltered as she searched for a reasonable reply.
“Oh, dude we have like, seven different ice cream flavours in the freezer. You’ve earned your pick.”
“Really?”
“For sure, kitchen’s right through there.” Frank gestured across the house and Harrison jumped to his feet.
Trip let out a low, long whine as he watched Harrison disappear, and fear returned to Frank’s face.
“Do you see? He doesn’t make that noise. He’s in pain.”
Cassie considered Frank for a moment. His eyelids sagged, weighed down by worry, and the muscles in his face cast shadows as he clenched his jaw. He looked… uncomfortable. Upset. Distressed. In pain. But he wasn’t in pain. Cassie knew that wasn’t what she was seeing.
Carefully, she shuffled around Trip and gently leaned her own back against the wall, coming side by side with Frank. She rolled the smooth rubber of her stethoscope between her fingers as she rested her wrists on her knees. She tilted her head slightly towards Frank, caught his worried eyes for a second, then looked down at Trip.
She presented her findings.
‘Clear chest sounds bilaterally, heart beat regular, mucous membranes pink and moist, soft abdomen on palpation. No obvious external injuries and no apparent neurological deficits.”
“Differentials?” Frank prompted.
“With inappetence and subdued mentation, could be GI obstruction, pancreatitis, spontaneous internal bleed, ingestion of foreign and/or toxic material….” She trailed off.
“Diagnosis?”
Cassie sighed. As she did so Trip stirred, stood wearily, and shook. His floppy ears clapped against the sides of his head, and he paused for a moment before shuffling away from his little blue blanket and out of the room. He was clearly fed up with his panicked dad and his makeshift-doctor and their incessant prodding.
“He’s going to find Harrison. I’m just the spare to him. He loves kids, though.”
“You said Abby has them this weekend?” Cassie made sure to tread carefully, “You two aren’t together?”
“Yeah. I mean no, we’re separated. The night of Pittfest she took the kids to her parents. Left me alone in the house.”
Cassie felt the room grow a little colder. “Frank I’m… so sorry.”
“Don’t be. She needed to do it. When I first met her I-” He paused, swallowed, and searched. “I’d never known love like it. She stayed. So many times. This isn’t my first - Last year wasn’t my first experience with drug addiction. There were so many times before that where Abby should have left, but she stayed. She chose me every time.”
Realisation blossomed through the cracks in the conversation and Cassie stilled. Her own past had been littered with years of addiction. It shouldn’t have surprised her that Frank’s struggle with Benzodiazepines was a chapter and not a prologue. She herself knew firsthand how to narrate a story to leave out the bad bits. Still, an itch of guilt nagged at her for not recognising it in Frank.
“I was clean for six years. And then I wasn’t. But this time we had the kids.” His voice was low and his eyes stared forward. Cassie could tell he wasn’t seeing the couch. He was somewhere in the far behind.
“She couldn’t choose me anymore. She did the right thing. I know it kills her... That kind of love doesn’t disappear. She just loves our kids more. And I’m so fucking grateful for that.”
He huffed a small, humourless laugh and Cassie thought it might morph into a sob. She felt her own throat tighten at the palpable angusih. She knew, acutely, how it felt to be the one choosing drugs and losing love. The day she lost custody of Harrison still triggered a spring of tears, and she blinked rapidly to subdue them. Frank’s eyes were pointing towards the ceiling as he argued with his own.
“I get Tanner, Penny and Trip every second weekend. I told her to get rid of the dog, he was an impulse decision anyway. But she loves him. And the kids love him, so freaking much. They’re inseparable – it’s like having a third child that raids the bin and screams at mailmen. It’s why I pay double the rent on this place with a yard instead of an apartment. So I can house this stupid dog that doesn’t even like me.”
Cassie said nothing. The words poured from Frank like a vase knocked from a table.
“I don’t know if my kids even like me. Everything is just – so beyond fucked. All I know is that my only job right now is to look after their best friend and if something happens to him…
…just tell me the dog’s not gonna die, Cass.”
She still said nothing. Instead, Cassie reached across, bundled Frank’s hands in both of hers, and drew it to her lips. She pressed a kiss to his knuckles, felt his grip tighten around her own fingers, and pressed another to the back of his palm. She wondered if she’d succeeded in taking away even a fraction of what he was feeling.
“The dog’s not gonna die, Frank.” Cassie assured him. “And he’s not sick.”
“Cassie ple-”
“He’s lonely.”
Frank was momentarily floored. “Dogs don’t feel shit like that.”
Cassie continued. “He misses his kids. He’s gone from having the comfort of his family to feeling all alone. That won’t show up on a blood test.”
“But he’s so flat. He’s a shadow of himself. He hasn’t eaten anything at all today.” Frank grappled.
“Have you eaten anything today, Frank?” The question was both gentle and pointed.
Frank finally found the parallels. He took a long pause before sighing. “Are you saying I’m lonely?” There was a tired defensiveness in his voice, but he didn’t pull his hand from hers.
“I’m saying there’s evidence to suggest you both are.”
Frank released a shaking sigh. “Treatment plan?”
The question was rhetorical and designed as sarcasm. It lacked the necessary levity to pull it off.
“Time. And find the ones who feel like home. You don’t need permission to lean on those who care about you.”
Frank contemplated her words for a moment before taking them literally. He dropped his head to her shoulder. Cassie had a lot of other things she’d like to say to Frank. She had a lot of stories she could have shared. She hoped one day she’d be able to.
They sat wordlessly against the wall. There was no sound aside from the soft breathing of Frank beside her, shadowed by her own inhalations, and the faint ‘tick’ of the clock above their heads.
Breathe. Inhale. Tick.
She couldn’t see the clock. She didn’t know how long they sat for. When they rose, they found an empty kitchen. The only sign of Trip was an empty food bowl still slick with saliva. The only sign of Harrison was the pushed-out chair and the wooden popsicle stick resting on the table.
Wandering through to the kids’ bedroom, they found Harrison asleep on Tanner’s bed. His shoes had been kicked off by the foot of the bed, and Trip sat curled in tight behind his knees. The dog’s head rested over Harrison’s thighs, and he opened his eyes partly at the intrusion, deemed it unworthy of consciousness, and shut them again.
Harrison had always been a sneak-away sleeper. It wasn’t the first time she’d found him in a bed that wasn’t his. Again, it was a shield she’d constructed for him; a bed was just a bed, to sleep was just to sleep. Memories that went bump in the night were reserved for her. It was, however, the first time she paused before waking him.
Frank took the opportunity to ask her to stay. She didn’t know if that was a good idea. She didn’t know what the daylight would say. As Frank scrambled to get her a towel and a toothbrush, as he threw a blanket on the couch for himself, and as he left her in his not-quite-home-yet bedroom, she knew the answer would always be yes.
There were a lot of things Cassie wanted to share with Frank. Words thick and hard to chew. Maybe another time. For that night, if Frank’s plate was full, Cassie would be the water to wash it down with.