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The first thing she registers is the warmth. The second is her panic. “Excuse me Izzy, Doctor Langdon,” Mel says quickly to the patient and her coworker, bringing a gloved hand up to her face. Neither of them catch a glance of her before she's already out the door and peeling her gloves off. A steady stream of blood trickles from her nose that her hand can't stop.
In all her years in the field it still shocks her how unprepared she feels by the most basic things. She stands in the middle of the hall facing the wall like a statue, unsure of where to even start. Okay. Okay, just… something to stop the bleeding. Gauze is stocked literally everywhere but she goes for a tissue from the nurse's station first.
“Doctor King—” Frank stops in front of her, already assessing the situation. “Ah. Okay, sit down.”
“You can stay with the patient, it's fine,” she tries to tell him, taking the tissue away to find the bleeding not stopping.
“Her labs have been ordered, she doesn't need me,” he says. A hand to her shoulder coaxes her into a swivel chair. His voice goes just a touch more gentle than she's used to hearing it. “Lean forward a little,” he mutters.
She wants to fight him. She seriously wants to. But she's on the tail end of a double, her sanity is slipping, and Mel doesn't know if she can bite back how relieved she is to be cared about in some way. So she tilts her body forward in the chair and lets Langdon press gauze to her nose with a gloved hand. “Did you swap gloves?”
“I'm not a med student,” he says in that tone that has her questioning if he's upset, but he quickly adds on quietly, “Joking. Yes, I did. Did you have any sort of blow to the head recently? Even minor?”
“No.”
“Can you think of another reason for this? Bad allergies, dry environment?” She shakes her head this time and his brow furrows. “Are you sure? You haven't been sick lately? No sinus problems?” he pushes. That look on his face she doesn't get to see outside of being in a fatal emergency appears. A strange feeling gathers in her chest when she sees that he reserves that same worry for her.
“Uh—no. No, I can't… think of any.” She swallows back the coppery taste in her mouth and leans further forward to stop it. It leans her face into Langdon’s hand but he's not phased and kneels by her chair. She has to stop shaking her knee in her nervousness or she'll hit him with it. In its place she taps a hand against her collarbone. It hits her: “There were a few patients from a chemical fire overnight and I bagged all their belongings, everything reeked of… of acetone, I think it was. I wasn't involved in treatment so I don't remember. It would've been enough to irritate the mucus membrane.”
He takes it all in quickly. “Any headache, dizziness or nausea?” She wants to tease him for the intake questions like she's a patient, and then she realizes suddenly that she probably is a patient. “Mel,” he urges.
“Uh… headache. That could be from the double.”
“And it could be from acetone exposure.” He presses two fingers to the inside of her wrist and tells her, “Your heart rate’s a little high. That could be for a lot of reasons, though.” Taking the gauze away from her face, she can tell the bleeding has slowed.
As a result she offers, “You can get back to your patients. I'll just clean myself up and take it slow, I'm really not worried.”
“I pride myself on not often being worried, but when we're talking about you, Melissa, I'm happy to admit it,” he tells her quietly, bringing her hand to replace his and hold the gauze firmly in place. “Humor me. Sit here until the bleeding stops and let me worry about you a little.”
It makes her press her lips together in a very subtle smile that she excuses herself for, just this once. Langdon's isn't as subtle but it's incredibly sweet. She adds a short, “Okay,” to let him have his point.
They don't get this moment to themselves, because why would they? Doctor Robby flies past them but stops just short of ignoring them. His shoes squeak when he stops to ask, “Doctor King, what happened?”
“It's nothing, I'm just stopping to—to take care of a nose bleed—”
“Epistaxis from acetone inhalation,” Langdon says after she trips over her words, stopping short of reforming her sentence. He glances her way to make sure it's okay, but the sudden panic in her expression seems to tell it all. “She's going to stay here until the bleeding stops, take a breather, and hydrate.”
Doctor Robby nods, his own furrowed brow showing more than usual. “Good. I don't need you to get acetone poisoning.”
“It's incredibly unlikely to get acetone poisoning from such a small amount inhaled.”
Langdon raises an eyebrow in the same beat that Doctor Robby does. The latter says, “I'm okay being safe over sorry. Don't move, I'll grab you water.”
Another breath of panic overtakes her at the idea of a plastic water bottle touched by twenty different sets of hands. Hand sanitizer can't fix that. In a desperate attempt at staying clean she says to the two of them, “My water bottle is on top of the lockers, I can get it!”
“I'll get your water bottle.”
“I really don't feel comfortable with the water bottles we give out—”
“King,” Doctor Robby interrupts, “I'll get yours. It's purple, with the stickers on it?” She nods. “Back in a second. Langdon, check in on your patients when I get back. Reassess her in fifteen.”
At this point she doesn't think it's worth the fight to argue. The gauze by her face gets replaced swiftly so she’s not sitting here with soaked through cotton. “See, second opinion.” Frank—no, Doctor Langdon…just Langdon? She doesn’t try to fight that either—puts his hands on his knees to brace himself to stand, moving the swivel chair back over to the nurse’s station a few feet away. “Don’t move until you’ve finished all your charting for the day and your water bottle is empty. Maybe twice over.”
“If this is because I haven’t caught up on my last two patients I assure you the trauma that arrived just—”
“No, Mel, stop that,” he urges. “Stop your brain. Shut it off. I’m benching you so you don’t get the bright idea to pick up another patient and accidentally bleed on them. You’ve done nothing wrong. Just… this is the task you have to accomplish. Keep busy so you don’t go crazy, alright?”
Keep busy so you don’t go crazy. She can do that. Doctor Robby sets her water bottle on the desk before she even sees him, and by the time she looks up he’s halfway across the hall again. She nods. “Keep busy,” she repeats to herself with a sip of her water.
Langdon promises, “I’ll be back. Have someone get me if it starts bleeding again or if you have any other symptoms.”
“I know the drill.” Her head pops up. “I mean—that sounded condescending, I just—yeah. I will.”
He gives her what could be called a reassuring smile. She just hopes it isn't pitiful. (Something in her gut tells her it isn't.)
When he leaves it’s with a tap to the shoulder, something gentle, a reminder. It leaves her to take a deep breath, center herself, and process the fact that she just had a nosebleed in the middle of her workplace. Trinity probably already has a new nickname ready. She doesn't even care anymore, not when Langdon sticks close to her side even after she returns to work.