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The Pitt was a lot today. It was always a lot, but today the hospital’s fluorescent hum was vibrating right at the base of Mel’s skull. It was a jagged little reminder that she’d had exactly four hours of sleep after a High School Musical movie marathon with Becca.
Her blonde braid was a lost cause, fraying at the edges, and her glasses kept sliding down the bridge of her nose. The constant slipping gave her brain too much room to ruminate. Between the fluorescent lights whining at a pitch only she seemed to hear and the mental tally of how many hours of sleep she’d lost to Becca’s latest fixation before, Mel was hanging on by a very frayed thread.
She leaned over the charting station, staring at a CT scan that was starting to look like a Rorschach test. Does that look like a fracture or a butterfly? If it’s a butterfly, I’m definitely hallucinating. Some intern—she’d already forgotten his name, maybe it was a J-name?—was droning in her ear about a hairline fracture, but his voice was just a dull buzz. Mel pushed her glasses up her nose again. Her finger lingered for a second on the tiny mole under her eye, a tell-tale sign that she was hitting a sensory wall.
Three feet away, Frank was supposed to be doing something important. He was mid-debate with Dr. Garcia over a chest tube they’d finished placing twenty minutes ago, and usually the sound of them bickering was Mel’s favorite background noise. It was familiar and steady, and the well-oiled machine of banter brought light into the ER once Mel realized the two of them were actually old friends.
Mel had been the first person to light up when he walked back through those doors almost a year ago; that first shift back had solidified a partnership neither of them seemed willing to let go of.
After that, the rest had just…happened.
They’d built a language of their own in the gaps between shifts. It was Frank sitting in her driveway after a double, refusing to let her go inside until she’d finally taken him up on his offer to call him by his first name. Hey, if everyone calls you Mel, you can call me Frank. It was Mel dragging him to his first Ren Faire when he didn't have the kids for a long weekend, and the photos from that day now being the only personal things tucked into her locker – and a duplicate Polaroid he'd asked for a week later that was now tucked in his wallet.
At this point, she had become an expert at cataloging the exact way her heart did a frantic little skip every time she got him to laugh at an inside joke, and then promptly ignoring it. She told herself he was a great friend—reliable, kind—and if she spent her lunch breaks wondering what his hands felt like when they weren't wearing surgical gloves, she certainly wasn't going to admit it to anyone. Especially not herself.
Behind her, the familiar cadence of the ER continued, but Mel was too far gone to track it. She was vaguely aware of his deep voice still going back and forth with Dr. Garcia, but she didn't notice when the bickering actually stopped.
She was too busy trying to keep her eyes from crossing to realize that Frank had completely frozen. If she had looked up, she would have seen him standing there, a tongue-depressor held aimlessly in one hand, his entire focus shifted away from the technicalities of the chest tube debate and tethered entirely to her. He was reading her, thinking about how she looked like she was about to vibrate right out of her skin. To him, the slump of her shoulders was a localized, gravitational event; she wasn’t just tired, she was Mel-tired—the kind of exhaustion that came from being someone who cared about everyone else first.
He watched her with the kind of intensity that usually preceded a Level 1 Trauma, but Mel remained in her own world, pushing her glasses up for the fifth time and wishing the intern would just stop talking.
He moved before he thought. It was instinct, honed by months of being the only person who knew exactly when she was reaching her limit. If he’d remembered to think about it, he would have remembered they were in the middle of a Level 1 Trauma Center with witnesses. Instead, he just closed the space with that silent, long-legged stride, his large frame casting a sudden, warm shadow over her.
He stopped right behind her, his shadow falling over the CT scan. Before Mel could even look up, his hand was there—massive, steady, competent, and warm enough to feel through the thin fabric of her scrub top. It wasn't a tentative touch; his palm settled firmly on the nape of her neck. His thumb slid behind the ear-piece of her glasses to tuck a stray blond hair back into her braid, his skin brushing against that tiny mole under her eye. Then, he gave her a slow, heavy, grounding squeeze.
"Drink some water, Mel," he rumbled. His voice dropped into that low, private register that usually stayed reserved for the quiet of his car. He nudged her Snoopy-patterned water bottle toward her with his free hand. It was the one they’d been sharing since the start of the shift, a quiet routine they'd fallen into because Frank never remembered his own and Mel had spent months gently worrying about his caffeine-consumption until he’d finally started listening.
"You okay? It looks like you’re running on fumes," he murmured.
Mel’s eyes flew shut. She didn't pull away. In fact, her body seemed to short-circuit as she leaned back, her head hitting the solid heat of his palm. She let out a breath she’d been holding since the start of her shift, and the noisy chaos of the ER faded into a soft-focus blur. Oh. Wow. This. I could stay here for a hundred years. For a second, the pining didn't feel like an ache; it felt like an anchor. There was just the weight of Frank’s hand and the steady, rhythmic flex of his fingers against her skin.
Then, a very distinct click-click-click broke the silence.
Mel blinked her eyes open, her face instantly going a catastrophic shade of pink. The intern was staring at them like they’d just started making out on the counter. Nearby, Jesse was wide-eyed and choking on his water bottle.
But the real problem was at the med cart.
Princess and Perlah were standing in perfect, narrowed synchronization. Perlah held a paper towel roll like a gavel, a knowing smirk playing on her lips, while Princess’ pen clicked with a menacing, satisfied snap.
"Ay, Dr. Langdon," Princess chirped, her voice a pitch higher than usual. "Since when do you give massages? My neck is very stiff too, you know. High-level clinical tension over here."
Perlah nodded, her eyes gleaming. "Must be a new protocol from the Chief. 'Manual Pressure Therapy for Dehydrated Residents.' Very innovative, Dr. Langdon. Very hands-on."
Frank froze. His brain was practically rebooting in real-time to find a professional way to explain the distance (or lack thereof professional distance). His hand gave Mel’s shoulder one last, rhythmic flex—the fingers digging into her trap for one final, betraying second—before he abruptly yanked it back to his side.
He stood up straighter, his face snapping into a mask of pure nonchalance, though his ears were already turning a bright, betraying shade of red.
"Dr. King looked dizzy," Frank said, his voice way too loud for the space around them. "I was checking for... a vasovagal response."
"A vasovagal response," Dana repeated, rounding the corner with a stack of charts. She stopped, looking from Frank’s red-tipped ears to Mel’s flushed face, and then back at the two nurses who were basically vibrating with glee.
Dana had seen Frank through everything—his eagerness to make an impression with Robby during his first shift back, his amicable divorce with Abby, and even that time he’d been caught in the background of one of Victoria’s "Dr. J" videos and had to have her explain what a “zaddy” meant—but she’d never seen him look this much like a deer in headlights. She nudged him out of the way with a seasoned hip. "Go back to your trauma bay, Dr. Langdon. I think your 'vasovagal' patient can handle herself from here."
Frank didn't argue. He cleared his throat, adjusted his stethoscope like it was a noose, and high-tailed it toward the ambulance bay. He shot one quick, pained glance back at Mel—a telepathic sorry, I’m leaving you to the wolves—before ducking out of sight, his ears a subtle, betraying shade of red.
The second his shoes were out of earshot, Perlah leaned over the counter. "Vasovagal, my foot," she whispered, her eyes dancing.
Mel stared intensely at the CT scan, trying to remember how to breathe. Her skin was still humming where his thumb had been and her brain was a chaotic loop of did that really just happen?
"He has the 'lover boy' eyes, Mel," Princess said, clicking her pen one last time. "You better tell us now, or we find out on our own. And here at the Pitt? We always find out."
Mel pushed her glasses up, her heart hammering. He doesn’t have boyfriend eyes. He was being a friend. A very, very thoughtful friend. She was definitely, absolutely, in trouble.