Work Text:
Frank’s worked on a sprained ankle. He’s worked on a migraine, he’s worked through sleep deprivation and borderline starvation and a world of other things the average person should not work through. Things he’s made sure his staff won’t work through. Train your students to be better than you, and all that. So when a headache pulses behind his brow he doesn’t bat an eye, just mutters about damn bad timing and moves on with his day. When it worsens he takes Ibuprofen from Dana’s desk that probably won’t do enough, but he can pretend.
It’s hour ten of his twelve hour shift that the pain hits him so suddenly as he’s walking that he has to take a long breath not to cry out. His vision swims for a moment and he nearly trips. A nearly-silent swear slips past his lips anyway. “Langdon,” he hears from across the hall; Robby’s looking. He looks up to see a furrowed brow marching towards him. “You okay?”
“Tripped on my own feet. Just my ego took a bruise.” It’s an easy lie, one of those clouded by humor and a little bit of self depreciation to make it seem more earnest.
Robby doesn’t have the time to question it and gives a noncommittal response that Frank doesn’t hear anyway. He’s already going back to the board, silently begging it for something easy.
Persistent vomiting. No thanks. Pediatric whooping cough. As much as he likes kids, he doesn’t like them enough to be coughed on more than he has to. Migraine. The board is mocking him, he swears it. With a sigh he looks over to Dana, asking, “Who’s gonna notice if I ditch my shift two hours early?”
She gives a firm raised eyebrow. “Everyone. I hate to admit it, but you’re pretty necessary, hotshot.”
“I’d like to be optional right now.”
“You need a break?” she asks, genuinely seeming concerned.
He waves her off. “Nah, just a bad attitude.”
“Worse than normal?”
He scoffs. “Somehow. I’ll just… Give me a sprain, or something.”
“I don’t make a habit of hurting my staff.”
“Har har.”
“There’s an infected laceration waiting on labs in C-2 you could check on, she hasn’t been seen since they were ordered about an hour ago.”
“Are her labs back?”
A second later, Dana hands over a tablet with, “Yeah, just a few minutes ago.”
“Who’s on this one?”
“King, but she got called into trauma one, I don’t think they’ll be out for a while.”
With a short wave and a nod, Frank calls back, “Thanks!”
It’s easy. Sure, he’s having slightly more difficulty reading and interpreting her labs than maybe he should, but he’s confident. Just… slow. The patient doesn’t seem to mind. It’s only after he finishes off and orders her prescription, stepping back out into the hall, that he has half a mind to take a break. His vision swims.
“Robby,” he calls over as he passes by. “I’ll be in the lounge. Get me if you need me.”
He thinks the crease between that man’s eyebrows is permanent. He gives an affirmative answer and Frank’s already moving.
The lights get shut off and it’s the first thing all day to help the headache. He now sees why Mel likes this so much. A grunt escapes his lips before he can stop it as he sits, head leaning forwards to meet the cold table. He has no clue how long he stays there, just begging the Ibuprofen to kick in or his consciousness to fade. Frank can count on one hand the amount of times he’s actually stepped away from work like this and had no plans of going back to it.
The clock mocks him just like the board did. Hour and a half. I can do an hour and a half.
“No, I'm grabbing my drink—” The door clicks shut. “Oh. Sorry Doctor Langdon,” Mel says, her voice far more of a whisper this time.
“It’s fine,” he mutters, lifting his head but keeping his eyes screwed shut. Even behind closed lids something blurs and floats in his vision.
Miraculously Mel doesn’t let the chair squeak on the tile floors as she sits across from him. “Are you feeling alright?”
“Headache. I’ll be back out as soon as the Ibuprofen starts working.”
She hums. “Sensitive to light and sound?”
“Yeah.”
“Any visual distortions?”
“It’s a headache, King,” he bites back, not meaning to sound unkind but at the end of his rope anyway.
In a perfectly clear voice he knows is well practiced in her job, she repeats gently, “Are you having any visual distortions?”
“...Yes.”
“That’s a migraine. I think you’ll want to do more than pray for Ibuprofen miracles.” Risking opening his eyes, he catches sight of Mel’s tender expression. “My sister Becca has gotten a few migraines, I know some pretty weird tricks if you want any. But in the meantime it might be worth heading home early.”
He shakes his head and it makes the pain momentarily worse. When Frank has the words to explain, he says lowly, “No, I only have an hour and a half left. I just need to get my bearings.”
“You’re going to burn yourself out, and this will get worse. Don’t become a patient here, Doctor Langdon.”
It’s advice he’d probably give to his residents. A huff in frustration is all he can muster, not wanting to make the pain worse. “I’ll… talk to Robby, see if I can get off a few minutes early.”
She hums in agreement. “I will be right back. I’d suggest hydrating as much as possible in case you get nauseous.”
Again her chair barely makes any noise, and the door clicks shut. His head meets the cold table again and this time he has no plans of lifting it when she returns.
He doesn’t get to hear the conversation, he doesn’t really even care. That’s how desperate he is.
(“Doctor Robby? Doctor Langdon’s in the break room, and I really think he needs to go home. I can do my best to cover for him until the night shift arrives.”
“Is he that bad?”
“He has a migraine. I’ve never seen him like this. I’m worried we’ll be cleaning bile off the floor if he stays.”
Robby’s grown to gain enough sympathy for him to know when to let up. He nods. “You can send him home and I’ll see if anyone can come in early. Thanks for catching that.”)
“Doctor Robby is sending you home. If you give me your locker code I can grab all your things and we’ll get you out of here ASAP.”
He really wants to argue. Nothing about this situation feels right, it feels like being taken care of by his staff, it feels like admitting defeat, but more than anything it feels damn painful. The last one overrides anything else and he lets her grab his belongings.
It takes the entire time for her to get them and return just for Frank to stay standing and not feel like collapsing back in the chair. Mel returns to hand him his jacket but keeps his backpack slung on one arm. He goes for the door but she stops him softly. “Hold on.” She hands over a pair of chunky headphones. “It’s better to stick out a little than to vomit on the floor.”
He would chuckle if it wouldn’t disturb the precarious agreement he has with his brain. “True,” he mutters, slipping them over his ears. Mel (when did he start calling her that?) takes his arm in one hand, silently offering to guide him out the door. They take the shortest path to the ambulance bay so they don’t have to go through chairs.
If anyone were to mention him wearing noise cancelling headphones and being guided by one of his residents, he’d hit them. He has half a mind to be grateful Santos isn’t working this shift or there would no doubt be photographic evidence. He’s sure he looks like a kicked dog right about now. But the kicked dog got out into the ambulance bay, walked to the sidewalk, and asked, “Does that look like a Toyota Rav?”
“One, two, three or four?” he mutters.
“Uh…” She checks her phone. “Four.”
Glancing up, Frank answers, “Yeah, why?”
“That’s your ride.”
“...You ordered an Uber?”
“You aren’t driving with a migraine, Frank.” She makes fast conversation with the driver, already setting him inside. “I’ll drive your car back after my shift, and take the bus home. I already grabbed your keys.” She drops the backpack by his feet.
“Thief. That’s a crime.”
“Make it up to me,” she says with that smile that makes something in his chest constrict. “Text or call me if you need any help,” and then she’s gone. He didn’t say goodbye. Pain pulses behind his eye and he’s still wearing her headphones and he didn’t get to say goodbye.
An excuse to see her again, he thinks.
========
The bachelor pad he barely seems to live in doesn’t even have a microwave, let alone proper medications or a first aid kit. He finds Tylenol in one of the boxes he failed to unpack months ago, strips himself of his scrubs and manages a pair of sweatpants, and finally gets to fall into bed.
It hurts like a migraine is supposed to, but at least he’s horizontal.
His watch beeps on the hour, and when it reminds him that it’s seven PM, he’s just grateful it’s seven PM in his bed and not trying to navigate the pitt like this. His vision is relatively normal now, suffering through a quiet TV show in the background just to distract his brain enough to possibly sleep. So when he hears a quiet knock he doesn’t think anything of it, no longer paying attention to the home renovation show and not catching the difference.
And then it happens during a Miralax commercial, so he groans at the realization that it’s from his front door.
Frank decides that if it’s his neighbor Linda, he should probably be fully dressed, and slips a discarded t-shirt over his head to answer it. Standing makes his vision swim but he trudges over anyway. His self preservation is gone and he doesn’t check the peephole before answering.
“Sorry, I would have come in but it was locked,” Mel greets with that thin smile. “I brought your car back. And I wasn’t sure what you’d have at home, so I brought you a few things.”
Her words make him catch sight of the CVS bag on her arm and the fast food drink in her hand. “Mel, you didn’t have to,” he says groggily, but steps aside to let her in. The door clicks behind them and even that noise seems too shrill to bear. But when Mel excuses it softly, her voice doesn't have that same affect. She sets the bag on his counter and pulls things from it. “Excedrin and Advil. Excedrin for the caffeine, and Advil to reduce inflammation. You should double up if you haven’t taken meds.”
He wants to deny her caring at all, wants to deny the effort. But he can’t. He can’t deny her anything. “Uh… one stray Tylenol when I got home.”
She nods, pursing her lips like she does when she’s focusing on her charting. “Take one Excedrin and two Advil, then. Repeat in four hours if it isn’t completely gone. But don’t overdose on acetaminophen while I’m not there to save you, got it?” She hands him the fast food drink, still wet with condensation and gratefully cold. Frank places it to his forehead like he would have in high school track when he was overheated. It makes Mel furrow her brow. “McDonald's coke is just a home remedy. Do you have a fever?”
Frank shakes his head even though he doesn’t actually know. “No, I run hot. Promise.”
She presses a hand to his forehead anyway, wiping off the condensation before actually attempting to detect a temperature. If he leans into her touch (he most certainly does), no one has to know. He purposefully ignores it himself. Mel hums, satisfied. “Okay. If you do get a fever, especially if the migraine gets worse, you should probably get a ride right back to the ER.”
“It’s a migraine, Mel,” he excuses softly.
She purses her lips again, looking at him with that sort of determination he knows well. “It’s also a migraine with aura that hasn’t yet gone away with medication. Add a fever into the mix and you might melt your brain. I don’t want to find out too late that it’s an underlying condition.”
“That won’t happen.”
“Let me fuss.” During this all she has poured out the medication she promised, handing it over for him and pointing to the coke that has found its way back to his head. “Take these, and back to bed with you.”
“Doctor’s orders?” he mutters before tipping back the meds.
It makes her laugh just enough that he thinks the migraine is worth it. “Doctors orders,” she confirms with a small smile. “Do you want me to stay?”
Yes, yes, yes. “No, I’m not on my death bed. Go home and get some sleep.”
She concedes softly, “Alright. But text me when you wake up so I know you’re not melting.”
“Aye aye, Captain.” Maybe this migraine’s worth it. “I’m working tomorrow, so you’ll see me un-melted, in the flesh.”
As she walks him back to his bedroom, she says quietly, “Text me anyway. I worry.”
“Will do.” He glances back to the living room, and says, “Grab your headphones on the way out.”
“I will,” Mel promises. “And your keys are on the hook.”
“Fair trade.” He doesn’t want this to end. He doesn’t want her to go. “Thank you, really. You didn’t have to do all this.”
“You’d do it for me.”
Of course. Of course I would. I’d do this and more, Mel. I’d do anything. “I would.”
“Well.” She glances back to the door. “Stay sane. I’ll see you at work.”
“See you at work.”
Maybe he is melting. His stomach drops when his door clicks closed. Her headphones and his car are no longer his excuse. Tomorrow they’ll return to work and it’ll be good but it won’t be like this.
The coke in his hands reminds him that there will always be an excuse. He’ll find one.