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Of course it is Dana who sees it. Dana, who presides over the floor with an iron fist and a golden heart, who cares more deeply about every single staff member than they will ever know. Who else would identify feelings that neither of the involved parties have so much as named yet?
She is the only one who recognises the ability Mel King has somehow acquired. The ability to assess Frank Langdon with a single sweep of her doe eyes.
No need for words, no need to break the contemplative quiet that follows her everywhere. One glance at those cobalt depths, the set of the square jaw, the stiffness of his posture seems to tell her everything she needs to know.
Only then will she step forward and, without fail, Langdon will open his personal space to her, turning his aching body towards her. Her words are too gentle to be overheard but he responds. Always. When anyone else would go unacknowledged at best, wittily eviscerated at worst, he allows Mel King to speak for as long as she wants.
Dana will busy herself doing nothing. Observing how Mel’s hand will eventually land somewhere, a caress she doesn’t seem fully aware of offering. Observing how he will lean into her touch, imperceptible to any passing glance, and the lines etched deep around his eyes will soften just slightly.
Mel King has no idea of the power she holds over this damaged man. Her only focus is his safety, his wellbeing. She doesn’t flinch from the responsibility she has chosen to bear.
And Frank Langdon just looks at her like she alone can take the weight of the world from his bowed shoulders.
X X X
She sees him. She sees the exact contortion of his chiselled face if he moves too sharply or twists the wrong way. She sees how his full lips will compress to the thinnest of lines and his eyes will glaze over as he retreats into his own mind.
Mel King plans everything in advance. She mentally rehearses potential conversations. She eats the same dinner on the same day each week. She takes the exact same route to work, to Walmart, on her daily run.
But she does not plan how to interact with Frank Langdon. She has learned she doesn’t need to. It happens naturally, in a way that is both completely foreign yet entirely familiar to her. Just like Langdon himself. A stranger she seems to have known forever, as if they have already met in another life and just picked right up where they left off.
Twelve months and a million years, and she feels like she knows him better than he knows himself.
Mel senses something is off the moment he returns from a trauma bay. His stance is wrong, shoulders at uneven heights as he hunches to one side. Taut, wary movements, each one a careful consideration. He doesn’t look at anyone, doesn’t make a sound as he lowers himself onto a desk chair. Save for an intake of breath so razor sharp it should cut him.
That’s all it takes to activate Mel’s radar.
His gaze doesn’t move from the screen as she sidles to the next computer. When his clenched jaw relaxes, she knows he is granting permission and she is safe to step inside his boundaries.
“What happened?” Her shoulder settles alongside his and, after a long moment as he fights with himself, she feels the weight of him as he leans into her.
“Dodged a punch,” he mutters. “Should’ve just taken it.”
He’s right. The hit would have hurt less.
She doesn’t need to ask if it’s bad – she can deduce that for herself – but it’s important to give him the control of acknowledging his own pain. So she asks and watches his head drop, his eyes close.
A long breath leaks from his lips. “Pretty bad.”
That’s the most he will admit. And only to her. Anyone else will be instantly dismissed with a curt ‘I’m fine’, if he deigns to reply at all. Not that the others ask. They don’t seem able to read his tells like Mel can, yet she doesn’t think he does a particularly good job of concealment. If she can spot the beads of sweat clinging to his hairline, the tremors rendering his big, strong hands temporarily clumsy, surely they can.
Maybe they just don’t care enough to look. Except Dana. Mel knows Dana misses nothing. She isn’t sure how she feels about that.
“What can I do?” she asks.
Another few beats pass before he answers, as usual. “Stay right there,” he eventually murmurs.
His weight grows heavier against her until she is practically doing the job his skeletal system is supposed to perform. But if it takes the strain off his latissimus dorsi, she will happily stand here until he chooses to move.
“Got any plans tonight?” After a moment of silence, she selects distraction as today’s choice of calming method.
“Lie very still on my couch, watch the Penguins’ game and drink every beer I have in the apartment.”
Six months since his wedding ring vanished. Five months renting the soulless South Side Flats apartment from one of the orthopaedic surgeons and he still doesn’t use possessive language when referring to it. Four months preferring to hang out at Mel’s Beechview duplex.
Mel keeps track, even if Langdon doesn’t.
“What about you?” he asks eventually. “It’s lasagne night, right?”
She can’t contain her beam of delight at his recollection of the meal plan fixed to her fridge. Slow cooker lasagne, every Thursday. “You want some?”
His lips quirk and he lightly shakes his head. But she’s learned that doesn’t mean no. It isn’t a negative movement.
Another two beats.
“Sounds good.”
Abruptly, his upper body tenses against her side and the warmth of him is lost as he takes his own weight.
Mel glances up to Dr Robby striding past and although he doesn’t so much glance in their direction, Langdon sets himself ready for battle.
His face tightens, furrows carving their way across his forehead. His right hand forms a fist against his thigh, banging lightly off the quadriceps.
“Hometime, Dr Langdon,” Dana’s voice announces from behind them, a rescue and a gift. Neither has noticed the clock until they turn to Dana pointing rather pointedly at it. Relief floods Langdon’s eyes, but he doesn’t move.
Dana’s gaze meets Mel’s before darting momentarily to Langdon. A barely perceptible nod towards him, that Mel confirms with a rather more obvious nod of her own. For someone who has always found the code of human body language unnecessarily complicated, she is doing well. She’ll have to report back to Becca how much progress she has made.
Mel reaches across, takes Langdon’s incomplete chart from him. “I’ll finish this up.”
Not even a flicker of protest. Dana makes too much noise tidying up her station as he takes an infinity to rise, straighten to his full height. Mel grants him the privacy of his first rigid steps without scrutiny, focussing on the information before her.
When she looks up, he’s heading for the locker room, each pace a microcosm of discomfort that he disguises with set shoulders, head held high, chin thrust out. Daring anyone to challenge him.
Mel types faster.
X X X
Dana is the only one to observe them leaving together, side-by-side, Mel slowing her stride to match his. The two women exchange smiles that don’t need to be explained. If Langdon notices, he keeps it to himself. He has more pressing matters to attend to, like successfully putting one foot in front of the other.
His beloved Dodge Charger waits in the staff parking lot, a crouching beast amid the sensible sedans and SUVs. The two child seats adorning the back should detract from its brooding power, but they are only occupied once a week and that grants them a special status, in Mel’s eyes at least.
The car unlocks at Langdon’s touch of the door handle, which still seems vaguely like magic to Mel. He tugs it open and she watches him stall.
“Frank,” she says softly, immediately realising the cause of his hesitation.
The bucket seating in the front will defeat him. They both know it. Even if he manages to lower himself in, getting out again will be another story, one Mel does not want him to attempt to write.
“We’ll take my car,” she tells him.
His eyes rove the cabin, trying to establish a way to overcome the obstacle without humiliation, but his keen brain is dulled by the more urgent battle and provides no help. His shoulders drop, defeated.
He follows her to her ten-year-old Toyota like a condemned man treading the path to the gallows.
“My car’s not that bad,” she smiles, pretending she doesn’t know the real reason for his reticence. His gaze lifts briefly to hers in acknowledgement of her effort.
She sees how hard he grits his teeth as he eases into the passenger seat. She sees his ragged breaths and the single tear that creeps from the side of one eye as he squeezes them shut. She sees how close he comes to crying out.
She reaches across and rests her palm atop his clenched fist. Not even one beat before he turns it upside and grasps her hand. Tight.
“It’s going to be ok.”
“Is it?” he asks, almost conversationally. “How?”
“We’ll fix this.”
His head turns. “We?”
“Yes, we.” It isn’t necessary, but she confirms it anyway. “I won’t let you go through this alone.”
His eyes don’t move from hers. “It’s not your fight, Mel.”
“I’m loyal.”
“Really? I hadn’t noticed.” A smile, just a flash, but enough for her.
In her head, she adds another note to the list. How to make Frank Langdon smile. She’s getting pretty good at that too.
X X X
He hangs his coat alongside hers without thought. Toes off his sneakers into the shoe rack. Stores his bag in the hallway closet. Her routine. He takes his end of the couch, easing down onto the nest of cushions she leaves built up for him.
Mel tosses the heat pad she bought four months ago into the microwave and goes to retrieve the bottle of Tylenol. He won’t open it himself. She knows she must hand him the pills and watch him take them, to make it clear the action is overt, acceptable, understandable, or however he has labelled it in his own mind.
He takes the beer bottle first, swigging half to delay the action before he finally swallows them. When she offers the heat pad, he leans forward, silently asking her to slide it beneath his shirt. Her fingers tingle with electricity as they brush his skin.
He exhales audibly and she can’t tell if it is from the heat or her touch. She hovers, unsure what to do next.
“Don’t skip your shower to deal with me,” he tells her.
“Why, do I smell?”
“Not even close, but showering is the first thing you do when you get home or you worry all night you’re spreading germs everywhere.” He takes an overt sniff of his own armpit, neatly avoiding acknowledging his recognition of her needs. “But I stink, right?”
He does not. His smell is uniquely Langdon. Cedar and leather and the slight tang of menthol from the mints he uses as a distraction technique.
“Want me to clean up before I’m the one spreading pathogens?” he asks.
“I don’t want you to move from that spot until you can do it without pain.”
“That’ll be quite a while, sweetheart.”
Her pulse thuds at how casually he uses the term of endearment.
“Mel,” he says softly. “Go shower. I promise to remain motionless til you get back.”
She returns, scrubbed clean, wearing his Steelers’ hoodie he left behind last week. She loves the way it drowns her, heavy enough to feel like his arm is slung across her shoulders.
His eyes crinkle at the corners as he notices. “Looks better on you.”
She dishes up the lasagne, scatters additional parmesan over his because he can never get enough cheese. They eat on the couch in companiable silence, Mel cross-legged at her end, Langdon propped up at the other, his socked feet resting against her thigh.
As the game starts, Mel shifts her position, edging further along the cushions. Langdon’s head settles against her shoulder, his soft hair brushing against her cheek. His hand finds hers, weaving their fingers together, and although his breathing is steady and even, his grip becomes steel every time he attempts to move.
Her palm replaces the heat pad, tracing circles across the rigid muscles, a map she doesn’t need to study. His eyes close and his head burrows closer.
“I don’t deserve you,” he murmurs.
If only he could see how much he does.
END