Work Text:
Frank Langdon awoke to the blaring ring of his alarm, 5:20 AM sharp, feeling like he’d never even slept at all. Slowly, groggily, he reached out an arm to switch it off before Abby began to stir.
It took an immense amount of time to convince his body to move, and as soon as he did, everything began to ache. Fuck. I should call in. As soon as the thought even crossed his mind, however, he stashed it away, sure that that would not be an option. At least right now.
At least after the past few days.
Things had been going so well. On his first day back, a day that had not gone perfectly, by any means, he had reduced that uni-facet cervical dislocation. Dr. Henderson, Dr. Abbot, and even Robby were super impressed with him for that feat. That feeling, saving someone’s life like that, was truly like no other, and Frank felt, for the first time in ten months, that there was something in his life he was one hundred percent sure about.
That was just the beginning. Each new day, Frank pulled something off in the Pitt that revealed his skills, adding positive after positive experiences, beginning to outweigh all the negatives. Inch by inch, Robby was starting to warm up to him again. Things were beginning to run smoother, flattening out rough terrain.
But then he sent himself right back to square one.
He’d tweaked his back on his first day when lifting that heat stroke kid, but the injury didn’t really affect him that much. With Advil and time, it started to fade into the background. He knew he’d have to get used to the highly-intense world of the ER again, and this was just a step in the process.
But then last week, it had stupidly happened again. They were transporting a patient from the ambulance’s stretcher onto their table. On the count of three, a group of them lifted the patient, and immediately Frank felt that all-too-familiar twang in his lower back. It was painful enough to distract him for a second or two, enough for Robby to cast him a confused sideways glance. When Frank could breathe again, he bit his lip, continued with the trauma, ignored that look, the one that reminded him of the expression on his attending’s face back on Pittfest day.
It continued to ache significantly. Frank started timing his Advil intakes, taking a dose every three hours to the minute. He didn’t want to call it what it was, what it reminded him of. He felt stiff during traumas, more irritated, which carried over to his home life, one of the worst parts. Abby was giving him a bit of a cold shoulder, which he deserved, no doubt.
Then yesterday, he’d been sitting in the break room, on the floor with his back perpendicular to the wall, as that was better than sitting in the chairs now. “Langdon? You in here?” Dana’s voice asked, emerging at the door. She looked confused to see his position for a moment, but then her expression flickered back to a conflicted wince.
Frank immediately went to stand up. “Shoot, sorry, I know my break ended three minutes ago-”
“Oh, that’s not what I’m here about,” Dana said. She sighed. “Upstairs called. They’re waiting on your urine test?”
Frank stopped getting up and looked at her incredulously. “What? I’m not doing that anymore. Robby stopped asking for that my first day back, so…” his sentence trailed off, and Dana looked at him sadly.
“I know, kid, I know. Believe me, I wasn’t happy to get that call, either,” Dana said.
Frank got up, did his urine test, and sent it upstairs, all in a daze. Dread was pooling in his gut, alongside another feeling: frustration, at Robby, and at himself.
He found the attending just outside after their shift ended in the Ambulance Bay. Robby was standing outside, as if waiting for what he knew was to come. “Are you gonna tell me what the hell that was about?” Frank asked immediately, no introductions. He’d meant to be a bit less aggressive, but was just so fed up with the whole situation, how stupid it was that this was escalating yet again.
“Well, why don’t you tell me, Dr. Langdon?” Robby replied, not even looking in his direction.
Before speaking again, Frank took a deep breath, channeling strategies he’d learnt in rehab. “There’s nothing much to say, Robby,” he said, calmer. “I’ve just been taking a shit ton of Advil the last couple days, all right? Could you not make me do a drug test for that, please?”
“I don’t even know what to say,” Robby replied, still not looking at him. “Are we going to have to do this every time?”
“Do what?!” Fuck being calm. “What are you even talking about right now?”
“Every time you latch onto something new?” Robby’s voice was raised as he finally spun around to face Frank, eyes set as they were on that dreadful day months ago when everything changed. “First it was benzos, now Advil?!”
“Those are entirely different levels of things!” Frank shouted.
“Doesn’t matter.” Robby stared straight at him now, challenging him to do something. “It’s in your system now: the routine of it all. And how am I supposed to know when it gets bad again if I’m not preparing myself now?”
Frank wanted to scream at him, push him, fight back, but his back was killing him, and he’d barely slept in days. Robby’s words had drained his last ounces of energy. It had been a rough day, a rough time lately, for Robby; they all knew that. But it didn’t make the words sting less.
“Maybe if you stopped waiting around for me to fail again, you’d actually notice the ways I succeed,” Frank said. He turned away, towards the parking lot. “See you, Robby.”
Fighting with Abby, fighting with Robby, sucking at his job. How fucking perfect. He unlocked his car and rested his head on the steering wheel for a minute with a sigh. He looked back up at the blaring lights of the hospital’s sign against a black darkness.
I might as well fail Robby again sooner than later, a terrible thought echoed in his mind. He wondered, briefly, how hard it would be to get a hold of some benzos again. God, he’d felt ten years younger when he had them. He could always try to get a new prescription from another hospital. Or maybe even-
His train of thought was interrupted by the blaring of his car horn; he’d rested his head against the steering wheel again, pressing the horn with his forehead. Immediately, he came to terms with what just conceived itself in his mind, and wanted to slap himself across the face. He hadn’t had a thought like that in four months, at least. “Oh my God, what the fuck is wrong with me?” he whispered out loud to himself.
Recovery isn’t linear. Recovery isn’t linear. It was something they used to say at rehab a lot. He’d mostly been indifferent to the sentiment, as his recovery had been pretty linear so far - it had been difficult as hell, no doubt, but he hadn’t even come close to thinking such a terrible thought, not like this.
He had to get home, and get to bed, before his brain fully came to terms with what he’d just imagined. It was far too late for this. Frank drove straight home and jumped straight into bed, not before grabbing a couple sleeping pills from the bathroom.
——
At 5:20 AM the next day, Frank got up, showered, dressed, brushed his teeth, refrained from the Advil (for now). At one point Abby woke up for work as well; he tried to strike up a conversation with her but was met with iciness. He picked up his cell phone and almost called the hospital twice to call in sick, but every time his finger hovered over the button, he saw Robby’s disappointed face, shaking his head. “He’s up to something,” he would say. And so Frank would chicken out.
He shuffled into the Pitt later than everyone else; the lockers were deserted. In his sleepy state, he tried to unlock the locker on the top shelf, his old one, like he’d attempted on his first day back. The “incorrect” beep confused him until he remembered, he remembered everything, he remembered Robby’s mistrust, his hurtful words, and he remembered last night, how he’d genuinely thought about relapsing.
Fuck. Of course all this shit was coming back now, right before he was supposed to start his shift. He bent to reach his lower locker, and right then a sharp pain shot all through his lower back, all-too-familiar, all-too-real.
It was the final straw.
He let out a pained groan, which quickly turned into a choked sob, surprising himself. He sat on the floor of the room, head against the unopened locker, and cried into the crook of his arm, unable to stop. He had no control over himself, his body, his thoughts. It all flowed out of him, composure be damned. I’m never going to get better. I’m never going to get bet-
“Ahem.” Robby cleared his throat.
If Frank could have suddenly ceased to exist in that moment, he would have. Instead, he looked up quickly to and away from his attending, trying to shrink farther into himself. “Fuck, you gotta be kidding me.”
“I don’t see anyone joking here,” Robby replied.
Something about his tone was strange. Despite never feeling such intense embarrassment in his life, Frank risked a glance at Dr. Robby, standing above him. Robby looked…. Sad? Puzzled?
“Are you here to welcome me to the Mental Breakdown at Work Club?” Frank asked self-deprecatingly. Stupidly, he still had tears streaming down his cheeks. He felt like a ten-year-old boy again as he sniffled and wiped them away.
“Not in the slightest.” Robby didn’t move, only crossing his arms. “Frank…”
It was the first time he’d called him by name since Pittfest, when he’d shouted at him to get out of his sight. The sound of his own name, spoken by one of the people he looked up to most in the world, in such a gentle tone, caused a huge lump to swell in his throat, and he had to aggressively swallow to keep down yet another sob.
Robby placed a comforting hand on his shoulder that smelled of hand sanitizer. “So, are you gonna tell me what’s going on?”
Frank brought both hands up to cover his face, muffling the strange noises escaping him. Robby helped him stand and led him to a quieter area nearby, away from the lockers, but not exactly in the Trauma Bay. If anyone heard crying while walking nearby, they’d likely mistake it for a patient in reception. Here, Frank came clean and told Robby everything, including what he’d thought about last night, because holding that in felt like it was killing him. He didn’t care if he got fired for real this time - he had to get it out, somewhere, anywhere.
Once he was done, he felt like a mess, sweaty, puffy, and ashamed. But he also felt lighter than he had in a very long time, like he could stand up a little straighter. “I’m sorry,” he said at last to Robby, voice barely a wheeze. “We should probably get back to work.”
“We probably should,” Robby agreed. He paused, not making any move towards the ER. “You know, Frank, what I said last night,” he began, “was uncalled for. All of us here, we’re going through very different things, and I’ll never know exactly what’s happening in your mind. Just like you’ll never know exactly what happens in mine. But at the end of the day, we all end up at this place, together. And every day we try our damn best to keep this place running. And Frank, you’ve done some messed up shit recently, but you come into work and you always do your best, some of the greatest stuff I’ve seen in my career. So I’m sorry for making that more difficult for you recently.”
Frank sighed. A hesitant smile appeared on his face. “Thank you,” he said. “And I’ll do better to…to let you know what’s happening, and what I need. And same goes for you.”
Robby smirked, placing that comforting hand on Langdon’s shoulder one more time. “Yeah, sounds like a plan.” He turned to head back into the ER. “Okay, Dr. Langdon, take ten and then come back in. Also, let’s book you in with the physiatrist upstairs at lunch, all right?”
“Yeah, sure,” Frank replied as Robby disappeared.
The room - wherever the hell he even was right now - was quiet, apart from his sniffling. Frank took a deep breath in, deep breath out. Despite looking like absolute shit, he suddenly felt pretty damn great.