Chapter Text
“Mr. Patterson, you cannot continue your current diet as is,” Frank sighed, staring at the man sitting on the edge of the examination table, “You are a diabetic, sir. It’s extremely important that you—“
”Bah,” Mr. Patterson scoffed, waving a hand in front of his face, “Son, nothing’s gonna come between me and my sodapop.” He wagged a finger in Frank’s face, causing him to jolt his head back, “I only drink the clear ones now. It’s that syrup that’ll get you.”
Frank tried valiantly to keep the annoyance off his face, “Mr. Patterson, you came in today with a glucose spike so high it could have put you in a coma. When we’re talking about diet, we’re focusing on the sugar content of foods as well as—“
”Can’t I get goin’ on my way now?,” Mr. Patterson interrupted, “I feel right as rain, and the church is holdin’ a barbecue,” he leaned in like he was sharing a secret, “Heard that Miss Linda’s gonna bring some of her chess pie.”
Frank Langdon was going to find the nearest bridge and drive off of it.
I-40 ran right past the McDonald’s in town, maybe he could grab a fucking Sprite and see what made Mr. Patterson so god damn dependent on them before he slammed the gas pedal through the floor of his midsize sedan and careened off the overpass.
He dragged a hand down his face, exhausted, and tried to launch into an explanation that wouldn’t have the old man back in the ER by the time the night shift took over.
***
Without mincing words, Frank Langdon was entirely, undeniably at rock bottom.
The worst part was that he didn’t have anyone to blame but himself. And as someone in a position that really, really wanted to blame someone else, he was slowly but surely spinning out.
Slowly was the operative word here. Everything in the small hospital where he had to take a position, after basically getting driven out of Pittsburgh, knew nothing but slow.
Slow processes, slow procedures, slow days that dripped like molasses and made Frank want to slam his head into the nurse’s station desk.
They still charted with pen and paper, for god’s sake.
The first few months after relocating to the town that time forgot, also known as Carthage, Tennessee, Frank kept waiting for things to work themselves out. Like, somehow someone would show up at the ED and retrieve him from the pits of despair. Like the world would correct itself because Frank Langdon was not meant to be in a hospital that saw twelve patients per day with no wife, no kids, and absolutely no friends at all.
After those first months, Frank stopped waiting and let the reality of the situation finally sink in.
Did he mention that he had nobody to blame but himself for ending up here?
Sure, he’d cursed every person he could think of. He’d privately thought things about Santos, Robby, and Abby that he would be embarrassed to repeat, frankly.
It took him a while to cycle through anger and end up smack dab in the middle of self-pity, where he now resided.
“Dr. Langdon, Mrs. Vertress is in 113. She’s complaining about the same heat rash from last week.”
Frank sighed heavily, lifting his head off the desk in front of him, “Thanks, Lori, on it.”
***
- Wake up.
- Walk the dumb dog.
- Get yelled at by Mrs. Crenshaw, his neighbor, for not picking up the dog’s shit.
- Pick up the dog’s shit.
- Shower and briefly contemplate running into the woods of Tennessee to live off the grid.
- Show up at the ED at Mercypoint Health promptly ten minutes before the changeover from night shift to day shift to slog through another day.
- Do not steal drugs.
- Go home.
- Feed the dumb dog.
- Walk the dumb dog again.
- Shower. Tennessee woods. Nosedive off I-40. Mr. Patterson’s soda.
- TV dinner.
- Beg Abby to tell his own children goodnight.
- Feel humiliated.
- Watch 60 Minutes.
Day in and day out until, apparently, Frank choked on a bland Michelina’s fettuccine Alfredo dinner and died in the recliner he’d hauled to every home since college.
Abby hated that recliner.
He popped the footrest out, sinking back and closing his eyes, exhausted, as Bill Whitaker’s voice droned.
She’d probably get a kick out of seeing him reduced to this tiny life.
***
Frank jolted to attention, squinting in the early morning light that filtered into his living room.
Fuck.
He tried to scramble out of the chair that had acted as his bed for the night, and winced, curling into himself for a second, at the pain in his back.
Didn’t matter. He fell asleep without an alarm, and his nearly dead phone showed that he was definitely going to be late for the changeover.
Fuck fuck fuck.
He rushed through the motions, letting the dog out while he hopped into the shower, half hoping the annoying thing would just run away. Much to his chagrin, when he opened the back door again, there it was, staring at him with its head cocked to one side like it wasn’t sure why Frank hadn’t come outside too. He said a quick prayer that it had actually used the bathroom so his house wouldn’t be covered in dog piss when he got home and bolted out of the door, tugging scrubs over his still half-damp body.
”You need to clean up after that dog, Mr. Langdon.”
Jesus fucking—
“Yeah, Mrs. Crenshaw, I’ll do it when I get home tonight.”
The woman scowled at him from her porch. The floral bathrobe she had cinched around her waist and her pink hair rollers would have been a funny contrast with her expression if Frank didn’t know how much this woman truly despised his very existence.
Her crinkled lips pursed like she was sucking on something sour, “Now that just won’t do. It’ll sit out all day and,” she searched for a word, “fester in the heat.”
Frank juggled his keys and lanyard, trying to detangle the two. “Look, Mrs. Crenshaw, I’m late for work. At the hospital,” he finally ripped his car key out of the tangle, unlocking his door.
“You know, the place where I’m a doctor? I have to go—“
Mrs. Crenshaw’s brows rose at his audacity to not completely cower in front of her, ”Mr. Langdon, that sounds like an excuse—“
“—save lives! Mrs. Crenshaw, uh, bye,” Frank dove into the driver’s seat and slammed the car door behind him, preemptively cutting off the lecture his neighbor was gearing up for. From the look she was giving him, though, he was sure he’d have a strongly worded letter taped to his door when he got home that night.
He put the car in gear, groaning.
***
Mercypoint Hospital barely felt like it had an emergency department. Going to work felt more like showing up at a family care clinic where cases slowly ambled in and out without anything really life-threatening at all going on.
The good thing was that this meant when Frank pulled up to the hospital fifteen minutes late, no one really seemed to care that much.
The bad thing was that no one really seemed to care that much.
Mercypoint would probably keep chugging along, slow as ever, even if Frank never showed up for work at all. Hell, if he died in one of the examination rooms, they probably wouldn’t find him for a few days.
The paper charts for the currently admitted patients were scarce when he walked into the ED. They were always scarce.
”Good morning, Dr. Langdon,” Tiffany, one of the young nurses who still seemed to have a will to live, said as he started to rifle through their pile of patients.
“Morning, Tiff,” He mumbled back, already feeling the tar of this place sucking him into the ground. His back twinged again like a cruel reminder that he’d already set himself up to be miserable for the next ten sluggish hours.
Tiffany smiled, unaware of the fact that Frank was stuck in an endless procession of torment of his own making. “Mr. Virgis is still waiting to be seen in room 111.”
Frank hummed in mild interest. Not one of the regulars, at least.
“What’s his deal?”
”Got his hand stuck in a hay baler.”
Frank’s head whipped up, “And no one’s seen him yet?”
Tiffany shrugged, “He said it wasn’t too bad. Kept lettin’ people get seen before him.”
This place was the Twilight Zone.
“He could lose his hand in an accident like that,” Frank snapped and turned on his heel, trying to inject a little urgency into this place after all, calling, “Lead with that Tiff!” over his shoulder.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her deflate slightly and winced. Maybe he should work on his delivery around these people. He wouldn’t be surprised if half of them thought he was a total asshole, sliding in from the city and expecting them all to move at the same pace he’d been trained for. It was another jabbing reminder that he wasn’t built for somewhere like this.
He made a mental note to apologize to Tiffany later and politely request that she inform him of high-priority cases immediately.
For the time being, he smiled a little. It looked like Mercypoint was going to see at least a little action today.
***
Frank snapped Mr. Virgis’s blood-soaked wedding ring off into a plastic container as the man outright cursed at him. His interaction with Mrs. Crenshaw suddenly seemed downright cheery compared to a man who was probably going to lose two of his fingers that had let multiple patients jump him in line while he was in shock and filled with adrenaline.
The pain had officially kicked in, and the medicine was taking its sweet time relieving it for the old farmer.
“Christ almighty, yer shit-for-brains doctors in here know how to do anything?”
Frank cleaned the area as best he could, trying to get a clear assessment of the damage done to the man’s hand. “We’re just trying to help, Mr. Virgis. The ring—“
”That damn ring has been on my hand for thirty-some years, pretty boy. It shoulda been on there till my bones turned to dust.”
The ring, Frank thought venomously, is the reason there’s barely any skin left on your finger.
Instead of rising to the taunts—Pretty boy? Really?—Frank tucked his head in, continuing his work until surgery was ready to take the man. Hopefully, the damage was only as bad as Frank had estimated. At this point, if Mr. Virgis lost his hand entirely, he might come back and beat Frank’s ass specifically.
The man raged at the ceiling, catching the attention of passing nurses and technicians in the hall, “Shit, boy, are you sure they gave me anything at all, or are you doctors liftin’ it on the side while we suffer? Rush Limbaugh did a special years ago—“
Frank blew a hard breath out of his nose, purposefully ignoring the man as a harried nurse rushed in, assuring him that they were upping the dosage.
Any excitement from the case died in that last sentence. Frank wanted this over with and quickly. Shame crept up his spine as patients who suffered, who could have died, from his actions flashed in front of his face.
Was there ever going to be a point where he could move on from everything? Or was Frank’s very existence going to be constant penance until he curled into a ball and let the embarrassment stop his heart?
He watched as surgery rolled Mr. Virgis out of the ED, bloodstained and numb, until Tiffany sidled up to him.
“Dr. Langdon, Mrs. Carrow is in the next room over, when you get a second. She’s worried about a spider bite.” She lifted her hands in surrender. “I didn’t think it was that urgent, so…” she trailed off, sounding a little sarcastic.
”Yeah,” Frank mumbled and turned, “Sorry. For earlier.”
She looked at him weirdly, “That’s alright,” and then snarked, “The patient?” before spinning on her heel and stalking back toward the nurse’s station.
”Right.” Frank agreed, talking to himself. He closed his eyes for a second and nodded.
It was fine. Tiffany was the only one who really greeted him every morning before this, but who needed friends anyway?
***
The second Frank pulled back into his driveway, he saw the paper fluttering on his front door.
”Come on,” He complained, resting his forehead on his steering wheel.
Was this really going to be the rest of forever? The edges of his vision turned blurry as a migraine threatened at his temples. He wasn’t going to cry. Probably. He was a grown man.
The rest of the day had been just as slow as he’d expected when he walked in that morning. No more belligerent republicans made him feel like an insect under their shoe, so that was at least a positive. His back hurt like a bitch, though, and Abby had sent him a video of Tanner’s spring concert that he wasn’t around for with a snarky message around lunch time.
All in all, he just wanted to go to bed.
Eventually, he swallowed the dread and unbuckled his seat belt, readying himself to read whatever lecture Mrs. Crenshaw had in store for him.
The second he cracked open his door, though, the woman came barreling out of her screen door, disrupting the quiet of the night like she’d been poised and ready for her moment.
“Mr. Langdon! Mr. Langdon,” she called, rushing down her porch steps.
He sighed, unsure why he was god’s personal chew toy, and quietly accepted his fate.
”Yes, Mrs. Crenshaw?”
She came to a skidding stop in front of him, trusty floral rope cinched around her waist like always, her pink rollers half falling out of her white hair, and Frank tried to tamp down on the borderline hysterical laughter threatening to rise out of his chest.
”Your dog has been barking all day, and I suspect it’s because you barely let him out this morning. Honestly,” she brushed one limp roller out of her face, “if you’re not going to take care of an animal properly, then you shouldn’t get one.”
The funny thing about Mrs. Crenshaw was that after being her neighbor for this long, Frank still couldn’t tell if she hated his dog or if she was constantly angling to take it from him. It seemed like it changed daily. Hourly even.
Frank figured she was all alone at home, with the late Mr. Crenshaw no longer around and no kids coming to visit, so if she really wanted the damn thing, she could just say that.
Though she did threaten to put the dog down once when he got into her daisies, so maybe it wasn’t a good call.
She could have just been in a bad mood.
She seemed like she was in a bad mood most of the time.
”I’ll keep that in mind, Mrs. Crenshaw,” Frank relented, “I’ll go check on him.”
“You best,” She sniffed. “And clean yourself up, my god. You look like a mess.”
”A pleasure as always, Mrs. Crenshaw, thank you,” he hissed back.
He turned and hurried to his front door as her echoing, “Excuse me?” bounced off his back.
He slipped into the dark house before she could demand more of his attention, quietly pleased that he got a little barb in to defend himself.
He was then promptly embarrassed at being reduced to fighting with an elderly woman.
And then he stepped into a puddle of dog piss in his entryway, effectively extinguishing any sense of small victories pretty quickly.
***
Two hours later, after cleaning the house, cleaning himself, and yes, taking a flashlight outside to make sure he cleaned up any mess in the yard, Frank was in the recliner again, trying to call Abby.
The call had already gone to voicemail twice, and every time the automated voice interrupted the ringing, Frank felt himself shrink further into the worn fabric.
By the third call, Abby must have figured he wasn’t going to give up.
”Hello?”
”Abby! Hey, hi,” Frank sat up in the chair, making the golden doodle in his lap jolt.
“What do you want, Frank?” Her voice wasn’t particularly annoyed. More than anything, she sounded exhausted.
A nasty part of Frank figured that if she hadn’t fought for him to have limited visitation, then she wouldn’t have to practically be a single mother.
A nastier part of him reminded himself that she’d sounded nearly just as exhausted while they were supposedly happily married.
”I, uh, I just wanted to talk to Tanner. About his concert?” Frank’s voice lifted at the end of the request, sounding unsure.
”He’s in bed, Frank. I just got him down.”
That was a complete lie. It had to be. The last time they did bedtime together, Tanner was fighting sleep so hard that they were lucky if he was in bed before midnight.
Maybe it wasn’t, though. Kids developed rapidly. Maybe it was just a cruel reminder that Frank was missing milestones by the hour.
His heart clenched, and he felt himself shrink even further.
”Right,” He agreed, “Right, sorry.”
Abby’s voice crackled over the line with practiced patience, “Is that all?”
Was that all? A dad begging to talk to his son like a little kid asking for a sleepover with his friend?
”Penny?”
“Asleep for hours, Frank.”
He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Okay.”
The line went silent for a minute. Awkward.
Frank cleared his throat, “We got a patient today that was pretty gnarly—“
”Goodnight, Frank,” Abby interrupted.
Jesus.
“Yeah,” he sighed again, exhaustion seeping deep into his bones, “Night, Abby.”
He was pretty sure the line went dead before he got the last word out.
It took everything in him not to hurl the phone across the room, staring blankly at the 60 Minutes logo on the TV.
Through the window, he saw Mrs. Crenshaw’s house windows go dark, and for some reason, that was what finally left him feeling entirely, hopelessly alone.
A year and a half of this already.
Only the rest of his life to go.