Chapter Text
Mel King was an accomplished liar. Well, accomplished at harmless white lies that were usually for the benefit of another person and to her own detriment. No, Dana, it doesn’t bother me that that patient called me frigid. No, Becca, I don’t mind if we watch Elf again. No, Dr Robby, I can totally stay late after my shift is over because the Pitt is slammed as usual. If it didn’t harm anyone except herself, she lied effortlessly and constantly.
Except him. She couldn’t lie to him.
She started the morning of that shift the same as any other. Woke up early, walked to Middle Hill for breakfast with Becca (and Adam, usually, these days). Bus to the Pitt, change into scrubs, humour Santos as she came up with more silly derivatives of her name (this morning it was ‘Maladaptive daydreaming’), jump onto a case, wait for him to pull her onto another one because they both knew they worked better together, even if neither of them ever said it out loud.
As besotted as she was with him, Mel couldn’t deny that Dr Frank Langdon was also an accomplished liar. But if Mel’s lies were benign growths, his were stage-four cancer cells. When Langdon lied, people got hurt, something he evidently didn’t realise until it was too late. No, Robby, I’m not stealing from the ER. Yes, Pitt colleagues, my marriage is fine. No, I haven’t been denied custody of my kids.
When the rumours about his divorce started to swirl, Mel said nothing and tuned out. So what if they were right the first time about why he took a ten-month leave of absence and disappeared once a day for the exact amount of time it took to take and get the results of a drug test. Lightning didn’t strike twice.
Except it did. It was Javadi who first caught him sliding his wedding band on at the start of a shift. Well, being realistic Dana probably noticed weeks ago, but she respected him enough not to tell anyone. Regardless of who was the first to notice, Javadi, upon spotting him fiddling with something small, gold and shiny, took approximately ten minutes to whisper something to Whitaker, and from there, well, it spread like wildfire. Langdon eventually fessed up to McKay, but Princess overheard them, told Perlah, forgetting again that Santos spoke Tagalog, and soon after, Langdon finally dropped the act.
The whole time, he didn’t say anything to Mel. Of course, she knew he didn’t owe her that. They were close, but he didn’t like to offer up information about the state of his marriage and she knew better than to ask. She had made peace a long time ago that she had fallen for someone who was unavailable. She didn’t want to be a homewrecker and she simply didn’t have the energy for something messy like that. Her crush on Langdon was a source of amusement for herself, something to energise her when the perma-exhaustion of being an ER doctor was becoming too much to bear.
The influx of golden wonders from the nursing homes hit the Pitt early that morning, and Mel got to work quickly. A 90-year-old woman had fallen and broken her hip on her way to the bathroom – well, that was how the paramedic put it. Mel pointed out to the interns that, since the patient had a history of osteoporosis, it was much more likely that she broke her hip and then fell. Mel hated these cases: many patients from the nursing homes were simply biding their time, waiting until whatever deity they believed in called them back and they shuffled off this mortal coil. If a 70 year old broke their hip, they had a decent chance of a full recovery within a year. But what was the point in referring this poor woman to physio if she literally might not live that long?
When she finished with the patient, Mel stole a moment in the staff lounge before sitting down to do her chart. Through the window in the door, she could see Langdon and Santos sparring again. They’d come a long way, in fairness – Santos didn’t actively hate Langdon any more, and Langdon had finally accepted that Santos was actually a good doctor.
Mel sighed and stood up, realising that she couldn’t put off this stupid chart any longer. She waited until Langdon left the nurse’s station to go there herself and grab a free computer. Mel and Santos were sort of friends now, but Mel didn’t want to give Santos any evidence of this stupid crush of hers. In fairness, she had told Santos a while ago – uncharacteristically sharply – that she did not want Santos to tease her the way she teased the others. The nicknames were fine; she actually enjoyed those. But Mel couldn’t do the workplace banter that most of her colleagues spoke like a native language, and it just upset her when she couldn’t keep up or didn’t get an inside joke. Santos, though she’d never admit it, did value Mel’s friendship, and she was smart enough to know that Mel wouldn’t tolerate being made fun of. Still, she just didn’t want her to know anyway. Mel was more cynical than most people realised. She’d been burned before, and played her cards close to her chest.
Santos didn’t look away from her screen when Mel sat down. ‘What’s the word, Maladaptive?’
‘I have to chart that woman who came in from the nursing home. 90 years old with a broken hip. Wants to get back walking again.’
‘Delulu, methinks.’
‘Well, I can’t exactly write that on her chart.’
Langdon materialised then to study the board. Before he could so much as open his mouth, Dana’s voice rang out in Mel’s ear: ‘I hope you’re not buffet-ing, mister.’ (buffet-ing = take what you want and leave the rest. Not best practice in an ER.)
‘Wouldn’t dream of it, Dana,’ he called back with a touch of sarcasm. He caught Mel’s eye and winked at her, which sent a fizzing sensation through her stomach. It never got old, when he flirted with her like that. At least, she chose to believe it was flirting. To everyone else it looked like she was his kid sister.
‘Hey, good job on talking the interns through that case,’ he said as he moved away from the nurse’s station to an awaiting patient. His voice grew louder as the distance between them grew. ‘Your teaching skills are really coming on!’
Mel blushed and returned to her chart.
‘I think someone has a crush on you, Malfeasance,’ Santos goaded, still not pulling her eyes away from her own screen.
‘Pick on someone your own size, Santos,’ Dana chimed in before Mel could respond. Because Santos wasn’t picking on her, she’d promised not to do that. So she could only be serious.
Someone else thinks Langdon has a crush on me.
Before she could process that, the phone rang and Dana yelled out that there were three car crash victims, two of them children, five minutes out. Mel put this paralysing piece of information in her pocket and got to work.