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It started with pain on a Wednesday morning.
Frank noticed immediately that Mel was more irritable than usual and kept clutching at her side and stomach with barely repressed groans as they worked together to get Becca and the kids ready for the day.
“Are you okay, sweetheart?” he asked when he saw her lean against the kitchen counter and take a deep breath.
“I’m fine,” she insisted, looking up at him with slight annoyance. “Just some indigestion or something. I told you Thai food doesn’t sit well with me.”
Frank held his hands up in apology and then went back to packing lunches. “Okay, but just…”
“I know, I know, Frank,” she snapped. “I’ll let you know if it gets worse.”
He bit his tongue, trying not to read into the fact that Mel was behaving in a way that was entirely uncharacteristic for her. They dropped the kids off at school first, then Becca at the center, before finally making their way to the hospital for their usual shift. All morning, Frank kept a close eye on Mel, watching her try to hide her discomfort for everyone else’s benefit. But everyone noticed that she wasn’t herself, and the more people asked if she was okay, the more upset she seemed to become.
At ten past three, Frank was searching for Mel, hoping he could convince her to take a quick break and maybe even tell him what was wrong, when he heard a sharp groan and a sound like someone hitting the floor. He rushed into the room, expecting to find a collapsed patient, and instead he found a very shocked looking patient and Mel hunched over on the floor.
“Mel!” he cried out, rushing to her side. He scooped her up in his arms and left the room without a second thought to the patient inside. “Hey, Dana, I need help!”
The charge nurse looked over her shoulder at him with raised eyebrows, but when she saw Mel groaning in his arms, she immediately jumped into action.
“North 4 is open!” she called back. “I’ll grab Robby!”
Frank privately thought that he’d rather have literally any other doctor in the Pitt, but he knew Dana was suggesting it because Robby was the most senior, and Mel deserved the best care available. He carried her as quickly as he could to North 4 and set her down gently on the table.
“What’s wrong, Mel?” he asked, hands fluttering over her body as if he could somehow sense where her pain was coming from.
She groaned again, her breathing coming more rapidly. She took his hand and pressed it to her abdomen. “Here.”
Frank felt the blood rush from his face. “Shit, Mel, that’s –”
“Appendicitis!” Robby’s voice startled them both, proclaiming the diagnosis like it was cheerful and fun. “Someone page Garcia while I confirm.”
Frank moved out of the way, his hand firm around Mel’s, though he had the feeling that was possibly more for his own benefit than for hers. He offered her a reassuring smile as Robby poked and prodded and a med student called up to surgery. Fuck, appendicitis. He should have picked up on that earlier. He should have noticed where the pain was and insisted she get seen this morning.
“Hey there, ER Barbie, I hear your appendix decided it’s had enough,” Garcia greeted as she waltzed into the room like she owned it. “Time to ditch that red flag of an organ.”
Mel smiled weakly at the jokes.
Frank moved to go with her as they prepared to take her upstairs, but Mel squeezed his hand until he looked at her and shook her head. “Stick to the schedule, please.”
He wanted to argue with her, but he knew it was pointless. They’d had this conversation before because Mel thought it was good to be prepared for these kinds of things before emergencies happened. Since Tanner and Penny were still young and Becca didn’t always handle last-minute changes well, Mel reasoned that it would be best for them to try to stick to the schedule as much as they could. Especially since this wasn’t a true emergency – it was an emergent situation, but Mel was at the hospital and in no real danger – it wasn’t necessary for Frank to stay with her. He could finish his shift, go pick up Becca from the center, and make sure she was taken care of. He sighed. It wasn’t exactly how he wanted things to go, but he wanted to upset Mel even less.
“Hey Becca!” Frank greeted in the lobby of the center, surprised to find that he didn’t even have to force himself to smile at her.
“Frank! Is Mel in the car?” she asked, looking around.
He had prepared for this though, knowing it would be the first question she asked. “Mel’s actually at the hospital still.”
“Oh, is she still working?” Becca asked. She always had one hundred questions about everything. It was endearing.
“She’s not, actually,” Frank answered slowly, keeping his eyes on Becca so he could watch her reaction. “She’s a little bit sick, but I don’t want you to worry, she’s going to be just fine. But she’ll probably have to stay there for a day or two just so they can give her medicines and things.”
Becca’s brow furrowed deeply, every expression exaggerated on her face, reflective of how deeply she felt things. “Is she really okay?”
“Yeah, she is, I promise,” he said, crossing his fingers over his heart. “She had a little operation, but it’s already over and it went really well.”
“Can we go see her?” Becca asked, biting her lip in a way that was entirely her own and yet also reminiscent of Mel.
“Not right now, she’s still resting,” he said, offering her a sympathetic frown as he dipped his head to the side. “Do you want to hear my plan?”
“Hmm,” Becca’s eyes narrowed as she considered it. “Okay.”
“Okay. So I think we should go get dinner and go home and maybe watch a movie,” he began, again watching her reactions closely for any sign that this was about to take a turn for the worse. “And then we can pack some of your things and I’ll bring you back to the center for the night while I go to the hospital. And then in the morning, I can come get you and take you to see Mel for a little bit when she’s awake and feeling more like herself. Does that sound okay?”
Becca frowned. “How come you get to go back to the hospital tonight but I can’t?”
Fuck. “Oh, I’m only allowed because I’m a doctor. Otherwise, visitors aren’t allowed at night,” he said, half-lying. Technically, he was allowed because he was Mel’s emergency contact, but that wasn’t something he needed to get into with Becca. This was simpler.
“Okay,” Becca said at last, though the skin between her eyebrows was still creased. “I don’t like that you can go see her and I can’t, but I guess that’s better than Mel being alone all night.”
“Yeah, I agree,” he said. “So is that plan okay?”
“I guess so,” she shrugged. “Can we get Italian food for dinner tonight?”
“Sure, Becca, whatever you want,” Frank agreed, mostly just relieved that he had gotten past this particular hurdle.
“And can we watch Elf?” she asked, looking up at him hopefully.
Frank was a little bit surprised, since she usually didn’t want to watch Elf without Mel (it was their thing, she always said), but he supposed it was her comfort movie.
It was half past nine when Frank got a text from Garcia that Mel was waking up. He would have liked to rush over to the hospital exactly then (actually, he would have liked to have been at the hospital already) but he knew he couldn’t stop mid-movie for Becca’s sake, so he did his best to wait patiently. Once it was done and her back was packed, he dropped Becca off at the center and then sped the rest of the way to the hospital. He parked in his designated spot in the staff garage and practically ran through the halls of the hospital like a madman until he pulled to a screeching stop in front of the room that Garcia had mentioned. He peeked in.
Mel was mostly sitting up in bed. Someone had given her glasses back to her, but her eyes were unfocused behind them, sliding back and forth across the room. Her hair was in a braid, but not her usual one at the nape of her neck, a looser braid that hung from the side, over her shoulder. Someone must have done that for her to make her comfortable. She was in a hospital gown, two thin blankets covering her legs.
“Fraaank!” she squealed when her eyes landed on him in the doorway. From the lilt of her voice, he could tell they were giving her some pretty good painkillers. “You’re hereeee!”
It reminded him of that very first day, when she’d called out the same words across the crowded ER floor.
“Hi, sweetheart,” he said, smiling warmly. “How are you feeling?”
“Good, I’m so good,” she slurred, her grin spreading sloppily across her face. “And even better because you’re here.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here sooner,” he answered, meaning it sincerely. He wished he had been.
Mel suddenly looked serious. “Becca?”
“She’s fine,” he told her, taking a seat in the chair provided, scooting it closer to the bed so he could reach out and hold her hand. “We had dinner and then I took her back to the center for the night. I promised she could come visit in the morning.”
“Mmm, okay,” she hummed. If she were more lucid, Frank would have thought she was deep in thought, but as it was, he was more inclined to think that her mind had just wandered off a bit.
Her fingers began playing with his hand idly, turning them over and drawing patterns on his skin. Frank found the gesture strangely intimate – he was seeing Mel completely unguarded, her raw instincts, the things she held back from doing when she was fully conscious. And fuck, he loved her like this so much. He would have to make a mental note to tell her that she was welcome to touch him in whatever idle way she desired.
“Frank, can I tell you a sssecret?” she asked.
“Of course, sweetheart,” he said quickly. “You can tell me anything.”
“I miss when you wore a ring,” Mel sighed, stroking his ring finger slightly. “It looked so gooood on you.”
“You mean my wedding ring?” he clarified, both confused and amused.
“Mmm. Didn’t like that you were married,” she said, blinking long and slow. “But you have such nice hands, hot hands. And the ring looked good.”
“Okay, thank you.” He was trying hard not to laugh at her because he wasn’t sure how much she would remember and he didn’t want to risk offending her, but he was having some difficulty keeping it in.
“I wish you still wore it,” she added, looking off into the distance with a dreamy expression on her face.
“My wedding ring?” he repeated, hardly believing that any of this conversation was real.
“No!” She seemed almost offended by the suggestion. “No. Not the same one. A different one. A newww one.”
“Okay…” Frank worked to keep his grin in check. “So you want me to wear a new ring where one traditionally wears wedding rings?”
Mel hummed in response.
“Mel King, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were asking me to marry you,” he teased, unable to resist himself.
“No, I can’t do that,” she answered, almost instinctively. “You have to do that.”
“Why?” he challenged. He knew that Mel was not a stickler for gender norms, but every now and then she did surprise him. Sometimes it just a facet of her personality that happened to line up with a stereotype (she hated touching bugs, be it squishing or capture, so while she was perfectly capable of handling a rogue bug in the house, she would rather he did it), but other times he thought it might be a craving for a traditional family experience that she never really had. Maybe this was the latter.
“I don’t know,” she frowned, like she genuinely couldn’t piece together why the words had come out of her mouth.
“Okay, well, for the record, I would say yes if you did ask,” he told her, leaning in to kiss her temple. And damn, he really didn’t know if he was hoping she remembered this in the morning or not.
“Mmme too,” she hummed.
Mel was blinking long and slow again, struggling to keep her eyes open. It wasn’t the same as post-shift and -caregiving exhausted, when they would crawl into bed absolutely bone-weary. This was a peaceful, post-surgical sleepiness, the fog of anaesthesia and pain meds still wrapped around her and not quite letting her fully wake.
“You should get some sleep, sweetheart,” he told her, reaching out to brush a few stray strands of hair from her eyes. “Rest is important, you know that.”
She hummed again.
Frank watched as her eyelids grew heavier and heavier. By his estimation, it took exactly four minutes for her to fall back asleep. He adjusted his position in the chair, pushing it into recline mode and trying to figure out how best to avoid fucking up his back. But once he was settled, trying to drift off into sleep himself, there was only one thought circling around his mind like a tickertape banner.
I’m gonna marry Mel King.