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Typically, the bets that go on in the ED are short-lived. They revolve around stolen ambulances, temporarily misplaced patients, or the number of firework injuries that walk in on the Fourth of July. It’s usually petty cash, nothing that human resources would bat an eye at.
However.
Opposite the big whiteboard and its many colorful stickies, is what one might call a whale. Or, rather, several whales. Or at least - it mentions a whale. Langdon’s still unsure why Whitaker thinks the Pittsburgh ED would see a harpoon injury from a whaling trip. They aren’t anywhere near the ocean.
The dinky little board - chalk, it’s chalk, that’s how old it is - holds the biggest and weirdest bets for the long-haul. In fact, it’s where Langdon’s only ongoing bet lives. They’ve all tried to predict the weirdest injury of the summer, and he’s gone with a very respectable smores stick burn, complete with chocolate and marshmallow goo in a half-cauterized wound.
It’s not just him. Santos’ is awfully vague - but insists whatever it will be will involve both a firefighter and fire hydrant. Dana’s got bets on some sort of Disney Princess having a heat stroke at a kid’s backyard birthday party - and Emma’s piggybacked off it to specifically bet that it will be Ariel. That somehow spun down into Shen claiming that some kid will end up swallowing a tropical fish from a pet store and Abbot betting that a peacock at the zoo will bite some old lady in the ass.
Then, at the bottom corner in perfect cursive script, is Mel’s one and only ever prediction: a hunter accidentally getting impaled on an eight point buck.
Langdon’s kind of hoping she’ll win. The antler thing sounds way cooler than making a kid throw up a tropical fish or googling if you can get bird flu from a peacock.
(You can’t. He checks.)
It’s a quiet day, though he won’t say it out loud. Mel took the Saturday off, so he’s been trying not to prove the whole ED correct by being sullen in her absence. It’s manageable today because Santos is also off. There’s a rumor that it’s because they’re hanging out. Very plausible.
Langdon is trying not to think about it. He’d much rather continue living in the fantasy that Mel will always be his best friend, and no one else’s.
He’s well aware these thoughts and feelings make him sound like Tanner. It was only last week his son was learning about dandelion wishes and plucking petals off flowers.
She loves me, she loves me not.
Mel loves Frank more, Mel loves Santos less.
(Yeah, yeah, he hears it. Much like Tanner and their games of hide and seek, Langdon’s not above cheating. In fact, he’s this close to shaking a Magic Eight Ball for advice or asking an Etsy witch to give him a lucky Best Friend crystal to carry around in his pocket.)
But it’s whatever. It’s fine. Mel will be back soon enough.
He’s taking a break between cases, staring at the chalkboard and trying to make sense of Captain Ahab’s whale prediction, when Cassie pops her head in.
“Who had: shot with a bow and arrow by someone dressed as a knight at the Ren Faire?”
“No one,” Langdon says slowly, arms still crossed, as he turns around. He searches her face for some tell of a joke. But there isn’t one. “No. For real?”
She slaps the door jamb twice. “Ambulance is two minutes out.”
He’s still trying to wrap his head around it. “A knight.”
“Yeah.”
“Like with the chainmail and the swords and the horses.”
“Not sure if the horse was involved. Also I'm not entirely sure he shot another knight, so I don't know how much chainmail you're going to see."
“But we’re certain chainmail was involved?” Langdon doesn’t wait for an answer, all while somehow managing to beat Cassie out of the security office and into the ambulance bay. “Dibs on pulling the arrow out.”
“Oh, no arguments from me,” Cassie scoffs. The sirens grow louder, which in hindsight, just adds to the soundtrack of the disaster he’s unprepared for behind those ambulance doors. “I do not want to be the one who -”
Whitaker effectively cuts her off as he comes jogging out, gowned and everything. “Hey,” He says, brow furrowing when he sees him.. “Wait, why are you -” His pointed finger swivels Cassie’s way. “You didn’t tell him?”
Langdon shoves down the instinct to bat the pointed finger away. “Tell me what?”
“I didn’t see the point,” Cassie says, which is not enlightening. “He’s not well trained.” Now her finger is out, pointing. It’s all very rude. “It’s not like he’ll actually listen when we tell him no.”
“But he’s her emergency contact -
“Emergency contact?” Now he panics. He’s a lot of people’s emergency contact because he’s the only doctor they know, but that long list includes his mom, his three sisters, his ex-wife, his kids -
“Yes. And he’s been contacted. About the emergency.” She spins her finger around. “Right now.”
He can see the lights now as the ambulance turns into the loading bay. His ears are ringing, but not from the sirens.“Guys, who is it -“
The back doors of the ambulance fly open to reveal two things that their chalkboard would have never bet on: Trinity Santos dressed as what he thinks is supposed to be a knight, and Melissa King dressed as what is clearly a Tudor noblewoman.
- a stabbed Tudor noblewoman.
Oh yeah. He’s Mel’s emergency contact, too.
“Before you ask,” Santos gestures to her outfit. “I’m not the knight who shot her.”
Well that's comforting.
Langdon’s vaguely aware that Santos is spewing off stats while she’s got a leather-gloved hand wrapped around the wound where the arrow remains impaled in her abdomen. But it’s hard to concentrate on things like her low diastolic and blood type matches when Mel is dressed like Anne Boleyn, smiling at him like she isn’t actively dying a little bit.
“Langdon!” She slurs somewhat, hands thrown up in the air. Santos swears at the movement and presses harder down harder on her abdomen and back as Cassie hops up into the ambulance to help get the gurney off. “I got shot.”
“Oh wow,” He blinks, stepping aside to let Knight Santos and her Court Jester Whitaker help wheel her into the ED. He’s hot on their heels. “I can see that, Doctor King.”
“Actually, today it’s Queen King - wait.” She trails off, chin hooked down, staring at the arrow impaling her like it’ll give her all the answers. He things of the magic eight ball again. Langdon wonders if there’s teeny tiny letters on the arrowhead that say outlook not so good. “That doesn’t make sense.”
She doesn’t look all that drunk, but he smells liquor on her - he thinks most of it is spilled on her costume, if the stains are anything to go by. One can hope. For her what is likely her lacerated liver’s sake. “You do anything fun at the Ren Faire besides get in the way of target practice?”
Santos looks like she wants to hit him for that comment.
Mel, however, just nods sagely. “I sampled from the land’s finest apothecary.”
He glances at Santos, silently begging for help.
“Dilaudid,” she grumbles, wiping her brow with her wrist; Mel’s blood ends up smeared by her hairline anyway. "The paramedic gave her dilaudid."
They wheel her into trauma room one, where Robby, only four days fresh off his sabbatical, looks like he’s about to stroke out at the sight of his resident looking like some extra in a haunted house. “Jesus fuck, Mel. What happened?”
Santos finally takes her hands off Mel when Whitaker elbows her out of the way to take her place. “The moron was showing off his fuckass medieval replica of a bow and arrow and shot her in the middle of the street.”
Whittaker has the gall to pause and look thoughtful. Like the physics of this matters right here and now. “This isn’t, like, from some sporting goods crossbow?”
“Oh no,” Mel starts, only squirming slightly when Robby does a quick pupil reflex. The dilaudid really is doing wonders to squash her aversion to unfamiliar touch and all things bright. “This was the real thing. He carved the bows and made the arrows and everything. He even did pearl inlays.”
Whitaker takes a peek at the arrow sticking out of her back. “In the arrowhead?”
“In the bow.”
Robby claps his hands. The shitty ED version of 1-2-3, Eyes On Me! “Santos, grab me a -”
“I can’t.” She blurts out. She has her hands up and out; there’s a small shake to them. “I’m drunk.” Which, okay. Maybe that explains the liquor smell. “I’m not doctoring. I’m just here as Mel’s friend.”
Mel lights up at that; when she whips her head to the side, glassy eyes searching, she nearly takes out Perlah who has just finished jabbing an IV in the crook of her arm. “We’re friends?”
“Yeah, dummy,” she says without any heat. In fact, Langdon might consider her eyes warm, if he hadn’t already considered the fire he usually finds in them straight from the depths of hell. “Would I have put on this skimpy Spirit Halloween costume if we weren’t?”
“Did anyone page Garcia?” Langdon asks, eying the pearl-less arrowhead sticking out Mel’s back. “I can’t exactly pull this thing out.”
“I mean, I think we’d push it…because -“
“Dennis, shut up.”
Robby scoffs. “Lamgdon, you are not pulling anything out. She listed you as her emergency contact which means you can’t treat her so - shoo.”
Langdon’s mouth drops open a little. “What? That’s not a thing.”
He’s got his arms crossed against his chest. Langdon hates that when he does that. It usually means he’s about to give some bullshit answer. “It is for her.”
Yep. Bullshit.
Mel’s nose wrinkles as she looks between him and Robby. Her eyes eventually land on him. “I think he’s saying that because I’m an orphan with no other family besides my sister.”
Hah. Finally, Robby has the decency to look flustered.
Practically, Langdon knows it’s the drugs making her speak her mind with reckless abandon. He doesn’t hate it. In fact, he’d like to encourage it. But she wouldn’t want that. So Langdon, dilaudid and benzos free, figured he'd be in charge of spouting out his usual jokes to keep her mood from tanking.
“That’s not true.” He’s got gloves on, so it’s not an easy task to try and rub a spot of her own blood off her chin, but he tries. “Queen King has an entire kingdom behind her. Including Knight Santos. But. Might need to get a new knight,” Langdon teases. He goes from trying to scrub the blood off her face to petting back the blood-matted hair off her forehead. “Don’t think she did a good job protecting you if you got shot.”
“That’s not fair,” Santos whines. At this point, she slid down the length of the wall into a heap of drunkness.
“Trin, you think you might want to get off the floor or….”
“Dennis, please.”
“It’s not,” Mel agrees. “She doesn’t have real chainmail. Her outfit is not historically accurate. She could have really gotten hurt if she tried to take that shot.”
Langdon swallows the retort of better her than you. Instead, his eyes trail down her chest. There’s a number of thoughts that cross his mind - most of them not exactly work appropriate - but one of medical value pops up when he considers how much smaller Mel’s frame looks in her dress. “How are you breathing in this thing?” He mumbles.
“It’s keeping all my inside blood from becoming outside blood,” Mel replies, which is. Uh. Definitely a sentence. That he never imagined her ever saying. She tries to take a deep breath, but she winces. A small look of panic flickers across her face when she realizes.
But Langdon is still latching on to what she’s trying to say. “You think this corset is keeping her from bleeding out?” He asks Robby.
“Maybe to some degree,” he admits. “Probably putting some pressure around the wound, but,” his face screws up. “We need to cut it off if we’re gonna finish assessing the damage.”
“Imaging first might be best. Mel?” Langdon takes his hand and pushes gently along her corset on the left side. “Is there metal in this thing? The boning?”
“Yes,” she answers. “Has to be. Can’t get whale bone anymore.”
Robby mimes the cutting of scissors with his fingers.
Mel blinks, sluggish, a little more pale than he thinks she might have been when they wheeled her in. The room has started to echo with the beeps of her heart monitor, which keeps reminding them she’s tachycardic. “The arrow likely went between the ninth and tenth rib, possibly nicking the bone while also puncturing my liver. It’s not fatal. Not with modern medicine. Did you know -”
Damn. He almost thought they had her back for a second. “Oh boy -”
“ - that some indigenous tribes used to coat their arrows in excrement? That way if the puncture wounds didn’t kill their enemies, the infection definitely did.” Her voice drops, like she’s got a secret. “They didn’t have dilaudibotics.”
“Antibiotics.”
“That’s….what I said.” Mel assures. “There’s also poison tipped arrows that use snake venom.”
Langdon can’t help it, he cracks a smile, even amidst all the chaos of the people moving around them. “Wouldn’t that make them venom tipped arrows?”
Mel’s eyes go wide at the revelation. “Right. Poison would have to be…hemlock. And dart frogs. I guess.”
“Well, the dart frogs are used for darts.”
“What, no ." A pause. "Wait….”
“Enough,” Robby snaps. Langdon gets pointedly pushed out of the way. He’s got scissors in his hands. “Mel. I’m sorry, but we really need to get you out of that costume.”
“That’s fine,” she mumbles. “This isn’t historically accurate, either. Trinity says you have to make period costumes sexy now. Hence this corset.” She tries to turn, to inspect the arrowhead to no avail. “Shouldn’t you break it off, first?”
“No!” The whole room erupts at the same time. It startles her enough that she starts to move, which makes her wince and make her heart monitor flicker into more alarming stats.
“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” Langdon says, effectively snatching the scissors out of Robby’s hands. Normally, he’d be all for walking Mel through how they’re going to touch and treat her but she’s sort of actively bleeding out and on so many painkillers she probably thinks she’s actually the queen being treated by the royal surgeons. “I’m gonna cut this off of you, we’re gonna take a closer look at the wound, and then we’ll decide if we need Whitaker’s farm hand strength to break off this arrow to effectively treat you. Capiche?
“Quiche.”
Close enough.
Mel watches with rapt attention as he tugs the corset away from her left breast, all while he’s quietly lamenting the fact that there isn’t some kind of slip underneath. He sticks two gloved fingers underneath the fabric to keep the corset off her skin so he can wedge the scissors in and start to cut. Cassie and Robby work on keeping the fabric as still as possible around where she’s punctured until Langdon can wiggle her left arm out of the dress, then the right, until there’s too many hands pressed below her naked breast.
Conventiently, that’s when Garcia decides to show up. “What the hell are you guys doing?”
“Saving Queen King,” Whittaker answers, flushing red when Garcia ticks an angry brow his way in response. “We didn’t pull the arrow out?”
“Small mercies,” she grumbles, taking long strides over to the gurney to take the first look of the damage they couldn’t see hidden behind all the fabric. “Goddamn, they weren’t kidding. You really got arrowed by a professional knight?”
“Yes,” Santos grumbles, while Mel nods in agreement. “I overheard him say he works at Medieval Times. If you guys ever go there, you cannot cheer for the Green Knight.”
“Noted,” Garcia mumbles, taking one last look at the wound, as well as the arrow. “Well, Queen King, it looks like this arrow is staying in you until we get you scanned and into surgery. You guys get her blood match?”
“Yep,” Cassie confirms. “B positive.” Which isn’t that ironic.
But Mel’s too out of it to understand the medical irony of it all. Her sunny disposition and positive attitude are a little MIA right now, and for good reason. “I’ve never had surgery,” Mel tells them, and her heart rate starts to go up - which doesn’t bode well with the low blood pressure.
She’s anxious. She won’t say as much, but she is, and that’s not good for her or them. “We can’t give her more meds if we can’t get her pressure up,” Langdon mumbles.
Whittaker, as well as Mateo have their hands pressed against the front and back of Mel’s wound. “I think that corset was doing more to pack the wound than we thought!”
Mel’s still sitting up, a miracle, on account of the entire arrow sticking through her back. But that doesn’t seem like it will last much longer judging by her sway and the pallor of her lips. “Side, side,” Robby chants. “Get her on her side, now.”
Langdon rounds the gurney as they do just that, trying to find her gaze, which is getting more distant by the second. He’s trying to ignore the tongue-lashing going on behind him about the decision to cut her out of her dress. “Mel. Look at me.”
Glassy eyes find him. “You need to pull it out.”
“We will -” He promises, resting a hand against her right cheek. There’s a headband on her head - makeshift French Hood - with a flimsy gossamer veil that he finally takes off. “But we need to try to get a scan before we go up to surgery -”
“No time,” Garcia curses. “My eyes will have to do.”
Mel’s hands try to find the arrow, shaking like crazy, so Langdon does the only thing he can think of as Mateo starts slathering her up in betadine and Mateo calls up to the OR to make sure they can bring her right up.
He holds her hand.
“Can’t pull it out, Mel.” Langdon says when she shoots him a betrayed look.
“Then you pull it out. Or push. Push it through.”
That sounds horrifying. “Nope. Don’t know what we’re dealing with. Can’t risk it.”
“You can risk it. You’re amazing, the best doctor I know and just - I just -” Her teeth are chattering. She looks cold and hot all at the same time. “It hurts.”
And isn’t that just an arrow to his own heart.
“Hey,” he whispers, crouching down in a way that has his back screaming, but something he deems completely necessary. He inches his face so close to hers, their noses nearly brush. “I know it hurts, honey. But it's gonna be okay.”
She takes a broken breath. A tear rolls down her cheek. “I think I’m gonna pass out.”
“Yeah. You’re gonna pass out,” he says as calmly as he can. “But that’s okay. You’ll pass out, then you’ll wake up. Arrow free. And I’ll be here when you do, okay?”
She moves slightly, and now their noses really do touch. “You promise?” she croaks.
“Yeah,” he says, voice pitched all high and kind, like there isn’t absolute chaos going on around them. There’s the click of the gurney legs being unlocked, so Langdon knows he’s out of time. “Anything for you.”
“Good,” Mel says, jaw shaking with the chatter of her teeth, chapped lips still curling into a pretty smile.
In the end, the surgery is pretty uneventful which is good for Mel and bad for Garcia’s adrenaline junkie tendencies. Langdon gets a call that she’s already in recovery before he’s back from his apartment to get her some of his clothes for her to change in due to the fact that he had to cut her out of hers.
“Take your time,” Garcia tells him. “We woke her up per protocol, but it didn’t last long. I’d give it at least another two hours before she’s able to hold her eyes open for more than two minutes.”
He’s looking at every single t-shirt he owns sprawled out on his duvet. He ends up picking the worn Penguin’s shirt he has, so worn that you can’t even see the hockey stick on it anymore. It goes in the bag with a pair of his sweats and his softest socks. “How long can you keep her in recovery?”
She sighs. “Why.”
“I promised her I’d be there when she woke up.” He scrambles to grab other things - spare toothbrush and toothpaste, a comb, his phone charger. He hurriedly strips out of his scrubs and changes into jeans and a t-shirt when he realizes he needs new clothes, too. “Which I intended to keep but someone said the surgery would take much longer and if she’s in recovery then at least I have that to save my ass - “
“Okay, okay, shut up.” Garcia cuts him off. “I’ll keep her until you get here. Half an hour.”
He slides on socks across his hardwood floors before he stuffs his feet in the sneakers he left by the door. “Forty-five minutes.”
“Langdon.”
“I have to buy her flowers -” The phone goes dead. “...Hello?”
Whatever. He’ll get there in time.
He doesn’t get there in time.
She’s in a private room upstairs, one of the nicer ones in the labor and delivery wing as a staff perk. It means an extra bout of security and having to wait for one of the nurses who knows who is to let him in because he isn’t in his scrubs, and he forgot his badge, and no one remembers the doctor that almost got fired for being a drug addict -
But that half-hearted personal fight completely deflates out of him when he sees her, partially sitting up in bed, shooting him a lazy, drug-induced smile.
“You’re here,” she croaks out, completely pleased and seemingly not aware that he’s broken his promise of not being there when she wakes up. Her eyes are focused on the bouquet of flowers in his hands. “Are those for me?”
“Of course,” he tells her, setting down the overstuffed duffle bag in the corner before he makes home of the vacant seat at her bedside. It’s a huge bouquet, one that he had two college students in a Trader Joe’s help him make by hand and wrap up in brown paper with a tweed ribbon. “Got you your favorite - orange roses.”
He doesn’t know why he knows that, he just does. Just like he knows how her boba order differs depending on which shop it’s from and how she always buys the books from the special exhibits at the art museums even though she never reads them. Langdon watches with an atypical tension as she inspects the flowers, hands running over the bundles of lavender and baby’s breath those girls assured him were necessary.
“I got a spiel on the color wheel and complimentary colors - I hope I wasn’t led astray.”
“Not complementary. There’s no blue. It’s triadic,” Mel corrects, though the words are heavy on her tongue. “Purple, orange, and green.”
“Are you counting the stems as the green?”
“Yes.”
“You can’t count the stems as the green.”
“These are my flowers. I can count whatever I want.” Langdon relaxes at that, the tension bleeding out of his shoulders when Mel sticks her whole face into the bouquet and breathes it in. “Thank you. I love them.”
“I can find a vase for you.”
“No.” Mel arranges the bouquet in her arms, holding it like a baby. “These are fine right here.”
He’s pretty sure he’s only got a few minutes before she nods off again, so he lets her hold them captive until he can wiggle them out of her grasp when she’s asleep. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you woke up.”
“I’m definitely not awake,” Mel counters, eyes closed for a moment. “At least it doesn’t feel like it.”
“What does it feel like?”
“Like I’m made of Jello.” She looks at her IV bag for answers. Which even if they were there, he doubts she could read. She doesn’t have her glasses. “Am I still on dilaudid?”
Langdon doesn’t need to check her chart to know the answer. Part of the arsenal of Mel Fun Facts he’s just starting to realize he has under his belt. “Probably, considering that you’re allergic to morphine.”
“I don’t like being Jello,” Mel groans.
“I can ask Garcia if she can try to switch you over to something that isn’t so strong tomorrow.” When she wrinkles her nose, a ghost of a whine getting caught in her throat, he feels the need to reiterate the obvious. “You were just shot with an arrow, honey. Maybe you need to feel like Jello for a bit.” He leans forward, thumb brushing against her furrowed brow in hopes that she’ll relax - she does. “We don’t want to see you in pain.”
Mel cracks an eye open, looks at him warily. “We?”
“Yeah, we. I know the lot of us in the ED aren’t going to win awards for being World’s Best Coworkers anytime soon, but we care about you. You just might be the best of us. Our strongest soldier.” His own nose wrinkles, smile frail as he’s on the edge of a half-hearted joke. “Or maybe knight?”
“Queen,” Mel corrects, eye sliding closed again. She licks her dry lips. Langdon has a runaway ADHD thought, wondering if he packed lip balm for her. “I’m King Queen.”
“Queen King.”
“That’s what I said.”
He pulls his thumb back, but not before gently pressing against the button of her nose. It has her opening her eyes again, gaze crossed as she belatedly tries to find the finger tickling her face. “They give you the post-surgery update?”
“Yes. Twice, I think.” Mel shifts a little in her bed, wincing immediately and giving up on trying to make any real progress to lean on her side to try to face him better. “I don’t remember any of it. Did they tell you?”
“They did,” Langdon says. “They were able to surgically remove the arrow. They took a little piece of your liver, but nothing you’ll miss. Small fracture to your ninth rib, but no concern for further puncture wounds. They’ve got you on a shit ton of antibiotics in case that idiot caked his arrows in stingray venom.”
“Not a thing,” Mel tells him, which he knew. He just wanted to get her to maybe sorta smile.
“Stingrays? No, those are definitely a thing.”
She makes some sort of pained noise, one that contorts her face into a less-than-ideal expression, and a complete counter to the smile she’s fighting. “Don’t make jokes. Hurts.”
“Sorry, honey,” he apologizes, but even to his ears it doesn’t sound like he means it.
“You keep calling me that,” she mutters, turning her head so one cheek is resting flat against the scratchy hospital pillow. “Is it because I got shot?”
Langdon chooses his words carefully. “Maybe a little. But it doesn’t have to be a Sick Mel Exclusive. I can start working it into more of the daily vernacular if you want.” When she regards him, the most confused she’s been since he walked into her room, he trudges on. “Use it when you help me walk the dog, or when we go get pizza at that place across the street. But if you want a more professional flourish, I can promise only to utilize it when you’re in Trauma One in the middle of a STEMI or thoracotomy.”
“Oh my god,” Mel mutters. “Please don’t call me Doctor Honey.”
He barks out a startled laugh.
“You said professional flourish,” she defends sleepily when he keeps laughing. “What other professional flourish is there?”
“Hmm. Professor Honey?”
Mel’s frown shouldn’t be so adorable. “That sounds like a Clue character.”
Langdon can roll with that. “Professor Honey with the Bow and Arrow at the Renaissance Faire.” She laughs at that one, not even bothering him to scold him a second time for the jokes. “Which you won’t be going alone to anymore, by the way.”
“I wasn’t alone. Trinity was with me.”
“Santos doesn’t count.”
Mel reaches over the absurdly large bouquet in her arms to try and slap him in the arm. She misses, probably due to a combination of the drugs, her IV, and her lack of glasses. Tradic, his brain thinks. “She does count. She didn’t have to come with me, but she did. And she even dressed up like I asked her to. Becca won’t even do that. It was a lot of fun.”
“Up until you got shot.”
“Yeah, that sucked.” She blinks. “But it wasn’t so bad. I wish you could have seen the bow. It was museum worthy." He doesn’t want to see the bow. If he sees the bow, he’s breaking the bow. But he leaves that alone for now. “It’s like I’m a wounded time traveler.”
“An episode of Doctor Who.”
This time, she successfully slaps his arm. “Exactly! And Trinity is probably the reason I’m not a mortally wounded time traveler, so be nice.”
“Okay, fine, Santos counts. As much as it pains me to say this, I’m glad she’s your friend.” Langdon relents. “But I would feel a lot better if at least this next time, you went with me.”
Mel turns sharply in her bed at that statement, brow ticking up in surprise. “You’d go to the renaissance faire with me?”
“Yes.”
“Even if it means you have to go in a costume?”
“Yes.” He grins. “That sounds like the whole point, right?” She nods, slow and deep, like she’s intentionally trying to see if she can get her chin to touch her chest. It reminds him of a dippy bird. “But you’ll have to help me think of something I can go as. That’s, you know, not a knight.”
Mel blinks a few times, her excitement gone as quickly as it came, the glassy look in her eye making Langdon believe she’s already forgotten half of their conversation. “Pirate.”
He doesn’t hate that suggestion. “Yeah?”
She does her dippy bird nod again. “Yeah. But not like Jack Sparrow. Like…Langdon. You. Just you.” Another blink. “But as a pirate.”
“I am a big Pirates fan,” Langdon agrees.
“No, Penguins fan. You’re a Penguins fan.”
“I’m both.”
“....The penguins are pirates?”
Langdon huffs out a laugh. “Tell you what - I’ll go as a pirate, if you promise to also go as a pirate. You can be the pirate queen.”
“Captain. That would make me captain.” Mel sneezes when a rose petal tickles her nostril. “Captain King.”
“There you go.”
“Well…what does that make you?”
“Whatever you want me to be.”
Mel doesn’t even hesitate. “First mate, honey.”
He’s gonna break his teeth if he keeps smiling like this. “Sounds like a plan.”
She squirms a little more in her bed, and this time, when Langdon goes to extricate the bouquet from her grip, she lets him, deflating further into the covers. With all her half-hearted tossing and turning, the oversized gown she’s wearing seems to be slipping off one shoulder and he hikes it back up her shoulder by the string. It reminds him he brought her a change of clothes. “You want a t-shirt and some sweats?”
“Yes,” she blurts out, sounding the most sober she has this whole time. “I’d settle for taking this thing off entirely. It’s not like it matters anymore. All of you saw me naked.”
Nevermind. She’s definitely not sober.
His back twinges as he crouches on the floor to go through the duffle. “I don’t know if I’d count treating you for a medical emergency as seeing you naked.”
She’s quiet for a long beat. “Langdon. Can I ask you a question?”
He's so afraid of what drug-induced inside thought is about to come out of her mouth. They might have already hit the iceberg and he’s doomed to go down with the ship, but he’s still gonna try to steer them in another direction. “Maybe later. Can I help you change first?”
“Oh, yes,” she agrees plainly. “Then you can double check if they’re even.”
He sits on the edge of the bed, slowly helping her sit up just until he can grab the ties in the back and start to pull her gown down. “Double check what? Your stitches?”
“No, my breasts.”
Langdon very pointedly pulls her gown up high. As high as it’ll go. Elizabethan collar. “I’m getting Garcia.”
Mel pouts. “Why?”
He thinks about lying. He shouldn’t. It’s not fair to her. But also, she’s drugged and he’ll die if he doesn’t redirect. So he does just that. “I think she’s got updates. About the bet.”
Doesn’t work like he hopes it would. “About my breasts?”
Why is this his life right now? “About the dude currently in south seven. Rumor has it that Shen’s treating a peacock bite to the ass as we speak. That’s straight off the chalkboard.”
Mel’s eyes go wide. “Really? What kind of peacock?”
“...There’s more than one kind?”
“Yeah. Two. Male and female.”
“Right,” he laughs. “I guess I’ll have to check.”
“You do that,” Mel yawns, moving around in the cot a little more. Her arms reach for the flowers to cuddle against her cheek. Langdon really needs to get down to the gift shop and buy her a stuffed bear. Or penguin. Or…peacock. “Let me know if he wins, Doctor Honey.”
Langdon gives up on the flower battle, leaning over to wrap her up in the thin hospital blanket as best he can. “Will do, your majesty.”
And later, as he’s curled up in the chair beside her bed, scrolling through his phone looking for a way to put the Pittsburgh Pirates logo on a pirates hat, his phone actually does ping with an update in the group chat on the White Whale Summer Bets. Only it has nothing to do with a peacock.
Abbot, 09:54PM
Okay, who had the bet on the hunter impaled by some deer antlers?
Abbot, 09:55PM,
S17. Six point buck.
Shen, 09:56PM
Thank god. My money is still safe.
Abbot, 10:02PM
Wait.
Shen, 10:03PM
Don't you dare say what you're about to say.
Abbot, 10:03PM
Eight point buck.
Abbot, 10:04PM
I was told that mattered.
Ellis, 10:06PM
You got to be shitting me.