Chapter Text
“Dr. Langdon, can I talk to you for a moment in my office please?” Gloria’s words were only directed towards him but he can feel every eye turn to look at him.
His eyes drift towards his parents- Dr. Robby and Dr. Abbot, before he can even think better of it. They were clearly doing handoffs, it had been a long day and for the first time in a long time, Frank actually let out a sigh of relief when he saw his papa- Dr. Abbot. His Dad- Dr. Robby had clearly agreed with his relief as he immediately went over and dragged Dr. Abbot away to talk privately and likely rely on the comfort they each provided. When they came back they were both smiling but as soon as Gloria spoke Dr. Robby had snapped his head to stare at Frank for the first time since that awful night.
He watched as he straightened up and started heading over towards them. Out of the corner of his eye he saw as his papa stiffened and looked like he was ready to intervene if things got ugly, which if he knew the truth he would know they were about to get worse.
He sees Trinity stiffen as she comes out of Trauma room two and sees that he is standing with Gloria. Trinity is his sister. She has been his sister since Robby and Jack adopted him when he was four. They had already had Trinity, apparently she was left in the Pitt waiting room and they got attached. No matter how many times she says she hates him and never wants to speak to him again, he knows she doesn’t really want him in trouble. It’s the reason she didn’t report him to the medical board when he got caught nearly three years ago.
It’s the reason you spoke to her that way during Pittfest, other than the fact you were scared she would know you're an addict the second she saw you at work. You knew she wouldn’t report the way you spoke to her to dad and you were hoping that being the bad guy would get her to forget about the fact that you were struggling. You’re stupid.
Snap. Snap. Snap.
He snaps his recovery rubber band against his wrist. He isn't allowed to think like that, his therapist said so. Apparently it can cause spiraling who would have guessed.
He does need to talk to Dr. Robby about her though. He can tell she’s struggling again like she did when she was a teenager. He hopes it's not as bad as it was then, he remembers almost losing her and then learning about her gymnastics teacher. It's the most Frank has ever been more scared and angry in his whole life. But every time he tries to bring up her struggling to either of his parents they think he is trying to get back at her for Pittfest. He once tried to talk to her about it.
He showed up to her apartment after work when he knew she would be alone because he was scared that she was going to try something. She had screamed at him that this wasn't any of his business. Once she realized that he saw through that tactic she started saying things she knew would hurt him in an attempt to get him to leave. She told him that he wasn’t her brother anymore and that she never wanted to speak to him again. He had refused to leave until one of his parents came and dragged him out. Which led to a screaming match with his dad in her hallway. He remembers Robby dragging him to the Pitt and forcing him to take a drug test and then contacting HR for going to a coworkers house uninvited and refusing to leave. HR quickly dropped it though once they realized it was a family issue but they did tell him that it would go in his file.
His dad had been furious that nothing was done so he called his sponsor and his therapist and then signed him up for more sessions. But Frank had refused to let him drop his sister's mental health discussion. The whole night he just kept repeating that Santos needed help. He knew Robby was seeing it as an excuse to either try to ask his sister for drugs or money, he told him as much. But his papa was silent the whole time from when they arrived at the hospital until eventually Robby ordered him to go home and not come back until his next shift. He just hopes that his continued advocacy has tipped off Abbot to keeping a closer eye on her and hopefully getting her some help.
He was so lost in thought that he doesn’t even realize that Robby is in front of him before he starts speaking.
“What’s this about Gloria?” The words come out in a stressed sigh as he glares at Frank out of the corner of his eye.
Oh.
Oh.
He thinks I relapsed. God, Frank just wishes that he wasn’t a carbon copy of his dad. He wishes he couldn’t read his mind about certain things. He wishes he didn’t know how his dad saw him. He wishes his dad didn’t hate him. Snap! Calm down, breathe. You can't control if he hates you but you can control how you respond to it, his therapist would say.
“Actually, Dr. Robinovitch, Dr. Abbot can you two come as well? I trust that Dr. Shen and Dr. Mohan can hold down the fort for about twenty minutes.” Both Mohan and Shen freeze when they hear their names and quickly nod so the attention shifts anywhere but them. He sees Dr. Abbot’s brow furrows in confusion as he makes his way over to them to stand behind Robby like a guard dog. He’s always been protective over everyone. If he didn’t know that his papa can barely stand to look at him he would think that his papa is also protecting him by standing in front of him to a perceived threat. Though he would barely count Gloria of all people as a threat, maybe an emotional threat, Frank snorts to himself.
Once Gloria is satisfied with their little group they make their way to her office. The elevator ride up to the administration floors is practically silent. Dr. Abbot keeps shooting him these glances like he can’t quite get a read on him. Frank tries hard to keep his face blank like they taught him when he was an army medic, he’s going to need the practice after all. He looks at Dr. Robby’s back, which is stiff and he, unlike Abbot, hasn't looked at him since before they got in the elevator. The tension is so thick you could practically cut it with a knife. Gloria either is oblivious to the tension or she is trying to remain professional.
Once they reach Gloria’s office she motions for them to sit. Robby plops down on the first available seat with the grace that only a forty year old civilian could have. Frank takes the seat facing away from the windows and doors, and the spot that gives him the best advantage to defend himself. The military training making it impossible to ever be too careful. He would have saved the seat for his papa- Abbot, damn it, but he knows the other man is too traumatized to even sit. Instead he stands behind Frank that way he can also see all the advantage points. It's probably for the best that Frank doesn’t see his face, seeing his dads- Robby’s face is already going to hurt enough without having to face both of his parents.
“So, Dr. Langdon I hear you are leaving the Pitt and I was just wondering if there was anything I could do to either help or convince you to stay?”
He sees Robby's head snap up and turn to look at him. If he weren’t a veteran he wouldn’t have been able to hear Abbot's inhale or the way he shifts into a more attention pose instead of an at ease one. He lowers his eyes to the ground, unable to look at anyone, including Gloria. This was going to be emotionally taxing enough without having to worry about seeing his parents' disappointment.
“Yes ma’am, I am leaving and no, there isn’t much more I need.” He is trying to keep his voice flat, the last thing he needs is to sound choked up in Gloria’s office.
“May I ask why you’re leaving? Do you have a new job opportunity?” Her tone clearly shows she is less than happy losing a new emergency medicine fellow. They are already short handed as it is and usually Frank would hate to leave them but he just can’t live like this any longer. I don’t know if I want you working in my ER. Snap! Stop it, Langdon, Breathe.
“I have re-enlisted to the United States Army as a combat medic.” He didn't really know what he was expecting, really. Maybe a dramatic gasp or movement, but what he wasn’t expecting was silence. Silence, the thing Frank has been stuck with for the last three years. He doesn’t bother looking up, he doubts his parents care that he’s going to be leaving.
“Thank you for your service,” Gloria stumbles out clearly recovering from the shock that one of her doctors was in the army and is currently rejoining the army. It was probably more that she didn’t know he was in the army which shocked her. She wasn’t used to not knowing every specific thing about the people who worked under her. She took a deep breath to recollect herself before looking at him again.
“Do you know where you're going and for how long?” He knows she's asking because she’s already short staffed and wants to know if he will maybe come back once his tour is done. It hits him then that his family won’t know where he is if he doesn’t tell Gloria now. Maybe that would be a good thing that they didn’t know he was going into an active warzone with a better chance of coming home in a box than coming home breathing. But not telling them feels like abandoning his children and not taking accountability. So he squares his shoulders and looks at the painting behind Gloria.
“I can’t tell you specifics but I can tell you it's the front lines in Iran. They need more medics that can think on their feet and the years I worked here have made me one of the best candidates in a long time.” He tries to remain cold as he says it but he can hear some of the fear in his voice and he's sure the other men in the room caught it too. Unsurprisingly it's Robby who speaks up first.
“‘One of the best candidates,’ tell me Langdon, do they know about your addiction? Are they prepared to deal with that or are you prepared for the consequences of me telling them if you didn’t?” He should have expected that being the only one of Robby's concerns. No matter what he does it always comes back to the drugs. From the time when he went from being the easy child to not being their child. He doesn’t turn to look at Robby as he prepares himself for this next part.
“My commanding officer has been made aware of my situation. I have emailed you paperwork that will allow you to monitor all drug tests results and they will come in once every week.” The words still come out as monotone and the tension could be cut with a knife. Gloria must not be able to sit in tense silence for too long because she clears her throat and everyone's attention is back on her.
“May I ask what you are planning to do for your children? I know that their mother passed away a few years ago, do you have a place set up for them?”
Even the mere mention of his babies has him holding back tears. He hasn’t seen them in so long. He only gets supervised visitation once a month in a park for only an hour with a social worker. They get bigger and bigger every time he sees them. He misses more and more everyday.
Tanner had apparently gotten a certificate for being a good student and Penny has switched from wanting to be an ER doctor to an Orthopedic surgeon because somebody had left her with Park the Shark. His parents, one or the other because rarely do visitation days fall on a combined day off. Usually they bring the kids to the park and then sit in the car for an hour, never even speaking to him.
But once Trinity came, he's guessing both his parents had work that they couldn’t get out of. She hadn’t sat in the car but instead came and sat across from him at the picnic table. But she just glared at him the whole time she was there, never speaking a word to him. That hurt him more than anything. The rejection of him in front of the son he named after her was a punch to the gut.
But it's nothing like the pain of having the social worker time everything and then pull his kids away from him after exactly one hour. They didn’t even let him say goodbye the first time. He hadn’t seen them in a year and had been too busy soaking them up to even think about the time. He has nightmares of Tanner being pulled out of his arms while screaming that he wanted to stay. He sometimes even hears Penny crying as well if he’s having a bad nightmare.
He remembers Jack who had been the one to drop them off for the first time, probably because your dad didn’t want to see you, jumping out of the car and asking what was going on. He remembers one of the two social workers that were there that day explaining to his papa that the hour was up and giving his children to him. He also remembers the social worker reminding him that he didn’t want to see Frank so he had to get back in the car. For the first time in a year, his papa had looked at him. He looked to Frank like he wanted to say something but he was interrupted by the social worker again telling him to calm the kids down and to get back in the car.
Frank remembers the second social worker having to hold him back. He couldn’t really, Frank was a veteran, if he wanted to he could have fought both social workers and won. The only real competition would be his papa, not that he ever would even try to fight him. Not because he knows that even with a missing leg his papa would win but because he didn’t want to hurt anybody. He didn’t want to hurt his papa or his kids. He didn’t want to hurt Robby. So he let the social worker hold him as he heard his kids scream and his papa struggled to get them in the car. That was the first day that he seriously contemplated relapsing, he didn’t, but he thought about doing it just to make the pain and nightmares stop for even a little bit.
Frank had realized head been silent for too long so he turned his attention back to Gloria. He knew this wasn’t going to be new information to his parents but usually when he tells other people they get a little judgemental of him. Like why couldn’t he see his kids? Did he relapse and is just hiding it? It's funny, whenever he was doing horribly people thought the best of him, but once he starts getting help nobody can stand to be around him.
“I haven’t had custody or visitation that is unsupervised or for more than an hour since I admitted my addiction.” The words sound hollow and broken even to his own ears, he’s now sure that everyone in the room can tell he’s close to tears now.
This time there isn’t silence. Robby makes a pained sound and Abbot is doing a common army breathing exercise. Gloria lets out a scandalous gasp. If it were any other circumstance Frank would be laughing at how her gasps always sound so horrible, but he is barely keeping himself together to find anything even slightly humorous.
“That was nearly three years ago!” Her voice that once held such profound professionalism is gone. It is replaced by a tone that he has never really heard from her before, it takes him a second to realize that it’s disbelief. He almost wants to laugh, but he doesn’t think he’ll ever find anything funny again.
“They are with my parents. It’s probably the safest place for them to be honest. I’m still trying to pay off my rehab bills as well as child support so I’m living in a transitional house for recovering addicts. It's another reason that I’m rejoining. Since the United States Military is in desperate need of medics they have offered to pay my medical debt and take a portion of my paycheck out for child support.” He might as well get it all out there to get this conversation over with quicker. Gloria is one of the only people who knows that Frank was Robby and Abbot's son. He sees her turn to look at them after he says everything.
If he wasn’t already emotional he would have heard the low whine Dr. Abbot lets out. If he were also looking at them he would see the tears in his parents eyes that have been there since he started speaking. He would have known that Robby wasn’t trying to bring him down earlier but force him to stay. Even if it was in a jail cell for lying to government officials, at least he wouldn’t be in a foreign country getting shot at. But Frank wasn’t looking.
“How long?” This time it's Abbot who speaks up. His papa has been silent for the whole affair, processing all the information. His voice sounds choked but Frank can’t look at the man who checked him into rehab under the name of his biological parents instead of Abbot-Robinavitch. He doesn’t even bother asking how long for what instead he just tells him everything.
“Today was my last shift. I leave tomorrow and won't be back for a year, but I am planning on doing a couple of tours. The social worker will be contacting you soon. I have stopped fighting you for custody and will let you two decide the terms for visitations and if I’m allowed to call or send them letters while I’m away. If that is all, may I be dismissed, Gloria?” He stands up at the last part. Gloria’s eyes widen as she stands up as well. She holds out her hand to him. He shakes it.
“Thank you for everything Dr. Abbot-Robinavitch.” Frank stiffens automatically. Nobody's called him that in years. Oh, she thinks since they're the only ones in here she can call him that. If only she knew that they weren’t his parents anymore, they have made that abundantly clear.
“It's Langdon now, ma’am. But thank you, I hope everything goes well for the hospital and you.” Once she nods at him he is out the door in seconds. He thinks he hears one of his parents calling for him but he just can't look back. He can’t see the disappointment in their eyes.
He wants to go to war believing his parents love him. Sue him.