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Frank knew Mel by now. Knew each of her little quirks— the way her lips parted and brows knit when she got focused. The way she gnawed at her lip when she was trying to make a decision. Her awkward smile when he complimented her, and she clearly wanted to give a rebuttal, but knew he’d only double down.
Point was, he knew her by now, and the twitching was… new.
Nothing too bad. Not anything all that overt, even, but— Well, Frank kept an eye on her. Mel was delicate, like a day lily, and he couldn’t help but worry about her. Couldn’t help but hover over her shoulder.
Mel would stare into the middle distance for a bit, Frank had noticed, picking at her fingers like she did when she was on edge or nervous, and then she would squeeze her eyes shut and twitch her head to the side minutely. His inner medical textbook started prattling differentials every single time he saw it, and he had consistently ignored it.
But now was the third shift they’d had together where she’d been doing it.
After successfully sending up a STEMI to be ballooned in what he was pretty sure was record timing for the Pitt, he ducked out of Trauma 2 and found Mel in Central 8. Last time he checked in with her— probably 30, 45 minutes ago— she had been doing good. She was her usual smiley, sunshine-y self.
Not so much this time around. Central 8 was empty right now, so she was just… sitting in the dark, brows pinched in worry, nail beds red with how she’d been picking at them.
Frank knocked, then pulled the door open.
“Hey, girl, hey,” he said, a bit gentler than he intended it to be. He just wanted to lighten the mood. She lifted her head when he spoke, then— in the span of only a couple seconds— squeezed her eyes shut, jerked her head right about two inches, and relaxed again. “What’s up, what’s goin’ on?”
“Sorry, Dr. Langdon,” she said quickly, already pulling herself from the rolling stool. “I, uh— I was just, y’know. Thinking.”
“Something happen?” he asked, letting the door shut behind him as he finally stepped into the room proper.
“Uh, not really. Just— I slept in a little late, so I’m in my head about it,” she said with a shrug. “I had to rush through my morning routine to get Becca and her boyfriend to the care home this morning, and I was just trying to remember if I’d left the TV on.”
Frank raised an eyebrow, idly crossing his arms over his chest. “It’s not the end of the world if you did,” he reasoned.
She rolled her eyes and huffed a quiet laugh, a dimple tugging at her cheek as she gave him that same smile of hers. A little shy, a little awkward. Frank ignored the weird twisting feeling in his chest.
“So says you,” she said. “I, uh… I’ve got a very strict budgeting system. If the TV stays on too long, our electric bill will go up, and if that happens, I might have to dip into our vacation savings, and if I do that, I might have to give Becca an allowance on vacation, and I don’t want to do that, because she’s a grown woman—”
She kept going, and Frank tilted his head a bit, idly sticking his tongue against his inner cheek.
“You worry too much,” Frank said finally, after Mel had tapered into anxious mumbling, and she faltered. His eyes darted down to her fingers. “…You’re bleeding.”
“What?” she said, her gaze following his, but his hands were already reaching for hers. She’d worried through her nail beds, and blood had beaded at two of her fingers on her left hand and three on her right.
He made quick work of cleaning her up, of sterilizing the pin-prick wounds, and purposely ignoring her pleas— ‘It’s okay, Dr. Langdon,’ and ‘I can handle it myself,’ and ‘Don’t worry about me.’
“Shush,” he said gently as he bandaged one with a band-aid he’d admittedly snagged from his bathroom at home. Bluey themed. He smoothed one with a picture of Muffin over her left hand’s middle finger, then another to the index finger of the same hand, this one with Bingo. “I don’t mind taking care of you.”
He cursed himself internally for the Freudian slip and prayed Mel didn’t comment on it.
“…Where did you get these?” she asked after a moment, and Frank could’ve sighed in relief. He had to school himself. Get it together, man.
“Tanner’s really into Bluey right now,” he said with a shrug. “I started carrying a few around with me whenever I leave the house, he’s pretty clumsy. Pediatrician thinks he might be dyspraxic.”
Mel blinked a few times, clearly not expecting that. “Oh, I’m… sorry to hear that,” she said, tone pitching up as if it were a question, but he knew she didn’t mean it to be one. “I, um, not that dyspraxia is, like, the end of the world. But diagnoses can be, uh, they can be rough. On families. Parents. Y’know…”
“I know, Mel,” he assured her gently as he finished patching her up. “You’re alright.”
When she didn’t immediately respond, he glanced back up to her just in time to see her squeeze her eyes shut and twitch her head again. Frank softened all over again.
“Uh, what’s up with that, by the way?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Hm?” Mel hummed, looking back up.
“The— the thing where you, like, close your eyes and do this,” he explained, then repeated the movement, jerking his head to the side. “Not judging, of course. I’m just curious.”
The lie slid easily over his teeth.
“Oh,” Mel said, sounding embarrassed. “Just, uh— I get these uncontrollable trains of thought sometimes. Like, fully off the tracks, out of control. I have to do that to get rid of them.”
“Like an Etch-A-Sketch?” he asked as he finally straightened and headed for the door of Central 8. Mel was, as he anticipated, hot on his tail.
“I… guess, yeah,” she said with a shrug. “I dunno, I’ve done it as long as I can remember.”
Frank hummed, using the sanitizer dispenser on the wall as he passed it. “That happen often?” The internal medical textbook in him was already pulling itself open, the pages ready to flip themselves.
The silence was very telling.
“Define ‘often,’” Mel landed on finally. As soon as they passed the nurse station, Perlah leaned forward across it.
“Dr. Langdon, we got a bird landing in a couple minutes, widespread burns,” she said, and Langdon’s brows shot upward. He couldn’t help but smile.
“Ah, never a dull day in this place,” he said, then nudged Mel gently. “You with me on this one, Mel?”
Mel made a surprised noise, then nodded. “Uh, yeah, sure. Yes! Yes, Dr. Langdon.” She glanced up, then returned his smile.
He gave Perlah finger guns before he spun on his heel and circled back toward the elevator.
As they waited, he rolled his shoulders.
“As I was saying,” he said, “I’d say ‘often’ is more than once a day.”
“What?” Mel started, then made a face. “Oh. Then, uh, that thing I told you about… yeah. Multiple times a day, actually. Not that I keep track or anything, but— Yeah.”
He nodded with an contemplative noise. The elevator doors dinged open. “If Caleb comes down during this shift, you should talk to him about that,” he said, pulling his trauma gown on.
“…It’s not that serious,” she said, waving dismissively. “I’m just a— a nervous person, I guess.”
Frank sighed. “…Right,” he said. If she didn’t want to seek help, Frank couldn’t make her. As much as he wanted to shake her and scold her until she started caring about herself as much as he did.
Once again, he ignored the twisting in his chest.
Mel groaned as she sat in the break room. Her feet were killing her— though, she guessed that was partially her own fault. She’d been in her own head again that morning— she woke up before her alarm and had spent about an hour and a half pacing.
She had taken Dr. Langdon’s advice— why wouldn’t she?— and had pretty much immediately been referred to another psychiatrist. She’d been in that office for only about fifteen minutes before that psychiatrist had informed her that there was absolutely no doubt in his mind that she had moderate OCD.
“There’s my girl,” a voice came from behind her. She glanced back over her shoulder to see Dr. Langdon, and she smiled.
“Hi, Dr. Langdon,” she said tiredly. She only had 45 minutes left in this shift, and then she could go home, pick up Becca and Adam, and they could go home. “Uh, you will be pleased to know you were right, by the way.”
Langdon raised an eyebrow as he sat down beside her on the couch. “…About what?” he asked.
She stretched upward, and sighed when her back popped. Once she’d straightened, her fingers came up to futz with the end of her braid. “Uh, that thing from last week.”
“What, the unhoused guy? Howard? No, he’s just got an on-again off-again relationship with this place,” Langdon said with a shrug. “He’s been coming here for ages, I probably know his body better than he does at this point.”
Mel opened her mouth to respond, then hesitated as she remembered that. The patient in question had come in with some symptoms that had honestly left her stumped, but Langdon had taken one look and wrote a script for some strong antihistamines along with a list of daily multivitamins to pick up.
“Oh, no, I meant— That was great work, of course, but, um— I meant about my obsessive thinking,” she managed. She twirled her braid around her finger idly. “I, uh, it was pathological. I had a good talk with a psychiatrist about it, actually.”
Langdon raised both his eyebrows this time, then made a sort of… face. That ‘Yeah, I figured’ sort of look, a nose scrunch, a tug down at his lips. Mel had seen that look a lot. (Mostly when she explained that she was autistic.)
For a horrifying moment, she worried she’d overstepped. Why would Frank Langdon care about her mental health? He’d probably only brought it up because he thought her spiraling was annoying, or something.
“I’m glad I could help, Mel,” he answered instead, and Mel was snapped from her thought. His expression was… well, he looked at her like he always did. That familiar intimacy was both comforting and nervewracking.
The silence fell over them. It must’ve only been a second, but it was more than enough time for Mel to lose her thoughts again.
“Uh—”
“Cool off, Mel, I’m being for real,” he said, as if he could read her thoughts. He reached over and squeezed affectionately at her shoulder. All at once, Mel’s mind quieted, as if he had found her brain’s volume down button. “I… don’t like seeing you spiral. I’m glad you’re talking to somebody. Anyway, I guess I should get back out there, huh? I’ve got some charting to do, and night shift will crucify me if I don’t get all my ducks in a row.”
He stood, squeezed her shoulder again, and left her alone with her thoughts.
For once, her mind stayed blissfully quiet. She was too consumed with the ghost of his touch to worry about the silly things she usually did.