Chapter Text
Sometimes she'll meet a kid and wonder.
It’s usually something small that catches her; a familiar shape to their eyes, the exact tilt of their smile, a little mannerism that makes something snag for a second before she brushes it off.
Though, it doesn't even cross her mind when she meets Penny Langdon. She just sees a little girl with blonde pigtails and pink glasses standing beside her father, and all Mel thinks is that she's cute.
It doesn't even cross her mind the second time, when her brother is there and Mel notices they look nothing alike.
Why would it? Genetics are weird. Interesting, but weird. Her and Becca are proof of that.
So she doesn't think twice about Penny and her brother looking nothing alike.
She certainly doesn't think about herself.
She just smiles at Penny when the little girl recognizes her, pink glasses slipping down her nose as she looks up.
“Hi, Dr. Mel.”
“Hi, Penny.”
“I got a new Spider-man toy at the store yesterday!”
Mel's smile widens. “Oh, did you?”
Abby gives Mel a tight-lipped expression. “Come on, Pen, let's not bug the busy doctors.”
Penny looks back at Mel. “But I was just telling her—”
“I know, honey.” Abby gives her hand a gentle tug, and Penny finally lets herself be pulled along, turning around to give Mel one last wave.
“Bye, Dr. Mel!”
“Bye, Penny.”
Mel watches them disappear around the corner before turning back to her chart.
The first tiny flicker only comes a year later.
By then, Frank and Mel are dating, which means Penny isn't just a coworker's kid anymore. She's become a familiar little presence in Mel's life.
It starts with a patient.
A little boy comes into the ER, and when Mel starts asking about allergies and family history, his mother can only shake her head.
“He's adopted,” she explains. “We don't know much about his biological family.”
Mel makes a note of that in the chart and carries on normally.
That night, she mentions it to Frank as they're talking about their respective days at work.
“When Pen was born we got a full genetic screening done,” he says. “'Cause we used a surrogate— no, sorry, egg donor, for her.”
Mel looks over at him. “What?”
“Yeah. We had fertility issues after Tanner. Don't know why, doctor called it Unexplained Secondary Inftertility, but Abby really wanted two close together, so we did IVF, but her egg quality was too poor.”
Mel's jaw goes a little slack. “Y-you never told me that.”
Frank shrugs, reaching for the bowl of popcorn on the coffee table. “Not something I really think about often. Abby carried her, birthed her, all that, so I kinda forget.”
She doesn't know why the answer bothers her.
Actually, she does.
She just doesn't know what to do with it.
“What did the screening say?” she asks before she can stop herself.
Frank glances at her. “About what?”
“About Penny.”
He shrugs again. “I don't really remember.”
“You don't remember?”
“Not specifically.” He reaches into the bowl again, completely unbothered. “It was a lot of paperwork. And expensive, but Abby's parents paid for it. Everything was normal, obviously, or I would've remembered.”
She looks away. “Right.”
She tries to focus on the movie Frank picked, but something restless has started crawling beneath her skin, a sensation she can't quite settle, no matter how she shifts against the couch. She crosses one leg over the other, then uncrosses it, reaching for her drink only to set it back down without taking a sip.
Later, lying beside Frank in the dark, she stares at the ceiling.
She thinks about Penny.
She thinks about herself years ago, young and naive. Desperate to pay for med school.
She remembers the clinic, the paperwork, the uncomfortable little plastic chair she'd sat in while someone explained the process to her in clinical terms, as though reducing it to hormones and follicles and retrieval dates could make it feel less personal.
And at the time, it hadn't felt personal. She hadn't wanted to know who might eventually receive her eggs. She hadn't wanted names or photographs or updates. She'd wanted the money, and the clinic had wanted a healthy donor.
A simple transaction. Or so it seemed.
She squeezes her eyes shut.
It's ridiculous.
A coincidence if there ever was one. But just that.
Penny is not hers.
Penny is not hers. Penny is not hers. Penny is not hers.
She does a good job of convincing herself of that up until a few weeks later and they're out for lunch.
Penny's burger arrives, and Frank immediately reaches across the table. “Hang on.”
He lifts the top half of the bun, inspecting it carefully.
Mel watches him brush his thumb over the surface before checking the underside too.
“Daddy, what are you doing?” Penny asks.
“Making sure there's no sesame seeds.”
Mel's stomach twists, so immediate that she actually goes still, her hand pausing halfway to her chicken wrap.
“Wait,” she says. “She's allergic to sesame?”
Frank looks up at her. “Yeah. Not anaphylactic or anything, but she gets hives and her throat gets a little itchy, so we don't mess around with it.”
She feels dizzy, enough that the restaurant seems to tilt for a few nauseating seconds before settling back into place.
For a moment, she's eight years old again, sitting at the kitchen table while her mother checks the label twice before letting Mel eat her bagel. Her father reading ingredient lists in the grocery store, squinting at the tiny print, asking waiters the same questions every time they went out.
Does this have sesame?
Are you sure?
Could it have come into contact with it?
She'd hated it when she was little. The fussing. The way her parents always had to check everything before she could eat it.
She'd grown out of the allergy years ago, eventually, and the constant vigilance had faded into something she barely thought about anymore.
Until now.