Archive of Our Own

—

When Frank starts back at the Pitt, he takes the night shift—pushes for it, actually. No one thinks it’s a good idea, or very workable, around his compulsory check-ins, random drug testing and NA sessions, but Frank figures he’s got nothing left to lose and asks for a two week block, and if there’s any way all the other assorted shit is flexible.

It’s forward of him to try and negotiate his return-to-work procedure, after being signed off as an addict and thief to boot—you could even consider it brave of him to ask for what he wants—but really, Frank’s being a coward, and try as he might, he can’t stop taking the easy way out. And so: the night shift.

He checked—the night shift is Robby-less, missing most of the crew that was on with him during The Shift From Hell, and yeah, okay, he’ll have to face them all at some point, but this feels like a good way to ease himself into it. Abbot and Shen prefer working the night shift, and he’ll deal with their slightly off-putting energy if it means he can avoid Robby’s eyes on the back of his neck for hours on end.

Maybe it’s because they’re always scrambling to fill the night schedule, or maybe it’s because the big man upstairs, who Frank was raised to believe in but hasn’t been sure is listening for a long time now, is finally throwing him a bone, but the hospital agrees to his request. Frank is pretty relieved about it. Working nights muscles out anything else you’ve got going on, which is good because for Frank, that amounts to roughly nothing. His therapist in the facility warned him that the first few weeks are going to be the hardest, so now Frank can get them over with, buried down with the early hours appendicitis cases and the bar fight fractures and all the ambiguous chest pains, and then he can emerge, blinking into the light of the day shift—healed. Or that’s the idea, anyway. Frank’s clinging to it.

He also has to attend a whopping three NA meetings a week, which would be a life-admin nightmare for anybody, but especially an ER doctor working twelve-hour shifts at night. With what copious free time, he thinks sourly, is he supposed to attend that many, and sleep and buy groceries and attempt to have a life, like he’s been encouraged to, on the side? But he manages to find an early evening session to attend, down the street from the hospital, held in the Methodist church’s community room—which he doesn’t love because churches make him feel weird these days—but at least it’s convenient. It means he can go before his shift starts, like some fucked-up morning prayer: I will not sabotage my life and career any more today, amen.

He’s been going to the meetings for a few weeks already, and the cast of characters is eclectic. They remind Frank of the type of people he sees in the ER, all walks of life, all with their idiosyncrasies, which makes sense because they’re regular people, except they’re sick—and so, he’s learnt, is he.

It took him a while to get there.

One month signed off, while shit, generally, went down (Frank spent most of this driving in loops around the city intersection, blocking calls from Abby); a couple of weeks while the hospital figured out what the fuck to do with him (this period felt like being lined up in preparation for the fucking firing squad); a month long stay at a rehab clinic in the suburbs (mandated, mostly miserable, but sometimes surprisingly not); another couple of months sick leave (just enough time for Abby to decide she wants a divorce, natch) and then another added on (in case moving into a new apartment and being officially separated from his wife sent him backsliding) and now here he is—mid April, and well into Spring. Ready to take the night shift; in time to completely miss the cherry blossom blooming along the North Shore. But he’s here.

Frank has a key tag he keeps in his wallet now. Most days, he wakes up, and it’s still really fucking hard. But he gets up.

The walk through the waiting room to the lockers is almost uncomfortably familiar. Time may move on, but Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center’s waiting room stands still. It could have been yesterday, mere hours ago, that he fled the ambulance bay after the confrontation with Robby, grabbed his shit from his locker, and spent the longest goddamn time driving around, swerving headlights in the dark, before standing, shivering in the breeze on Hertford Bridge, white knuckling the rails, staring down at the velvet blackness of the water. He thinks about that moment often enough that it feels recent, anyway. Being here makes it more immediate, and Frank tightens his grip on his backpack as he walks through, sidestepping the skirmish working up by the doors, between an obviously disgruntled patient and a nurse he feels guilty for having forgotten the name of.

He’s been assigned a new locker, but he uses the same code. He’s just closed the door, taking a deep, steadying breath, when he hears a slight, obviously fake cough from behind him.

It’s Mel King, who looks absolutely identical to the other times—count them, three—he’s seen her: honey-colored braid, no-nonsense thick-framed glasses, a slightly uncertain expression playing across her face, which Frank already knows hides the strength of her convictions.

You’re not a bad person, Dr Langdon. You just developed bad coping strategies. Those are fixable.

Jesus Christ, but he’s had five months to think about that line, and he still remembers the way Mel delivered it; turned to go, like she was imparting something she knew he wouldn’t want her to stick around and see him absorb. Totally, disarmingly earnest, which he already understood was simply how she was. Maybe that’s why it cut through, much more than his therapist did, those first few weeks. Everyone who worked at the clinic was being paid to feed him those lines, whereas Mel had taken the time out of her day, away from her sister, to come and visit him across the city and look him in the eye while she said it. It became more of a lifeline to him than she probably ever anticipated.

“Dr Langdon! You’re here!”

He finishes clipping his ID to his scrubs. He’s not in control of what his face is doing—maybe frowning, out of habit.

“Dr King,” he replies, more stiffly than he wants to.

Despite the fact that this is the hospital where she works, which would suggest her appearance in front of him isn’t some whacked-out accidental manifestation of his, Mel seems like a mirage—a totally unexpected apparition in scrub pants and a soft cotton t-shirt. He’s spent more time than makes sense thinking about her in the last few months—the way she looked in the doorway at the clinic, standing in a shaft of weak winter sunshine, filtering in through the barred windows. It’s an image he hasn’t been able to get out of his head.

But he’d checked the schedule, and no one from Back Then was written down when he signed up. She wasn’t supposed to be working nights, but she’s definitely getting ready to start, rather than packing up her things to go—the kind of unruffled you only see at hour zero.

“It’s good to see you,” Mel says, her slightly raspy voice too easy for Frank to believe. “We missed you.”

Frank swallows the sudden lump in his throat. “I—uh—yeah. Good to be back,” he says brusquely. “I—didn’t know you were working tonight, Dr King.”

“Oh, well.” Mel hooks her stethoscope around her neck and looks briefly awkward. “I wasn’t supposed to, but a few weeks back I swapped my night shifts. The facility my sister stays at couldn’t keep her overnight due to short staffing, so we had to juggle some things around. This is the payback.”

“Right,” Frank replies. He’s aware that sounded like he was disappointed to see her, which isn’t the case. Or maybe it is. “No—I just thought—for a second—that you might have—”

He cuts himself off. Mel looks at him strangely.

“Might have what?” she prompts.

Frank winces. “Might have swapped. Because of me.”

The slight furrow between Mel’s brows looks genuine. “Why would I do that?” she asks.

Frank is fed up with looking like the crazy one in every conversation he holds. “To keep an eye on me or something. It’s my—I mean, fuck, it’s my first shift back. I’m being monitored.”

Mel looks sympathetic, but she’s firm when she says, “I’m not a spy, Dr Langdon. That would be a gross invasion of your privacy.”

And Frank snorts at that because, honestly, what privacy? These days, his whole business is just out there, flapping in the wind for everyone to see. He trusts Mel to be telling the truth, though. Which is nice.

“Right. Of course.” Tacks on, “Sorry.”

She flashes him a small smile and closes her locker, heading out to where Abbot’s waiting to brief them for the handover. Frank watches the rope of her braid as she walks away, so perfectly aligned down her spine, nestled between her shoulder blades. In the clinic, the sunshine had made her look limned with gold.

—

Frank keeps his head down. It’s easier than he thought to get caught up in the work. The Night Shift has always had a different energy, and Frank thinks it’s the contrasts. The trauma cases roll in, a steady deluge, the first being a drunk driver with his girlfriend in the passenger seat, no seatbelt. He’s banged up, but most of his injuries are cosmetic. The girlfriend comes in unconscious, with multiple fractures and internal bleeding. They get her stabilised, but then the cops show up and arrest the guy, who starts hollering about it, still with enough movement to fight, and it’s—pandemonium. For a bit, anyway. After them, there’s a young woman who comes in with a broken rib and black eye, who flinches away from Frank’s touch. Frank doesn’t know the social worker on call, but he finds her anyway, and tells MaryAnne, the charge nurse on shift, to send female doctors only from now on, which she nods at, a look like flint in her eyes. The bar fight, he ends up handing over to Abbot. Two guys, both with head lacs, one with a stab wound in his thigh, narrowly missing the artery, but still deep enough to be a problem, both still yelling about bouncing each other’s skulls off the bar counter. Turns out Abbot knows the stab wound guy since he’s an ER regular, a vet like him. An alcoholic, probably. Abbot talks to him like he’s a soldier injured in the field, voice low and threaded with steel, and he shuts up after that. The cops want in on this one, too, but Abbot keeps them at bay, at least for a while.

But in between the adrenaline spikes, it’s like the blanket falls back down. Most of the patients in the beds are asleep, the steady beep of the machines their lullaby. There’s something hushed about the atmosphere that Frank wraps himself up in, while he does his charting in one of these quieter moments, like a protective layer of cotton wool. Nothing feels quite so real. There’s work, and people to save, and charts to enter. Stuff he is able and ready to do.

Abbot catches his eye while he’s at one of the stations and drifts over, during one of the lulls. Frank’s always respected him—hard as nails, not afraid to play around with spontaneity, typically more hands-off with his advice, unless he thinks it’s warranted. He’s more unpredictable than Robby, but maybe that’s because Frank doesn’t know him as well; was never his mentee.

“You doing okay, son?” he asks. Abbot looks him in the eye while he asks, expression neutral. The term of not-exactly-endearment is Abbot’s usual vernacular, Frank knows, but it still makes his chest pang.

“Yup,” he says. “Thanks for taking the bar fight case. Meant I could take care of the woman in 2 who mistook her finger for a vegetable. Got some surtruing practice back in.”

Abbot nods. “Ronny’s basically an old friend of mine,” he says. “One of these days, I swear we’ll get him out of here for good.”

His tone suggests he’s not holding out much hope, though, finishing with a half-smile. He walks away without digging any deeper into how Frank is coping, which he appreciates.

And on the whole, it is fine. Good, even. Using his brain is like waking up an atrophied muscle; painful at first, but then pleasurable. He’s slower on his recall than he’d like, reflexes dulled by detox and time. When Ellis beats him on a Pericarditis diagnosis for a patient rolled in with acute chest pains, he does not curse out loud, but there are plenty of expletives sounding in his head, lit up by the competition.

Around midnight, he takes a smoke break around the back of the ambulance bay—not the place he blew up at Robby, but further round, by the wall. Smoking is a new habit, but it gives him something to do with his hands. It’s almost peaceful. There are the flares of sirens in the distance, rushing to other emergencies, but for now, the bay is quiet. The smell of ash covers the sterile hospital smell, which had taken approximately less than an hour to sink back into every crevice of his clothes and skin. When he tips up his head to breathe out a column of smoke, the sky above is flat and inky, like a dome covering the world, narrowed down to the hospital, his hands, his patients waiting on their gurneys.

Frank stubs out the cigarette butt under his shoe and turns to go back in.

So it’s fine—an easier groove to fall back into than he perhaps expected—except that he notices there are a lot of people avoiding his eye contact. Maybe he’s being paranoid about it—it’s the night shift, but it’s still busy and maintaining eye contact over your crashing patient as you bark instructions at each other isn’t the priority—but when he touches base about cases with other doctors and nurses, it’s noticeable. It could be a ‘don’t poke the bear’ situation, or it could be that they just… don’t want to. He’s not an idiot—six months gone is enough time for the rumor about his addiction to have travelled around every hospital in Pennsylvania. Medical professionals are worse than high schoolers for gossip. He doesn’t know the staff on rotation as well, which was by design, but when a nurse he doesn’t recognize fills him in on an elderly patient’s initial eval—slurred speech, blown pupils, broken hip, tripped on his way to the kitchen for a glass of water in the night—without ever looking him in the eye, Frank has to bite down on his tongue very hard to stop himself from asking her what her fucking problem is.

Only Abbot is the exception. And, of course, Mel.

MaryAnne put her on Chairs, so Frank’s not had much crossover with her. She’s mostly been dealing with the lower-level stuff—line cooks with kitchen burns and pediatric panic from sleep-deprived parents whose kid fell out of bed and ‘cried weird.’ Frank spots her moving around in his peripheral vision, her blonde head picking up the harsh fluorescent lighting, braid swinging. He looks over during a quieter moment and sees her with a toddler on her hip, who's got his first curled around the tuft of hair at the end of it. Mel’s laughing, and the mother is standing up and thanking her, still white as a sheet but smiling faintly.

Frank can’t help smiling, too.

It’s only much later, around 2 am, when the EMTs bring in two gurneys, that Mel rushes over, and the night warps and twists beyond Frank’s reach. The boy is sixteen and the sister is twelve, and they’re both covered in second and third-degree burns—a house fire, their parents late home from a dinner party, no babysitter. The girl’s unconscious, soot around her mouth and nose, but the boy’s still awake and coughing, black in his lungs. It’s the crack in his voice as he asks about his sister, who he rescued from her top bunk, that does it. Mel takes the girl, a wild look in her eyes that she quickly shuts down in front of Abbot, and he’s on the brother. He’s grateful for the responsibility, knows this is a case he can help with, and yet his hands shake for a millisecond when they have to intubate. After a carbon monoxide check and sterile burn strips and IVs to keep them stable, they transfer both siblings to the burn unit, having done as much as they can. The boy’s prognosis is better than his sister’s, but they’re both still uncertain.

Mel finds him in the break room afterward, on the floor with his back to the wall, knees up, and his head hanging between them. He hears the snick of the door closing, glancing up to watch as she turns off the lights before settling down next to him. The dimness helps, even if it makes her face shadowy. Another added blanket. She takes off her glasses, rubbing her eyes.

“You okay?” he asks.

Mel hums in the back of the throat, a raspy sound. “Siblings,” she says. It’s enough of an explanation.

Frank nods. “Reminded me of my kids, too. And my sister.”

Mel slots her glasses back onto her nose, a blurry movement in the dark. The light from outside makes a perfect crisp rectangle against the floor. Frank edges the toe of his sneaker away from crossing over into it.

“I didn’t know you had a sister,” she says, surprise in her voice.

“Yeah, I do.” It makes sense that she doesn’t know because they barely know each other, not really. Even if sometimes it doesn’t feel that way. “Her name’s Genevieve. She’s a PHD student at NYU. Much smarter than me.”

Mel makes a small noise of approval. “What is she working on?”

Frank blows out a breath. “Post-colonial lit of some kind, I think. We don’t talk as often as we should.”

“Well, she sounds great.”

“When she’s not being a pain in my ass, yeah, she is.”

There’s a beat of quiet. Frank takes the time to appreciate the inverse mirror image they make, both down on the floor, Mel with her legs out, and Frank with his around his shoulders. A mirror image of their last shift together, too, though this time they’re both struggling together. Not that Frank wasn’t struggling back then, because he was, but he wasn’t being open about it.

“It’s worse,” Mel whispers, “when you can’t call them, isn’t it?”

Frank nods. “Yeah. It is.”

They stay down there for another few minutes. It’s Mel who moves first, huffing out a sigh, brushing at her eyes, and hauling herself off the floor. Frank can’t help smiling in surprise at the hand she holds out for him.

“You should grab an icepack off MaryAnne,” she says, after he’s taken it and pushed himself to his feet, Mel’s hand more of a gesture than a tool, since he doesn’t allow himself to hang his weight off it. She drops it quickly, anyway. Her face is still shadowy, but she’s looking directly at him, the slash of her thick eyebrows furrowed down. “If you’re hurting.”

Frank winces. Being backed up against the hard, straight wall had provided some short-term relief, a brief restacking of his spine, but there’s a twinge working its way up to being a problem.

“That’s why you avoided the couch, right?”

“I can cope,” he tells her.

Mel shifts, and the rectangle of light falls across her face—warm brown eyes, not filled with pity or judgment or exasperation, just gentle appraisal. “Well, if you change your mind, you should ask her. She’s very nice.”

“Okay,” he finds himself saying. “Yeah. Sure.”

Mel smiles, wide and genuine. Frank wonders if she smiles at all her patients like that. Maybe, he hedges.

Still, in the next lull, when he’s back at the desk, he asks MaryAnne for an icepack, one of the ones you crack to activate. She hands it over with a small pinch between her eyebrows, training kicking in enough to prompt a question. “You okay, hon? You need anything else?”

“For my back,” he explains shortly. He knows she’ll pass that on to a few people, paint him as vulnerable, but he can’t avoid it. “I’m okay, though.”

He sits with it over the base of his spine, pressed against the back of the chair, while he types up his recent notes. Mel walks past with an iPad five minutes later, sees, and beams at him—which is faintly humiliating, but maybe worth it, if it makes her happy.

—

The one issue with Frank’s new apartment is that he forgot to order any goddamn blackout blinds. The curtains his landlord provided are grey, to match the rest of the interior, but they don’t keep out the sunlight, and Frank wakes up wincing at the sunshine creeping in through the cracks only hours after passing out. The preparation and the paperwork for his clearance to return to work was like pulling fucking teeth without painkillers, and for a long while Frank wasn’t sure he’d be allowed on night shift, so the blackout curtains fell down his priority list.

He regrets it now, pulling himself out of bed and padding into the lounge—but then again his sleep schedule’s been fucked since he left the clinic, and that was months ago, so it was a lost cause even without the blackouts. These days, he gets a couple of hours at most—the rest he spends staring at the ceiling before giving up. The new apartment is in a purpose-built block, and Frank hates to think about what other corners the construction company cut, because sometimes it sounds like the walls are made of tissue paper. He overhears everything: sex, late-night arguments, and since Spring Opening a few weeks back, he’s learned that his neighbour is a very passionate Pirates fan, which he’d almost pity him for, if his dismayed yelling at his TV hadn’t become the soundtrack to Frank’s off-hours.

It’s just gone midday, though, and the baseball thankfully isn’t on. Frank settles on his couch and pulls a stack of medical journals onto the coffee table towards him. The one on top stands out, colorfully sticky-noted. Frank opens it to an article not singled out by the tabbing system, somewhat amusingly titled Exertional Heat Stroke: Are We Keeping It Cool Enough? It’s a retrospective observational study of patients who participate in running events, which piques Frank’s interest. It’s been a long, long time since he dragged himself out on a run, especially with his back being what it is, but it used to be his exercise of choice. The actual article is basic in its findings, and more relevant to field medics, but he traces his fingers over the absurdly neat cursive in the margins—Mel’s handwriting, her voice so clear in the annotations: even mild confusion or poor gait should trigger immediate cooling—don’t wait for full collapse! Further down, her final assessment reads: Missing data on actual core temps, neuro status, or timing in some cases—not applicable to all settings.

It’s the last journal she gave him when she visited the clinic. She never came back to pick it up or discuss his opinions. Frank’s not lacking for reading material, but he kept this one in his move, shoved in a miscellaneous box alongside other detritus he couldn’t quite let Abby throw. To his delight, he’d discovered that there’s hardly an article Mel hasn’t marked up. He doesn’t know why he likes finding her scrawl so much. It’s just nice. Grounding, somehow. A little bit like having a conversation with her, even if she isn’t actually there.

Without the baseball, it’s pretty quiet. Frank flicks the page—smiles when he finds a singular question mark looped in the margins of the next article. Mel’s unimpressed doubt is so easy to picture.

—

He never asked Mel how long she was on nights for, but she keeps showing up when he does, her name on the board when he heads in every evening. In NA, they talk about taking and appreciating good things as they come, and Frank knows this is a good thing. Nights were supposed to be his new symbolic fresh start, but one friendly face doesn’t hurt. Abbot’s, Frank’s decided, doesn’t count since he never looks totally friendly, anyway. Even if he seems okay with Frank’s presence in his ED.

A few days in, Mel spares him a glance when he slots in next to her to listen to Abbot’s droll patient notes—and then does a double-take.

“You look awful,” she whispers, which makes Frank crack a smile because it’s clearly out of her mouth before she thinks to stop herself.

“And good evening to you, too, sweetheart.”

He watches Mel’s eyelids twitch at the too-easy teasing, the way her lips part. “Sorry,” she says quickly. “I didn’t mean—just, you look tired, Langdon.”

She’d dropped the ‘Dr’ around him but not made the switch to first-name basis. Frank wonders if she ever will.

“Four hours of sleep will do that to ya,” he whispers back. Abbot’s gruff ‘go forth and deliver’ briefing never takes very long, and they’ll have to move soon. “I don’t have blackouts in my apartment. Never got them sorted. Makes it hard.”

Mel frowns, like the news upsets her. “You should really fix that,” she says.

Frank could count the neat little wrinkles in her forehead. He wants to smooth them out for her with his thumb. His mother used to tell him that if he twisted up his face too hard, the wind would change and he’d get stuck like that. He stops himself from repeating her maxim or lifting his hand. “You’re right, I should,” he nods.

Later, Mel sidles up to him when he’s at Central, busy peering up at the board to see where he’s needed. There’s a white takeaway cup in her hand, which she sets down on the counter and pokes towards him.

“It’s from the cafeteria,” she says meekly, “so I know it tastes like gasoline. But I thought it might be better than nothing.”

Frank takes the proffered cup and cracks the lid. Mel’s right—the steam that rises into his face smells sulphuric, as the cafeteria coffee always does. It’s good to see that some things haven’t changed, at least. “Mmm, petrol fumes,” he says dryly. “My favorite.”

“Probably better than running on them,” she returns. “Just saying.”

Her flat delivery catches him off guard, forcing a smile. “You’re funny, King. But thank you for the coffee.”

He expects her to leave, then—but she continues to hover. “You should eat something too,” she adds, chewing on her bottom lip.

The concern in her voice squeezes his chest, unexpectedly tender. “Wait—hang on, are you a doctor? Is this licensed medical advice you’re giving?” he says, holding up the coffee to his heart, pantomiming shock. Mel’s mouth wobbles back into something resembling a smile.

‘I don’t think that was as funny,” she judges, which is a lie. He’s almost impressed.

He takes a swig of the petrol-coffee, winces, and grins. “I’m out of practice, I guess. I’ll be better next time, I promise.”

—

And so—Nights. He and Mel swap numbers on the guise of being able to warn each other if they’re running late or held up. Sometimes his NA meetings run long—Frank tells her, even though he doesn’t have to—and he can’t always find a good time to slip out without looking like an asshole if people are feeling chatty. He still hasn’t contributed himself, but he’s on the register as being there, which is what counts.

His sleep doesn’t really improve, despite dragging himself out to a furniture store and buying the cheapest blackout curtains he can find. The lack of exposure to sunshine doesn’t help, but Frank can admit the bags under his eyes look fierce. Occasionally, Mel still looks worried, so Frank takes to sending her pictures of his bitten-down apple cores and protein bar wrappers to prove that he’s listening to her expert doctorly advice. She smiley face reacts to each one.

Frank learns that Becca is at an adult version of sleep-away camp with the facility Mel moved here for, another part of why she switched her shifts in the first place. If they get a chance, they take a break down in the cafeteria, which is where Mel tells him this, frowning ever so slightly into her wan-looking Earl Grey tea. (She is not willing to risk the petrol-coffee herself, it seems.) She wakes herself up during the day when Becca calls, which, she admits, is thankfully never for long because Becca gets so caught up in everything else going on. Which is how Mel wants it, of course—to know Becca’s having fun. She misses her, though.

On their last shift in the two-and-a-half-week block, Frank searches for Mel and finds her in the stairway during a quiet moment, after they’ve both pulled a teenage drowning case (pool party gone wrong) through to safety. It had been hit or miss, and a faint film of nausea is clinging to him—drownings have a new angle for him to deal with now, it seems, so that’s—something. Mel stashes her phone when she sees him, but doesn’t tell him to go away, which he’s grateful for, so he doesn’t.

They have two days off before they switch back to days and throw their whole equilibrium off balance again.

Two days until Frank walks back into the ER and sees a certain sad-faced attending, and everyone else he’s been avoiding like the goddamn plague.

“On Sunday,” Frank says, leaning against the propped open fire door, taking his weight off a second, “do you want to get coffee in the morning? Maybe stuff that doesn’t taste like gasoline?”

Mel sits up straighter where she’s huddled on the stairs. He sees the surprise written all over her face, always so damn expressive.

“Oh! Uhmm—yeah. That sounds nice.”

“Do you have a go-to place you like?”

He already knows that Mel’s a creature of habit. Every time they go to the cafeteria, she makes a beeline for the same table in the corner and looks visibly distressed if it’s occupied. Frank usually ends up asking the other staff members if they'd mind swapping.

“Uh—I mean, it’s in my neighborhood?” she says. “It might be out of your way.”

“That’s fine,” Frank assures her. Maybe he’ll even walk there, see the cherry blossoms and make up for that vitamin D deficiency. “Drop me the addy, yeah?”

Mel’s nose wrinkles at his ham-fisted use of slang. Yesterday, she inadvertently called him old when he revealed he didn’t know who Timothee Chalamet was—Becca’s celebrity crush, even though all she’s seen him in is the new, bizarre Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie. Frank maintained it was because he’s not that plugged into pop culture, but he’s enjoying turning it into a bit, too.

“Okay, I will,” she agrees.

A few hours later, when all he’s seen of her is her braid whipping past the corner of his eye, his phone buzzes in his pocket. The place is a joint coffee shop and bookstore, which Frank feels he could have predicted. Google shows cosy couches and a lot of sunlight, and delicate latte art. He instantly understands why it’s Mel’s favorite.

He texts Abby—tells her he’ll pick the kids up sometime in the late morning.

—

Mel’s curled up in the corner of one of the coffee shop’s saggy, velvet couches, knees tucked under her, feet just dangling off the edge so she’s not got her sneakers on the upholstery. Frank saw her in normal clothes back in the clinic when she visited, of course, but his brain was preoccupied with eating itself at that point, so it’s not really her clothes he remembers, more the way her presence made him feel—like salvation was something he could struggle towards. Which sounds dramatic, but then, everything was back then. Still is, kind of.

She’s in a pair of straight-leg jeans and a t-shirt with a faded Springsteen print on the front, comfortable and easy. And—her hair’s down. It slides over her shoulders when she leans forward to pick up her coffee, holding the wide, shallow mug in both cupped hands. It’s thick and slightly waved; like wearing it plaited gives it a permanent kink. She tucks it behind her ear when she speaks, impatient, and he knows by the time they leave here, she’ll have found a way to keep it off her face again. It looks pretty, though, framing her soft jaw. Frank likes it.

When he asked if she was a Springsteen fan, she answered with a shrug— “Uhm, more my dad. He used to be a massive fan. This is his shirt. It’s one of the last things I have of him, actually.”

Which is how he learns that Mel’s lost both her parents—is paying for Becca’s facility with her father’s life insurance—that she lost her mom when she was thirteen—her dad a decade later to a brief battle against an aggressive brain tumour. Becca’s been in her care ever since. She’s alluded to this stuff before, in throwaway lines and veiled interactions with and comments about patients, but this is the first time he gets the full picture.

Frank sits with that for a minute, until the coffee mug starts to burn through to his fingertips, and he has to set it down. Mel looks awkward about it, a pink flush to her cheeks. She sits up and pushes her hair behind her ear again.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Mel,” he breathes.

“I’m really very used to it,” she says diplomatically. Or not diplomatically, because it's not as if she’s trying to hide anything, and she’s careful to emphasise that Becca really is her best friend. But still—Frank can’t get fucking past it.

“When was the last time you had a break?” he asks. “Been on vacation?”

“I’m on break right now,” she says. “Becca’s up in the Poconos, remember?” Mel frowns like he’s missing something obvious. “And I’m a doctor—when would I have the time for a vacation?”

It seems deeply tragic to Frank that Becca, who deserves it too, of course, gets the chance to go on a trip, and Mel doesn’t. Even he’s been away recently-ish; last summer, to Abby’s father’s house, of course, in Cape Cod. Frank was sort of freaked out by how postcard-perfect everything was, all the clapboard and pastel paintwork. It was good to get away, though.

“Working nights while your sister is away so it doesn’t mess with her schedule isn’t a real break, Mel,” he says, as gently as he can. It still comes out sharper than he’d like.

Mel lifts her coffee mug and takes a sip. It’s big enough to hide behind, which is what she does. “I don’t mind,” she says again, afterward, still pink in the face, up to the tips of her ears.

Frank realizes he’s going to have to mind on her behalf, whether she likes it or not. Even if he can’t do anything to change it.

Clearly uncomfortable with the attention on her, Mel swings the questioning back to him.

“Are you feeling okay about switching back to days?”

It would be shitty to shut down on her, now that she’d admitted so much to him, so Frank resists the urge to side-step the question. He wonders if that’s why she asked, which would be sneaky of her. But there’s more to Mel than he reckoned with, so it’s very possible.

“Not really,” he huffs. “But more okay than I was two and a half weeks ago, I guess.”

Mel nods. “And you’ll be able to see Tanner and Juniper on your days off, now,” she points out.

If Abby’s still feeling generous, that is, and doesn’t give in to fickleness and suddenly remember a classmate’s birthday party she forgot to tell him about. But Frank nods. “I’m seeing them later today, actually,” he tells her. “We’re going to Indoor Soft Play.”

Mel grins. “Oh. That’s very brave of you.”

Frank snorts a breath through his nose. They’ve both seen enough cases come through the ER to appreciate the horror stories associated with the place. “I’m terrified one of them’s gonna rip off a limb in the ballpit, but it’s their favorite place, so what can you do?”

“Keep your eyes peeled very hard, I think,” Mel says, with a small smile.

Frank’s mouth twists into a smile to match. “Yeah. That’s certainly the plan.”

They fall into other topics after that. They circle back to the Springsteen question—if Mel’s not a big fan, what music does she like? The answer turns out to be hip-hop, rap and R&B, to Frank’s complete incredulity. Her go-to karaoke song is Destiny’s Child's Bills, Bills, Bills, and she has a near-encyclopedic knowledge of the female artists of those genres. She likes Doja Cat, for God’s sake.

When Frank is forced into confessing that his go-to karaoke song is probably The Backstreet Boys’ I Want It That Way, or possibly something by Fall Out Boy, if he’s feeling inspired by teen angst, Mel giggles into her palm.

“You think that’s funny, do you, King?” he says, leaning back in his armchair, arm draped over the leather top. “You know I was in choir during High School? I can sing, I’ll have you know. We’re gonna have to put this to the test someday.”

This makes Mel giggle harder. Frank’s surprised to feel his cheeks ache.

By the time they get up to leave, Mel’s fished out a pen from her purse, which she’s used to wedge her hair into a bun, spearing it through the thick strands—a trick she learned during med school study sessions, when her hairbands kept snapping on her, she says. It’s the messiest Frank’s ever seen, loose and pulled back low against the nape of her neck, strands falling out. If he saw her through the coffee shop window, he wouldn’t recognize her. It’s almost disconcerting.

When he stands, his back pings with protest, and he seizes for a second before it unlocks. Mel’s watching him with careful eyes.

“Hey, we didn’t go to the bookstore part,” Frank says, gesturing through to the other part of the shop with a sweep of his hand. “I guess we’ll have to come back, huh?”

Mel blinks. She’s still looking at him shrewdly, but her expression softens. “I’d like that,” she replies.

And so, he realizes, would he.

—

“I expected you earlier,” Abby sniffs, when Frank pulls up at the house an hour later, a packed backpack full of snacks and Abby-approved distractions in the back, his recently purchased car seats installed and buckled in.

She looks as glamorous as ever, in leggings and an old sweatshirt, hair tumbling around her shoulders. Shannon, their au pair, doesn’t work weekends unless specially compensated, and Abby looks run off her feet. She’s got Juniper in her arms. Presumably, Tanner’s inside, hiding. It’s becoming a habit of his.

“Sorry,” he replies, without much feeling. “I texted you on Friday what time to expect me, remember?”

“Right,” Abby says, something clicking. There’s a touch of remorse there. “Coffee with a coworker. Don’t you spend enough time with them at the hospital? Seems odd to me.”

“I don’t really need your judgment on my friendships, Abs,” he says tiredly. “The advice was to broaden my social circle, if you recall.”

“I’m not sure grabbing coffee with Robby counts as widening your circle.”

“It wasn’t Robby,” he corrects. He doubts he’ll ever get coffee with Robby ever again, even if before, it mostly took the shape of accidental pre-shift run-ins in the local Starbucks queue anyway. He leaves Mel’s name out of it, but Abby’s expression is already flickering, eyes dragging over his face. “How’s Tanner doing today?” he asks, both a deflection and a genuine question.

Abby huffs out a sigh. “He’s a little moody. I told him you were taking him to Indoor Play, though. I think he’s excited.”

“Alright, I guess we’ll see.”

“Don’t blame him if he sulks, Frank,” Abby warns. “You know he’s sensitive.”

“I do know that.”

Juniper wriggles, jostling Abby in the doorway, who pulls a face. “Alright, sweetheart, yeah—Dad’s here. Frank, can you take her? I’ll see where Tanner’s taken himself off to.”

“Sure,” Frank says. It’s a delicate dance, figuring out how to hand over the toddler between them in a way that won’t involve Frank accidentally groping his ex-wife. He swears, even when they were on the skids anyway, it was never this difficult or awkward. Maybe the legal shit still trundling on in the background makes a difference.

Still, soon he’s got an armful of his daughter, who immediately settles a sticky, small palm against his chin. “Hey, Junebug,” he tells her, nuzzling into the touch. Frank can feel it leaching some of the tension out of his shoulders already, his body winding down at the recognition of his child’s skin on his. “How’s your day been, huh?”

“Dadda!” She smiles up at him, wide and gummy. Her tiny wafts of hair are in pigtails—blonde, though no one in their family is close to being fair-haired. Abby swears it’ll get darker as she grows, but Frank kinda hopes it doesn’t. It suits her. Juniper was a happy baby, and she’s a happy toddler, and most days Frank’s happy that she’s probably too young for any of this shit to really fuck her up. Hopefully, anyway.

Which is not the case for Tanner.

Frank can hear Abby’s voice floating down the hall, cajoling. “Daddy’ll bring you back for dinner, sweetheart. No—no, he won’t be staying, but tell you what, we’ll have fish sticks. You like them, don’t you, honey?” It’s clearly a desperate bribe; Abby disapproves of frozen food, on the whole.

Juniper lets her hand fall from his chin, though she twists in his arms to press herself against his chest and crane her head up. “Tanny’s upset,” she tells him, in a dour little voice.

“Okay. Thanks for telling me, Juney,” Frank says. “We’ll have to cheer him up together then, won’t we?”

“Ye-ah!” she singsongs.

His back’s beginning to ache, holding her, but he doesn’t set her down. A minute later, Abby leads Tanner down the hall. His narrow face is set in a frown that could cut glass, it’s so sharp. Frank tries not to be intimidated by a four-year-old, but it’s hard.

“Hey, buddy,” he gentles, “good to see you, pal. You ready to go?”

Tanner offers him a terse nod. Above his head, Abby flashes him a slight grimace of apology, which he appreciates, even if it’s useless. They’re hoping Tanner will get over this stage, but maybe Frank’s caused irreversible damage here. There’s a chance—Tanner would be well within his rights to grow up and resent him for the rest of his life for his fuck-up. Frank tries not to think about that, knows he and Abby were never destined for the long run, even if rehab hadn’t been the final nail in the coffin, but it does become a bit of a worrying thread when he’s staring up at the ceiling, unable to sleep at night. A loose end he keeps picking at.

It would help if Abby allowed him to have them overnight at his new place, so he can prove he’s not dumping them back with their mom as soon as possible to get rid of them, but they’re not there yet. Abby’s weighing it up, she tells him. She’s considering. Frank’s trying to be patient.

“Back by 8:30,” Abby reminds him, as they turn back down the drive. Frank raises a hand to indicate he’s heard but doesn’t turn around.

At the Soft Play Center, Tanner slips his palm into his as they walk from the car to the door—a rough thirty seconds, but Frank’s heart squeezes inside his chest all the same. It’s progress, and it’s enough to keep going.

—

It’s not like Frank hasn’t seen Robby at all since their argument in the ambulance bay, although argument seems too soft a word for what happened between them out there. A reckoning, maybe. A rupture. An atomic explosion of their relationship, leaving only shrapnel in its wake, might be a better way to frame it.

But Frank has seen him. It was Robby across the table when they finally dragged him in for those early intervention meetings, looking hangdog and full of pity, which rankled less than his decision to try and shoulder the blame like a beleaguered martyr for Frank’s missteps. It was Robby, too, who was part of the board who were setting up the terms of his probation, deciding every hoop he’s going to have to jump through to prove his recovery, ad infinitum. Robby, who had to sign off on his return to work, starting on the night shift.

Robby, who washed his hands of him.

It was awkward, and they didn’t talk, outside of the strict confines that necessitated it. When Robby looked like he wanted to, outside in the hallway, after one of his HR meetings, Frank turned on his heel and ended up walking away. He doesn’t regret it, exactly, but maybe if he’d allowed the ice to thaw a little, Robby—in front of him now—announcing to the rest of the crew “and a warm welcome back to Dr Langdon,” wouldn’t feel so fucking disengenous. There’s nothing warm about their relationship any longer.

A dozen sets of eyes swing in his direction, settling on him like flies. Santos, in particular, has a funny expression on her face, like she’s bitten into a lemon by mistake. He sets his jaw. Nods. When Robby’s done, he picks up an iPad and gets to work.

The night shift didn’t heal him, obviously, but what it did allow was the opportunity to get his feet back under him—find his sea legs. Frank’s grateful for that, especially as Collins and Dana and Santos mill around him like he’s a damn interactive art installation—half an eye on watching his progress, like they’re curious to see if and how he’s holding up. Hell, maybe they’re watching to see if he makes a break for the roof door, to finish what he contemplated. Frank doesn’t know much detail made it out of those meetings, into the hospital rumor mill, but he does know there are some boxes on certain diagnoses forms in life you can’t uncheck. He hopes they don’t know, but he has to consider the possibility that they might.

Meanwhile, he has patients to see.

—

“Dr Langdon? Can I borrow you for a second?”

Frank looks up from his charting to see Mel hovering by the side of the desk, hugging her tablet to her chest. There’s a determined look in her eyes, which sparks his curiosity. He pushes the wheelie chair away from the monitor and spins to face her.

“Do you have something interesting for me?”

Frank’s seen a lot of sprained and broken ankles today. Sometimes, you get a rush of them, no rhyme or reason. He’s picking them up, though. Playing willing. But he could do with a stimulating case.

“Maybe—I mean, I think so, yes. Man, early 40s, with a rash I can’t figure out. He’s tachy. Says he has no known allergens.”

“Did you quiz him on his travel history?”

Mel nods. “He visited Arizona on a work team-building trip at the end of last week.”

Frank absorbs this. “Can I take a look?”

“Please,” Mel says, with a smile.

Frank pushes himself out of the chair. He wobbles for a split second upon standing. Reaching out to brush a hand against Mel’s hip both steadies him and feels natural, done without thinking. “Lead the way,” he tells her.

“Oh—uhm, yeah, he’s in Room 4.”

Room 4 is round the other side of the floor. They pass Collins and Robby as they walk back over, talking quietly in front of the family room. Mel could have asked them, but she didn’t, which makes Frank happier than it should.

Mel draws back the curtain, passing him the iPad, which he scans. The patient is lying on the bed with his shirt undone, a nasty rash spreading across his skin, red and raised and clustered.

“Hi, Mr Aster. I’m Dr Langdon. Dr King says you’ve got a nasty skin complaint. Mind if I take a look?”

The man raises his chin and shrugs. “Sure,” he huffs.

“Heart rate’s 126. No fever. No wheezing; sats are 93 on room air,” Mel says quietly.

Frank nods. “Mr Aster, are you short of breath?”

“It’s like I’m winded,” he answers. “Felt like I lost my breath just walking to the car this morning from my front door.”

“And no history of asthma or heart disease,” Mel adds.

“Alright, can you take me back to when you first noticed the rash, Mr Aster?” he asks.

“Uh—well, it started as a few red spots yesterday. Figured it was chicken pox or something? Can you get chicken pox twice? I’m pretty sure I had it as a kid. Now it’s... everywhere. I’m itchy, I’m tired, and my chest feels weird. Tight.”

“And no new soaps, medications, laundry detergent?”

“No, doc.”

“Dr King—are his nodes swollen?”

Mel nods. “The rashes are maculopapular, too. But it’s the tachiness I’m concerned with. Allergic reactions don’t cause tachycardia unless you’re heading into anaphylaxis, and his BP’s stable. And they don’t cause lung involvement.”

The guy looks panicked at the mention of anaphylaxis, as he should. Frank wishes it were easier to get information out of patients. “And you recently got back from Phoenix?”

“Yeah, I flew back over the weekend.”

He frowns. It clicks in Frank’s mind, perfectly falling into place. “We need a chest X-ray and a fungal panel, and to draw blood cultures.”

Mel blinks at him, recognition dawning across her face, eyebrows quirking up. “Are you thinking of Valley Fever?” she says quickly.

“Could be,” Frank replies. “Would match the profile. You go trail walking out there, Mr Aster?”

The dude nods.

“See—disturb the soil, inhale the spores—rash, breathing tanks, fatigue.”

“Jesus,” says the patient, “—so it’s not chicken pox?”

Frank shakes his head. “Are you on any other medication, sir?”

“No—I mean, I take vitamins? And, well—there’s a cream I use—for my joints, I guess?” He looks embarrassed. “I get stiff. I wanted to keep up with the Gen Z kids at work on the trip, you see.”

Mel looks alarmed. “Sir—are you arthritic?”

“Well, I wouldn’t put it like that…”

And then—typically, and somewhat poetically, Frank can’t help thinking—his blood pressure crashes, and he faints back against the bed, eyelids fluttering.

“That’ll be the damn corticosteroid he’s been slathering himself in kicking in. Jesus Christ. Suppressing his immune system. I bet he ordered it online,” Frank hisses, making a dive for the oxygen mask and the IV line, speeding through the setup.

They get the guy back stable, and then it’s a process of sorting through the mess one thing at a time—the steroid withdrawal, the EKG and chest x-ray, the anti-fungal cream—putting orders through, and flagging the pharmacy.

By the time they get out of there, Mel’s wearing a screwed-up expression, shoulders up around her ears. “I’m sorry,” she’s saying, “that was way more complicated than it needed to be. He didn’t mention the joint cream. I should have thought about Valley Fever, too—Arizona was a big clue. That should have been an easy save.”

“Patients lie,” Frank sighs, “or they withhold, which is the same thing. You know that as well as I do. He obviously had a fragile masculinity thing about keeping up with the kids at work. Don’t blame yourself, Mel.”

She looks unconvinced, so Frank finds himself throwing his arm around her shoulder as they weave through the floor, before he realizes that maybe she wouldn’t welcome it. Mel stiffens for a fraction of a second under the weight—and then, surprisingly, relaxes—letting him do it—allowing Frank to steer them the long way round back to Central.

“Besides,” he continues, trying to pick back up as Mel falls easily into step beside him, “that was kind of fun.”

“Fun,” Mel repeats dubiously. They pass Collins and Robby, still with their heads bent together, but by Room 10 now. Frank glances at them but doesn’t slow down. Collins raises an eyebrow. Frank readjusts his arm around Mel’s shoulders.

“Come on, you didn’t feel like Sherlock Holmes in there?” he prods.

“I don’t know,” Mel says, as they clear the corner back to the board. “Does that make you my Watson?”

Frank throws back his head and laughs, caught off guard once again. “I’ll be your Watson any day, Dr King. Just say the word.”

—

Because Frank can’t have anything easy in life, Santos corners him when he’s walking to his car at the end of the shift, feeling like he’s managed about as well as he could have. He wants to go home, cook himself a miserable portion of pasta for one, and then go the fuck to bed, and he nearly doesn’t stop—but her voice is annoyingly hard to ignore. Plus he’s already an asshole, and maybe—maybe they have some air to clear.

Santos catches up with him, hand over her backpack, eyes wide. “Did you want something?” he asks, turning to face her. Not a great opening, but Santos doesn’t flinch. She’s slightly out of breath after running after him, and she makes him wait while she gets over it. Frank adjusts the strap of his own backpack and frowns.

“So I heard you were on night shift with Mel,” she says when she’s recovered, which is not how Frank expected this to start.

He blinks at her. “Uh—yeah?”

She nods, looking interested—in what, Frank doesn’t know.

“The changeover’s a bitch, huh.”

Frank makes a noncommittal noise. He doesn’t understand why Santos flagged him down if she’s going to make small talk about well-worn topics. Santos has the decency to look awkward, like she knows she should get to the point.

“I guess I should say that I’m sorry,” she finally says. “For snitching on you like that. I saw the signs, and I reacted. I didn’t even know you yet.” She huffs. “Still don’t, let’s be honest.”

Frank’s knuckles tighten on his backpack. The thing is, he doesn’t blame Santos for what she did, but she is, ultimately, a major catalyst in the way his life blew up—so it’s hard to look at her with grace. She can’t help being a walking calendar reminder for the day his world went to shit.

“Did you want a thank you?” He’s being out of line again. But Frank really wants to go the fuck home.

Santos blinks, mouth settling into tense brackets. “No, I get it, man,” she says. “It’s just—I’ve known addicts. The signs were there. I didn’t have anything to do with how the rest of it was handled, though.”

It’s humiliating to have been seen through so thoroughly by this self-righteous kid, who doesn’t—by her own admission—know him.

“I thought about coming to see you in rehab, to apologize,” she says suddenly. “I decided against it.”

“Wise choice,” Frank replies stiffly.

Santos hums. “I’m sure seeing Mel was much more preferable, right?”

Frank hesitates. He didn’t realize—or maybe he’d been naive to assume she hadn’t—Mel shared information about her visits to him, especially with someone like Santos. Were they friends? He’d been gone a long while, after all. Maybe it’s because, in Frank’s mind, the visits exist in a sort of parallel universe; Mel, seeped in sunshine in the doorway, feels less like a scene that played out in real life and more a kind of dream he keeps on re-conjuring in his mind.

Something like triumph creeps into Santos’s eyes. “Yeah—you know, I wasn’t sure, but that checks out. She doesn’t talk about you much. Almost like she’s avoiding the topic.”

“I don’t know what you’re insinuating,” Frank says coldly.

Santos shrugs, hitching her bag back up her shoulder. “I’m telling you, dude—I can track the signs.”

Frank glares at her, decides he’d do better to keep his mouth shut, and turns on his heel to leave her behind.

—

He starts to add ‘snake’ in front of ‘pitt’ in his head when he walks into work in the morning, which gives him about a second of vicious pleased-with-himself satisfaction before it fades, and he’s back to dealing with the aforementioned reptiles.

Cassie, who understands better than most, Whitaker, who’s just generally clueless, and Mel excepted, of course.

Even Dana is wary around him. She doesn’t seem to have the same quips or comebacks these days; looks over the frames of her readers at him sometimes in a way that makes him feel like shuffling a step backwards to avoid her. Not hostile—just like she’s seeing right through him.

The conversation in the break room splintered something between them, too, Frank knows. If he and Robby took an axe to each other, the split with Dana was more subtle. Every time she looks at him, he’s worried she sees the manic man making demands of her. That’s what Frank hates—the indelible image of his worst moment burned into the back of other people’s retinas. No way to smudge it out.

It was one of Robby’s worst moments, too, of course. Frank gets that, logically. He doesn’t know where to go from there.

That is, until he realizes what Robby’s doing.

It takes a couple of shifts for him to understand. He’s not unused to Mel coming and finding him, of course—usually with a case she wants to ask about, a nudge to escape to the cafeteria, or with a gentle reminder about taking time out to eat. The first couple of occasions she relays a message from Robby don’t raise his eyebrows, and then, efficient as ever, Mel starts to combine the two. Hi, Langdon. Robby said he’d finish up with the patient in 5, so maybe you’d like to go down to the cafeteria now? Or Langdon—showing him her chart—what do you think about this? Should I press for a tox screen? Yeah, I agree, thank you. Oh—uh, while I’m here, Robby asked you to pop back in to see the elderly patient in 12 about his fib fracture?—and so on.

It’s when Mel approaches him with a plainly delivered message about the nurses needing to take a sample, waiting on the tox lab floor for him—one of his mandated random drugs tests—that Frank finally puts two and two together and fucking loses it. The worst thing is, Mel probably doesn’t realize Robby’s nominated her as some kind of go-between—she’s just doing what’s asked of her.

He’s half tempted to drag Gloria down there and give her some choice lines about efficient staff management of the ED floor. Instead, he thanks Mel stiffly, somewhat surprised and yet not at her lack of awkwardness about the drug test. He marches himself upstairs to go pee in a cup on command, and when he comes down, he corners Robby by Pedes, who looks shocked to be confronted.

Mel’s across the way, by Room 3. He sees her disappear behind the curtain, and then unclenches his jaw enough to speak. “If you have something you need me to do or know, either page me or come talk to me yourself,” he hisses. Robby’s lined face jumps upwards. “Stop giving Mel your dirty work. She’s a talented, busy doctor who doesn’t need to be wasting her time, chasing me down to deliver your fucking messages.”

Robby’s eyebrows stay buried in his hairline. “My dirty work?” he echoes.

“Since you obviously view talking to me as unpleasant, yeah.”

Something like guilt ripples across his tired face. “I thought you might prefer it, coming from Mel.”

Frank rears back. “She has a fucking job to do, and it’s not running around after me. Let her do it,” he finishes, before walking away.

He sees less of Mel after that, especially during busy shifts, and sometimes they miss their cafeteria breaks, but he won’t let himself regret it. He and Robby start talking to each other again. It’s civil, and that’s all Frank can ask of both of them.

—

Time moves differently for Frank now. Before, he marked time by the days and cases he was able to dip his hand into, measuring from his last successful smuggling, mind racing ahead to estimate how much relief that would afford him, and when his supply might next run out. In retrospect, of course it sounds insane that he never, not once, admitted that he might have a problem, but you can never see the wood from the trees when you’re that deep in the forest. And he was fucking stubborn about it.

In rehab, time lost all meaning altogether, and since getting out, the weeks have started to stack up on each other, bit by bit. It depends on the day whether Frank feels like he’s scaling the climb or being crushed under the weight of them. When his back hurts, when he’s alone, when Abby has the kids, when Robby doesn’t meet his eye when they talk, it definitely feels like the latter. When he’s at work, and there’s a patient on the table that he saved, and there’s a text from Mel waiting on his phone when he grabs a break; a sunny picture of the park where she’s taken Becca on a picnic on her day off—it feels closer to the former.

Their shift patterns fall out of sync, and in some ways, he misses those first fuzzy night shift weeks, just the both of them together, even if he’s much more confident and capable now. He misses her when she’s not there.

Later in the week, after they’re back together and finally wrapping up a tough shift, he swings his car keys around his finger and waits while Mel peels off the jacket she always wears. She’s chatting idly about the roller blade girl she treated, who tripped and busted her chin open, and how that’s put her off trying that hobby even though she thinks it looks really cool, kind of like dancing, but she’d have to get the right safety equipment first, of course, and—

“Hey, you want a ride home?”

He doesn’t know why he hasn’t offered before. It seems like the least he can do.

Mel stops talking. “Oh,” she says, frown puckering. “It’s very nice of you to offer, Langdon, but I’m picking up my sister from the facility, remember? It’s a Friday. We’re going out for dinner.”

She looks guilty about turning him down, which is ridiculous. And also, yeah, he should have remembered. She’s mentioned their standing plans often enough. Frank was getting ahead of himself.

“Right, yeah, of course,” he corrects smoothly. “Well, how about I drop you at the facility? That at least cuts down on some of your walking, right?”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. I mean, since we’ve ruled out rollerskating in case you fall and eat shit, and since I’ve finished work and definitely don’t wanna have to stitch you up afterward, it seems like the best option, no?”

Mel smiles at the joke. “You know, I’ve never actually had to have stitches,” she says.

“And I sincerely hope to keep it that way—so absolutely no rollerskating.” He gives his keys an extra flourish. “You coming, Dr King?”

The address Mel guides him to is one of Pittsburgh’s late-Victorian mansions, full of bay windows and several stories tall, with a grand porch and a flight of steps at the front. The windows are lit up, glowing orange in the dusk as Frank pulls the car to an idling stop at the curb, engine ticking over.

“This the place?” he asks, as Mel glances towards the building, reaching to unclick her seatbelt. Frank’s got the radio playing low, a soft rock station he’s mildly embarrassed about liking, and the air-con is circulating a musty breeze around the cab, jammed stuck on the cold setting because Frank overheats easily, and his car is falling apart, one non-essential part at a time, but he’s too broke and too busy to do anything about it. Mel fingers the sleeve of the sweatshirt draped across her lap against the cold, which she had to move out of the way before she got in, since he’d left it on the front seat by accident. Frank told her she could wear it, if it helped, but she sat with it primly over her legs instead, and now she’s worrying her fingers over the sleeve-edge, fingers finding the worn-through hole.

For a fraction of a second, it looks like she isn’t going to move any further, shoulders slumping into the car seat, chin dropping down.

And then, like an elastic pulling into shape, Frank watches her snap everything back together.

“Yup. This is it,” she says brightly, setting the sweatshirt aside. “Becca’s probably waiting for me—we were later getting out than I said, but the ride cut down on the time, so I really do appreciate that. Thanks, Langdon.”

She reaches for her backpack in the footwell, hand on the door.

“Mel.”

She twists back. “Yes?”

Frank drums his fingers across the steering wheel. “If you’re tired….”

Mel’s eyes flick towards his, questioning—and no, Frank doesn’t know how he intended to finish that sentence, what suggestion he was about to make. Mel knows it, too. Her expression turns soft—maybe a little embarrassed.

“I’m okay. It’s just dinner. We do it every Friday. It’s one of Becca’s favorite things. I’ve had worse shifts, Langdon. I’m absolutely fine.”

There’s a sense of helplessness, sometimes, when a case comes in and there’s a certain fact that’s obvious from the onset—that there’s no saving the limb, that the broken bone is concealing more serious injuries, that the head lac is the least of their issues. Frank feels like that, now; a stone sunk down in the lining of his stomach.

“If you’re sure,” he says.

Mel nods firmly. “Of course. I’m sorry to ditch you. I hope you have nice plans tonight. I’ll see you soon, Langdon.”

She passes him back his sweater and gets out of the car. Frank watches her walk to the door, barely waiting before someone buzzes her in, and then, for reasons he doesn’t want to closely examine for fear of labelling himself a weirdo and a pervert, he eases the car around the corner, still within eyesight of the house, and lets the engine continue to dawdle.

It’s May, and the sunlight has almost completely faded, sinking into a smoky purplish hue. The streetlamps aren’t on yet, but his headlights make twin slices in front, throwing the leafy hedges into focus. It’s a nice street, old and wide and well-maintained. He knows the facility’s expensive.

Minutes later, he watches two women reappear on the porch. One is Mel, of course, and the other must be Becca—as tall as her, also wearing glasses, dressed brightly compared to Mel’s subdued hospital scrubs. Frank’s too far away to see detail, but Becca is talking animatedly, hands gesturing loopily in the air. Mel smiles and nods and says something in return, listening, and they walk slowly away, disappearing around the corner.

Frank doesn’t have nice plans, so he kicks his car back into gear and drives around in loops again, through the neighborhood of the facility, cruising down the tree-lined avenues, keeping rough tallies of every old mansion he passes. He drives until Mel and Becca must be done at the restaurant; until the AC starts to make him shiver; until the dark presses in completely and his headlights start to swing like searchbeams in the night—and only then does he go home, ending up back in his cool, empty apartment with another of Mel’s marked up journal articles in his hands.

—

Mel pushes aside her pudding cup. On the ranking of cafeteria food, the pudding cups sit above the petrol-coffee and below the surprisingly good egg and cress sandwiches, which makes it passably decent, but today, Mel drops her plastic spoon into the half-finished goopy mess and sighs.

“You’re upset,” Frank says. “Is it Mrs Sokolova?”

Mel’s expressive face wobbles, mouth turning down at the corners. “I know it’s silly,” she sighs. “She was old and in pain. I just—”

She lets out a small noise of distress and goes to pick up the spoon again, to try and poke at more of the pudding, but Frank extracts it gently out of her grasp, replacing it with his fingers for a quick squeeze before pulling away. “It’s not silly to mourn a friend.”

Mel’s face spasms and then crumples further. “I only knew her for a day, but I really liked her, Langdon. She told great stories, and it was nice to hear about her dancing career.”

Mrs Sokolova–eighty-nine years young—had come into the ER towards the tail end of the night shift, two nights ago, after a fall at home. She’d broken both hips and some bones in her hand, and had dislocated her collarbone. She was extremely frail, so she wasn’t an easy fix, and instead, she’d been given a bed downstairs while they decided on the right surgery and way forward. The old girl was frustrated at the situation, sharply acidic every time Frank checked on her, more alert than he’d come to expect in their elderly patients. Mel, on the other hand, she took a shine to immediately, demanding to see ‘sweet angel, Dr King’ whenever anyone else dared attend to her. When Frank came to see if Mel wanted to join him on his smoke break—and stand downwind, obviously—during a quiet moment, he found her perched on the seat by Mrs Sokolova’s side, being regaled by stories about her time as a young woman in one of the apparently infamous Russian ballet troupes, Mel hanging on her every word. He’d left them to it and smoked alone, which by that point, felt stupid and a little like sulking.

But when they came in this morning, they learned from Abbot Mrs Sokolova hadn’t made it through the night—a sudden stroke, stress-induced, that none of them saw coming. At the time, Mel hadn’t reacted much, but he could see now she’d been trying to stifle her sadness.

“She made me remember how much I love ballet,” Mel continues, with a sniff. “She made it sound so magical.”

Mel used to dance as a kid, he’d learned, which had shocked him at first, before it immediately made absolute sense. Frank keeps on picturing a miniature version of her, two pigtails instead of one—not a bun—dressed up in a tiny tutu, the same look of steely concentration on her face as he sees every day when she’s talking herself through a difficult procedure. It makes his chest feel tight, like he’s thinking of his daughter—which Frank knows is weird, because Mel is a grown, competent woman and his friend. Is he even her mentor anymore? He’s not sure. She talks herself through most of the procedures because she barely needs his guidance, and Frank’s redoing his R4 year, after all.

All he knows is that tiny Mel probably nailed a perfect pirouette. Top of the class.

“I’m sorry,” he offers, which isn’t enough and never will be for anyone, but it’s all he can say. “I know she enjoyed spending time with you. That matters, Mel.”

Mel shrugs her shoulders and lapses back into quiet. They sit for long enough that Frank starts thinking guiltily about heading back—he has a concussion case he should check on—when Mel interrupts him.

“We never went back to the bookshop,” she says suddenly.

“Huh?”

“The bookshop-coffeeshop I like. The one we went to.”

Frank pauses. Usually, if Mel wants something, she’ll ask. She’s usually very forward about it. He likes that about her. The statement throws him off.

He decides to take a chance, watching her fingers twist around each other, now that he’s taken her pudding cup away. “...Would you like to go, Mel?”

Mel’s cheeks flush pink. “Oh–I don’t want to take away your time from your family.”

“Abby actually has the kids this weekend,” he tells her. His nose wrinkles, because they fought about it—they’re up in New York for her dad’s birthday, staying in a very nice hotel he could never afford himself. He guesses she’s right, because it's the kids’ grandfather and they shouldn’t miss it, but still, losing the days with them hurts.

“Well, in that case…. Becca’s got a ceramics workshop at the facility on Saturday afternoon,” she says tentatively, “so we could go then? If you wanted?”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” he announces, leaning back in his chair and smiling at her. Mel smiles back—still dimmed at the edges, but it’s the first one he’s seen from her in hours, so he’ll take it.

—

They sit in the same seats as before, in the corner by the window, late spring sunshine streaming in past the shop’s frosted logo, bouncing off the cars parked up outside. Mel looks the most relaxed he’s seen her in weeks, tipping up her face to the light, dressed in another band t-shirt (Guns N Roses, this time) with her hands wrapped around her hazelnut latte—despite the warmth and the sun on their faces. Frank’s opted for iced. He picks up on her wincing when he crunches the ice cubes, though, so he stops doing that pretty quickly.

“You don’t talk about your parents much,” she says, when they’ve cycled through the usual topics—Tanner’s wobbly progression with phonics and handwriting; Whitaker and Santos’ continuing confounding living situation; Frank’s noisy neighbors.

Frank swirls his ice cubes around the plastic of his cup and screws up his face at the semi-question there. When Mel doesn’t ask, it’s because she’s already sensed it’s a potentially off-limits topic and is trying to be respectful.

“I don’t really see them a lot,” he shrugs. “We always saw Abby’s parents much more. One set of parents is enough, you know?”

“Oh, well, it’s nice that you have them, too.”

He sucks at his cheek. Mel must note his reaction, because she adds, softer, “...You didn’t get on with them?”

“You don’t want to hear about this, honestly.”

Mel shrugs. Her Guns N' Roses t-shirt is a little big, the neckline sitting crooked across her shoulders, slipping further as she moves. Her hair’s in its customary braid today, though, as if she’s got to keep something in proper place. “I do, if you want to tell me.”

Frank considers it. He thinks about the kids, in New York as they speak, in places Frank could never take them. Mel’s gently questioning gaze pulls it out of him.

“Abby’s dad financed a lot of ours and Abby’s lives when we were married,” he says. “Her family background is…. more elevated? I guess? It caused some pretty big arguments between us. I had all my college and med school debts, and I never felt like I could match that—could support her in the way she wanted, I guess. Even if it wasn’t actually the way she wanted.”

“Money-wise?” Mel prompts, uninflected.

“Yeah. I know that’s, like, old school ideas about relationships, or whatever. I think her stuff with her dad made it worse. Made me care more, which I hated.”

He thinks of the damn Birkin handbag—the dog, back when he was still trying to pass it off as a gift for her too, and not a bribe for kids he wasn’t around enough for. Stupid to think competition was the solution.

Mel’s mouth twists delicately at the corners. “I used to not care about money much, until I had to pay for Becca’s care. It’s very expensive.”

“Yeah, I imagine it is,” Frank agrees soberly, remembering his drive through the facility’s leafy neighborhood. He still doesn’t quite understand why he did that, but if he learnt one thing, it was the burden Mel faced in finding a facility she deemed good enough for her sister’s care, and then stumping up the inevitably inflated price tag that came with it.

“It must have been nice not to worry about money, though,” she says quietly.

Frank shrugs, and feels like an asshole. “I think in the end it was another wedge between us.”

Mel takes another sip of her coffee, head tilted to the side. “Where do your parents live?”

“They live in Pittsburgh, actually. Just outside. The suburbs.”

Mel’s eyebrows lift with surprise. He knows he’s been talking about them as if they live states away, which is always the accidental impression he gives. “They do? But you don’t see them often?”

“No, not really.” He can feel his face doing something funny, trying to settle on a more neutral expression. His parents never really liked Abby, whom they deemed flighty, or approved of him naming a son Tanner and not anything even more sensible and traditional, like, say, Jonathan—their most recent impasse, drug addiction and divorce notwithstanding. “They’re decent people, they’re just not …affectionate people? Plus, I was, uh, raised Methodist, and now I’m not anymore. Which is also difficult for them, I think.”

“You’re a doctor,” Mel says flatly—gently. “Crises of faith are statistically very common in our field.”

“Yeah,” he allows. “So is divorce and addiction. I’m going for the trifecta. Gotta complete the exercise, or whatever.”

Frank loves to check those boxes.

“Langdon,” Mel admonishes, critical of his self-criticism. “Come on.”

He’s made her frown. They’re powering through some pretty deep shit in this very nice and sunny coffee shop, and Frank’s bringing the mood down. The hiss and click of the coffee machine and the gentle patter of other people’s much lighter conversation swirl around them. Mel’s curled up again, her feet dangling off the side. He stretches out his legs toward her, taking up more space in their little closed-off corner. They could probably both fit on the sofa, but they chose to sit like this instead, opposite each other, and now Mel’s holding his eye contact, something he’s noticed she can find hard sometimes. But she’s looking at him now, eyes full of soft chastisement and understanding, and Frank can’t break away at all.

“Frank, is that you?”

Mel jerks her head upwards, to a woman standing frozen in front of their seating, clutching her plastic to-go coffee cup in her hand. Frank inhales sharply, annoyed—then fights back a laugh when he sees her shocked expression.

“Oh, Jessica—hi.”

“It is you! Wow, I didn’t know you came over this side of town much! What a coincidence, huh! So funny to run into you like this!”

Jessica’s acting like she’s swallowed her tongue, or at least her ability to not make every sentence end in an exclamation mark. It would be funnier if he didn’t, at that moment, catch sight of Mel’s softly confused face, or see the way her fingers had tightened around her coffee mug as she watched them interact.

“Sorry, Mel, this is Jessica, she’s a friend of Abby’s—and this is Mel, we—” He pauses—sees Jessica hanging on his next word—bites down on the urge to play this up for her— “we work together.”

Abby used to complain that Jessica was the world’s worst gossip. Frank knows, immediately, that this is going to make its way back to Abby’s group of friends, a sure-fire bottomless brunch topic, a lost cause as soon as she spotted them, and while stringing Jessica along might be amusing for Frank, it wouldn’t be fair on Mel.

“Oh! Hi, Jessica. It’s so nice to meet you.” Mel extends her hand to shake. Jessica looks like she doesn’t know what to do with such a formal gesture, staring down at her outstretched palm like it’s a foreign object, until Mel notices her hesitation and starts to panic. Frank reinserts himself into the conversation.

“Jessica, how uh—how’s your event planning business going? I heard you threw that engagement party last year, and it went well?”

“Oh, I paused that,” Jessica says airily, turning away from Mel’s still outstretched hand, which she retracts very slowly. Frank bites the inside of his cheek to stop himself from calling out her rudeness. “Very hard to stay on top of, you know. So much paperwork!” She laughs, waving a hand, bangles clacking together along her wrist.

“But isn’t that the point of event planning?” Mel asks, confused. “Paying someone else to manage the paperwork?”

Frank clamps down on more laughter.

He’d liked Abby’s friends fine, but Jessica he’d never been sure of, and she was proving that suspicion tenfold right now. He watches as her eyes narrow, twisting back around to look at Mel, whose question he knows was genuine—but Jessica clearly doesn’t.

“So you and Frank work together, you say?”

Mel’s brow wrinkles at ‘Frank’—like she forgets he has an actual real name.

“Uh, yes, Frank and I are both ER doctors.” She’s trying to match Jessica’s tone. “I started last year, so–”

Jessica visibly stops glowering. “Oh, so of course, you must know all about—?” Frank’s torn between being appalled and amused as she gestures vaguely back toward him. “So nice to know Frank has friends he can lean on after struggling so much. I know Abby was worried about that for a while!”

Mel’s eyes bug out, caught on Jessica’s empty hand movement. Frank has the renewed manic desire to laugh. He’s right fucking here. So Jessica can gossip about it, but she can’t say it out loud? She may as well call it ‘Frank’s little problem’ —at least she’d be using fucking words.

Biting at her lip, Mel’s eyes slide over to his, past Jessica standing between them. “Excuse us,” she says stiffly, edging on cold. “But we were just about to leave, actually. I need to pick up my sister.”

Jessica blinks. “Oh, of course. How lovely—time with family.”

Frank finished his coffee long ago, but Mel chugs the last, probably tepid, couple of mouthfuls of hers and gets up to leave, pulling herself up to her full height, which isn’t much, but he’s impressed with her for trying.

And God, he knows he’s going to be in the shit for this later, but as Frank stands to follow her, he reaches to place a hand on Mel’s shoulder, almost cupping her neck, over where her t-shirt is slipping. “It was good to see you, Jessica,” he says, pasting on a smile. “Hope business picks up!”

And then he steers both of them out of there, through to the bookstore section of the shop, as if they’re aiming for the back door, but stopping before they make it. The impulse to turn around and check if Jessica’s watching is strong, but he ignores it, until they’re tucked down a row of shelving, and he can let his palm slip away. Mel’s skin was warm and smooth and softly downy under his touch. He could feel her pulse jumping under his thumb.

“You okay?” he says, stepping back to lean against the books. “Sorry, you were right to get us out of there. I didn’t mean to manhandle you.”

It takes a couple of seconds before Mel turns to face him, looking up with wide eyes. “Is she always like that?” she huffs.

He laughs. “Yeah, pretty much. I’m not even sure Abby likes her. One of those people, you know.”

Mel blinks at Abby’s name. “I think I was rude. Will she mention that to her, that I was rude? I don’t want your wife to think I was rude.”

“Ex-wife,” Frank corrects. He considers lying, but thinks better of it. “This is definitely going to make its way back to Abby, but I don’t think whether or not you were rude will be the focus,” he says delicately, with a wry smile. “Honestly, Jessica’s a piece of work, so it doesn’t really matter what she says.” Then he snorts. “Good for quizzing her on the party planning, by the way—that is what you’re supposed to be paying for.”

Mel cringes. “She’s definitely going to say I was rude.”

Frank doesn’t want to waste more time on Jessica, or Abby for that matter, than he can help. This was supposed to be a nice morning, and he’d already risked it whining about his parents.“Hey—you don’t have to pick up Becca yet, do you?”

Mel checks her watch. “No, not yet.”

He sweeps his hands out to encompass the neatly organised books around them. “Then we should go shopping, right?”

It turns out that Mel is a fan of those mass-produced pulpy psychological thrillers, with titles like The Girl In The Hallway and None of This Is Really Happening. “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” he says, when she comes back to find him with a small stack, after letting him beg off to go browse the popular health and science section. “Is this really your genre of choice?“

“They’re very entertaining,” she protests. “I like a good genre novel. Why, what did you think I read?” she laughs, adjusting the stack in her arms, so the top title—Things You Said Before You Disappeared—doesn’t slip off.

Frank shrugs. “I don’t know—Tolstoy or something. Like how everyone says they’ve read War and Peace, but most people use it as a glorified coffee coaster on their night stand, but you actually have.”

“I don’t think everyone says they’ve read War and Peace. I certainly haven’t,” she giggles. “You think too highly of me, Langdon.”

But that’s the thing—Frank’s pretty sure he doesn’t.

—

They’re taking a break in the ambulance bay, coming up to the end of a night shift block, and Frank is bleary-eyed with exhaustion, sporting a headache at his temples that’s been steadily building since 9 pm and an ache in his back he’s doing his damn best to ignore until later—so he doesn’t process Mel’s sentence, at first.

“So—you can say no,” Mel says, “but Becca wants to meet you.”

Frank’s got a lit cigarette in his hand, which he’s mostly flicking the ash off instead of smoking, though Mel’s still eyeing it warily. He’s being careful to keep it on the other side of his body from her. It’s the usual 5 am lull—the sweet spot between the early birds breaking down the door to report injuries done earlier, and everything already under their roof finally settling to sleep. The sky’s getting lighter, a hint of pink and orange bleeding into the skyline in the gaps between the buildings opposite.

“Langdon?” Mel prompts.

Frank blinks. “Becca wants to meet me?”

He stubs out the cigarette on the wall and grinds it under his shoe. Mel’s version of a smoke break is listening to white noise for five minutes, but she doesn’t have her earbuds in, and her face is creased with anxiety. He expects her to fill the pause he’s leaving, but she waits, shuffling a little, watching him carefully. “Are you sure?” he says.

“I—uh—apparently, I talk too much about you and it’s annoying her, so she wants to put a face to the name,” she answers, with a half-smile, apologetic.

Which is funny, because hadn’t Santos said that Mel didn’t talk about him? Maybe that was only at work. Frank could understand that—he still wasn’t the most popular person in the building by a long shot. But she talked about him to Becca?

“She wants you to join us for dinner on Friday,” Mel says, “if you’d like that? It’s very casual, I promise.”

“Mel, I’d love to.”

Mel smiles—it breaks across her face, stronger and brighter than the sunrise they’re standing under. Frank almost wants to shield his eyes.

“Okay, good. That’s—great. But Langdon,” —and now her tone changes, dropping low, smile fading, “you have to talk to her like she’s an adult. Or at least try to, okay? She might not get everything, but she’s—very smart about some stuff, alright?” Mel’s twisted to face him, and they’re standing very close to each other. She hooks her chin up, looking him in the eye.

“I understand,” he says.

Something in her softens. “Yeah, I know you do. Alright, so you’ll come with us? After work? On Friday?”

Frank feels the weight of it, then: how much she’s trusting him, how easily she could keep these parts of her life separate, and how much courage it’s taken to purposefully bridge the gap. It shocks a bolt of lightning through him.

He could reach out and touch her face—cradle the soft set of her jaw, until she smiled again, like before, and leaned into his palm. He wants to do it. In his head, that’s what he sees: the bright, blinding sunlight of her smile and his thumb resting below her eye, smoothing over her cheek.

He redirects his hand—drags it through his greasy hair instead, flopping over his forehead. “I’m looking forward to it,” he says.

Fuck.

—

Frank slides a finger between his neck and the collar of his dress shirt and tries to stretch out the material. The June air carries a slight breeze as he steps out of his car, soothing his overheated skin, but not, unfortunately, his worries that he’s stupidly overdressed. He hasn’t bothered wearing a button down on many occasions recently, and halfway to the restaurant, he realized why getting ready tonight—changing after his NA meeting, rushing through a shave, wincing at himself in the mirror, pulling on a decent pair of shoes for once—felt faintly familiar. Frank felt like he’d been getting ready for a date. A first date.

It’s definitely proof he needs to get out more, has spent way too many hours in his sad, blank bachelor apartment, but he also knows how much Mel has riding on this, and he doesn’t want to disappoint her. And so, the nerves, and the conviction that he’s gone too far wearing a shirt with a collar. A t-shirt and jacket would have been fine.

He spots them immediately, sharing a booth at the back with their heads bent together—tucked in as quiet a place as possible, he notes, a habit Mel takes with her always. He recognizes Becca from the time he watched them like a goddamn creep weeks ago, though he’s not going to reveal that. She and Mel are both in hoodies. Crap. He makes himself walk over anyway.

“Good evening, ladies.”

Mel looks up—and there’s that smile again. It’s really going to start going to Frank’s head.

“Langdon! Hi! You made it.”

He’s also greeted by Becca’s sudden, delighted, pealing laugh. “That’s Dr Langdon, Mel?”

The tips of Mel’s ears—God help him—turn pink. Frank can’t hold back his grin. “It sure is,” he says. “I’m Dr Frank Langdon. It’s good to meet you, Becca. I’ve heard a lot about you. Mind if I sit? I’d like to join you ladies, if you’ll have me.”

He makes eye contact with Mel, who’s still faintly blushing, but she gestures awkwardly for Frank to go ahead. When he drops into the chair opposite, Becca giggles again. “We never have anyone to join us!”

“Well, then I’m very honored.”

“Not never, Becca,” Mel corrects. “Sometimes Nurse Beverley joins us, remember?” She looks at Frank—“one of Becca’s favorite nurses at the facility,” she explains.

“Nurse Beverley doesn’t look like him,” Becca retorts. “You’re handsome,” she tells him earnestly.

Frank can’t help smiling. His mirror has been a harsh reminder recently, so it’s kind of nice to hear outright. He lost weight in rehab; he still hasn’t managed to put it all back on. “It’s the chin dimple, right?” he says, thumbing at it. “Not many people have them, I know.”

Mel coughs, not all that discreetly. “Becca, do you want the same thing as usual, or do you want to check the menu?”

Becca decides she wants to peruse the menu for a bit, humming under her breath as she slides her finger down the options.

“You do look… nice,” Mel says quietly, while she’s busy.

Frank smooths a hand down his shirt and grins wryly at her. “Thank you. I scrub up okay, I guess, although I think I’m overdoing it.”

Mel shakes her head. “No, no—it makes it feel like an event. It’s lovely. I wish I were wearing something nicer, too.”

Frank’s about to tell her that she looks just as lovely as usual—which she does, smart and soft and familiar—when Becca pokes her finger at the menu. “I’m thinking…. Pizza,” she says firmly. “Four cheeses.”

“Well, of course,” Mel says, swinging her attention back over. “That’s the—”

“Perfect number of cheeses, I know!” Becca finishes for her, with a fond eye roll. “You always say that, Mel.”

“Well, that’s because the perfect number doesn’t change,” she responds promptly, taking Becca’s menu and offering it to Frank, which seems to also remind Becca of his presence. She leans towards him, excited, zeroing in.

“Do you mind if I ask you some questions?”

Beside her, Mel winces.

Frank leans back in his chair and rolls out his shoulders, preparing. “That depends, do they have right answers? You’re not testing my medical knowledge to check I’m a real doctor, are you, Becca?”

“Are you a real doctor?” she presses.

“I sure hope so, otherwise I paid a lot of money for a few flimsy pieces of paper,” he replies. “But go on—shoot. What are your questions, Becca?”

“I ask everyone new I meet these,” she tells him seriously. “So I can figure out what kind of person they are.”

That sounds vaguely ominous—Frank isn’t sure himself what kind of person he is, these days—but at least Mel’s face has relaxed. She seems to know what’s coming and isn’t asking Becca to stop or trying to distract her. There’s a small smile pulling at the corner of her mouth, which Frank takes as encouragement. He makes a show of limbering himself up for the inquisition, taking a deep breath in and steepling his hands together. “Okay, sure. I’m ready. Throw ‘em at me.”

Becca works methodically through her mental list, launching them quick-fire and showing little emotion either way at his answers. They manage to cover a lot of ground; favorite movie (The Goonies) favorite colour (a glance at Mel, yellow) favorite animal (dogs—which Becca proclaims boring—so he borrows giraffes from Tanner) favorite ice-cream flavor (mint—which does inspire a nose wrinkle, actually, identical to her sister’s, who also makes a face.) And so on.

“Favorite country?”

“Uhm.” Frank’s mind spins. He hasn’t done much travelling outside of the US, if he’s being honest. Canada probably doesn’t count.

“It doesn’t have to be somewhere you’ve been,” Becca amends, seeing him struggle. “I like Morocco. The flag is cool, and I like camels. They drink a lot of mint tea over there, so maybe you’d like it. You should go.”

“Maybe I should,” Frank allows. He should probably start with Europe first. Paris, maybe. Mel’s smiling at him, which is distracting.

By the time their food arrives—Frank allowed Mel to order for him and gets a classic pepperoni, which he wants to immediately inhale—Becca is all questioned out and seems satisfied with his answers, sipping on her Coke, so Frank figures he’s passed whatever test was hidden amongst her examination.

“Thanks, Mel,” he says when the server slides his pizza in front of him. “This looks incredible.”

“You’re welcome. I took a guess,” she says. Hers looks like mushroom and pepper, veggie. “Didn’t want to interrupt your guys’ flow.”

“How was your ceramics class, Becca?” he asks, his turn now. “Mel told me you went to one a while back?”

Becca abandons her pizza to get out pictures to show him the bowl she made—wobbly around the rim, but beautifully, delicately painted in shades of pink and purple, with a scripted B on the side. She wants to make another one for Mel, she tells him, so they can eat their favorite cereal out of them together.

“Would you like one?” she asks him seriously, after he’s zoomed in on her paintwork and oohed and ahhed over it, genuinely and effusively. Next to her, Mel widens her eyes. “What letter should I use?” she continues, frowning, “because Mel calls you Langdon, but you introduced yourself as Frank.”

“You should call me Frank,” he laughs, “and so should your sister.”

Mel shakes her head as if to say no, and goes back to cutting up her pizza into slices instead of picking it up. He can see her smile curling at the corners, as she ducks her head down to hide it.

Frank picks up the bill. He slips away to the restroom and stops by the server’s station on the way back, announcing that he’s got it sorted. Mel gets to her feet slowly while Becca rummages in her backpack for her headphones.

“I can’t let you do that, Langdon,” she says.

“Sure you can,” he replies breezily. “And Becca’s got a point—you can also call me Frank.”

“I can’t let you do that, Frank,” she repeats, with more amusement. As a first attempt, it’s not bad. A touch wooden, but he hopes she’ll warm up to it.

“You can buy me a dozen shitty petrol coffees to make up for it, how’s that?”

“I don’t think that would even it out.”

“Mel, please. Let me get this. Thank you for inviting me.”

He can tell she wants to protest more, but then Becca is ready to go, and she untenses her shoulders and tells him earnestly, “Thank you for coming. I think it went well.”

“Good. I’m glad.”

—

Frank drives them home—because he’s a gentleman, or at least trying to be, though he has to clear the usual kid clutter from the back seat—water bottles, a frisbee—before Becca will agree to climb in.

He knows they usually watch a movie, but as they pull up in front of Mel’s apartment, Becca loudly and firmly announces that she’d like some alone time, please, and then proceeds to unclip herself and leap from the car. Frank would worry he’s upset her somehow, but there’s a definite skip in her step as she scurries up the drive, so he thinks something else might be happening.

In the passenger seat, Mel presses a hand over her eyes and stifles a small laugh, shuddering out of her. “She’s giving you permission to come in,” she explains dryly. “And she’s teasing me about it.”

“Oh,” Frank says. “I mean—I don’t have to. It’s been a long day, I totally get—”

“Frank,” Mel interrupts, “you can come in for coffee if you want.”

As suspected, Mel and Becca’s apartment is immediately soothing as soon as he steps inside. It’s not minimalist and tastefully muted, like Abby insisted on, all of the kids’ mess cleared away for peace of mind. It’s lived-in, but still neat and tidy; a shoe rack by the door, a stack of mail on the kitchen counter, Mel’s keys in a bowl on the side, Becca’s backpack hanging off one of the breakfast island stools. The furniture is basic but comfortable. In the living room, a second-hand couch draped with blankets takes up most of the room, as well as a big patterned rug and a heavily bowing Billy bookcase, filled with DVD boxsets and dozens and dozens of colorful DK Eyewitness and Lonely Planet travel guides.

Becca has already disappeared into her room. Mel goes to check on her and make coffee while Frank settles on the couch, scanning over the eclectic collection of destinations—everywhere from Latvia to Chile & Easter Island.

When Mel steps back in and passes him a mug, she follows the direction of his eyes. “We thrift them,” she says lightly. “The DK ones are her favorites—they come with these great fold-out maps and they don’t skimp on the history and context of places.” She bites her lip, considering the heaving shelves. “I’m gonna have to get a new bookcase soon. I’ve been putting it off.”

“Ah. Hence, the favorite country question,” Frank says.

“Yep. She’ll push you for that again, by the way. Be prepared.”

Mel comes and sits next to him on the couch, feet tucked under her. Frank taps his fingers against his mug. “Does she…mind not going to these places?”

“She minds not being able to do a lot of things,” Mel shrugs, “so I’m sure she does, a little bit, but the travel books are fun for her. Besides, it’s not like everyone else is jetting off to all these places, either. And she knows that, too. She’s not the only one missing out.”

No, Frank thinks, she isn’t.

“Do you have a favorite country, Dr King?”

She grins at him. “Yes, actually. It’s Japan.”

It’s not the answer Frank would have guessed. He loves being surprised by her.

She tells him why—she’s attracted by the tranquillity of the temples and gardens in Kyoto, but she’d like to experience the buzziness of Tokyo, too, for contrast, and explore the mountain villages, and she likes Japanese food a lot—while Frank sips his coffee and listens.

Halfway through, she reaches up and slips the hair elastic out of her braid, sliding it off and raking her fingers through the strands, still talking animatedly. She’s in a hoodie and jeans, blanket over her lap, but still it’s one of the most sensual things he’s ever seen, made more so by the way she’s not giving it a single second thought. Frank stops being able to concentrate on her extremely detailed description of the historical sites around Mount Fuji, and zeroes in on the way she shakes out the kink, careful and methodical, and smooths a section behind her ear afterward.

Her mouth’s moving, but Frank thinks about leaning over, cutting her off mid-sentence, and kissing her instead.

“Maybe one day,” she finishes, winding up with a shrug. Frank hopes he’s been sufficiently good at nodding along and looking like he’s been following, because God knows his head’s been elsewhere. Moving a million miles ahead in a direction he fears he can’t come back from.

He knows a lot of caring, competent women. But he’s never met anyone like Mel.

Finishing his coffee doesn’t help; his throat is horrifically dry. Mel walks him to the door, hesitating a second before she reaches out to squeeze his upper arm. “Really, thank you for coming tonight,” she says. “You were great.”

Frank has to give her a goddamn salute to stop himself from leaning down to kiss her. He speed walks back to his car, feeling her voluntary touch like a tattoo the whole drive home.

—

In the summer, the city gets sticky, and Frank likes to escape up to the roof if he’s feeling particularly hemmed in during a shift. Yes, he thrives on adrenaline and chaos, but the heat thins everyone’s patience, even his own. Besides, the skyline looks pretty in the haze. Frank’s working on a cigarette, trying to lose his train of thought beyond the horizon, when the fire escape door bangs open and brings him back down to earth.

“You’re not gonna jump, are you?” Dana says, coming up behind him. “What is it with you men and getting moody up here?”

Frank flinches and steps back. “I’m not going to jump,” he tells her firmly. “But thanks for showing concern.”

Dana hums, reaching into her pocket to pull out a pack of cigarettes and shake one out. She wedges it into her mouth and motions for Frank’s lighter, which he huffs and passes over. Once she’s lit up, she exhales a breath of smoke and looks in his direction.

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

“Talk about what?” he sighs.

He and Robby worked together earlier to save a couple caught up in a car collision—punctured lungs, crushed abdomen, internal bleeding—and he thought they handled it fine—perfectly, even. Both patients made it through. It was almost like old times. But apparently not, if Dana wants to discuss it.

“The post-divorce crush you’re working up on your mentee,” Dana says, after another exhale—rasing her eyebrows when Frank nearly cricks his neck turning to look at her. “What?” she huffs. “You gonna tell me I’m wrong?”

Frank stays silent. His therapist—the one he sees for compulsory fortnightly sessions—has encouraged him not to fall back on lies.

Dana whistles. “Hoo boy. Alright. So, it’s serious, huh? We weren’t sure.”

Frank scrubs the hand not holding his cigarette over his eyes, pressing his fingers into the socket. “I don’t—what gave me away? And who’s ‘we’?” he demands.

“Collins and Robby mostly. Santos, too. Me. Everyone who ever sees the two of you together, basically.” When Frank flinches again, she shrugs. “Langdon, you look at her like she hung the moon and the goddman stars. You’re up here brooding because she’s not on shift with you today. And there’s your lunch dates. And the fact that you swung for the fences for her with Robby that one time, of course—although I did tell him he went about that all fucking wrong. You put the two of you together, and you’re in your own little world. You can’t hide it, kid. It shines out of ya.”

It’s as if by saying it loud, Dana’s opened up a wellspring inside of him. It rises up and nearly overwhelms him; makes him choke on his next swallow. “She’s a really good person, Dana,” he croaks.

Burning cigarette angled away, Dana touches his arm. “She's the best of us, it’s true. She could be good for you,” she says gently.

Frank lets out a broken little hiccup. “Yeah, I'm sure she's just waiting for the chance to shack up with the drug-addicted, divorcé. She’s Mel.”

“Well, not if you use the phrase ‘shack up,” Dana replies dryly. “But that’s also not who you are anymore.” She huffs, a frustrated noise. “I’m sorry—I’ve been trying to give you space, since you came back. I wanted you to handle stuff on your own terms. I don’t think it’s been working, has it, kid? I didn’t want to poke you, but I feel bad about how I acted. It was just such a fucking hard day, y’know?”

“Dana, come on…” he starts, ready to argue.

“No, no,” she says, waving his words away, like cigarette smoke. “Let’s not, okay? Back to Mel, alright—I think you could be really good for her too, you know? Someone for her to lean on. Hell, you already are. And I don’t think she cares—about what happened before.”

‘Yeah?” he asks weakly.

“Yeah,” Dana repeats, before dropping her cigarette and grinding it out. “Jesus Christ. Why is my ER always worse than a damn soap opera? Come on, let’s get back down there.”

Frank takes a deep breath and follows her.

—

In his next NA meeting, when he gets asked if he’d like to contribute, instead of letting them skip over him in the circle, Frank fiddles with Juniper’s bracelet around his wrist and finds himself opening his mouth.

“I’m trying to navigate….maybe a new relationship,” he says. “Well, I hope it’s a new relationship.” He has to focus on a poster-tack mark on the peeling wall to keep talking. “It’s hard—to fight the labels I’ve given myself. That other people see me as. I have no idea what I’m fucking doing, but I keep telling myself, it’s okay to take it slow. To feel everything, even if it’s difficult, I guess.”

He gets a few nods and murmurs of approval and agreement, and the group lead thanks him for his contribution, and that’s it. Frank thinks he should get extra probation points for actually talking. He doesn’t, but he feels better anyway.

—

The kicker comes when he has to ask Abby whether Mel can meet the kids.

He FaceTimes her because, in many ways, he’s still a coward, and he can’t face doing it in person. He wants to take Tanner and Juniper to the movies on Thursday night with Mel, while Becca’s with a friend, but it’s not his day, and he knows that Abby at least deserves to know who he’s introducing their children to.

Abby answers the call from their old bedroom. The bed still has sheets he recognizes on them, which throws him for the first few seconds of the call. If she thinks it’s weird, she doesn’t move to a more neutral location, so Frank does his best to ignore it. He explains his request, says Mel’s name; watches Abby’s reaction filter across her face, muscles tensing and releasing, the slight thinning of her mouth.

“Jessica said she saw you two together—God, weeks ago now, at that coffee shop,” she tells him.

“Yeah, I thought she might,” Frank says. “Was she awful about it?”

Abby snorts. “Treated it like the most salacious piece of gossip she’d ever had the delight of being able to share. Absolutely couldn’t wait to tell me about it.”

“She’s kind of the worst, Abs.”

“Yeah. I know. But I don’t really know what to do about it. Cut her off, probably.” Frank shrugs, like yeah, probably, and Abby huffs out a sigh. “So, what is she, then—so I can go back and tell Jessica the truth—a rebound?”

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath in. “No,” he says calmly. “She’s a friend.”

Abby keeps looking at the camera. “A friend you want to introduce very purposefully to our children,” she says pointedly. “A friend who visited you in rehab. A friend you work with. A friend you spend your days off with.”

Frank stays quiet.

“Jessica described her as ‘very sensible looking’ by the way.”

He frowns—hard. Fuck Jessica. “Christ—you wanna invite her on this call, too?”

“So, you do find her attractive, then?” Abby says, testing.

It’s such a familiar pattern—the long-baked habit of winding each other up. He has to count to five in his head before he speaks. “You don’t think that’s an immature question to be asking, Abs?”

She shrugs. “I’m just trying to work out what changed. Apart from everything, of course.”

“Mel’s good with children. I trust her. That’s really all you need to know.”

Abby scans her eyes across his face, a long pause while she finds what she’s looking for. “Fuck,” she says quietly, “alright, that’s enough.” The screen disappears, abruptly switching to audio only. Frank blinks in surprise. “Just bring them home by—”

“Eight thirty,” he finishes. “Yeah, I know.”

“Good,” Abby says. “Have fun. You can tell her hi from me, if you like.”

Her voice sounds further away, over the call. Frank tells her he’ll think about it and hangs up.

On Thursday, they watch the live-action How To Train Your Dragon, even though he’s never seen the cartoon, because it’s basically the only kids' movie that’s showing, and Tanner confirms that, yes, he and Juniper have at least seen the original. Mel arrives at the cinema looking flushed from the walk over, a pinkness that doesn’t fade when she spots them all in the foyer, waiting for her. Frank beams at her and demands to buy her popcorn until she backs down.

Juniper loves her, but Juniper is very free with her affection—a trait he desperately wants to protect, no matter how much it scares him. She clings on to Mel’s hand while they’re waiting in line and insists on sitting next to her, propped up in one of the cinema’s booster seats. Tanner is more reserved. He never used to be, and it worries him, but when he says so to Mel, she smiles and tells him, “Kids move at their own pace, Frank. It’s fine,”—and Frank knows she means it’s fine as in here and now, in the line for popcorn, and also that she believes Tanner is going to be okay, in the long run. And it helps.

She eventually gets Tanner to smile by offering to share her sweet popcorn when he decides he doesn’t like his salty bucket, anyway. Frank doesn’t remember a fucking word of the movie, just the feeling of Mel’s arm brushing against his all the way through, awareness like a vice.

Afterward, he drives her home, but he drops the kids off first. It’s fucking odd, pulling up to his old house with Mel in the front beside him. He sees her watching out the window at the very nice but normal exterior as he gathers the kids’ things out of the back. Juniper waves enthusiastically, and even Tanner mumbles out a goodbye, both of which she returns very seriously.

He walks the kids up the drive, Juniper on his hip, Tanner a few steps ahead. Abby meets him at the door rather than making him come inside, peering around his shoulder to get a look at his parked car, with Mel waiting patiently in the front seat. He hands the kids off and passes over their stuff, bending down to get his hugs in and hold on to his children’s tiny hands—the usual routine. When he straightens up, Abby flits her gaze away from where she’s been staring.

“Jessica is going to have a fucking field day with this,” she sighs.

“You need to get better friends, Abby,” he tells her.

And then he walks back, slipping into the driver’s seat, reaching over to tap Mel on the knee to let her know it’s safe to look around, since she’s probably been staring determinedly ahead for the past seven minutes while he’s been gone.

“You good, sweetheart?”

It slips out. Mel blinks at him, a quick fluttering of her sandy eyelashes. “I’m good,” she says. “Can we go home now?”

So Frank drives her home.

—

Genevieve—frequently the most impulsive of the two Langdon siblings, which is saying something—probably about their fairly strict upbringing and its repercussions on their characters—pitches up at his apartment late one weekday evening, all entirely without sending him a text beforehand.

He opens the door to her at around 11 pm, already in his pajamas, a medical journal in his hand, the reading glasses he tries to hide his prescription for pushed up into his hair. “Jesus Christ, Gen." He'd been prepared for it to be someone else entirely; a split-second before he remembered Mel had never visited his apartment, possibly didn't even know the exact address. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

He’d sent his sister his new address when he moved, but figured she’d use it for a Christmas card, maybe. She’s got a small rolling suitcase with her, and she grins when she sees him.

“Oh, good, you’re not working! Woulda hated to have to shell out for a hotel. I’ve got a conference in town—‘Post Postcolonialism: Localities and Transformations.’ I’m delivering my paper on dystopic othering in Angela Carter,” she says breezily, as if any of that means anything to him at all.

He lets her push past him, noting the way she pulls a face at his meagre decor. “So this is your sad sack new place, huh?”

“Five stars on TripAdvisor,” he tells her dryly. “So fuck off, maybe.”

She turns round to grin at him. “Oh yeah? Who’s been staying over recently to do the reviewing? Wait—put a pin in that—I wanna talk about it later, but I wanna be drinking a beer while I do it.”

Frank tosses Mel’s journal onto the coffee table, defeated. “You could have texted.”

“I wasn’t sure what time my flight got in, or whether you’d be working. It was easier to turn up,” she shrugs. “Hey, have you seen Mum and Dad recently? I’m debating whether it’s worth swinging by while I’m here.”

“No, I haven’t,” he says. “But by all means, if you wanna take one for the team, go ahead.”

His parents’ problems with Genevieve stem mostly from her decision to get a nose piercing at fifteen and her decision to get a girlfriend at twenty-one. They treat these as equal betrayals, and Frank, honestly, doesn’t know if it makes it worse or better.

“Ugh. That means I should call in. But you owe me for next time, alright?”

“Yeah, alright,” he sighs, heading to the fridge, sliding out two cans of Diet Coke. Frank’s not banned from alcohol, but it feels like tempting fate, so he doesn’t drink much anymore.

He passes one over, stepping round where Genevieve’s abandoned her rolling suitcase by the end of the couch, and collapsed back onto it. “Sorry,” he says. “No beer.”

Genevieve’s face shifts, her customary delight at annoying him falling away for a second. “Coke’s fine,” she says, cracking the tab. “Though you coulda had full fat. Ugh.”

Frank ignores her and slumps down next to her on the couch.

“So how’s that going, anyway,” she says, “being a recovering drug addict?”

Gen at least has never walked on eggshells around him. “Sucks,” he says. “Zero out of ten, don’t recommend.”

“How are things with Abby?”

Frank can’t help the snort he lets out. “Yeah, it’s…complicated.”

“Oh, fuck. Please don’t tell me she’s the one who’s been round here leaving reviews, as it were. You know I said that I thought the separation was a good thing. A clean break, you said, Frank, remember?” His sister’s stare is incredibly off-putting.

“No–no–God, stop looking at me like that! That’s not—and for your information no-one’s been fucking leaving me trip reviews. I was joking. And Abby’s being off with me, because I’ve…”

He pauses. Gen reaches out to poke at his thigh when he doesn’t continue, dark eyebrows disappearing into her messy bangs. “You’ve…? Fucking hell, Frank. You’ve not—You haven’t—?”

Frank groans and sets down his can. “No!” He knows this is going to sound ridiculous. “I’ve got a…friend. And Abby doesn’t know how to feel about it, I think. She’s clearly sorting through her shit. Which is—fine. But things are awkward. I mean, they were before, but now they’re worse.”

Gen stares at him, a grin beginning to take over her features, making the dimple in her cheek deepen. “Don’t get lesbian on me, Frank,” she says dryly. “A friend or a friend?”

Mortifyingly, Frank feels himself blushing. He picks his Coke back up and holds the cool can to his cheek. “Well, that’s complicated too, I guess,” he says.

“Oh my God,” his sister snorts—laughing at him, and the pained look on his face. “You’re worse than me. Go on—spill, please. Tell me about her.”

So Frank does. He tells her about Mel, and her calm practicality, and her courage and her optimism, and her quiet determination to see the best in everyone, even him. He recounts how, back on that day in September, he thought he’d finally found a mentee that might listen and look up to him, only to quickly realize that he was the one doing the learning—is still learning, for and from her, how to be a better person, maybe. That she was the silver lining of that nightmare day. He tells her that Mel’s visit in rehab was the one thing that cut through the sick haze of withdrawal, and he tells Gen about Becca and how tired Mel is, but how she never admits it, and he tells Gen how much he likes making her smile, and how well they work together, and how much he’d really, really like to take Mel to Japan, because she deserves it—but even if that never happens, first he ought to maybe kiss her and see how she feels about him.

Gen stops laughing pretty quickly. By the end of it, her mouth is hanging open. She probably, Frank notes, looks a lot like him. “Fucking hell, Frank,” she says. “If you don’t marry her, I will, and I’ve never met the woman.”

“Fuck off,” Frank says weakly, tipping his half-finished can of coke down his parched throat. He was talking for longer than he realized.

“You have to tell her how you feel,” Gen pushes.

“I don’t know how I feel,” he tries to protest, snapping the ring pull off the can now that he’s drunk it and flipping it over his knuckles. Gen reaches out to shove his shoulder, sending it pinging to the floor.

“Yes, you fucking do. Don’t give me that. You’re in love with her. Obviously.”

Obviously.

—

Frank thinks he might have gone on like that, knowing the obviously, and not doing anything about it, flaking out every time he considers it, if it weren’t for what happens on the roof.

They get a patient rushed in—a drowning, a guy who apparently took a swan dive off Hertford Bridge during his fucking lunch break—mid twenties, younger than Frank—with a distraught pregnant wife as his emergency contact, who found a note when she came home from her morning shift. Bystanders say he visibly regretted it halfway down, but by the time he hit the water, it didn’t matter, and the current got him. The EMTs were fast on the scene, but they think he was under a while.

It’s him and Robby, because of course it fucking is. They intubate him, and they get his temperature back up, and it’s a goddamn fucking miracle he’s alive, but the CT scans are showing signs of cerebral edema after hypoxia, damaged cognitive function, so now Robby’s taking the guy up to the ICU and Frank’s here, white knuckling the railing on the roof, trying to judge if he can vomit off the side of the building or not; trying to stop the numbness in his fingers from spreading; trying to catch a breath and hold it, and fucking calm down. He can’t.

The fire door clangs open. He knows it’s her without turning around.

“Frank? Are you okay? Dana came and found me and asked me to check on you—I heard about your patient, I—”

Frank turns around. Mel’s walking towards him, face contorted with concern. The panic roaring inside of him reaches a powerful crest and then recedes so quickly his knees nearly buckle. He reaches out for her, wordless, but his desperation must be rolling off him, because Mel lets out a murmur of alarm and steps into his arms without hesitating. He gathers her in, wrapping his arms around her, slotting her head under his chin. She goes very, very still—almost pliant. Frank understands that she’s letting him hold her like this. He concentrates on the feel of her warm body pressed against his; on the faint scent of her apple shampoo hidden under the harsh, generic hospital smell that clings to all of them. He matches his breathing to hers, in and out, and buries his nose in her hair, until his fingers stop tingling and his heart rate has settled to something more normal.

When he loosens his arms, Mel rocks back, but keeps closer than she usually does. “Frank,” she says, very quietly, “you’re scaring me.”

“Is the patient—?”

Mel shakes her head, minuscule. “He’s the same.”

Frank drags a hand over his face. “Sorry. I don’t mean to scare you. I scared myself. I—I can’t really deal with drownings any more. Especially a case like that.”

Mel sucks in the tiniest, sharpest of breaths. “Frank…”

He sighs. “It was after the Pittfest shooting—after Robby found out everything that happened and walked away—I nearly did something stupid,” he says, looking at her, concentrating on the sweet furrow between her eyebrows. “It was Hertford Bridge, too. I guess it’s the pedestrian access. I didn’t—but I thought about it. I was scared and I was fucking panicking, because Robby didn’t tell me what was going to happen to me, and I was fucking in denial about everything, and I thought about it, for a minute.”

Very carefully, Mel reaches out to touch the back of his hand. “Do you still feel like you did then?”

“No,” Frank says—greedy enough to turn his fingers and thread them through hers. “No. Maybe I did, in the clinic, at first. But not since. I’ve gotten better. I would have regretted it, like he did, as soon as I hit the water.” He smiles, an awful, sour twist. “I’m a shitty swimmer. Good job I remembered.”

Mel doesn’t laugh. She steps into his space again, but this time she’s the one who slips her arms around his sides and pulls him in. Frank exhales and rests his cheek against the top of her head, so, so grateful that he’s still here, able to hold her like this, to feel the vibrations when she talks, low and soft and slightly raspy. “I’m really glad you didn’t,” she says. “We are so lucky to have you, Frank. I’m so lucky to have you.”

He takes another five. Mel leads him back down the stairs, and she fields him all her easy-fix kid patients for the rest of the day, until he feels like a good doctor again—and then he drives her to pick up Becca and she invites him back to their apartment, and they watch a movie on the couch, the three of them together, until he also—finally—feels like a normal person.

—

“You have to close your eyes!” Becca says. “Frank! No peeking!”

Frank obediently screws up his eyes and presses his palms up tight to his face. He’d barely been able to get through Mel’s front door this morning before Becca waylaid him and dragged him to the kitchen, and started acting mysterious. “Can you see? How many fingers am I holding up, Frank?”

“Five,” he guesses. “Four if you don’t count your thumb.”

He hears Becca gasp dramatically. “How did he know!” she hisses to Mel, who he’s not yet been able to say hello to yet, but can feel hovering out of reach, to his left, leaning against the kitchen doorframe. “Is he lying?”

“No, Frank wouldn’t lie to you,” Mel says, stifling a laugh, tone dry. “Unfortunately, he’s just very good at guessing.” The sound of her voice makes him want to open his eyes and drink her in, but he keeps them shut tight, for Becca.

“One of my best talents,” he agrees. “But I promise I can’t see anything, honey. I’m being good.”

There’s a shuffling noise, the rustle of something—tissue paper, maybe—Mel saying “careful!”—and then Becca giggles delightedly.

“Okay, okay, you can open them.”

Slowly, blinking against the light, Frank retracts his palms from over his eyes. Becca’s standing in front of him, holding a small bowl in her hands, wobbly and misshapen. It’s painted in neat stripes of varying shades of blue and green, and there’s an unmistakably bold F on the side she’s presenting to him, cradled like it’s some kind of talisman. Which it is.

Frank feels the breath in his throat catch.

“Beccs,” he says. “Is that—is that for me?”

“Duh! Now we match, see?” She points to her and Mel’s bowls, both upside down in the drying rack. “That means you have to start eating breakfast with us, though, because it’s a cereal bowl, okay! Do you like it?”

He takes it from her gingerly, picking it up like it’s delicate. “Becca, I love it, I—” he starts, and then genuinely can’t finish that sentence, because he feels like his throat closes up.

Mel comes to his rescue. “I think Frank’s saying thank you, Becca,” she says. Frank’s eyes flick back over to her. She’s watching them both, smiling; the softest expression he’s ever seen her wear.

“Okay, well, you’re welcome! It was super fun and I’m very good at it,” Becca says brightly. “Everyone in the class agrees I’m the neatest painter, and that’s my best work.”

Gift satisfactorily bestowed, she retreats to her room to listen to music on her headphones, and Frank and Mel are left alone in the kitchen.

“As you can see, she’s very humble,” Mel says, laughing. “She’s not exactly wrong, though. She is the best in the class. She really loves it. And she really likes you, Frank.”

The sunlight is streaming in through the window, pouring over where Mel’s standing in the doorway. The memory of another, older version of her—Mel, at the clinic, turning back to talk to him—superimposes itself over this one, and for a brief hallucinatory second, Frank can’t gather his thoughts enough to speak.

Does she know that she’s saved him—once, twice, three times over? More than that? In the clinic, on the roof, every time between?

“Mel,” he says. “Mel, I have to tell you something.”

She looks alarmed. Frank wishes he could skip this bit, but it’s important, so he can’t; he just has to make it through.

“Are you okay? Is it—?” She steps closer, faltering.

He makes a wounded noise at her hesitation. “Can you let me know if you’d like to kiss me?”

Mel gives him a stunned look. Frank wonders if this was a terrible, awful idea.

“Can I ‘let you know’?” she repeats.

“Yes,” he answers wretchedly. “Because you’re very important to me, and everyone says I’m in love with you, and well—I think they’re probably right, because people are generally pretty good at pointing out when I’m trying to kid myself. I mean, they’re definitely right, and I haven’t been kidding myself for a while, actually. So yeah—I love you, and I’d like to take you to Japan, but I think we both know that’s going to be pretty difficult, so I thought I should at least kiss you first, if you’d—be open to that.”

For a moment, Mel stares at him. Frank calculates the possibility of making it past her to leg it out of the door, before she starts to gently turn him down.

“Frank.”

His stomach clenches. “Yes?”

“Yes, I’d like you to kiss me. I have done for months. I’m sorry, I’m just—surprised—”

And Frank laughs, because, no, she’s the surprising one, and God, he thought he’d been obvious, or maybe he hadn't, but the relief that washes over him is so acute he can’t help it. His laughter becomes trapped in his throat, transforms into a whine, and then Mel’s stepping towards him and he’s gathering her in. He slides his fingers under her chin and tilts her face up and kisses her, feeling the imprint of her glasses, sliding his mouth over hers. Mel kisses with precision and determination, which he really should have expected, and Frank loses himself in her, guiding them back against the doorframe, his other hand on her hip to keep them steady, gasping as he breaks away.

“It’s eleven in the morning,” she breathes, sounding stunned.

“Is it?” Frank says, kissing over her cheeks now, her jaw, burying himself in the juncture of her neck, and inhaling the sweet musky scent of her. He couldn’t care less what time it is.

“Frank,” she says, reaching up to fist a hand in his hair, yanking gently to get his attention—and oh, fuck, that’s something else entirely— “Frank, we can’t stand in my kitchen and makeout like teenagers.”

“Are you sure?” he whines, nosing at the place behind her ear where her hair’s swept back.

“Not that I—” and it’s satisfying, to hear her voice so thready— “did much making out when I was a teenager, actually,” she says. Frank groans, heat flaring, and moves back to her mouth to kiss her properly, swallowing her stifled gasp.

“Frank!” Eventually, she manages to weave out of his way, pushing him gently off her. “We can’t—I have Becca today.”

Manfully, Frank nods. “Sorry, sorry. You’re right. I’ll stop.”

He’s managed to muss her braid, flyaways bursting out. She’s frowning, lips bitten pink. Frank thinks it might be the most erotic thing he’s seen in his life.

“Okay, I have an idea,” she says carefully. “What if I can get us time this evening?”

The suggestion makes Frank’s pulse spike. “Can you?”

Mel calls in a favor. He can tell she feels guilty about it, chewing on her thumbnail as she dials the facility’s number, avoiding his eye contact while the call gets put through, and as she asks the woman on the other end of the line—Beverley—if they might have space to take Becca tonight, a one-off. Her cheeks flush pink, determinedly looking away from Frank’s direction. “I—uhm—have a date,” she says. “With—yes. Him.”

Even Frank can hear the hooting and the hollering in response, and the call’s not on speaker. Mel’s cheeks deepen another shade of pink.

“They said yes,” Mel says needlessly when she hangs up, face still bright red.

Frank grins, swooping back in to kiss her.

—

Becca is more than happy at the prospect of a surprise day at the center, enthusiastically talking about the opportunity to see one of her friends, when Mel tentatively brings up the suggestion over lunch. It helps wipe some of the guilt from Mel’s face, but if Frank didn’t know better, he’d think the little looks Becca keeps shooting over her grilled cheese toastie mean Becca knows exactly what’s really going on.

Frank chooses not to get involved.

The fact that Becca comes skipping out of her room with her overnight bag prepped and ready, without it being part of the deal, means Frank has to turn to the wall to hide his grin. He may have found his strongest ally.

They drop Becca off at the center. Frank stays in the car because he senses going in with Mel might result in her spontaneous combustion from embarrassment. She’s flushed when she slides back into the passenger seat.

“Becca okay?” he asks.

“Oh, she’s already having a great time,” Mel answers dryly. “Beverley wants me to tell you she’s very pleased to help, by the way.”

Frank laughs and starts the engine.

The air in the cab, still on the edge of icy thanks to his busted AC, feels anything but on the drive home. When they get stopped at a light, Frank lets his hand slip off the steering wheel and places it, carefully, over Mel’s thigh where she’s got it pressed against the console. “Is this okay?” he asks.

“Yes,” she responds, looking straight ahead. The shaky inhale when Frank gives her thigh a light squeeze sends sparks dancing up his spine.

Truthfully, Frank has every intention of making it into a real date, of taking Mel out to eat, even if it’s to a restaurant she’s already been to a dozen times, but once they get back to Mel’s house after dropping Becca off, the tacit agreement they’ve had in place to keep themselves in check falls apart as soon as they step through the door.

Frank manages to trip over the shoe rack in his haste to get inside, arms windmilling. Mel, with her usual lightning reflexes, snags a fist in his shirt to stop him from keeling over, and then they’re kissing up against the wall, Frank’s hands anchored on her hips, though he still feels like he’s freewheeling through the air.

He’s never seen Mel like this—a wildness in her eyes when she pulls away. It’s all the determination he’s used to, pushed into overdrive, trained on him, and it leaves him breathless. “Baby,” he says, “I don’t—I don’t want to rush you. We can slow—”

Mel’s expression tenses. Her hands slip off his shoulders and fall to the hem of her shirt, which she strips perfunctorily off; a sure, smooth movement, letting the cotton dangle before dropping it to the floor. She looks vaguely embarrassed by the way he gapes at her afterward, pushing back her shoulders. Her bra is a pale yellow color, the scraps of lace around the edge a light concession to impracticality. His body is on fire. “I made up my mind weeks ago that if I had the chance to do this, I would,” she says, biting her lip.

“Mel. Baby.”

Frank will never, ever stop being surprised by her. He never wants to.

—

Mel’s bedroom is sparser than he thought it might be. He’s not been in here before, respecting her space, but it’s as if most of the color and comfort of their home is concentrated in hers and Becca’s communal spaces. “I don’t have cause to spend much time in here,” she shrugged, by way of explanation, when Frank half-carried her through the door, after she told him off for straining his back.

There are a few photos on her night stand, mostly of Becca, alongside one of her pulpy paperbacks, more tabbed medical journals, and a slim dresser and a chair in the corner, piled with fresh pairs of scrubs she hasn’t yet put away. Frank lies back in her plain sheets and lets his hand drift over her shoulder, where she’s curled against his chest, tangling his fingers in her loose hair. He hasn’t felt this at peace since—since he doesn’t know when, actually.

Mel tips up her head, watching his face. Without her glasses, he can see the expressions flit through her eyes more clearly, but this one he can’t name.

“Sometimes…I don’t think you’re real,” she whispers. She lifts a hand, running her finger along his jaw, over the shadow of his stubble, up to his cheekbone. Frank keeps himself very still under her explorative touch. “I’ve been told before that I have a very overactive imagination. When I was a child, it was a problem. I’d get very distracted in school. It didn’t matter because I knew the answers, but it was probably very rude.”

Frank chuckles. “Of course you knew the answers,” he says. “Smart girl.” He reaches up for her wrist, gently guiding her hand back down, until he can bite playfully at the ends of her fingertips. “That feel real to you?”

She giggles. “Sometimes dreams can be very realistic. Imagined sensation can be very convincing.”

Frank pulls her more firmly on top of him. “Mel. This is real. I promise.”

She’d gotten re-dressed afterward, but they stayed in bed, talking. He checks with her before slipping his hand between them again, under the hem of her sleep shorts.

He doesn’t say I need this to be real. If it isn’t, I don’t know what I’ll do. But maybe she can tell, anyway.

When Mel cries, coming back down, Frank thumbs away her tears. “Jesus, Mel. You’re not supposed to react like that. Are you okay? Too much? Do you want me to give you some space?”

“Sorry,” she sniffs, rolling off him until they’re not touching, throwing an arm over her eyes. “You’re fine, I’m—it’s just a lot. Please—I’d like you to stay.”

“Okay. Of course,” he says, relieved. He doesn’t roll closer—lets her recalibrate her breathing. Eventually, she lifts her arm away and turns her head to look at him.

“Tomorrow, can we take Becca for breakfast before our shift?”

“Sure,” Frank says, “yeah, sounds good. Is she gonna make us go to Dunkin again? I mean, I’m okay if she does, it's better than the cafeteria coffee, but—” he can’t help wrinkling his nose. “It's still not…”

Mel hiccups out a slight laugh. “I know.”

Frank watches the shallow rise and fall of her stomach, the wrinkled shirt pooling across her curves. “Do you—would you like to come to the aquarium, both of you, with me and the kids, on our next day off?”

Mel makes a guttural, choked-off sound and bursts into tears.

“Mel.” He reaches over and touches the crook of her elbow, where her arm’s still thrown out at an angle. “What can I do? Darling, please.”

Mel cries harder. Frank’s respect for her space loses out to his need to do something to help, and he pulls her back into his arms. Mel sniffles against his chest.

“Are you not a fan of aquariums? Is that it?” he asks, once he’s assured himself Mel’s calmed down, safe to attempt a very feeble joke. “Juniper’s obsessed with them.”

Mel’s smile is watery, but it’s there. “No, I do. Becca does too. She likes the Finding Nemo fish.” She pauses, blinking away the last of her tears. “Sorry—I got overwhelmed. I never thought to expect any of this. Not really.”

“Neither did I,” Frank replies, smoothing a hand over her hair. “It’s good, though, right? I like being surprised, when it’s you.”

—

The ER is slammed. Frank’s been pulled from one case to the next since the second he walked in the door. He’s snatching the chance for a breather, standing over a sleeping patient, checking their chart, when the curtain snaps back and Santos steps through.

Frank’s lost the urge to recoil when he sees her now, but he does raise an eyebrow, which Santos ignores.

“So, I see you’ve extracted your head from out your ass,” she says flatly.

Frank lowers the iPad he’s holding. “Huh?”

As far as he’s aware, the relationship between him and Santos has been on the same mildly antagonistic level for weeks now. He gets the impression she’s watching him, more than she does anyone else, but she hasn’t made any more comments, or cornered him again—until now, that is.

“Quick bit of advice—kissing in the car before you walk in a minute after each other isn’t the kind of subtle you think it is.” She tosses him a grin. “And honestly, I wouldn’t bother—everyone’s had stakes in this for months. I flagged it first, though.”

She looks smug. Frank’s keenly aware he’s taking way too much time on the sleeping patient in front of him, whose vitals are fine. And that they shouldn’t be having this conversation in front of them.

“Stakes?”

“It’s mostly the nurses. Robby tried to shut it down, actually. I think everyone else realizes this is, like…deeply personal, or whatever. But I did call it.”

“Santos, stop talking.”

She throws up her hands. “We’re rooting for you kids! I mean, at first I thought you were Mel’s charity case, so I wasn’t sure, but now I guess it’s the real deal, huh.”

Frank turns sharply towards her. “Trinity—please leave before I throttle you.”

She scoffs. “I’m saying I’m happy for you, dude. Jeez. Thought I’d let you know. And also tell you to drop the secrecy act. You’re not gonna fool anybody. It’s kinda nice to see.”

He points towards the curtain, taking a deep breath in. “You’re giving me whiplash, Santos.”

“You should tell Robby—like, officially. Maybe he’ll stop looking like the world’s saddest basset hound if he knows he didn’t totally ruin your life—you never know.”

“Out,” Frank repeats, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Santos rolls her eyes, backing away with her hands still up, and goes.

—

He finds Mel in the break room hours later, refilling her water bottle. She smiles when he comes in through the door, holding up her palm before he gets a chance to launch into what he’s about to say.

“I know, I know—Javadi told me congratulations, while I was helping her sew up a severed finger,” she says wryly. “I guess we weren’t very good at keeping it on the downlow.”

“I guess we weren’t,” he huffs. “How’d you feel?”

She shrugs, setting her water bottle down and stepping closer to brush a kiss to the underside of his jaw. “I feel okay about it. Do you?”

Frank glides a hand over her side, enough touch to make him settle. “Yeah,” he says. “I feel okay.”