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Losing children always ran water through the emergency department.
It was hard not to get caught up in it or swept away, needing to strap the feeling down a thousand ways so it wouldn't affect them. Not everybody was good at it, not everybody wanted to be good at it. Most folks preferred to stand, let their shoes soak for a little while just to remind themselves of the cold before moving on. A couple struggled to wade through the waves, feet dragging in the current.
A handful, mostly those with kids themselves, barely managed not to drown.
Some did.
Robby pulled his hands from his pockets, walking up to Central just to put his elbow up on the desk. "Have you seen Langdon anywhere? I want him to get on discharging his kitchen accident guy."
Dana glanced up at him, then off to the room where the man with poor knife skills resided. "No, but he might be taking a moment. You know how he gets after those trauma cases, he looked pretty shaken."
Langdon had always been one of those that just managed to tread, whenever a child died in their hospital. Some pulled responses worse than others, and while he'd never seen Langdon struggle to give care or be objective, the aftermath always seemed to grab him the way kelp wrapped around your ankle.
Dana wasn't wrong. Langdon had gone a different color when the little girl was brought in, two parents travelling behind in carefully released tears. Heart failure at nine years old. He'd done a good job, stayed with her, talked to the parents, but realistically, palliative care for a child needed to be done in a ward, not in their ER.
Langdon's knuckles had been white where they held on the pen used to sign the death certificate, and then he ghosted the department floor entirely. Of course he did.
"We need him back out here." Robby glanced around to try and spot him again, frowning some when the resident was nowhere to be found. He wasn't usually gone for this long, a couple minutes to collect himself and a couple more where he was visibly worn, but other than that, Langdon was good at compartmentalizing. The way he was supposed to be.
Dana shrugged, gesturing a hand to the stairwell doors. "You know where to find him."
The idea of being the one to go pull him inside sounded a bit hellish. Regardless, Robby sent her a tight smile, and she gave a knowing one back. He could feel her eyes burn into him as he walked off to go fetch Langdon back to the realm of the living.
Glancing down the stairwell, he didn't see Langdon on the next landing or on the steps. Looking heavenward, he wasn't there either. Not in the window, not pacing. Now that he was listening a little harder, he couldn't even hear the sound of him on the phone.
Weird. It made a couple little beeps ring out from the center of his brain, a smoke alarm looking for fire, pushing back into the ER to see if maybe they'd just missed him. People can blend and bleed together in this department, it didn't necessarily mean something was wrong. All it meant was someone was forgotten.
Robby did his needed rounds. Checked rooms as subtly as he could, got pulled into a case consultation by Mel and ended up asking her if she knew where Langdon was. The only thing she had to offer was that she'd seen him head for the stairs, and a question if he was alright. That he looked colorless in a way he nearly never was.
All that did was make the detector he could've sworn he took the batteries from protest a little louder. Either Langdon had come back inside and no one saw him, then he decided not to visit any of his patients, Dana, or come out of any rooms since Robby had started looking, or he had gone further than the stairs.
Gone up or down. Ascension or be damned.
Robby took the steps two at a time, frustrated with how slow the elevator was.
The sun was setting. Checking his watch, that made sense. The Pittsburgh landscape was one he always loved. Big buildings that let you feel lost, streets that didn't quite shut up. Close by were mountains that you could pretend to like nature in, and enough places to visit it always felt to the left of whatever home you came from.
Robby took a deep breath, fresh air for the first time in too long. He scanned the skyline, along the rails, and finally spotted Langdon on the opposite side of the roof.
He had his head tilted down, hips back against the railing, phone in hand. The screen was on, casting colors up to contrast the shadows clouding his face. They shifted with each swipe, thumb moving across, changing whatever it was he was staring at.
Notably, Langdon wasn't on the phone, which was his usual MO after these sorts of things. Call Abby, talk to Tanner, sometimes Penny now that she was more understandable, and be back inside in a few.
Noticing it only as he walked closer, it looked..
It looked like Langdon had been crying. Two half dry lines down his cheeks, hair mussed from where Robby'd guess he'd run his hand through it.
What the fuck?
"Langdon." It wasn't an ask, more a statement. An acknowledgement that he'd been found.
The man in question's head didn't so much of snap up as it was ratcheted, clicking into place at being seen. "Robby. Fuck, um."
His hand shifted around the phone, an aborted motion to put it away, thumb over the power button. Like somehow he couldn't quite get himself to shut it off.
"You've been gone a while, your patients are getting antsy." It wasn't fully true, he knew Langdon never stepped out without grabbing coverage, but the lie was easy. He just wanted him back inside.
"Right." Langdon agreed, eyes flicking down to whatever seemed to draw his gaze like a magnet. "Yeah, I'll um, I'll be back soon."
"No, back inside now."
"Robby-"
"Langdon. We can't have you sulking up here, your patients need you."
Robby didn't have time to deal with Langdon's emotional instability right now. Not over something like this. It sucked, it did, but move on.
He was closer now, standing across from the man. It was a bit difficult to watch, Langdon looked wrecked. Not in the normal a patient hit you in a tender spot way, more so like how he'd seen Dana react once to an elderly woman and a car crash. Same way her mother had gone, and he found her in the ambulance bay draining the fastest cigarette of her life with more than smoke stinging her eyes.
There was a pause, a moment hanging, before Langdon shook his head. "I'm not- I can't go back inside yet."
Robby tilted his head back, putting his hands in his pockets at the annoyance that brought. "It's not really much of a choice."
"You don't want me on the floor right now. Just a couple minutes, I'll get a hold of myself. Please, Robby."
It was easy to not like that tone. It took very little, in fact, trying his best to ignore all the other signs going on here. The way light kept shifting around him, Langdon moving his weight to the side, different hues of soft orange lighting up his scrubs. It was stark when met with the off blue of his screen, still on.
He was close enough now. The picture on it, even upside down, didn't strike Robby as particularly unique.
A little kid, sitting in the grass. He couldn't give a proper idea to the age other than maybe a year old, and the distortion from it being not tilted towards him didn't give him a great view. His guess was Penny. Looked similar enough.
"Langdon." Robby tried for a firmer tone, letting his frustration seep in. "I'm serious, stop feeling sorry for yourself. I get it, you're worried for your kids, miss Penny, whatever, but-"
"She's not Penny."
He blinked, caught a bit off guard by the cut. "What?"
Langdon shifted his weight against the rail, looking up at Robby. The light still hit him from underneath, just enough to catch the bottoms of his eyes. "I'm not looking at pictures of Penny."
"Okay." There wasn't a point in trying to hide the strange confusion that brought. "Who is she then?"
Langdon took a deep breath, it was nearly shaking, before flipping his phone around to show off the picture of a child Robby didn't recognize. "Her name was Charlotte."
He was pretty sure he'd never heard that tone from Frank before. A sheer, bone deep ache that penetrated right down through him. Burrowed next to his heart like a bunny too cold for the winter, and died to become immortalized when the dirt warmed up, collapsed in the hole they had made.
There was no speculation needed. Robby wished he could find a way to misinterpret the soft shudder that ran through Frank at saying it out loud. Wished he didn't recognize the look on his resident's face he'd seen on dozens of parents over the years, front and center in a trauma bay and cast upon by lights too bright for the weight now resting on their shoulders.
This child, Charlotte, was dead. Frank's daughter.
He swallowed down the earlier emotions, shoulders settling. "Yeah?"
Frank sniffed, flipping his phone back around and looking up at Robby. "Yeah. She um, she was the cutest baby, Robby. She had the most adorable smile.." He shook his head, thumb swiping through a couple pictures before gently tilting his screen to show.
On screen, if he had to guess, was a maybe eighteen month old girl. She was being held by what looked like a mid twenties Abby, both of them looking at the camera. Charlotte followed the pattern he'd seen in Frank's other kids, taking more after Abby with curls and dark eyes. He remembered one time while talking with a nurse, Frank had been asked off handed if he wanted more kids. All he'd said was they were pretty done with the chaos.
Both of them in the picture were grinning, and when he glanced up Frank, it wasn't mirrored there. Instead, he was staring at the photo, grief etched into every possible line on his face.
"She'd be turning ten, this year." Frank supplied after a moment, swallowing down what was likely the weight of a gravestone. "And, now Tanner's two years older than she ever was."
It was a heavy admission. Too much so, and only fitting for the roof. He can't imagine having heard this anywhere else in the building. Couldn't think of another place that could bare it.
Robby didn't know how to respond to this, nope. How did you say I'm sorry when someone told you their heart had been pulled from them? After they showed you the bloody thing in a jar, tears in their eyes at the memory of how it beat?
"I'm so sorry, Frank." It felt hollow, all things considered. Not enough. "I didn't.."
"I never said anything. Um, Dana knows, but I asked her to keep it quiet. Clearly, she has." He sniffed, a small laugh suddenly bursting from him. "How would I even bring it up? Hey, sorry I need a few minutes after we lose a kid, I'm thinking about sitting in the hospital with mine."
It was almost like being hit while kissed, one set of knuckles digging into the diaphragm and the other brushing against his cheek. A comfort and a stolen breath, all in the same movement.
Frank had trusted Dana. Maybe hadn't meant to, maybe had it pulled from him, maybe it had been desperate, but he'd trusted Dana, and couldn't manage to find himself to trust anyone else. To trust Robby.
"That's, that's good that someone here knew. Could help you if it got hard." Robby forced words out, meaning them.
There was a nod, and a quiet stretched out between them. Unrolled as a carpet, laid out brick, and showed you the woods to go through. A path to choose, green or worn, two different measures to take.
Robby could ask, or he could walk away. Could keep the hanging evidence of what he'd heard, let Frank decide where to go, or push to try and understand.
Frank beat him to it. "You're not gonna ask?"
He startled a little at the question, glancing away on instinct. "Ask what?"
"About Charlotte." At the small silence, Frank shrugged, moving on. "I guess I'm used to the first question being what happened. People tend to want to know."
Robby just shook his head, looking to the sky before shifting to lean against the rail next to Frank. It was easy, simple, enough space between them it didn't feel particularly close, but it felt like comfort. "If you want to tell me, you can. If not, I wasn't going to push."
Neutral and practiced, a branch lowered just in case. Frank seemed perfectly capable of getting out of the river himself, but Robby wanted him to know he didn't have to. Not right now, not with this.
Their relationship had taken too much of a hit too long ago for him to expect a hand around the bark. It was a slow grind on all fronts to trust again, and that part of him that was burned longed to set Frank alight with him. He'd tried, honestly, back on the Fourth. Had when he came back. They were months down the line and it was still hard some days.
Regardless, this wasn't a place to toss matches. Not with something so delicate and beloved and pain-filled as the little girl Robby could still see on screen, a new picture of her curled around a cat stuffed animal on display.
The nursery looked like it had been garden themed, butterfly decals on the wall behind.
"AML. She was diagnosed when she was two, went into remission after her first round of chemo. We were told her chances were good." Frank shrugged a shoulder, glancing down at his phone and tapping it to keep the screen on.
He wasn't looking at the picture, not really, but he seemed to dislike the idea of not having her in his sight. Robby couldn't even blame him. It felt like trying to cover a star.
Acute Myeloid Leukemia. Fuck, that must've hell to deal with, to watch, to notice. Robby did an elective oncology rotation way back in med school, saw enough end of life and newly beginning cancer patients in his ER that it was a familiarity at this point. He knew it like the break between sidewalk you always tripped over.
"Shit."
"Yeah. First year of med school, actually, pretty soon after I started."
Robby blinked, lifted a hand to drag it over his beard. "How old was she?"
Frank tilted his head to look over at him, dropping it to the side after. "Couple weeks after her second birthday. We had a party, and while we'd been worried, other people noticed she was different. Took her to her PCP, they drew blood, elevated WBC, poor kidney function.. You get the picture."
He did. He knew what came after. Frank didn't need to recount the entirety of watching his child get diagnosed with cancer to understand how horrific the entire procedure must've been on all ends.
There wasn't really anything he could think to say to that other than expletives. Somehow, he kind of felt like that might be appreciated. "I'm sorry."
Frank sent over a tight look, maybe mourning, maybe displeasure at the lack of words. Robby couldn't really tell, and he wasn't entirely sure if he wanted to know. "Yeah. Thanks."
A pause. He heard a helicopter distantly, cutting through the sky. Stars were just becoming noticeable, now that the sun was setting, seeping into the world. It wasn't too cloudy of a day, fairly clear, which meant the view into space would be nice for a little while. Before the lights all turned on, but just as their natural one died.
"She um, she was just shy of a year before it recurred, and six months later, she was gone." Frank shuffled a little, scuffing a shoe on the concrete. "Two months after Tanner was born. We have some pictures of them but it's.." He shook his head, taking a deep breath. "She doesn't look like how a four year old should."
Jesus Christ.
He was trying very hard to pull on all his doctor training, but so much of that was to be impersonal. Professional, gently distant, still warm but not emotional. Not unless that seemed to be the only way to get through to the person across, the only way to let them feel seen.
There hadn't been a section on what to say when someone you'd known through two distinct lifetimes said their daughter you never met was dead.
Robby felt his mind snag on part of it, tilting his head. "That sucks, so soon after having Tanner."
"Mhm. The only reason Abby felt comfortable being pregnant was because she was in remission. Neither of us wanted her to be an only child, I was going to be done with med school soon, our family was healing." There was a crackling hope to his words, something faint and angry.
It made Robby think of the way someone cried when burning letters. He'd done it once to a piece of paper from his father halfway around the world. Hadn't heard from the man in over a year and he decided to send something, a proof of life, false platitudes of thinking about him and the memory of mom.
His bubbe had found him outside in the backyard with the lighter and tear stained cheeks, not even thirteen and filled with a heartbroken rage. Hurt at being left behind, at having to keep going. Absolutely furious with the greater concept of universe and resigned to the reason, knowing exactly how they got to this place. Merely wishing for it to be different.
Frank sounded like Robby had, finally brought inside and wrapped in a blanket, breaking down at their kitchen table. Tired, and desperate, and soul deep scarred.
He took a breath, steadied, and soldiered on. "And all of this was during med school?"
"Yep." He popped the p, half hearted. "We thought we'd be okay. Abby did, more like. I didn't.." Frank took a breath, closing his eyes tight for just a second. "It's hard not to be cynical about statistics. Abby was positive for us, I tried to be for her."
Robby remembered when his bubbe had died. He'd been premed at the time, but still knew enough from talking to doctors, taking care of her, that it wasn't a question of if she died soon. It was a confirmation. A promise with the chime of a scythe.
She'd asked him to be brutally honest with her on her odds, what amount of time they were looking at. Ever since her husband had died she'd been on a slow tailspin, they both knew it, and every appointment only cemented it further in his head, and thus, hers.
She wasn't a stupid woman. Never was, never could've been, and any obfuscation attempts that went over her head did nothing but confirm what he already knew. She was deteriorating, slowly but surely. He always made sure to never correct himself.
They made funeral arrangements together. It was the most morbidly kind thing he had been able to do, and it stuck to him like a thorn.
"I'm sure you did your best."
"I could've done more." It was automatic, nearly practiced. Like he'd said it or heard it enough times for it to be carved into his tongue. "I should've."
Robby didn't know the response to that. Nothing that wouldn't sound hallow or fake, nothing more than an attempt to make him feel better. He didn't know what had gone down, not truly. He never would, in fact.
Instead of voicing any of it, he simply asked. "Why are you saying that?"
"I couldn't take time off, when she died. It was the middle of COVID and if I did, they'd probably drop me from the program. I was in this very ER a month after." He tapped his foot on the base of the rail. It sent vibrations up and spread throughout.
Oh.
Robby still remembered Frank on his ED rotation. He came through during a spike in January, working hours so long none of them had time to talk to each other. Almost all they could assess on was crisis management, teamwork, and pure ingenuity. He'd done great, a nearly manic shine to his eyes through the safety goggles, and too much had been going on to think about it more than damn, the kid was fast.
Looking back, it had been desperate. Knowing what he knew now, it was probably more like running. At the time? All it did was show adaptability.
Frank had been one of the top picks for PTMC when Match Day rolled around. Him and Heather hadn't been on the same rotation, but Robby knew they'd get along like a shoreline. Might take them a minute to learn how to not drown each other, but they'd figure it out. They did.
It was a bit stinging, realizing how little he learned about Frank during his rotation. It took two weeks before he even found out the man was married, gloves on so often there wasn't any time. Nobody chatted at all.
The COVID years were so massively blurred in Robby's head, thinking back. It wasn't hard to know how he missed something. Quietly, he wondered if anyone even noticed, or if Frank would've said something if someone had.
Probably not.
"Fuck, Frank." It was easy to say, shaking his head and clearing his throat. "God, I'm-"
"Don't you dare say you're sorry again." It was fake levity, Frank exhaling a note of amusement. "I hear it from everyone about everything with Lottie, I don't need to hear it more from you."
He held up his hands, giving the point easily. Of all the things to push at, this was not one of them. This didn't even crack the top thousand, to be honest.
After a few moments, he glanced over, putting his hands back against the railing. "Lottie? Which one of you decided on that?"
It was said lightly, a little playful in the pit of misery, and it just got Frank to chuckle. "Me. I thought it was cuter and more unique than Charlie. Not that she needed a nickname, but, we wanted to give them professional names as well as something cute."
"Uh huh." Robby nodded, feeling a smile tug slightly at his lips. "So Tanner and Penny were the others?"
"Penelope, get my kid's name right." There it was, Frank laughing softly at Robby's antics. "I had no say in Tanner, that was all Abby. She wanted to honor her uncle, I was not going to fight my pregnant wife on the name of our son over the phone."
That got him to frown a bit, confusion seeping into the temporary mirth. "The phone? Couldn't do it in person?"
The catch of what he'd said seemed to kill whatever humor still existed with a shot, leave it smoking on the gravel down below. Frank took a deep breath, shaking his head. "Ah, no. Immunocompromised kid and wife, I was doing rotations. Anything I had in person where I was likely to be exposed.. I didn't go home as much as I wanted."
Robby tried to think through the implications of that, tried to find whatever hidden bit was under there. Wanted, pretty desperately, for that to not mean what it was sounding like. "Where did you go?"
He shrugged, more of a tired lift to his shoulders. "Walmart lots usually let cars stay overnight."
It felt like sliding on a rope, fingers and palms scraped raw from the friction. "You slept in your car? For how long?"
Frank's expression didn't change beyond going greyer. Older, more like, ink working its way into the lines on his face. "On and off for months. Tanner was still a newborn on my ED rotation, I didn't go home once. Abby.. we couldn't handle another sick kid, Robby, we couldn't do it."
He crossed his arms suddenly, tight over his chest, clearing his throat. Something had struck with that phrasing, be it an old wound reopening or new words cutting somewhere unmarred, but something about admitting that seemed to hit him hard. Frank glanced away entirely, sniffing once, mouth drawn up.
He'd been crying earlier, Robby remembered that. Not actively, maybe, but he had been. The phone screen was still on, carefully not pressed to his arm, and it reflected up to show the tracks.
Frank didn't seem keen on a repeat performance, but didn't seem capable of stopping it.
Quietly, with the reach of moonlight across dense woods, Robby pulled his hand from his pocket and pressed it to Frank's shoulder. He hadn't touched Frank in a nonclinical sense in over a year, cold with the memory of shoving him through doors and the rattle of pills, and this felt like that.
He didn't comment when it started to shake. Didn't say anything when the sniffs turned over to stifled gasps, keeping steady against him and gently moving his thumb back and forth. It didn't feel like a proper comfort. He didn't know what else to do.
The feeling seemed to crawl across his arm, creeping like shadows, and dampen his own eyes. He could've closed them. Instead, he just lowered his gaze to a broken bottle not too far from their feet, giving Frank the smallest amount of privacy he could, and did not fight the emotion.
Let himself feel for the man he knew, for the man he knows, for the man he never met, and for the child that never got to grow like the flowers painted on the walls of her room. Kept alive in memory and in picture, just like them.
It took a while. Robby could hear sirens wail, but none approach them. That didn't necessarily mean anything, and to be quite honest, right now he couldn't find it in himself to look for it. He had a patient here to take care of. One he should've a while ago.
Frank slowly emerged again, lifting one hand to drag it over his face with a breaking inhale. He shifted so slightly, and Robby took it as a cue, retracting his hand to put it back in his pocket.
"That.. sounds really difficult to get through." Was what he settled on to shatter the glass, gentle with the hammer.
All that got was a nod, Frank's voice rough. "It was. We never really got over it."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. Abby and I.." He thumbed over his ring, letting out a long breath. "My addiction was, it was about a lot of things. We're in counselling, therapy. We should've started going when Charlotte got diagnosed, or when she died, but we didn't."
He knew Frank had been in therapy, of course he did, but the Abby part of it was new. "Yeah? How's it going?"
His mouth twitched to the side, looking up at Robby with old eyes. "I don't know if we'll last, but, we want to try. I don't think either of us processed her death. Just tried to move on, it was easier to keep it contained between us then it was to ask for help."
It was a feeling Robby knew well, and one he was trying to beat out of himself. That voice in the back of the mind that said this wasn't anyone's problem but yours, that other people aren't there to lean on or catch you, they're just there to watch. To be entertained, and hold on to your arms if they stumble.
There was no point in providing the same courtesy for yourself. All that did was bring them down with, and then both of you were on the floor with broken noses and bruised pride. Now look at what that accomplished.
Robby cleared his throat, feeling it stick a little with how dried out he was feeling. "It's good that you two are getting help."
Very carefully, he didn't add anything about hoping they stayed together. Frank had a habit that Robby was able to recognize now, something he probably should've picked up on ages ago, of going with what the perception of him could be. He tried to curate a little too much, and the idea of missing yet another crisis in his resident grabbed at Robby's neck.
He couldn't do that again. Couldn't miss more developments, he'd done it a dozen times that it seemed almost more expected than the acknowledgement, judging by the breathed out 'yeah' and Frank's ensuing quiet.
There was a temptation to let it just rest again. Leave it there to be picked up another time, but he had a somewhat difficult to grab feeling that Frank wasn't done talking, and he had a much more concrete knowledge that this would probably be it. Cut him off now, and that would be the end of understanding.
So, he listened.
"I used to carry her everywhere." Frank's chest rose, shifting. Maybe trying to offset discomfort. "She liked to be held and it's really hard to not indulge your dying kid."
"Yeah, I'm sure."
"That mindset kind of, it transferred to Tanner and Penny. We probably held them too much, how often we picked them up, how quickly we'd cuddle. It just kind of felt like one thing we could always do."
Robby nodded, feeling it ache the way that must've felt. Holding your kids in a breaking imitation of the one you lost. "That makes sense."
"Yeah." Frank pressed the tip of his shoe into the roof, shaking his head. "So when, when I hurt my back, and I wasn't able to pick them up anymore, it fucked with me. Bad."
Well, now Robby felt like even more of an asshole than when he found out the injury persisted, thinking back on the first time Frank had told him he hurt his back. That he needed to be on light duty, not strain himself, joked with dead eyes about getting the laughs out now.
Robby had teased him. Not just teased, poked at. Made fun of.
He didn't know how to respond, unsticking his mouth to try and break the cobwebs suddenly gluing it together. "Shit."
"Yeah that's a good word for how I felt." He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. "Who would've thought, not sitting with grief makes things worse?"
That was accompanied with an incredibly pointed look at Robby, eyes catching the fading sunlight. Just enough, the hues of the sky fighting with the color in his. They matched earlier in the day, but not here. Not at this time. They almost looked bleeding, the way the mix of city lights caught on worn tears.
Robby wondered a little what he was seeing back. If the shadows cast dirty over Frank were on his.
"Who would've thought?" He parroted back, voice weak. He didn't know what else to put behind it.
Slowly, breaking through the grief, Robby pushed off the railing, taking a small step forward before turning back to him. "We need you inside, Frank."
"Yeah." Frank nodded, looking down at his phone. The screen had gone dark finally at some point, and he didn't make a move to turn it on. Instead, he drew a breath in, let it out with a shake. Then, glancing up at him, squinting one eye slightly, "I'll.. I'll be down in a minute or two, okay? I'm serious."
He should say no. He should take him by the stethoscope still around his neck and pull him back down. There was the itch in his fingertips to do so, but he couldn't quite find it in himself to be convicted in it. Not right now. Not after this.
"Two minutes." Robby agreed, eyebrows raised. "Or I'm sending Dana to grab you down by the ear."
That did what he wanted, making Frank sniffle a chuckle. "Yeah. I just want to.." He gestured a hand vaguely to his face. "Ground myself a little. I'll be quick."
The platitude of 'take your time' perched on his tongue tip. Instead, he nodded. "Be sure of it."
Robby felt the heel of his shoe dig in slightly as he turned, too used to the feeling of coming off the roof. Usually though, he wasn't leaving anyone up here, but Frank was on this side of the railing, just like Robby was, and that felt safe enough for now.
It had to be.
Charlotte. Lottie, more like. He hoped her memory was a blessing.
Judging by the glimpse he saw of Langdon as he closed the door behind him, phone lifting to his ear, he guessed she was.