Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“Indeed, I was born guilty,
A sinner when my mother conceived me.
You desire truth in the inner being;
Therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.
Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Let me hear joy and gladness;
Let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.”

— Psalm 51 (NRSV)

On his knees, looking up at the popcorned ceiling, Frank Langdon reaches out for the broad hand of God. 

“Uh,” he tries, “hi.”

The ceiling does not respond. 

The first step of the Twelve-Step NA program is to admit your powerlessness over your addiction, and that your life has become unmanageable. Turns out, when you’re forcibly admitted to rehab, step one is incredibly easy to achieve. Easier still when your continued employment depends on that admission. And even easier when your wife proposes separating, and then waits until exactly two days after your first shift back to actually do it, and takes the kids for good measure. (Well, not all the time. He gets weekends.) Yeah. He can admit it. Things are pretty damn unmanageable. 

The second step is to come to believe that a Power greater than yourself can restore you to sanity. 

The third step is to make a decision to turn your will and your life over to God. 

At his first meeting, he wasn’t sure exactly what he was hearing. But everyone else treated it as totally normal. A necessary part of the process. He sat there (your first time, you’re supposed to just listen) as everybody shared their stories, their struggles, their own personal come-to-Jesus moments. Totally earnest. They all really believed in it— grace, whatever that meant. He skimmed through the complementary NA literature and realized numbly that on every second page there was a blessing or a prayer. 

God, one speaker explained, upon seeing his dubious face, didn’t have to mean the Christian God, necessarily. It could be whatever unseen force you trust to keep you clean. The spirit of the universe. The breath of the world. Things of that nature. The speaker grinned. Hell, it could even be a doorknob! 

But Langdon is pretty sure those are all just other, fancier terms for God. 

Thus, his knees digging into the cold hardwood of his new empty condo. Thus, his head tilted forward, his hair in his eyes. He balances the big blue Narcotics Anonymous Basic Text on his lap and flips through it to the section on Spiritual Principles. 

Take a deep breath and talk to God. 

Sometimes, when we pray, a remarkable thing happens: We find the means, ways, and energies to perform tasks far beyond our capacities. 

He’s progressed. He has. Genuinely. Rehab went great, it only took a couple weeks to get the anger and bargaining out of his system, then he really committed himself. Maybe he slipped up one time, but that’s well in the past. He’s basically on step ten of the Program already. He’s made many searching and moral inventories of himself, he’s been making restitution, all of it. He just… skipped a few steps here and there. Which is fine, because he’s doing really well! Better every day! He is, in his opinion, considering everything, absolutely fucking stellar! 

Except that his knees really hurt, and there’s nobody on the other end of the line. 

Langdon shuts his eyes and breathes out, deep and slow. Like the therapists taught him. His group usually ends on the same prayer, all together, so he murmurs that now, reading off a printout his sponsor gave him, wishing it felt more personal, wishing he felt like anyone was listening. 

“God, I offer myself to thee, to build with me and to do with me as thou wilt.” His voice is hoarse. It all sounds uncanny coming out of him. Thou wilt? Why is he at Medieval Times all of a sudden? “Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do thy will. Help me do what is necessary to walk a free man at last. Amen.”

Last week his sponsor even invited him to come to church. Thankfully, he was busy with his kids that day, but it was a close call. He’s gonna have to go sometime, he guesses, if the program really depends on it. It just… wasn’t ever much of a thing for him, growing up. His mom went, sometimes, but her parents had been crazy evangelicals and she didn’t want to pass that down. He likes the blessings, but deep down he knows they’re just words. They sound nice, they feel uplifting. Isn’t that all he needs?

Then again… It’s hard to admit, but in some deep cavernous part of his soul, he does want it. God. The whole thing. He wants it to be true, badly— that there could be someone out there who really does give a fuck. And not just about repentant smalltime sinners, but real wretches, people with real fucking problems, anyone who’s ever been genuinely lost in the dark. A kind hand, a glowing light, a meaning. Or just a watchful eye. Something abstract. Something, at all. 

He sinks deeper into his bow, tweaking an old muscle in his back and resolutely ignoring it. He rests his forehead on the floor and breathes in the new veneer smell of it. 

Total submission, his sponsor had told him. Abandon yourself to Him. It’s not about you anymore. Let Him into you. Be a channel of His peace. Langdon lays himself low. He can feel his ego kicking in his chest like a fetus and tries to choke it out. His problems don’t matter. His desires mean nothing to the universe. The itching, aching feeling is a phantom, an imposing temptation, he can close his eyes to it. He wants to let go. So he will. He wants to believe. So he will. He wants to be nothing. He can be nothing. 

He breathes out, and in his deepest heart of hearts, there is a tiny flicker. A single beat of a delicate wing. A window to some greater, higher place creaking slowly open. 

A channel of His peace.

And then it’s gone. 

And he’s back in his body on the floor in his unfurnished apartment beside a bed with no frame. And his pumping blood is just a function of his body, and his mind is just a series of neurons fizzling. But he can’t shake it. It did happen. It was real, somehow. He felt that unnameable, unanswerable thing. 

Something. Something. 

It’s seven thirty in the goddamn morning, and the hemorrhoidal globules of pus on the patient’s lower asscheeks are glistening— actually, glistening— when Dennis Whitaker decides he would no longer like to be a saint, thank you very much. 

It’s his duty, he reminds himself as he bites back his sigh and gets to work. His looming and everpresent oath to the world and all its errant inhabitants. A duty he was born to, and works to recommit himself to every day. 

Because you’re a good boy, he can hear Santos singing coyly in his ear, a good little soldier for papa. Well. She’s not entirely wrong. It’s not his fault he understands the virtue in serving others and their whims. The purifying, healthful feeling of plain hard work. He pops another pustule. This particular whim was, of course, Langdon’s. As in, Langdon didn’t want to do it, and volunteered Dennis, because he knew he wouldn’t complain— because he never complains, because it would be against his very nature to do so. 

(What does Langdon know about his nature? Maybe it’s in his nature to stick a fucking pencil in his eye.)

His patient is grateful, though, effusively so; Whitaker exits the room and strips off his gloves feeling a little proud of himself. Then he feels shame for his pride, a lovely leftover consequence of his upbringing he doesn’t have time to acknowledge. Ah, well. A job well done. A duty satisfied. 

Langdon shoots him a sheepish look across the hall. Whitaker glares right back. 

Thankfully, his duty does not require him to perform any sincere feelings of joy. 

He’s nearly done with his double, so for a blissful few minutes he allows himself the luxury of wandering around pretending to look busy. The med students are occupied observing a trauma with Dr. Al-Hashimi, the patients are nearly quiet for once, and he’s pretty sure he can get away with stealing some of Santos’ meal prep once he gets home. 

He can practically taste the adobo when a crash cart flies in through the bay doors with an EMT at its side— mid-forties, altered driver, smashed his car into a telephone pole, broken leg and who knows what else. 

Whitaker’s already at his side, Langdon loping over to join, Emma darting into Trauma 2 to set them up. The patient is half conscious, the bone poking horribly out of his leg. He shines a flashlight in his eyes. “Name?”

“Wallet says Larry Webb.”

“Larry? Hey, Larry?” No response. “What’d you take, Larry?”

Larry does not answer, but once they get him stabilized and flood him with sedatives and the blood labs finally come back, it turns out to be benzos. 

The room goes quiet, but Langdon just throws up his hands. “That’s why you don’t drive on downers, kids.” He checks his watch. “Let me catch a night shifter and hand him off for the splint.”

They could stand to run a couple more tests, check him a little more closely, but Dennis is fucking tired, and it’s true, he’ll be looked after by the incoming shift. They both turn to leave, but in seconds, Larry starts to violently seize. Whitaker whirls and tries to hold him down. 

“Shit, he was stable. Wasn’t he?”

Langdon shakes his head minutely, and for a very long, strained moment doesn’t move. His eyes, usually so full of life, have gone strange and glassy. 

“Dr. Langdon,” Whitaker prompts, still straining against the flailing body. “Langdon?”

The door opens and Al-Hashimi strides through. “What’s going on here?”

Langdon finally shakes it off, grabbing the internal imaging system and skimming it over the patient's chest. He ruminates on what he sees with a potent misery. “Fuck. Internal bleed just under the abdomen. Missed it.” 

“You didn’t check?”

Langdon is already working at him; Whitaker takes the opportunity to page up to the OR and Emma fumbles to start a transfusion. “We stabilized him— we were just about to do the night shift handoff.”

Al-Hashimi cocks a well-groomed eyebrow. “I would hope that you would try to catch something like this immediately.” 

“I—”

“Get to it, Dr. Langdon.”

It takes Garcia and a clever surgical intern to do it, but eventually they tie up the internal bleed, and Ellis, shaking her head all the while, comes in to supervise the case. Al-Hashimi has no further comments, stalking away to finish her reports for the night. 

Leaving Whitaker and Langdon standing awkwardly outside the glass doors. 

“I’m sorry,” Dennis offers, his stomach churning. “I really should have been checking for that.”

Langdon’s expression looks somewhat empty. “You’re an intern. Anyway, he lived.”

“I just wanted to—”

“Uh huh.”

Dennis turns to reply, to save this sorry conversation, but Langdon is already shouldering his backpack, edging out the bay doors and into the dark of the parking lot. 

Asshole, he thinks, uncharitably. And feels not a lick of shame.

There’s no beer in Langdon’s fridge. There’s no fucking beer in his fucking fridge. This is, frankly, baffling to him, and he stands slack-jawed in the dim light staring at the empty shelves for several minutes until he remembers that he’s an addict and he isn’t supposed to consume any substances, ever, and he can’t go to the basement to the dedicated beer fridge because he doesn’t live somewhere with a basement anymore, because his wife’s gone, his house is gone, and he’s alone, he’ll be alone forever now, because he’s a fucked up, worthless ghost of a person, and he always will be. 

He kicks the bottom of the fridge. It does not respond. Just keeps on buzzing. 

What the fuck is wrong with him? He can’t even do his job anymore. His brain isn’t fast enough. Or maybe it’s too fast. Overloaded. He just stood there, blankly drooling, instead of helping the damn patient. Something happened. A blockage, maybe? He forgot how to form words! He thought he was safe, really, he thought he was better. But you never know. Could be protracted withdrawal, or post-acute withdrawal, maybe. That can disturb your mental function for up to eighteen months after you taper off, which would be fucking fine and he’d learn to live with it except he’s a goddamn medical doctor. The fact that he knows the exact chemical mechanisms of how it works doesn’t make it feel any better. 

“I would really like a Xanax,” he says out loud, to no one. 

Instead of contemplating this further he calls his sponsor, who is— of course— away, playing golf. 

He should be sleeping, getting ready for his next shift, but lucky him, he’s still got crazy insomnia, no amount of measured tapering could fix that, so he paces around his empty apartment in a fit of malaise. He makes a truly perplexing bean dish with the scraps in his pantry. He tries putting on a self-help podcast but it all just turns to mush and white noise and empower yourself and it gets better. 

He tries his sponsor again. Nothing. The message tone bleeps, but he chucks his phone onto his mattress and collapses into his single plastic chair. His leg’s twitching, and he’s meant to have a shift tomorrow morning, but can he really trust himself to go in, to not have a major meltdown every time anyone mentions dosing with Librium, to not freeze in place at seemingly nothing at all, as his precious mental capacity slowly seeps away into thin air?

It’s in this context, a very specific and never-to-be-repeated context, that he ends up at the empty dive bar down the street on a Wednesday night, staring at a full glass of whiskey with his heart pounding in his wrists. There’s a cross fixed to the wall hanging above the bored bartender. He ignores this. He continues to stare at the glass. 

It can’t hurt him if he looks. 

He was never a huge drinker, anyway. One too many killer hangovers in college. Sure, he’s down for a couple small beers and a good time, but alcohol takes too damn long to dull any real pain. For a downer, it’s pretty inefficient. Better a couple pills. Something that can clear the traffic out of his neurons with actual haste. 

But now this is all he can get. Legally. Not that he’s going to drink it, because he’s not supposed to, and he would never jeopardize his health like that, he’s not gonna stoop to that level ever again. He knows the risks, he knows the dangers, and he’s only looking, only imagining how it would feel to white out for a bit, slow the throbbing in his throat, ease his way to a deep, deep sleep without the sweating waking dreams and the buzzing of the fridge and the endless ticking of the fucking alarm clock. It’s one drink. It’s nothing, not anything, it’s what millions of Americans across the nation are throwing back right this very second, it’s normal, it’s not important, it’s not the same thing. 

He runs his finger over the rim, thinking.

Then his phone rings. 

He fumbles to answer. His sponsor, finally. Finally. “Hello?”

“Hey, Frank. Sorry I missed ya earlier. Something on your mind?”

“Right.” He resolutely ignores the glass. “Listen, man, I’m— fine now, seriously, it’s just… I messed up, at work. Something happened and I froze up.”

“Well, you’re still healing. Things like that are bound to happen. I think you can give yourself a little grace.”

“Yeah, but I can’t still be healing at the emergency department. I blanked out and missed something really important and it could’ve cost a guy his life. And all I thought was…”

“What?”

He drops his voice, trying very hard to be imperceptible. “Like, maybe if I was still using, it wouldn’t have happened?”

There’s a decently long pause on the other end of the line.

“…Have you been talking to your higher power about this?”

He screws his eyes shut, then tears away from the glass and the bar table, tosses down a couple bills and shoves out the door and into the open air, away from prying ears. 

His fucking higher power. He hisses into the receiver. “What does that have to do with it?”

“Remember the meetings, bud. It’s got everything to do with it. It’s a soul issue, not just a medical one. You’re doing the work, and that’s great, but you can’t heal your mind until you fix your spirit.”

He kicks the sidewalk listlessly. “I, uh— I did try. To pray. I swear.”

“And?”

“And nothing. Um. Mostly nothing. I say all the right stuff but I don’t know if it goes anywhere. Look, maybe I just don’t know how to do it right.”

“You might want to consider speaking with a priest.”

“Uh. Right. Maybe.”

His sponsor hums. “Well, we can talk about it. Next meeting, right? Or do you feel like you need to meet up sooner?” 

“No, that’s… fine.” Langdon scratches his stubble. “Sorry to bug you.”

“It’s what I’m here for.” There’s a long beat. “As long as you’re sure you’re okay. Keep studying the texts. Nothing like the Blue Book for some tips on spiritual guidance.”

“Got it. Thanks.”

“We’re all on your side, Frank. Even Him.”

Langdon returns to his apartment even emptier than before. At least his little sojourn tired him out. That’s good. Maybe he’ll actually catch some sleep. 

It’s broiling hot, the dog days of summer. He couldn’t afford a place with central AC, and he can’t bear the thrumming of a fan, so he lays flat on his mattress atop the sheets and shuts his eyes tight. He thinks very deliberately about faith, what it might mean. About the supposedly boundless joy and love of God. His mind wanders to his kids, the physical ache and pull in him he’s had since they were born, the effortless way his daughter smiles… that’s what’s boundless to him. That’s good, unequivocally. 

But it’s all he’s got. Every other pleasant memory he has is another product of his own arrogant, empty ambitions. Self-serving, never satisfied. Pointless. Poisoned now.

He can’t find the words, can’t say them out loud, but he feels his mind cry out, and sweats with the effort of his wishing, and promises to lay himself low, to serve something better, to shatter himself and become something new. 

God is silent. As He always is. As He certainly always will be. 

The next day, bleary as all hell and somehow pushing through it, Langdon checks his watch at exactly two minutes before the morning seniors’ home rush and capably secures himself a spot in a bathroom stall. He doesn’t have a hard time with those cases— who would?— but they’re fucking boring, and he’d rather not start his day with a code. 

By the time he emerges, all the cases have been miraculously snatched up. He glances at the board. A couple DOAs— pointless charting, no thanks. Alzheimer’s with a pulmonary embolism at ninety years old— Jesus. He sends up a half-ironic prayer of thanks that it’s Cassie’s name up there and not his. He wanders around, checks in on his first couple patients, then relaxes into the bottom of his can of Celsius, spinning at his desk. 

McKay exits North 4, frowning. “Anybody know what’s tying up the hospital chaplain?”

Dana clicks her tongue. “Might be he’s on an upper floor. That, or he’s doing an exorcism. You need him?”

“She’s fading fast with a DNR. She keeps asking for a priest, and I’ve called up, but…”

“Want me to find a backup? You know what church she’s in?”

Cassie rubs the bridge of her nose. “Not gonna make it in time.”

“—I can step in.”

Everyone swivels. Whitaker is hurrying over to the desks with an uncharacteristically determined look in his eye. 

Cassie tilts her head, examining him closely. “Are you sure?” 

He looks anxious to help, as always. Because he’s a dweeby little suck-up. But very sure of himself. “She needs last rites, yeah? I know them. I can help her through.”

“Uh… be my guest.”

Whitaker steps into the room without looking back and shuts the door. Through the window, they watch him sit gently at the old woman’s side, and take her hands in his. 

“Huh,” Frank says. “I didn’t know he was religious.”

Cassie shrugs. “He was raised on a farm.”

Mohan, crossing the floor, stops to watch with them. “Did you know he has a degree in theology?”

“…No shit.”

“Actually, he told me that before med school he was set on becoming a pastor. He was in a seminary and everything.”

“Huh,” says Langdon. Nothing hits like a Mohan lore drop. She seems to absorb pointless information like a sponge. “Huh.”

The others flit away, back to more important tasks, but Langdon hovers near the window. Whitaker’s voice is low, just barely audible through the glass. It starts unsteady, but soon enough it sounds totally natural, as if they’re his words, as if he wrote them. Patient, measured, suffused with something Langdon cannot place. 

Sincere belief, maybe?

“God of everlasting love, God of eternal life, God of light, shining in the darkness,” he begins, “we turn over to you our lives and our cares, we trust that you walk with us in all places, and that you are always with us.”

The woman’s eyes are closed now, her breaths are coming quick and shallow, but it seems a calm has settled. 

Whitaker swallows visibly, and clutches her hands a little tighter. “In this moment, free us from our distress, help us find comfort in your promises, peace in your presence, rest in your loving arms, and— and welcome in your kingdom. These things we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.”

The monitor flatlines. 

“Amen,” Langdon blurts out, to no one. 

Whitaker’s eyes flutter shut, and he murmurs something to himself, taking a long breath with his hands clasped tight around hers. He flips the chain out from under his scrubs— a tiny cross— and holds it to his chest for a moment, before standing up and slipping back through the door. After sanitizing, he locks eyes with Langdon and gives a start, but Frank’s already turning away, as if he’s heard a patient calling, pushing through the crowd to somewhere nobody can see the expression on his face. 

He can’t stop thinking about it for the rest of the shift. He throws himself at the toughest cases, fixes his mind on untangling a few sticky medical mysteries. But he finds himself watching family members clutch prayer beads at bedsides with rapt, unexpected attention. He floats around the Pitt lost in thought. What’s he missing? What is it about God that he doesn’t get? If it’s his only path to salvation, to real recovery, why is it so hard? There has to be a path for him, he knows it. If he can just let go of his damn pride. 

He’s learned by now, hasn’t he? There’s nothing wrong with seeking help. With taking any offered open hand. 

And hell, that woman looked so… healed. 

Feet aching, Whitaker wants nothing more than to beeline back to the apartment and crash into bed, and he almost gets through the PTMC front doors when he feels a malignant presence hovering behind him. 

Swallowing his groan, he whirls around to face a contrite-looking Dr. Langdon.

The gleam in his dark eyes is extremely strange— somewhere in between terrified and keen. “Hey, Whitaker.”

“Hi.” There’s a long beat. “…Did you need something?”

Langdon shuffles his feet. Is he blushing? “I have kind of a strange request.”

“Uh… yeah, shoot.”

He looks askance at the other departing day-shifters, some of whom seem to be actively eavesdropping. “Are you hungry?”

Dennis blinks. He’s not sure he understands the question. “Huh?”

“Of course you’re hungry. Come on. With me. My treat.”

“Um.”

Langdon is already pushing past him, elbowing him through the door. “I said, my treat.” 

Dennis rushes to follow. “No, I heard that part.”

“Why, is there something else about this that’s confusing?”

Literally everything about this is confusing. Speechless, utterly baffled, Dennis nonetheless follows Langdon a couple blocks down to a Denny’s, of all places. 

His treat. How generous. 

Langdon opens the door for him and ushers him inside. “Interns first.”

By the time they get seated in the diner’s most private booth, Dennis is pretty sure he’s either going to get yelled at or propositioned— not totally uncommon coworker experiences for him at this stage. He sits in a zen-like state of carefully controlled terror and accepts his fate. But Langdon is oddly quiet. He draws his hands to his lap, squirming in his seat, staring at the menu like he’s never heard of waffles before. 

Yep. Definitely a proposition. 

“Dr. Langdon?” he finally says into the pained silence. “What’s going on?”

Langdon pushes away the menu. He still can’t meet Dennis’ eyes. “So… this is going to sound pretty weird.”

Dennis tries to control his face. “Okay.”

“Trying to figure out how to say this. Okay. It’s, uh, it’s been a little rough, lately. Mentally speaking. The details don’t exactly matter.” He’s fidgeting with his wedding ring now, and his gaze drifts down; he stares at it listlessly. Oh, god. “You know, I’m not even supposed to be wearing this.”

“…Oh?” Don’t say it. Don’t fucking say it. 

“Not that we’re divorced. Just separated. Temporarily.” His sheepish expression is not helping matters. 

If you ask me to have sex with you right now, post-shift, at a Denny’s, Whitaker thinks, trying to beam it into Langdon’s brain with his mind powers, I am going to have a mental breakdown and stab you with this fork. 

“All of this to say.” Langdon pauses to ruminate for another excruciating moment. “I need you to help me learn how to believe in God.”

Whitaker blinks. 

“Uh,” Langdon continues, clearly grasping for words, “I mean… I’m kind of in need of… spiritual guidance? Right now? And I know you know a lot about that stuff, and I just need… like, a second opinion.”

“Um,” says Whitaker, “what?”

“What?”

Mortifyingly, he realizes that Langdon is serious. 

He tries to reign in his bafflement. “Just— what… do you mean, by spiritual guidance? Exactly?”

“I heard you were almost a pastor once.”

His voice gets very small. “Who told you that?”

Langdon ignores this. “Do you know what the twelve steps actually are?”

“…Not really. Um, first step is admitting it to yourself, right?”

“What’s step two?”

“I have no idea.”

“You’re meant to lay yourself low,” he says, “and realize that only a power greater than yourself can help you out of it.”

Whitaker leans back. “Wait, really?” 

“I mean, the power doesn’t have to be God.” He looks dubious, though. “But let’s see. Step three, we turn our will and lives over to him. Step seven, we ask him to remove our shortcomings. Step eleven, we keep seeking him out through prayer…”

“But you feel you can’t do that,” Dennis guesses. He’s never heard any of this before. AA groups used to use the meeting rooms in the library at St. Anselm’s sometimes, but he didn’t think there was any particularly religious connection there. 

Langdon cards his hair back. “Look, I wasn’t raised in it. Makes it kinda hard to do the work. I have no idea where to start.”

Dennis raises an eyebrow. “Have you maybe tried a church?”

“That’s not…” He grimaces. “I guess it’s just intimidating. The whole rituals and ceremonies thing. I need an intro. A crash course from someone who’s not gonna, like, try to recruit me.”

He looks so genuine. That’s the thing. Dennis has no idea how to process this. If he had any guesses about where this conversation would go, trying to recreate Christianity from first principles would not be on the list. He didn’t know Langdon had the inner life required to develop spiritual desires. He honestly didn’t think of Langdon as having an inner life at all. He feels his phone buzz in his back pocket. Probably Santos, wondering where the hell he’s gotten to. He leaves it be. 

“I’m not sure exactly what you want from me, here,” he starts, delicately. “I’m not ordained or anything. And— even if I was, I can’t just teach you how to believe in God. That’s really not how it works. It’s kind of the whole point that you have to come to it yourself.” 

He neatly elides his own doubts, which are technically irrelevant.

“I know.” Langdon sips at his tepid water. “I know. That’s not what I’m asking for. I guess… I just want to talk it through with someone. Formally. Ideally someone with similar job experience.”

Whitaker’s brows furrow. “What, like a Bible study group?” 

Langdon looks up, eyes sparking. “Yeah, sure. Why not? Be nice to get the basics down.”

“…Have you actually read any of the Bible?”

“Sure, the SparkNotes. Cain, Abel, et cetera.”

Whitaker buries his face in his palms. “Okay…”

“Look, I really need this,” Langdon says, his tone shifting, tucking his gaze down. “If you don’t want to do it, that’s okay.”

He softens, a tiny bit, entirely against his will. “Do you really think your faith’s the reason you’re struggling?”

There’s a pained sigh, like he’s biting something back. “I swear, I’ve been doing everything else right.”

“I’m sure you have.”

“My sponsor says it’s ego. That I still can’t admit it. What I am.” Whitaker winces slightly at the implication, but Langdon’s still looking at his lap as he continues. “To progress we’re supposed to realize we’re powerless. And submit, totally. That’s how the whole God thing comes into the equation. And I feel it, I feel myself… straining against that. I still want to pretend that I’m normal, that I can just bounce back, that what I did doesn’t mean anything. That I’m not an addict. I can’t give up control.” He shakes his head. “I’m too scared of what that means.”

“What would it mean?”

“That I’m not the centre of the damn universe?” Langdon scratches his stubble. “That I never could’ve stopped myself from going down that path, that it was marked in me from the beginning?”

Whitaker swallows. What can he say to that? “That would be distressing,” he manages, trying not to make any concrete arguments. “To anyone.”

“I’ve been trying to pray,” Langdon admits. “I have, seriously. We do it at our meetings, and I’ve been working on it at home. I just have this feeling like I’m doing it wrong. Like nobody’s listening, ‘cause I’m on the wrong frequency?”

Whitaker reels. He knows the feeling a little too well. Wouldn’t do any good to tell Langdon that, though. “Sure, that’s not uncommon.”

“See, that’s good to know.”

“Some people carry that struggle their whole lives.”

“Uh, any chance we can whittle that down to a couple weeks?”

“Langdon,” Dennis asks, trying to be patient, trying to be kind, “what exactly do you think God is?”

“Like, in literal terms?”

“Yeah.”

Langdon mulls this over. Their server comes over and opens her mouth, but sees the looks on their faces and quickly flees. 

“Mercy,” he says finally. 

Whitaker considers him for a moment and gives a small nod. “And… and you believe in it. In Him.”

“I…” Langdon bounces his leg restlessly. “I want to. Is that enough?”

Whitaker tries to keep his expression neutral. “Yes,” he says, with trepidation, hoping he looks like he actually thinks it’s true. “It’s enough.”

“So you’ll help me?”

There’s a need in his eyes that’s all too familiar. It’s the same stricken look he remembers from all the quietest churchgoers— high school dropouts, single moms, little kids trying their best to be seen and never heard. It’s the look he saw everywhere at the shelter off the Greyhound, the one he sees on his patients when he works on the street. It’s a visible ache, a dark cast beneath his eyes, a sort of lack in them— an emptiness they might dream that God can fill. 

He’s really struggling, Whitaker realizes. His hands are trembling. He’s still in the throes of his recovery, even now, and it’s eating him from the inside, and he’s probably looking for any way out. God can’t fill that void, he wants to tell him. You’re searching in the wrong place. God can’t save you, or he won’t save you, and you’ll spend your whole life trying to figure out which possibility would be worse. 

“Alright,” he hears himself saying, and he extends an open palm. “We can give it a try.”

Langdon takes it and grips it so hard it hurts. “Appreciate it, man. Seriously.”

With some effort Whitaker extracts his hand. “I guess I should brush up on my Thomas Aquinas.”

“Who?”

“…Don’t worry about it.”

They eat their meals (side of hashbrowns for Dennis, a loaded Grand Slam for Frank) in the taut silence of their newfound truce. Whitaker texts Santos that he stayed late charting. Not that there’s anything he has to hide from her. He’ll explain. At some point. 

Once Langdon signs the bill, he casts his gaze across the table. “Okay. Odd request.”

Whitaker suppresses a groan. “Do you have any normal requests?” 

“…Could we pray?”

“Like, right now?”

“Yeah.” 

“At Denny’s?”

Langdon flushes. “Well. You could teach me how you do it.”

Dennis sits back. How is he supposed to tell him that he doesn’t pray, not anymore, at least not with words? “I’m usually alone.”

“Just go on like you normally would, and I’ll copy.”

Dennis watches him for a long, searching moment, scrabbling for an excuse, but none comes. Langdon returns his stare, imploring, somehow servile. 

So he sighs and holds his sweaty palms together and closes his eyes, remembering. He doesn’t know why his mind lands on the passage it does until he starts to speak. 

“Oh, God,” he says, quiet and steady, “my God, I seek you.”

Langdon repeats the words under his breath. 

“My soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land.”

Again Langdon repeats. 

“I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,” he continues, “beholding your power and glory. Your steadfast love is better than life, so my lips will praise you.” He suppresses a flicker of pride that he’s still able to pull a whole psalm out of thin air. “So I will bless you as long as I live; I will lift up my hands and call on your name.”

“I will lift up my hands and call on your name.”

“Amen.”

“Amen.” 

Whitaker opens his eyes and watches as Langdon finishes the words, seeming to savor them. 

“I liked that one,” he says, raising his head and smiling slightly. 

“Psalm 61.”

“I’ll read it.” 

And against all odds, Whitaker actually believes him.

When Langdon gets home, he spends thirty minutes combing through the Wikipedia page for Thomas Aquinas, and exits the tab even more confused than before. 

He’s not keeping secrets, Dennis tells himself. He’s just continually forgetting to mention a piece of totally innocuous information. Expressly because he wants to avoid conflict. It’s a normal thing to do. And he’s allowed to hang out with his coworkers. There’s nothing strange about it at all. If he’s bringing along a giant 3-ringed binder stuffed with all his old seminary notes and readings, that’s nobody’s business but his. 

Dennis shrugs on his hoodie and scoots around the living room on soft feet, trying not to wake Santos, who is lying asleep on the couch, half-dead after a gruelling shift. Maybe this time it won’t be futile. He reaches carefully for the doorknob. 

“Uh uh uh.”

He spins. Santos has cracked one eye open. Because she is a bat in human form. Because she has been created specifically to vex him. “…Hey! What’s up?”

“Where are you going in such a hurry?”

“Out.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Out?”

“On a walk.”

“It’s raining.”

“So?”

She snorts and rolls over. “Whatever. Your funeral.”

He’s not keeping secrets. 

When he checks his maps, he’s surprised to learn that Frank Langdon doesn’t live very far away. A fifteen minute walk, max. And they don’t exactly live in the best of neighborhoods. When he arrives, trying and failing to dry himself off in the lobby, he starts worrying that he got the wrong address somehow. The apartment building is shabby and run-down, and the elevator’s broken. He’d assumed it’d be a townhouse, at least— somewhere with some room for his kids, maybe?

He doesn’t even have Langdon’s phone number. Twelve flights of stairs, and no welcome committee, and it’s probably the wrong place anyway. Awesome. 

Wheezing all the way upstairs, he knocks on the door to the apartment, fully prepared to apologize to whatever unlucky soul actually lives there. But it swings open, and Langdon is leaning against the doorframe, his hair in his face. 

“Um, hi.”

“Yo.”

The inside doesn’t look much nicer than the outside. It’s very… plain, is all. The walls are whitewashed and empty, and there’s hardly any furniture in the living room, just a folding table and a couple plastic chairs. 

Langdon goes into the barebones kitchen. There’s an ominously large pile of pots and plates in the sink. And no dishwasher. Ouch. “Want a drink?”

“No.”

“Good, because I don’t have anything.” 

Dennis has no idea if that’s a joke or not. 

He pours them each a glass of water. Dennis settles himself on one of the chairs and looks around, trying not to be too obvious. 

Langdon clocks it anyway. “Nice place, huh.”

“Oh, it’s just… not what I expected?”

Through an open door into a side room, he can see a pile of unopened boxes. Then he remembers the whole separation thing and instantly regrets his reaction. He wonders if he’s the first person Langdon has invited over to this new place. Does he have any other friends, outside of work? Somehow he doubts it. 

“Yeah, I’m working on it.” 

“I can’t talk,” Whitaker admits, trying his best to sound contrite. “I still don’t have a bedframe.”

Langdon fidgets in his seat. “Can we start?”

“Sure,” Whitaker says quickly. He flips through his notes. He’d spent all of last night trying to plot out a safe curriculum. “Maybe with the beginning?”

“The beginning of what?”

“The beginning.” There is no recognition on Langdon’s face. “You know. Genesis. How the world was created. Et cetera.”

Langdon still looks blank. “Do you believe in Jesus?” he asks, suddenly. 

“—What?”

“Like, actually. Is that something you really believe.”

Whitaker struggles to keep his composure. “Yeah, I do.”

“What about the whole coming-back-from-the-dead and doing-legit-miracles thing?”

Now he looks engaged. Whitaker decides this is a good thing. He closes the binder. “I’m not sure.”

Langdon furrows his eyebrows. “You’re not sure? How can you not be sure? Isn’t that, like… the whole point? Of Jesus?”

“Well, technically—”

“Don’t bullshit me, man. I might not know much, but I’m pretty sure you have to believe in the resurrection. You were in a literal seminary. What, were you all too busy sucking each other’s dicks in the dorms to do the readings?”

Dennis glares. “Gross.”

“Sorry. Too far.”

“The point is.” He puts his fingers to his temples. “The point is that Christ was kind. Right?”

Langdon’s incredulous look falls away. “I guess.”

“The point is that he loved everyone. Regardless of what they did or who they were. And if they had done wrong, he loved them even more. It doesn’t really matter to me if he actually, chemically turned water into wine, or bread into fish. The point is, he fed people. The point is, he did things people thought were impossible. Touching the untouchables. Healing the sick.”

“Exorcising possessed children,” Langdon quips. 

“Do you understand what I’m trying to say, here?”

“…Not really.”

“It’s all healing work. Spiritual and physical. Right? This is just how I see it. But if I was you, and I wanted to find a natural way in, I would stop trying to think about him as, like, a magical wizard.”

“You’re putting words in my mouth.”

“If you really boil it down, to first principles,” he says, “Christ was a doctor.”

Langdon leans back. “That’s your big conclusion? Christ was a doctor?”

Whitaker feels himself turning red. “Um, yeah.” 

“I did read it. The New Testament. Well, some of it. It’s pretty repetitive, right?”

“What did you think?”

“I just think ‘Christ was a doctor’ is a little reductive.”

Good, Whitaker tells himself. It’s good that he’s invested. “How so?”

“He does a lot of unrelated blabbering.”

“Sound like any doctors you know?”

“The doctors I know,” Langdon says, unamused, “aren’t the literal child of God. They don’t tell people how to live.” He looks thoughtful. “Well, maybe he was in psych.”

Dennis snorts. “Good, you’re getting it.”

“I don’t think I am, actually.”

“I’m just trying to get you to relate to him. It might be easier that way.” He sips his water. “Christ is God. Sort of. But he’s also… not-God. That’s the struggle for a lot of people. How do we do what he did? How can we compare ourselves to somebody like that, let alone try and emulate him?”

“Yeah. How?”

“We remember that he was a person, making the choice to help and to heal. That’s all,” Whitaker says simply. “It’s all that’s really relevant to me, anyway.”

Langdon digests that for a while. “Can I make a confession?”

“Sure?”

“Like. A confession-confession.”

Whitaker frowns. “I’m a Presbyterian. We don’t really do that. Not out loud, anyway.”

“What’s a Presbyterian?”

Dennis could throttle him. “I don’t think we’re there yet.”

“I thought confessing was, like, required.”

“Not for everybody. We just tell God about it in our heads. You might want to find a Catholic.”

“Well,” Langdon huffs, “it’s required for me. Step 5.”

“No, literally, I can’t take confession— I’m not a priest. I’m not qualified.”

Langdon rolls his eyes. “So... why don’t you just passively listen as I talk to God, then?” Dennis sighs, and nods dubiously. “Alright. Do you know why I became a doctor?”

“No. Why?”

“It wasn’t to help people. It paid a lot of money, and kept my attention, and I…” He shrugs. “I was good at it, y’know? It had prestige. People praised me, a lot, and I liked that. I had pride in it.”

Whitaker studies him. “I think that’s pretty normal.”

“It is sinful, though, right? Objectively?” His voice tightens. “To go through your life only motivated by ambition? Wanting to be better than everybody else, at everything? And I get that, it was wrong, but… it’s my whole life.” He falters. “How am I supposed to strip away that version of me if it’s all I know?”

This isn’t how Dennis expected their first lesson to go. His hands are starting to sweat. “We all start full of sin,” he tries, but it’s already coming out stale and stilted. “Even as kids. That’s the common thought. It might not be our fault, but it’s our responsibility. And— and we get rid of it through confession, and prayer, and good works.”

“I’ve tried prayer, and I’ve tried confession, and I still feel the same.” Langdon taps his fingers on the table restlessly. “Aren’t I supposed to feel something? Some— I don’t know— grace?”

Whitaker raises an eyebrow. “You’ve left one off.”

“But if I’m only doing good stuff to feel better about myself,” Langdon counters, “and to get right with God, does it really count?”

Whitaker can only shrug. “It counts to the people you help.”

Langdon squints at him. “Okay, I don’t get it. You don’t proselytize. You don’t believe Jesus had magic powers. You don’t go to church, either, do you?”

Dennis feels like he’s been slapped. “No, not… lately.”

“You’re an interesting kid,” he concludes. “You must have had a pretty bad falling out with God to get kicked out of theology school.”

“I left.” And I’m not a kid. 

“Ah. That’s right. To help people. I assume you became a doctor out of the pure selfless goodness of your heart,” Langdon says sourly. “To fulfil the highest order of God’s fucking will, right?”

“No,” Dennis interrupts, just to shut him up. He keeps his voice cool and steady. “I became a doctor because I was a coward. I was angry, and confused, and scared. And I’m still running, and I’m still paying for it. Okay?” There’s a long beat of silence. “Is that what you wanted to know?”

Langdon stares at him. “I’m… sorry, I was just…”

Dennis pushes himself up from his chair, all of a sudden flushed, spilling over with embarrassment. He doesn’t even know Langdon. What the hell is he doing here? “Look, I should probably get going soon. Trinity will be wondering where I am.”

Langdon follows. “Wait. I got carried away, okay? Hey. C’mon. We just started.”

Dennis takes a piece of paper out of its folder and slides it across the table. “There’s a reading list. Some intro stuff. Pick and choose what you like.”

“I still have things to confess.”

“Again,” he says, zipping up his hoodie, “find a priest.”

“I’ve done some really bad things,” Langdon says. Standing by his ugly plastic table he looks very small, somehow. 

Whitaker rocks on his heels, regretting all his life choices, everything that’s led him here, regretting the stupid burning ache in him that’s forcing him to stay. “Yeah. I know.”

Langdon stumbles onward. “I’ve been weak-willed. And covetous. I allowed my pain to override my judgement. I stole from sick people. I’ve been callous with my wife. I’ve been cruel to others. I’ve been self-serving, and self-satisfied, and arrogant.”

Whitaker nods, slowly. “Anything else?”

“Last week,” he says, sinking into his chair again, “when I asked for your help, it was because I messed up. I wasn’t— strong. I thought about relapsing. It was all I could think about, actually. I almost did it, too. I felt like the worst person in the world. I think that’s a sin, too. The self-hatred. And I— I think I just need someone to forgive me, because I can’t do it on my own.”

Whitaker bites the inside of his cheek. He’s so infuriatingly earnest. Without thinking he crosses the floor and places a hand on Langdon’s shoulder, holding him still— he’s shaking, just a bit. Langdon freezes under his touch. His eyes dart around like frightened animals. 

“Okay,” he whispers, not wanting to spook him. “You’re okay.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn't have…”

“In the stead of the Lord Jesus Christ,” Dennis says, quickly, before he can continue, “I forgive you all your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

Langdon shuts his eyes and shudders when he exhales. He looks— Dennis thinks— almost beatific. 

“Thanks.” Then he stands, and shoulders Dennis off, starting to clear the table, and the moment is over, the calm has retreated, absorbed back into the plaster on the walls. 

Dennis hovers awkwardly, feeling very faraway all of a sudden. “Uh, yeah. No problem.” 

Langdon looks up at him, clearly swallowing some incalculable emotion. “You said there’d be a next time. Any way you’re still up for it?”

“Yeah,” he decides. “The next weekday when our days off line up?”

“Sounds good.”

He inches towards the door. “Okay. Well, good start, I guess. Read the stuff on the list for next time. Bye, Dr. Langdon.”

“Just Frank. It’s cool.”

“Alright. Just Dennis, then.”

Frank looks genuinely repulsed. “There is no way I’m calling you that.” 

Whitaker shuts the door on him. 

“Bye, Dennis,” he hears Frank call out, halfway down the hallway, and despite himself, he actually smiles. 

When he gets back to his own apartment fifteen minutes later, he finds Santos waiting for him in the living room with her hands on her hips. 

“How was your walk?” she asks archly. 

“Miserable.” Dennis tries to shuffle towards his bedroom, but she blocks him. 

“Your hoodie isn’t wet,” she points out. 

He turns to face her, unblinking, and holds his hands up in surrender. “Okay, I get it, it’s a trap.”

She produces a few loose pieces of paper. Printouts. They must have fallen out of his binder. “Want to explain these? Genesis: A Children’s Guide?”

He scratches the back of his head. Red-handed. “Um. Research?”

“You’re not defecting back to the seminary, are you?” He can hear the very faint note of concern in her voice. “‘Cause that would be really stupid.”

“Uh. No.”

“So what the hell is this?”

“This is going to be really hard to explain,” he says, very fast, all at once. “So please, please don’t yell at me?”

Trinity tilts her head. “Me? Yell?”

“Promise me, Trin.”

“Ugh. Fine.” Her eyes suddenly go wide. “You weren’t having sex, were you?”

“What? No!”

“Why so sensitive, Hucklefuck?” She elbows him, hard. “If it’s another coworker, I will straight up jinja kill you. We made a pinky promise, remember? Never again.”

He twists away, out of her reach. “I was at Langdon’s apartment.”

She stops and stares at him, mouth ajar. 

“Not for sex,” he clarifies quickly. “He, uh, asked me to do Bible study with him. Actually.”

She continues staring. 

Whitaker wonders remotely whether she would be more receptive if he really had told her they were fucking. 

“It’s, like,” he tries to explain, “a recovery thing? You know, like with his twelve step program? He’s struggling with his faith? He thinks he found God— or should find God— so he wants me to help him, with that?”

Trinity’s voice, as promised, is deathly quiet. “Are you insane?”

“I know, I know, he’s an asshole. But he’s really not— doing well. I thought…” He cringes. Laid out plain, it does sound kind of stupid. “He asked for spiritual assistance. It was so out of nowhere… I thought I’d just play along until he got what he needed.”

“You’re giving Langdon,” she says, slowly, “spiritual assistance.”

“Yeah.”

“Dr. Langdon. Dr. Frank Langdon.”

“Uh huh.”

Looking dazed, she collapses onto the couch. He expects her to blow up, or ask more questions, but she just shakes her head and turns on Bravo. “Whitaker, has anybody ever told you you’re the weirdest person ever?”

He sits beside her, tucking his legs underneath him so they can both fit. “Yeah, you. Every day.”

“I’m telling you again.”

“Noted.”

In hindsight, Langdon’s pretty sure Whitaker regrets telling him there are no stupid questions. 

They start meeting more regularly, and Frank takes full advantage of the opportunity. He runs the gamut. Which one’s Peter and which one’s Paul? Is the Trinity confusing on purpose, to weed out the weak? Satan— what’s his deal? So we have free will, but there’s also a predestined plan? How does that work? Does the Pope have magic powers? How do the dinosaurs fit into all this? Why was everybody getting thrown into pits of lions all the time back then? Do people genuinely believe in the apocalypse, or what? Why don’t angels actually help out when you pray? Who’s Luther? Who’s Calvin? What is a Presbyterian, anyway? 

(Better than his twice-a-week NA meetings, where everybody else in his group seems to be relapsing, and the only questions anyone asks are “What do I do now?” and “How can I live like this?”)

“Is it scary?” Frank asks one day, afternoon light filtering softly through his newly-bought IKEA curtains. “Growing up in it?”

Whitaker gives him one of his customary oh, Langdon, you blistering idiot stares. “Scary? Why would it be scary?”

“Like. Being a kid and hearing all these creepy stories. Sin and punishment. Sodom and Gomorrah and Revelations and stuff.”

Whitaker leans back. “I guess I never worried about it because I was mostly a good kid.”

Langdon grins. “Mostly?”

“Well,” he allows, “I was shy.”

“Good for you.”

“Ha.”

“But seriously, you didn’t freak out? About God punishing you?”

Whitaker frowns. “No, it was comforting. If I did all the right things, nothing would go wrong. There were rules to follow. I liked that. I’d be rewarded, in the end.”

“Yeah, when you’re dead.”

“It was nice knowing God was out there, and He loved me. Loved the earth, loved everyone...”

“What about the devil? You weren’t ever scared of,” he ventures, “temptation?”

“Even if I was, I always knew I could be forgiven.” He coughs, casting his eyes to the floor. “I mean, when I was a kid, at least. Things got complicated later, I guess. Church was my whole life. Every Sunday I’d wake up smiling. My family thought I was nuts. But we weren’t evangelicals, we didn’t— like— think the end was imminent. People weren’t thumping Bibles in the streets. If there was shame,” he says, with a wry smile, “it was quiet. Um, kept to the home, mostly.”

Langdon would very much like to dig into that last sentence, but he can sense an antsy energy rising, and anyway he’s definitely not close enough to Whitaker to pry. “Good ol’ Midwestern Protestantism?”

“See, you’re getting it.” He checks his watch. “Should we pack up soon? I have a double shift.”

“Prayer for the road?” Langdon suggests. 

“Sure.”

“I have one.” He ruffles through one of his new prayer books. “It’s, uh, for my kids.”

Whitaker smiles in his annoying, cherubic fashion. “How are they doing?”

Honestly? Frank has no fucking idea. He takes them out on weekends, a few hours at a time, but if he has a shift, he’s shit out of luck. Maybe he can squeeze in some ice cream, or a walk in the park. And they’re excited, and happy when they’re with him, but there’s something horribly fragile about it. After his months away from them in inpatient, he can’t blame them for that. He can’t even fight with Abby about it, because it’s true, they’re better off with her. His hours are too demanding. (And where would they sleep in his apartment? The nonexistent couch?) 

“They’re good,” he says, but inadvertently his voice flips up and makes it sound like a question. 

Whitaker nods, perceptive as ever. “It must be hard.”

Frank is not talking to fucking Whitaker about this. “We’re managing.”

“They’re not…”

“Religious? God, no.” He finally finds the right page. “Here.”

“Go on.”

Langdon prefers it when they both pray together, but whatever— they’re not Whitaker’s kids. “Lord, I pray for the safety of my children. I pray that you will fill them with joy and peace, and cultivate a grateful heart within them.” He sneaks a glance at Dennis, who looks… strange. “I pray that you will help them love who you have made them to be.”

Dennis says nothing.

“Amen,” Frank prompts, and he jumps. 

“Amen,” he says quickly, but his voice is strained. 

“Are you…”

“Yep. Yeah. Fine.”

“You don’t look fine.” 

“That was really kind,” says Dennis, “the way you said it.” He’s very pale. 

“I mean. It’s just what was in the book.”

Dennis chews his lip. “I should probably pray for my family, too.”

Frank frowns. “Sure. Yeah.”

“Take my hand,” Whitaker says suddenly. 

“Okay.” Langdon grips his outstretched palm, which is disconcertingly damp. 

He watches Whitaker with a caught breath, but he’s silent and still, his eyes closed. The sweat of their hands intermingles. Maybe he’s doing it silently? Isn’t that the Presby way? His mouth gets tight, and then after a couple of moments he tears his fingers away again. 

“I’m— sorry,” he says, wringing his hands. “I don’t know what happened there.”

“Are you okay?” 

“Yeah. Sometimes it’s just hard. For me.” He hunches down. “Um. Weird memories? I guess?”

“Oh,” Langdon says, extremely confused. 

“It’s got nothing to do with— with you, or anything, really. My family is fine.”

“It’s cool, man, seriously.”

“It’s just because…” He winces. 

“What?”

A long beat. Whitaker looks squeamish. “You know.”

An even longer beat. 

“No, I don’t.”

“Yes, you do.”

Langdon squints, and then all of a sudden he gets it. “Oh,” he says, smacking himself in the head, “because you’re an atheist,” at the exact same time that Dennis says, “Because I'm gay?”

They stare at each other. 

“Oh,” says Frank, into the ensuing silence. “That sucks.”

Dennis blanches. 

“Not to say,” he stammers, quickly, trying desperately to save his ass, “that being gay sucks.” This clearly isn’t helping. “I just meant. You know what I meant.” 

“No,” Dennis says, now a frightening shade of pink, “yeah, I know…”

“I am so sorry.”

He shakes his head. “Did you really think I’d stopped believing?”

“Oh, uh—” Well, at least he’s out of the frying pan of dubious homophobia. “Sometimes the way you talk, it’s like you’re just kinda… humouring me.”

Whitaker smiles slightly. “Maybe I am.”

“But you still would… call yourself a Christian, then?”

He shrugs, looking a bit morose. “I haven’t been to church in years.” He bites back a sigh. “It’s not because— ugh, it’s not that, not really. Sometimes it chafes, of course it does, but I’d already been struggling even before I knew. It really was my whole life. And when I went to the seminary, my parents were so proud... I thought I was doing the right thing, that it was what I was always supposed to do. I liked it. I was good at it. But one day I looked at my hands and realized I hadn’t actually done anything with them. I hadn’t saved anyone. How was I serving people? Their prayers never got answered. They died, or got sick, or got hurt. It all just started to feel— wrong, somehow. Tangled up. I don’t know if that makes sense.”

Langdon can’t help it. He needs to prod. “How did your parents take it, when you quit?”

Whitaker grimaces. “You know, I haven’t been back to see them in five years?”

“Really? That’s…”

“They’re nice,” he says. “They really are. Good, solid people. But it’s still hard. I think they just saw it— med school— as a total fantasy. Like I was being reckless. All my life I did what I was supposed to do. Now I was throwing away hundreds of thousands of dollars, all because, what, I quit on God? They didn’t understand it. They still don’t. How I could be… more than I was, y’know? In more ways than one.”

I pray that you will help them love who you have made them to be. Things are starting to make sense now. “Gotta be tough.” 

Whitaker scratches the back of his neck. “I still believe. I do. Somehow. In the goodness of Christ. I mean, maybe it’s not real, but… the ideal of it is still there. Right? Isn’t that all we really need?”

Langdon feels something when he says that. That same feeling from before this all started, the little tumble in his chest, a gear clicking into place. “That makes sense,” he says, trying not to display whatever weird emotion is bubbling in him. 

Whitaker grimaces. “Sorry, this is all…. a lot. Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine.” Langdon studies him, his drawn features illuminated in blocky strips of sunset light. He really does look like a spiritual sort of person— a young monk-in-training, a wandering priest, a tragic disciple. Like he’s suffered, but the beautiful, archaic kind of suffering, the kind that gets written about in florid prose. (Nothing like his own misery, so messy and mundane.) “That’s wise as fuck, man.”

Whitaker lets out a surprised laugh. “Um, thanks?”

“No prob.”

“Do you really mean that?”

Frank clasps his hands together. “Look at me. Look. Seriously, look. Would I ever lie?”

There’s this weird feeling Langdon gets sometimes, now, when he’s on shift with Whitaker. 

He seems almost like— like he’s a different category of being to everyone else. Not in a haughty way. Pure, somehow. Innocent and clean. Bumbling around the hospital being kind to everyone, flushed with some higher purpose. He’s like an alien, or maybe a saint. (Do Presbyterians have saints?) An odd, precious, nonhuman thing, with the whole sun shining out from his eyes. 

But then he’ll mutter a snarky comment and push his fringe out of his eyes, and then the feeling will be gone. 

And Frank will go on pretending nothing’s happening, and everything’s fine, and that his sanity isn’t being held up by a singular live wire with a babyface and hand-me-down scrubs. Because that would be ridiculous, and he isn’t ridiculous, he’s normal, getting better every day, there’s nothing at all wrong with him, and when he gets on his knees for God now it’s breathless, it’s a revelation; he can feel that flickering glow somewhere inside himself, reach inward and open his chest like a window.