Chapter Text
The fluorescent lights stung the back of her eyes at the end of a long day like this. When she closed them to halt the throbbing in her temples, she could see the ER, photonegative, burned in. Of all shifts, this one hadn’t been the worst. As her residency progressed, she was learning that even the most milquetoast of shifts would leave their mark. Patients who didn’t die, the ones who did. Even when it seemed to be their time, the very old, the unsalvageably sick, it still hurt.
Mel would not consider herself someone overly concerned with her own mortality. She was pragmatic and found the alternative of floating, untethered in space, as the universe blew apart, far more frightening. But the ache of loss never softened. Nor had she hardened as she hoped she would over the course of her residency. It was the hustled panic of sudden death, freed from ceremony, full of tubes and messy with blood - the unfairness of it all - that got her.
That’s how Mel found herself outside in the ambulance bay, staring at the waning sun over the ugly concrete. It was the last one that did it, a woman in her 20s, all made up in her summer dress and curled hair, out for lunch with friends, collapsed and blue from a congenital heart defect. Family all out of state, panicked college friends out of their element in the extremity of the moment. Maybe she was a bit concerned with her own mortality. She still had so much to get done: needed by the hospital, by her patients, by her sister. She hadn’t even finished her residency.
Mel had had to tell three women, still digesting their mimosas, that their best friend and confidant had died for no reason at all. It got no easier. Their tears, out of sync with her own. The big explosions of emotions, real hurt that they had a right to, versus her delayed, silent, grief.
She considered calling her sister, but she was going to pick her up shortly either way, and didn’t want to throw their system out of wack. Instead she pulled her headphones from her pocket and, untangling them, decided to indulge in her Spotify ‘Bad times’ playlist.
It was just as she had queued Sufjan that Doctor Langdon rounded the corner. He had been back for a couple of weeks and yet she felt she was still learning to see him anew. His wild eyes were less wide, his hair less gelled, his demeanor less electrified than that first day in the pitt.
They hadn’t spoken about it, and Mel was unsure if that was a faux pas on her part. She had eventually been drip-fed the details from the RNs in the weeks following his departure and felt that he’d likely been interrogated enough. She felt wrong-footed upon his return, away from the easy companionship she rarely felt upon first meeting someone, knowing that he knew that she knew something and her knowing the same. There were stifling layers to it all.
“Hey,” he pulled a crumpled box of cigarettes from his trousers, deftly lighting one as he settled next to her. “Tell me if you mind. Honestly.”
Transference, Mel had heard of that one. One habit to the next. “I don’t.” She meant it, the second-hand smoke reassuringly stale, like secondhand clothes. Comforting.
“You okay?” It had been a while since she heard that from him. It was nice.
“Yeah!” She pulled her headphones back out, tangling them back up as she shoved them away, running the back of her hand across her face. “Just, y’know, a long day.”
“I get it.” Turning to blow the smoke away from her. “That last one was rough. It never stops being unfair.”
“It’s not fair that I feel sadder for the young ones. The people who are like me.”
“We’re all guilty of that. Human selfishness.” He looked over at her then, “It might be the most human thing.”
Mel didn’t know what to do with this disconcertingly earnest invitation for comment. “For sure. We all, um, have our weaknesses.”
“Doctor Langdon, I’m not the best at saying things like this. But just so you know.” She took the effort to look him in the eye: “We’re cool.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Mel replied with a small smile. They fell to slightly less uncomfortable silence.
There had been anger. It took a while to emerge, behind the confusion and frustration at the sense of colleagues talking behind her back and over her head, the dawning realisation that he wouldn’t be coming back for what seemed from that vantage point to be forever. After that though, it was slow-building and laced with betrayal. She had really wanted to trust him. She had wanted to trust him because he believed that she was good at what she did and that meant a whole lot from someone brilliant at what they did.
It was another small grief she kept close. That that brilliance could also be selfish and wielded to risk the people he was supposed to care for. He had cared for her, that first day - looked out for her in a way no other senior doctor had during her other placements, carving out the niche that still now let her feel in-place with her coworkers at the Pitt.
Though she lacked the hands-on experience of Santos at the center, she on some level understood what addiction could do. And he had worked really hard, months spent away only to have to return to the same stage of his humiliation; he’d kept his chin up. She didn’t know if she had that sort of resilience in her.
It was all a big tangle of emotions that she lacked the wherewithal, and thus far the courage, to pull apart. But she meant it: they were cool.
It wasn’t her that Langdon wanted to hear this from, Mel knew. So she let it lie, satisfied at the slightest relief in tension from Langdon’s shoulders. The return of the conspiratorial smile from that first day, as he stubbed out the end of his cigarette and spun on his heel to return for the last hour, was a nice bonus.
“Let me give you a lift?” Langdon was waiting for her as she had finished gathering her backpack from the locker room, trading scrubs for a cosy sweater and her favourite jeans that had worn thin with wear.
Mel’s car had been out of action for the past month, including the whole time that Langdon had been back. Mel was reluctant to admit to herself that it was less out of action and more beyond redemption, but had lacked the umph to organise replacing it. She had been taking the bus, and was surprised that anyone had noticed. It served her pretty well - she turned up to work on time and had only twice been left to call Becca apologetically when it failed to show for an hour and she kept her waiting in the evening.
“Don’t you have somewhere you need to be?” Becca wasn’t all that far away but it was likely a trip in the opposite direction to the vague suburbia where she’d gathered Langdon lived.
“Not for the next hour or so. Grant me a good deed, if you have to”
“Alright then.” If he insisted.
To his credit, Langdon’s car was less flash than would be assumed by the. Everything else about him. This wasn’t a new change, like the loss of general waxy ER ken sheen, but had apparently always been the case, his vehicle of choice a lightly battered, not all that washed, family sedan. It was honestly more embarrassing than her dearly departed.
She had explained that they’d need to go via the center to pick up her sister before dropping her off at home, Mel once again emphasising that she really was fine to find her own way back, Langdon continuing to insist that he was stubborn and had made up his mind now so it was really her doing him a favour.
She didn’t think Becca would mind this change to routine, but shot off a quick text to let her know just in case to give her a heads up. She looked up from her phone to see Langdon opening the door to the passenger seat, bowing and gesturing her in. She didn’t think Becca would mind at all, on second thought. A handsome doctor showing up, one that she could tease Mel about, would make her day.
Mel was grateful that she had told Landon about her sister on their first day together. She was never troubled to speak about her sister's support needs, but rather disliked the itchy sensation of feeling like she was talking about her friend behind her back, risking opening her up to judgement, and hated doing it more often than she had to.
As it was, Landon checked that it was okay for him to pick her up.
“She’ll probably be far more excited to see you than she ever is for me.” Mel answered honestly, and then instantly cringed and looked straight ahead as they backed out of the car park.
She could see the other doctor’s self-satisfied eyebrow raise in her peripheral view. “Well then, I certainly hope I don’t disappoint.”
It was a short drive without the bus’ stops, passed with inane commentary on the less dire cases of the day. The ease felt like a return to form after the stiltedness of the past couple of weeks, Mel was glad she’d risked embarrassing herself.
Becca was not disappointed. Mel’s cheeks burned as her sister waggled her eyebrows at her in the mirror from the backseat as Langdon told her all about what Mel had been up to that day, editorialising in a way that made Mel look far more central to all the most extreme cases.
By the time Mel had directed him to their condo she was pretty sure her ears were neon.
“Thank you Frank!” Langdon had insisted on Becca using his first name, which still rung odd to Mel’s ears. That man was not a Frank.
“Bye Becca, it was great meeting you. I’m sure I’ll see you soon.” With that he drove off, leaving Becca to elbow Mel in her side.