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Frank knew he was fucked in that moment. He wanted to think it had started innocently, but he was working on not lying — to others, and, arguably most importantly, to himself — and the final thread had snapped on that excuse.
He took a deep breath and tried to trace back his steps to find exactly where he had gone wrong. The flippant answer was “when you blew your entire life and family up just for some fucking benzos,” but even that was a slow-moving car crash that happened over the course of a year with the exact moment of impact impossible to pin down. So it actually wasn’t anything like a car crash at all.
But this, right now, with Mel? Where had he gone so wrong?
He prayed it was only just now, five seconds ago, when the yoga teacher had ordered them into a nightmarish twisted side pose — pretty brusquely, Frank thought, for the so-called “Relaxed and Restorative All Levels Welcome!” class Mel had dragged him to, citing a 2020 metanalysis that, “you know, yoga was shown to have the same positive effect on pain and disability as any other form of physical therapy, and plus, it would be fun to go together!” when she had caught him ineffectively attempting to massage his back after their shift.
He took a second to gather himself, remembering how big she had smiled up at him, playfully tapping his shoulder with her bright yellow yoga mat. Apparently she was a regular every Sunday after their shifts, something he couldn’t deny now, seeing her effortlessly flow into the pose with her patented precision and diligence.
Wait, no, that was making it worse. Get a grip.
He groaned, and the stern gaze of the teacher snapped over to him. He tensed up, sensing a form correction was incoming.
The last thing he needed was anyone picking up on the very specific hell he had put himself into by going to this class with Mel. Wasn’t this supposed to be relaxing? So far, he felt disgustingly out of shape (a drug addiction, withdrawal, and living off frozen food in your pathetic post-divorce studio apartment will do that to you), punctuated with the growing awareness of Mel’s physical form, something he tried very, very hard to ignore on their shifts together, when she was wearing boxy scrubs and long-sleeved jackets.
He tried to right the ship, pretending this was just another shift, a very weird one where Mel happened to be wearing form-fitting leggings and — god, how was that top even allowed in public? It was a bra. She was in a bra. Directly in front of him, the stretchy fabric sending him straight back to first-year anatomy, seeing every single muscle move under the fabric.
Wait, that was his lifeline. Name all the muscles of the human body! A totally normal thought exercise to take his mind off of what was happening on the mat in front of him. He stared at her head and began to breathe easier, sinking into the pose and trying to project an aura of “DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT TOUCHING ME” so strong that it would physically repel the instructor from even approaching his mat.
This somehow worked, and he overheard the teacher moving past to correct the form of the deeply unlucky young man a few rows behind them. Maybe this was a just world where good things could happen. Probably not, though, given the larger issue.
The problem was, as made abundantly clear by the class — and also, his fucking drug problem — that Frank was very good at denial.
Mel was an extremely professional, competent doctor, one of the best he had ever seen, honestly, and he was her weird, divorced, (desperately trying to be an) ex-addict, shambling wreck of a mentor, and the last thing she needed was to feel uncomfortable because this creepy older man couldn’t stop mooning over her.
He had worked hard to compartmentalize it at work — yes, everyone teased him for his very obvious favoritism (and yes, Mel was his favorite, obviously), but part of him hoped it was a way to avoid the very obvious elephant in the room — the rehab stay, the divorce, and the humiliating series of HR mandated hoops to jump through to claw his way back to a semblance of where he was professionally before he blew his entire life up. That wasn’t good joke fodder at work. A lot more fun for everyone involved to pick at his dedication to ensuring Mel got the best procedures, most interesting cases, and felt confident and supported as she grew into herself as a doctor.
But no one ever made suggestive jokes, the way they did about Garcia and Santos, or hit them with the knowing gazes that followed Robby and Collins when they were having one of their incredibly emotionally fraught fights allegedly about a patient's treatment, but so, so clearly about whatever the fuck had happened between them. He and Mel got none of that type of scrutiny, just little comments from the nurses about having Mel ask him to do a bullshit procedure because that would get him to say yes, or how it was always assumed they would work together since he "didn't like anyone else."
And that wasn’t a crime, was it? To be a dutiful teacher?
Frank wanted to slam his head into the mat repeatedly. He knew he was far beyond that. Dutiful teachers don’t lose the ability to speak whenever they saw their brilliant young colleague taking her hair down after a shift.
Mel's hair was surprisingly long the first time he saw it unbraided, and god, how was it so shiny? And with that hit of apples straight to his prefrontal cortex whenever he leaned over her to help with a procedure — something he had been doing more often than necessary, especially at the end of a really long shift when he was flagging, and his back hurt, and he couldn’t just erase it all with drugs, and he hated his life, and he knew he had to go home to his shitty, quiet, tiny apartment because of his own terrible decisions and so was it really a crime to just, in a very professional and definitely not creepy way, get a little whiff of her hair to steel himself to face that?
Okay, yes, that was extremely pathetic and also really weird, and pretty gross, and he’d self-immolate if anyone ever somehow read his mind and picked that thought out. But-
A small bell rang out, and he snapped back into focus.
“You’ve all mostly done a good job relaxing today,” the instructor said, without a hint of a smile.
Frank could feel her gaze turn to him, and he gulped, knowing he did not factor into the “mostly” — whatever. Who cares if you managed to fail a relaxing yoga class, a thing he didn’t previously know was possible. Definitely a great sign for his mental health and well-being.
The instructor continued in her clipped voice, “Now, we’ll end the class with a long shavasana. I will light some incense. I recommend utilizing this time to focus on something grounding for you as part of your practice.”
Why did she sound so deeply unrelaxed? Maybe this was part of his problem, he was always trying to flip over anything positive and look for bugs underneath, like some sort of rock in the backyard. His old backyard, he corrected himself.
Frank flattened himself on the mat, and his mind began racing. He wondered what Mel was thinking about. He wondered if he could push his luck and ask her to go to the farmer’s market with him next weekend since she’d brought him here this week.
Maybe they could hang outside of work now, Mel had opened the door after all.
And they were friends? He wanted to be friends. He thought they were friends. They’re definitely friends, right? And friends hang out outside of work. And friends can be tortured by the physical proximity of the other friend as long as they don’t act on it or make the other person uncomfortable. That’s actually a classic type of friendship, you know?
Okay, this train of thought was not grounding. He took a big breath in, and thought about the farmer’s market again.
He’d started going on Sundays, encouraged — well, hectored, really — by his therapist into finding a “healthy routine” and every single week he bought a bag of apples, whatever green vegetable was in season, and two cartons of eggs.
He didn’t even want to admit this part to himself, but he was in too deep, and he had to face it now. He loved the smell of apples. He never ate the last one. Frank would pluck it out of his fruit bowl (a wedding gift Abby thought was ugly so she had put it in his pile when they split up), and he'd sit there, smelling it on those long, lonely nights and smile a dopey little grin as he thought back over what he and Dr. King had accomplished that d-
The bell rung again.
“Class dismissed.”
He was fucked.