Work Text:
i.
Mel knows she can be clumsy.
It isn’t uncommon for her to trip over her own feet while leading a patient through the hallways, or to accidentally hip check the desk at the nurses’ station on her way by. She’ll commonly leave treatment rooms soaked in malodorous liquids she would rather not know the origination of. She does, however, try not to do any of these things in front of people higher on the hospital’s food chain than herself; such as Gloria, for example.
The administrator is making one of her routine visits to the pitt, and Mel can overhear her explaining the importance of patient satisfaction to Robby near the South corridor. He has his head leaned against the wall behind him, the picture of nonchalance. She guesses he isn’t hearing a word Gloria says, probably repeating some semblance of, “Bullshit, don’t care, we focus on saving lives around here,” in his head instead after getting the same lecture on a weekly basis for the past several months. Or, well, past year is probably more accurate considering it’s been ongoing since Mel first began her residency here.
“Are you listening to a single word I’m saying, Robinavitch?” Gloria asks, the picture of professionalism and, if Mel’s being honest, intimidation. Her arms are crossed in frustration, and Robby couldn’t seem to care less.
Mel’s carrying a box of supplies from one end of the department to the other, having been the one to notice one of the supply rooms was lacking.
“Oh, I hear you loud and clear, Gloria,” he steps away from the wall and turns to face her, tilting his head as he quips sarcastically, “I do have to ask, though—would you like me to lecture myself next time? It’s just that we’ve had this conversation so many times, I think I could recite both of our parts with an impressive accuracy.”
Mel stifles a laugh as she walks past, only she must not have done a very good job because they both turn their heads in her direction. Her eyes widen and she clears her throat, voice tight when she mutters, “Sorry, I’m- I’m sorry, I was just-”
To make matters worse, an empty gurney is being wheeled past by one of the department’s patient transport staff, and she tries to stop in order to avoid colliding with the man, only to stumble and fall flat on her ass, sending the box sliding across the floor. It falls open noisily, its contents splayed across the floor around her.
She cringes, her eyes closing tightly shut. It’s ridiculous, really, the way she has to fight back the burn of tears. She’s strong, and independent, and she’ll most definitely have to listen to Meg Thee Stallion on her break (assuming she gets to take one today) to make herself feel better.
“Mel,” she hears, and opens her eyes to see Dr. Langdon crouching in front of her, his face apprehensive. “You okay?”
Gloria and Robby’s conversation has ceased, the two of them watching her with creased brows. Mel scrambles to pick up the contents of the box to avoid acknowledging the pink blotches that are likely covering her from head to toe in reaction to the situation.
“Yes,” she tells him. “I’m- I’m fine. I’m good. Great, even.” Then, though she knows it’s overkill and probably lame of her to say, “All good over here, Doc.”
“Doc?” His puzzled look changes into that of amusement. Laughing, he asks, “Are you channeling Bugs Bunny or something?”
He bats her hands out of the way when she reaches for the box, grabbing it himself.
“What?”
“It was a joke, Dr. King.”
“Oh.” She nods. “Oh. Yes, yeah. I made a joke, so you made a joke. Funny.”
“C’mon, Mel,” Langdon sets the box, now returned to its original state, aside, and reaches for her hands with both of his. His hands are warm and dry against her own clammy ones, and she hopes he doesn’t try to make a joke about that, too. Would he? No, surely not. He wouldn’t embarrass her further, right? “Up you go.”
He pulls her up and, once she’s settled, squeezes her shoulder before bending to pick up the box.
His voice is quiet when he asks, “You okay?”
“Yes. Thank you, Frank.”
Dr. Robby and Gloria ask if she’s okay, surely worried her tumble will result in a workers’ comp case, though Robby is probably at least somewhat concerned for real. He’s a nice person, Mel thinks. She doesn’t talk to him quite as much as she does the others, the whole authority thing somewhat intimidating, but he always seems keen to listen to her when sharing her findings with him, and he does seem to care about the overall well-being of the department’s staff.
“I’m fine, I promise.”
“Make sure you fill out an incident report anyway, and go ahead and take ten.” Robby tells her before turning back to Gloria, and Mel can only nod in response.
“Before you do that, why don’t you show me where this is going and I’ll make the delivery?” Frank asks, and his presence alone is enough to make her feel better about the whole situation, as pathetic as it may sound.
“Um, it’s supposed to go to one of the supply rooms close to twelve south.”
“Lead the way, Doc.”
ii.
“Only a six?” Cassie asks, feigning disbelief. “Robby’s at least an eight if we’re ignoring all of the trauma and compartmentalized feelings he refuses to acknowledge.”
“You asked me to rate a man, so I rated him. Ask me about someone I might actually fuck and you’ll get a more accurate rating,” Santos shrugs, stuffing a piece of an orange into her mouth as she spins her chair around. By “someone she might actually fuck,” Mel assumes she’s meaning Garcia—they haven’t exactly been subtle, and if Mel can see it, then subtle has all but been tossed out the window.
“Okay, fair, I’ll allow that.” Cassie taps a pen against the desk in front of her, chin rested in her other hand. It took a while for Mel to get to know her, but she finds that she gets along well with Cassie. Though intimidating at first, she’s good at what she does and has only ever been kind to Mel. “Mel, wanna play?”
“How do you play?” Mel asks as she sets aside her notebook and pushes her glasses higher on her nose.
She won’t say it aloud, knowing it’s the harbinger of chaos, but it’s been a slow day in the pitt. It’s Christmas Eve, and thus far, there have only been a handful of patients. The chairs out front are practically empty save for a few people who have only just come through the doors and are still filling out paperwork. Whitaker’s stuck with a fecal impaction, Mohan and Javadi are tending to a grandmother with a second degree burn to her right hand, and Langdon’s across the room engaged in conversation with Dana and Robby.
“We give you a name, and you rate the person from one to ten, ‘wouldn’t touch them with a ten foot pole’ to ‘would climb them like a tree.’”
“Climb them like a tree?”
“Would fuck them,” Trinity clarifies, feet now crossed on top of the nurses’ station as she leans back. “No explanations needed.”
“I don’t know that this is an appropriate game for work.”
“It’s just between us,” Cassie assures her. “Besides, we’ve been playing it for months now, HR hasn’t caught a whiff.”
Mel agrees, somewhat reluctantly. She doesn’t quite understand the point, nor does she like the idea of assigning these imaginary numbers to her coworkers. Celebrities or other people she doesn’t know personally would be better.
“Okay, Mel, we’ll start easy. What about Jesse?”
“Oh,” Mel shrugs, trying to understand how the two of them might answer if tasked with the same person. “He’s conventionally attractive, I guess. Maybe a five?”
McKay and Santos share a look and Mel tries not to shrink in response - it’s a game, it’s not serious. There are no consequences to what’s said, because it’s only the three of them in at least a twenty foot radius. It’s supposed to be fun.
“Sorry, I’m just- I’m not good at this.”
“Mel, you’re fine, this isn’t supposed to be serious. We just play it to pass the time,” Cassie reassures her, and Mel relaxes. It’s just to pass the time. Right.
“I’ll do you one better,” Trinity says, a glint in her eye, and Mel doesn’t like where this is going. She merely nods in response, reaching for her bottle of water.
As she begins to take a drink, the cool liquid doing well enough to soothe her as it goes down, Santos suggests, “Rate Dr. Langdon,” and Mel sputters, water soaking both the surface in front of her and the front of her scrub top.
Over the past year and a half that Mel’s been here, she and Frank have gotten close, a friendship forged by long shifts and shared dinners on their nights off. When he went to rehab following her first day, Mel visited him, his presence already deeply missed by her despite them only working one shift together. He seemed to understand her, to care about what she thought, and about how she felt. It’s all she could ask for in a friend.
Of course, somewhere over the course of that year and a half, she’s grown to have feelings for him that resemble something more than friendship. She gets jittery when he sits too close to her, a flush threatening to creep into her cheeks any time he smiles or laughs at one of her jokes. She tried to shove them down, lock them away, but the moment he showed up at her apartment in the middle of the night asking if he could come in, only to tell her that he and his wife were getting a divorce, any false impressions of overlooking those feelings were thrown out the window.
Mel coughs harshly into her elbow, choking on the remnants of her drink, and Santos hides her grin in her hand. Cassie shows concern, reaching over to pat Mel on the back and asking if she’s okay.
“I’m fine,” she says tightly. “I don’t, um- I don’t think I’m interested in playing anymore.”
Before they can protest, as Mel is still trying to get her bearings, Langdon appears.
“What’s going on?” he asks, and she hopes he didn’t notice her choking on her drink from where he stood across the room. When he places a hand on Mel’s shoulder, she jumps.
All of them respond, “Nothing,” and he tilts his head, his eyes narrowing.
“Okay, that was creepy.” He squeezes Mel’s shoulder before dropping his hand back to his side, and she finally sets her bottle back down, reaching for her notebook. “Wanna check out a case with me? I think it’s one you’ll like.”
A beat, and then, “Is there wound irrigation involved?”
“You know it,” he winks, and part of her is thankful that she choked in response to Trinity’s challenge. Mel wouldn’t have been able to rate him without drawing more suspicion than she already did; she’s a terrible liar.
iii.
Mel doesn’t like arguments, be it an argument she’s involved in herself, or one she bears witness to. Which is why she sometimes wishes patients would leave their significant others in the waiting room while they’re being examined. She’s looking at the scans of a fifty year old man with multiple metatarsal fractures, and typically it’s an easy fix, especially when they’re not displaced.
“I told you to move the goddamn stool somewhere else,” he tells his wife, who sits in the corner with a seemingly permanent frown. Mel understands why; she’d be frowning, too, if she were married to this man. “Now how am I supposed to work?”
“The stool isn’t the problem,” the wife responds, just as harsh, and Mel’s glad she’s facing away from them because she’s rolled her eyes at least three times. “The problem is that you’re a dumbass who doesn’t watch where he’s going.”
“How am I supposed to watch where I’m going when the lights are off?”
“If the lights are off, you’re just as likely to run into something else. Am I supposed to move all of our furniture?” The wife asks, shrugging in question. Their voices grow louder with each sentence fired at one another. “Why don’t we just get rid of all the furniture then?”
“Quit saying stupid shit,” he says, waving her off. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Um,” Mel starts, but she doesn’t know how to break it up without raising her own voice. “Why don’t we calm down?”
“Did you just tell me to calm down?” the patient asks, irate, and all Mel can focus on is the bulging vein in his forehead that moves when he speaks. She forces her gaze away, focusing instead on a spot of chipped paint in the wall across from her.
“No- um, no. I’m just saying, maybe we should lower our voices so we don’t alarm the other patients.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” the patient says at the same time his wife says, “We’ll calm down when we want to calm down.”
They’re arguing again now, louder than before, and Mel goes to busy herself by grabbing supplies from the cabinet. Only, she’s distracted and they’re really loud, and she can hear her heart galloping wildly in her ear, and so when she goes to open the cabinet, she strikes herself violently in the forehead with the corner of the wood—just as Frank and Dr. Robby walk through the door.
“Did you just hit yourself with the cabinet?” the wife asks, followed by the patient asking, “Are you sure you’re a doctor?”
Mel’s face feels warm and she sputters, trying to find a response, but Dr. Robby beats her to it.
“Dr. King is a doctor, and an excellent one at that,” Robby assures them as Frank comes up to her, tipping her head upward with a finger under her chin so he can inspect the bruise that’s surely beginning to form. “She’s one of our best. I’ll be taking over for now, though. Mrs. Dennison, I’m going to ask you to wait outside while we treat your husband. The two of you have already caused enough of a fuss.”
Frank leads her to the break room and forces her to take a seat despite Mel’s insistence that she’s fine, thank you very much. He pulls an ice pack out of the freezer and sits in the chair next to her, placing the ice pack against her forehead. It’s a little too cold, if she’s being honest.
“I told you I’m fine,” she assures him. “It’s only a bruise, it didn’t even hurt.”
“Head trauma should never be taken lightly, Mel, you know that.”
“It isn’t trauma,” she laughs, stopping when she realizes how close his face is to her own. “I’m okay, really, this isn’t necessary.”
“I know,” Frank says, shrugging, and he pushes an errant strand of hair away from her forehead, tucking it behind her ear. “You’re important to me, though, Mel. I like to take care of you.”
She can’t find the words to argue with him after that.
+i.
It happens suddenly and unexpectedly, much like most other things in Mel’s life. They begin carpooling to work together, mostly Frank driving, and then he’s coming over on their days off when his kids are with Abby, and even sometimes on the days they do work. He kisses her in the middle of summer, when the air is hot and humid, and her air conditioning isn’t working, and they’re sitting on her back steps in as little clothing as is publicly acceptable.
Mel doesn’t think she had any idea of what true hunger was before that moment.
Of course, they don’t label it right away. Mel knows they’re together, in a sense. He spends the night at her place, she spends the night at his. They have dinner, and kiss, and sleep with their legs intertwined no matter how warm the nights get. She expected it to bother her, the constant touching; she’s always struggled with physical affection, and touch in general. Yet, with Frank, it’s not an issue. Rather than causing her to feel jittery in the worst way, it ignites something within her, making her long for more.
The new facets of their relationship are wonderful, and fulfilling, and perhaps what makes it so excitable is that it’s only theirs to know.
At work, they still do as many cases together as ever. Maybe even more so, Robby recognizing that they work well together and often assigning them the most superfluous of tasks to complete. Not that Mel’s complaining.
When they’re able to take a break, they spend it in the break room. He usually sports a protein bar, not bothering to pack a lunch, but it works out because Mel always packs extra because she knows he never packs anything.
“Do you want the orange or the pudding cup?” she asks, holding them up for show.
“The pudding cup, duh,” he reaches for it, and Mel smiles because she knew that would be the answer.
“Are we still on for tonight?” He tears the wrapper off the top of the cup and tosses it aside, dipping the plastic spoon into it. “I was thinking we could get takeout and hang out at my place. I know you drove this morning, but we can just-”
He’s interrupted by Robby walking through the door, followed by Collins and McKay.
“The patient literally brought the raccoon that bit him,” McKay explains, midway through a story. “It was in a wire cage, still alive. I was half afraid it would tear through the metal or some shit.”
“I mean, it’s kind of smart,” Collins shrugs, plopping down into a chair in the corner. “The only way to know if the raccoon has rabies is by testing it.”
“Don’t they have to cut off its head for that?” Mel asks, fiddling with the orange peel in her hand.
Robby nods, then adds, “Brutal, but it’s the only way.”
“Okay, what kind of break room conversation is this? Choose something lighter, for God’s sake, we’re eating here,” Frank complains, and jokingly tosses the pudding wrapper in Robby’s direction, who swats it back at Frank in return.
“Don’t be a baby,” McKay tells him, teasingly scrunching up her face.
Mel stifles a laugh against her hand.
“I’m not a baby. I can’t be a baby, I have to go be a doctor,” Frank explains, scooting his chair away from the table and standing up to leave. He glances at his watch. “I have a four year old with a temp and a patient who very likely has a distal radius fracture to tend to.”
He moves to leave, but before he goes, bends down to press a kiss against Mel’s cheek, his hand squeezing her shoulder. Before she can gauge any sort of reaction from him, he’s gone, the door falling shut behind him, and any conversation the others have started immediately stops, the room falling silent.
Mel knows, without looking, that her face is sporting a very angry flush, so she ducks her head. She buries her face against her hands momentarily before quickly gathering her things and standing up.
“I, um- I have to go. Bye.”
She doesn’t stop to see what their reactions are, and if she returns the favor by pressing a kiss to Frank’s cheek at the end of their shift when Garcia and Abbot are standing nearby, well—at least they’re even now.