I’m thinking thoughts of them being paranoid any time Mel and they travel.

They have massive travel anxiety, they rarely fly, and are hard to find without a carefully researched and prepared emergency bag for each of them.

Frank and Trinity are gym buddies, Frank has to be careful because of his back, but he’s fanatical about his pt. Trinity gets strong enough to carry Frank bridal style if she needs to.

Frank and Trinity have secretly promised that if it comes down to it, she and Mel will eat him rather than starve. (Trinity wants to fight it, but Frank convinced her, she demands less calories and he’d provide more than her (he carefully doesn’t mention his terror of his back hindering Mel’s chances of survival if it’s just him and her))

Mel knows it’s a trauma response, and she appreciates that it means they care about her, but their paranoia and the ways they validate each other in unreasonable behavior is a little exhausting.

I love it! And I know you didn't mention this specifically, but the first part made me think of Sean Bean who refused to take a helicopter to location for shooting the mountain scenes in Fellowship of the Ring.

They'll have a conference to get to, and these two idiots just flat out refuse to fly and resort to carpooling to get to the conference on time.

At some point, maybe right before the fourth, facing the barrel of coming back to work alone, after 10 months of radio silence, with a wife that hates him, and knowing how little anyone wants him to come back, especially Robby, he questions if he should even keep going at all, if things would be better if he was never there.

Without him, things are different: No tanner, no penny, patients he saved gone, and more gone besides, people that his presence freed up to be treated quicker or by other doctors. Robby’s gone, not having frank there crashing on his couch during the pandemic, not having someone to live vicariously through, to hope and dream about and be his heir apparent, he burnt out and died during Covid or shortly thereafter. Abbot’s gone too, Robby not there to talk him down from ledges.

Idk how I want to have trinity here, under different attendings I have no idea how her gunner behavior would be handled. I do think not having Langdon to blame for her “pariah status” would change stuff though.

And I do think without his pep talk Mel would probably have changed specialties, gone into pedes or ob/gyn. Still noble pursuits, but they’re not what she wanted.

I love the idea of the thing that brings him back is visiting Robby’s grave and doing the Ho'oponopono prayer. (And of course when dr. Robby ‘I am an active suicide risk’ Robinavitch is spiraling that shift I think frank is in a position and mind state to call him out.)

I'm so sorry this has been in my inbox forever and I just didn't have the capacity in my heart to catch up with my messages.

This is wonderful! I love it!

I think Trinity would still struggle but maybe internalise even more and slide back into self harm harder. I think you're right, without anyone telling her she belongs, Mel would duck out into a different speciality.

I also think a few of the doctors and nurses would have died, because it was Frank that saw the gun and jumped on it before the guy could reach it. If he hadn't I think McKay and Javadi were the closest, but I don't remember for sure.

I think this is well worth a fic if you ever feel like writing it @dad-inside

He bathes it, treats it and feeds it and stuffs it in his scrub shirt’s chest pocket until Dr. Al-Hashimi (regretfully) tells him off for hygiene reasons. But by then Dana has found a box and stuffed it with a sweater. The kitten is asleep in the box on the charge desk, and everyone drops in to check on it.

“What are you going to do with it?” Mel asks, watching Frank feed it formula with a syringe.

“I don’t know... “ He looks so sad. “I’m already sleeping on the sofa. If I bring her home I’ll be sleeping in the car.”

“That doesn’t sound like a good place for either of you to go home to.” It slips out, and for a moment she starts to apologise before closing her mouth because no, she means that and he should hear it.

Mel gets pulled into an emergency before they can finish talking, but she goes to find Frank after.

“I can take the kitten.” She says. “But I think you should come home with me too.”

He blinks, shocked.

“Think about it,” Mel tells him.

He’s meticulous about sending flowers for medical leave and a PTMC branded baby onesie for parental leave. He schedules calls in the week ahead of employees’ return to work so no one ever has to wonder what their first day back will look like.