sag mal, geht‘s noch?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He fidgets with his half-empty can of Red Bull, waiting anxiously for the rest of the night shift to arrive so that he can go home and…do what, exactly? It’s not his week with the kids; all he has to look forward to is a divorced-dad-chic apartment close to the Pitt.

“Mhm.” Dana turns her attention back to her clipboard, and Frank knows he’s been dismissed. 

He spots Mel walking toward the lockers and hurries to meet her, glad that Shen is now nowhere to be seen. “Hey, Mel, wait up! Do you need a ride?”

Still, she finds herself skulking at the nurse’s station, not-so-surreptitiously watching one of the new MS4s talk to Dr. Langdon. No, not talk—flirt with him. Mel’s not confident in her people-reading skills at the best of times, but even she can tell when someone’s trying to flirt with her best friend.

She tries to look nonchalant when Dr. Langdon looks over and spots her. “Mel! Just the person I was looking for. I was just telling Sophie here how we set a new record for a STEMI on your first day.”

Mel can’t help but preen, and for two good reasons. First, it’s touching that he still remembers that even with everything else that happened during her first shift at the Pitt. Second, the MS4’s name is Sophia, not Sophie. She doesn’t point this out though. The MS4’s dejected face does it for her, but it’s not like Dr. Langdon notices. 

“And I was just telling Dr. Langdon that I’d love to try and beat it,” Sophia says. She looks like a supermodel, what with her perfectly-fitting FIGS scrubs and pristine Hokas. Mel wonders if Garcia’s given her the nickname of “ER Barbie” yet.

Dana butts in before either of them can respond. “Medic 4 is two minutes out with a sixty-year-old male. He’s presenting with active, crushing chest pain. I need Trauma 2 prepped immediately. Langdon, you’re up.”

He immediately locks eyes with Mel. “STEMI with me, Mel?” The corner of his mouth quirks up, and Mel gets a funny feeling in her stomach. 

“Right behind you,” she says, accepting the pair of size-small gloves he hands her. They hurry off in the direction of the ambulance bay, leaving Sophia standing next to Dana, looking dejected. 

In fact, she never thought she’d go wedding dress shopping, period. Ever since her mother died, Mel had pushed all thoughts of romance and relationships to the side to focus on finishing undergrad, then med school, and then residency.

She doesn’t have many days off at the moment, as she and Frank have planned a two-week honeymoon soon after the wedding, so Mel is heartbroken when Becca tells her she’d rather stay at Middle Hill for her weekly pottery class than watch Mel try on dresses all afternoon. Frank’s suggestion that she invite his ex-wife along had stunned her.

“Why not?” Frank had said with a shrug. “I’m sure Penny would love to come along too, maybe she can try on some flower girl dresses.”

So, after an initially awkward conversation with Abby when she’d come by to drop off the kids for the week, Mel, Abby, and Penny were at a small bridal boutique in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. Mel had never spent time with Abby without Frank present, but Penny’s presence helped. It turned out that Abby was honored to be included, especially, as she put it, she “probably wouldn’t have another chance until Penny was old enough to marry.”

“And I hope that’ll be far in the future,” Abby says, taking a sip of her mimosa. Mel holds her flute of orange juice awkwardly as she watches the graceful redhead sift through the racks and racks of white dresses. She turns and looks at Mel, scrutinizing her. “What style did you want to try first?”

Mel freezes. “Uh, I hadn’t really thought about it.”

“Hmm.” Abby throws back the rest of her mimosa and hands the empty glass to Mel. “I think I know what would look good on you.” She waves over a sales associate. “Can I get some help pulling dresses?”

To Abby’s credit, she’s quite patient and doesn’t get offended when Mel doesn’t like a dress. Mel dutifully tries on every dress that Abby pulls, but she doesn’t even have to attempt to come up with a nice thing to say about them. Abby takes one look at them on her, and shakes her head. 

After trying on ten dresses and loving none of them, Mel is ready to call it quits. Penny, who had gotten bored sometime between the sixth and seventh dress, comes running with a garment bag trailing behind her, a panicked employee close behind. “Mel-Mel! I think you should try this one.”

She doesn’t have the highest hopes, but Mel agrees anyway. The silk is cool against her skin, and the dress is the perfect length, stopping just above her ankles. She likes that she won’t have to worry about tripping on the train as she walks down the aisle.

Abby nods in approval when Mel steps out of the fitting room. “That’s it. That’s the one.”

At first, Frank assumes Santos is talking to Whitaker—from the tidbits he’s shared about his childhood in Nebraska, it really wouldn’t surprise him if the kid has never had a birthday cake. 

He freezes, can of Redbull halfway to his lips, when the subject of Santos’ pestering replies. “I still celebrated my birthday, it’s just that Becca doesn’t like cake. She thinks it’s too dry. We always have underbaked brownies instead.”

It’d taken a lot of finagling (and some blackmail) on Princess and Perlah’s part to get him to come along, despite his rebuttal that he was newly sober, and shouldn’t they be more considerate of this?

Perlah had just muttered something in Tagalog, causing Santos to snort, and, well, here he is now.

Frank takes a drag. “Nicotine isn’t a controlled substance,” he says. He and Santos aren’t exactly friends, per se, but they are friendlier than they were when he came back to the Pitt. Part of the issue is that they’re more alike than either of them would like to admit.

“Melancholy doesn’t look so melancholy anymore,” Santos points out. She makes a grabby motion for Frank’s cigarette, which he pointedly ignores. 

He ignores her comment as well. 

“Who knew Shen was such a good dancer?” She reaches over and plucks the cigarette out of Frank’s hand.

Frank stays silent. He doesn’t want to think about Shen right now, and definitely not about how the annoying attending has been glued to Mel’s side all night. He knows deep down that if he asked Mel to dance in that dank dive bar, she’d say yes, no questions asked. They’d arrived at the bar together, both having just gotten off of the day shift, and while Frank’d been working up the courage to buy Mel a ginger ale, Shen’d walked over and swept her away.

Santos finishes Frank’s cigarette and blows the smoke in his face. “I wasn’t talking about the nicotine, by the way.”