more desperately than romantically

Abby shifted, rolling over and taking half of the covers with her, blinking sleepily over at him, “Who is calling you at midnight?”

Frank froze, snatching his buzzing phone off of the nightstand before Abby could catch a glimpse of the contact ID flashing on his screen: Mel PTMC

“... It’s the hospital. I better take this. Could be an emergency.” 

Abby shrugged, too tired to argue, and went back to sleep. 

As cautiously as he could, he crept out of the room and shut the door before answering the phone. 

“Mel?” He asked, voice low, concerned.

There was a sniff, then a sound like she was clearing her throat. Oh, shit, Frank thought, she was crying.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” 

A moment of silence, and then she finally said, voice hoarse, “Um, hi, Dr. Langdon. I’m sorry for calling so late… you were probably sleeping! I’m so sorry!” 

“It’s okay, it’s okay, hey,” He tried to assuage her, “I never sleep, okay? You’re fine. What’s up?” 

“I just, um,” More sniffing, he could imagine her wiping her face off with her sleeves, her red-rimmed eyes, “I wasn’t feeling great today at work. And, I didn’t want to go home, so Dana tried to give me some Zofran, but, you know I hate taking medicine— sorry, hold on, I’m rambling,” he could hear her take a big deep breath. 

“It’s okay. Just, say whatever you need to say.” 

“Um, anyway, she asked me if there was—” Another big, shuddery breath, “any chance I could be pregnant." 

Frank stopped cold, back against the wall. 

They weren’t even dating. This wasn’t an affair. It was one time in the back of his car after a particularly rough shift. It wasn’t romantic, it had actually been kind of desperate. And afterwards, he had said she could call him any time if she needed him. 

He supposed she had come to collect. 

“I’m sorry,” Mel began to cry again, “I didn’t know what else to do!” 

“Slow down, slow down,” he said after a moment of recalibration, mind going a thousand miles an hour, “Did you take a test at home?” 

“Um, yes, I got about twelve of them–” 

“Twelve? How did you have enough pee for twelve pregnancy tests?” 

“I put them all in the same cup!” 

“Sorry, Jesus, Mel, I’m just— I’m processing this,” 

“I know,” She said miserably, “I’m sorry. It was my fault, I thought it would be okay.” 

“It is going to be okay. No matter what, it’s going to be okay. And it’s not your fault. It’s my fault, for sure.” He was the one who had touched her leg in the passenger seat, had taken her face into his hands and kissed her.

“It’s just something that would happen to me. My first time ever having sex, and,” A puff of breath, dejected, “Of course.” 

“Hold on, that was your first time? In the back of my car?”

“Is that bad?” 

"You need a hand there, Bambi?" Santos said, eyeing Emma's hands, now shaking, which were struggling to find a vein in an eighty-six year old cardiac patient. Emma froze minutely and looked up at her, bracing for what came next. "I can go get a practice dummy if you need to spend a little time - "

"Santos," Dana barked from the doorway, and everyone jumped. A hunted look came over Trinity's face and she turned, face resentful. "Enough. Go to the gym if you need a punching bag, my nurses are not your fuckin' stress balls."

"Sorry," Trinity sneered, shoulders tense. "I would just really like to get this lady hydrated sometime before the heat death of the sun, that's all. Maybe Nurse Baby over here can go back to - "

"Got it," Emma said, having taken the opportunity to focus while Santos's eyes were focused elsewhere, taping down the IV with a slight breath of relief, keeping her eyes averted as she reached up to check the line, untangling the tubing from where it had bunched up slightly beneath the patient's shoulder.

"Finally," Santos muttered. She glanced over at Adiyodi, the wide-eyed and silent MS3 who'd been following her around all day and said, "for the record, it usually doesn't take four tries."

Dana pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. "Emma, go wait with Langdon in the ambo bay, there's a trauma incoming, four minutes out. Santos, a word."

Emma leapt at the opportunity to escape, slinking past Adiyodi - who was grimacing and half-smiling at her in what Emma hoped was sympathy - and fleeing before she could hear whatever Santos would say next. She took the long way around on purpose to give herself a few extra seconds of rest time - rolling out her shoulders and neck, deep breaths, whispering her self-confidence mantras under her breath - I am an instrument of success, strong and created by God, I am capable of doing hard things, I do NOT crave my own downfall - and so by the time she reached Dr. Langdon, standing tensely with Jesse and Kim just outside the bay doors, she felt almost normal again.

"Hi guys," Emma said, pasting on a cheerful face. Langdon always looked sort of taken aback whenever anyone smiled at him, but he was always quick to smile back, and Jesse of course had his cool-guy head-nod ready to go. Kim, smoking the other half of her cigarette from this morning, scrunched up her nose and grinned. "Dana said you needed another pair of hands?"

"MVC, two victims," Langdon said, nodding. He was leaning against the side of the building with his arms extended, pressed flat against the brick in a sort of Jesus pose - it looked goofy but apparently it really helped his back - but he pulled one wrist down to check his watch. "Three or so minutes out now. First one has an exposed fracture and hasn't regained consciousness since they pulled her out of the car, that's all we know."

"Shitty day for it," Jesse said, taking a drag of the cigarette Kim offered him. "Sun shining, birds chirping, all that."

"I know, right, if you're gonna get t-boned it should be on a snowy day or something," Kim agreed. She looked over at Emma. "The other guy in the car is less critical, so he's a few minutes behind. I'm gonna triage him while you guys take the first one."

"Great," Emma chirped, startling a little when the doors slid open and another nurse walked out, talking rapidly in Spanish on a cell phone. She took another deep breath and wrapped her arms around herself.

"You okay, kiddo?" Langdon asked.

"Yeah, totally," Emma said eagerly, as genuinely as she could. "Just, um. I was just having some trouble placing an IV on a patient with Dr. Santos just now, and - um. Is she always, like..." she paused, unsure of how to put it.

"Bitchy?" Kim said, finishing the sentence for her. Jesse snorted loudly. "Yes. Absolutely always, yes."

"Oh, um. I wouldn't use that word about anyone, unless we were joking and they were okay with it, but - "

"Don't let her get to you," Langdon said, a sort of weary, jaundiced look on his face. "Really. She's..." he paused delicately, glancing over at Jesse, who was looking at him with a little smirk, one eyebrow raised. "She's a little difficult. Just not worth your energy, really."

Emma exhaled tensely, fiddling with the end of her braid. She liked Dr. Langdon, he was a good teacher, and he didn't let the cockier interns and med students treat the nurses like crap (unlike some other doctors Emma could name, who rarely even noticed let alone did anything about it). And Jesse and Kim were some of her favorites too - Jesse had a big brother sort of vibe with everyone, droll and ironic but steadfast, and Kim was just a ball of sunshine. Who didn't like Kim? (Dr. Whitaker, maybe, but in Emma's opinion - and from what Kim had told her about what happened last year - Dr. Whitaker was kind of an idiot.)

"It just seems a little bit... personal," Emma said unsurely, glancing at all three of them in turn to gauge their reactions. Jesse didn't look surprised, but Kim raised her eyebrows and looked over at Langdon, shooting him a jaded sort of look. "Do you guys know if I maybe... did something? I don't know, it just feels like she's really got it out for me lately or something, and if I offended her somehow I'd really like to apologize - "

Jesse snorted again, which made Kim elbow him. Langdon just shook his head.

"You didn't do anything," he said firmly. "Just ignore her."

Emma narrowed her eyes at them. "So she is mad at me. Like, specifically."

"It's her own issue, Em," Kim said, shaking her head. "You didn't do anything wrong. Langdon's right, you really should just ignore it."

"But you all know what it is," Emma accused, jutting out her chin stubbornly.

Kim patted her shoulder. "Let's talk later, babe."

"Oh come on, if there's like some rumor going around about me or something - "

"Heads up," Jesse said, pointing out at the end of the parking lot, where an ambulance with its sirens on was cutting through traffic towards the bay.

"Don't worry about it," Langdon said encouragingly, pushing his body off the wall and then jumping a few times on the balls of his feet, shaking out his arms like he was about to go on a run. "Really. Okay, I've got ten bucks and a red Capri Sun on rib trauma."

"Chest and concussion," Emma said immediately. She loved the red ones.

Kim rolled her eyes. "Like it could be anything else, when the poor girl got t-boned."

"If it's all three, I win," Jesse announced, throwing the cigarette away. "Let's also throw in that last creme brulee cupcake, Langdon."

"Hey, Mel made those for me," Langdon whined.

"Like you haven't been flaunting them in front of us all day," Emma said, unapologetic. (Mel's cupcakes were incredible. She really hoped this lady didn't have rib trauma.)

Emma liked emergency medicine specifically because of this - the rush and triumph of knowing exactly what to do and doing it efficiently, being important in an important moment, the satisfaction of keeping someone alive in their worst moment. Traumas had frightened her at first, but the longer she worked here, the more she loved them - and she was good at them, too. She knew how to read people, could predict what Langdon would ask for first as opposed to what McKay would, that Whitaker was paranoid about blood clots, why Mel always needed everyone to be extra professional when things were dire. It was almost fun, in a weird way - she understood now why her roommate in nursing school called the ED the "adrenaline factory." On a good day, Emma didn't have time to second-guess herself. And the more she did it, the better the days became. It was almost addicting.

Their MVC victim did in fact have rib trauma, severe enough that Langdon called for gensurg the moment they did a physical exam without even waiting on x-rays. When the scans did come through though, he took one look and said, "flail chest," in a tone of resignation, and Emma looked over at Jesse and smirked.

"Counts," Jesse commented idly. "That cupcake is mine, Langdon."

"Yeah, yeah. Let's get this leg under control so we can get her up to the OR. Damn, this break is nasty."

Emma was debriding and cleaning the wound, which was complicated by the bits of broken glass and what almost looked like motor oil, smeared all over the leg from the car. She was almost impressed with herself that the sight of the woman's ragged and broken femur bone wasn't making her feel sick. "Dr. Langdon, I'm not sure I'm doing this correctly, can you - "

"Yep," Langdon said, sliding over and pressing his hand over hers on top of the dressing. "Here, no, you've got it. Focus on the larger foreign matter first, especially the glass, just be careful not to push anything deeper into the wound. We don't want to get too pushy with it, just get it as clean as we can for the surgeons."

"This oil stuff that's all over her, how do we even - "

"Blood pressure's stabilizing," Jesse called. 

"Good, let's push vit K, plasma, and PCC," Langdon said. "Just focus on irrigating and getting the glass and debris out for now. Jesse, let's also start two of ceftriaxone and five hundred of metronidazole. The OR will take care of anything else, Emma, it's safer there."

"Just the obvious easy stuff then," Emma said to confirm.

"Low pressure irrigation reduces risk of osteomyelitis," Langdon said. "But with grade three fractures like this, best to let the surgeons handle it, everything's too goddamn delicate. Oh, and speak and the devil shall appear." He snapped his head up with a sharkish grin. "What'd they send you down here for, I called for the ortho."

"Busy," Garcia said, swanning in and snapping on her gloves. She whistled at the sight of the patient. "Damn."

"Hi, Dr. Garcia," Emma said cheerfully, and Garcia's haughty look melted into a warm grin. "We have an open grade-three fracture of the left femur and a flail chest on the left anterior chest wall, approximately ten centimeters, with dyspneic respiration." She smiled up at Langdon. "Right?"

Langdon was smirking at Garcia for some reason, who was pointedly not looking at him. "You got it, champ," he said. "Fractures to the clavicle and scapula as well, right hydropneumothorax. We did a thirty-two chest tube and I started her on ceftriaxone and metronidazole."

"Super," Garcia chirped. She smiled at Emma. "Look at you go, Powerpuff. Nice work."

"Thanks," Emma said. Dr. Garcia was always so friendly - it was such a breath of fresh air. "The oil is really worrying me, but Dr. Langdon said the surgeons will take care of the worst of it."

"Cleaning up your messes like usual," Garcia said. She leaned over and carefully examined the chest, glancing up at the radiograph Jesse was holding up for her. She whistled. "This lady got fucked up." She pronounced 'fucked' more like 'fuhhhcked.'

"T-boned by a drunk in a pickup," Jesse said grimly. "She was in an old sedan."

"Pickup driver is just fine, I assume," Garcia said meanly. "Let's go ahead and get her up to the OR, I can get started on the chest while we wait for Park to finish doing his makeup and join us." 

"Does self-tanner count as makeup?" Jesse wondered out loud.

"You know he gets manicures, right?" Garcia asked. She turned to examine Emma's pressure dressing and suspension, then looked up at her and grinned. "Gemini."

"Nope," Emma said happily, smiling. "That's a good guess, though."

"For fuck's sake," Langdon muttered, but he was grinning. 

"I'll get it, I'm getting closer," Garcia said. "Did you set this too? Damn, I'm impressed."

"Oh no, that was Dr. Langdon," Emma said. 

"Did you just say 'impressed?'" Langdon crowed. "No takebacks, Yoyo!"

"Whatever," Garcia groused. "Let's get her moving. Emma, you wanna help me take her up? You can see my neck of the woods." She grinned, showing all her teeth. 

"Oh, I should probably stay, we're down a nurse today because Rachael's sick, but - "

"Actually," Jesse cut in, "maybe you should get outta here while you can." He nodded out towards central, which they could see through the glass doors.

Emma turned and looked just instinctively. Santos was standing there, ostensibly talking to Dr. Robby, but she was eyeing them over his shoulder, a sullen look on her face. When she saw Emma looking, she jerked her eyes away and crossed her arms. 

"Oh," Emma stammered. "Uh."

"It's like lesbian Days of Our Lives down here," Langdon muttered, and Emma jerked her head back to look at him, feeling a hot flush in her cheeks. 

"Shut up," Garcia snapped. "Like you're one to talk, Erica Kane."

"What?" Langdon said, eyebrows pulling together. "Erica Kane?"

"From All my Children!" Garcia said. "She was married eleven times? Big wedding episodes - "

"Oh my God, and you call me a fucking nerd," Langdon said. "I was only married once, thank you very much. Unsuccessfully, but - "

"So far," Garcia said ominously. She hitched up the side bar as Jesse finished prepping for the move and stepped out of the way, pulling Emma back before she even had a chance to safely dispose of her tweezers. "I know you're an air sign. You have to be. Have I guessed Libra yet?"

"Jesus Christ, follow your patient, Garcia," Langdon said. Garcia shot him a dirty look and tugged Emma's elbow towards the doors. "And Emma, don't let her keep you for more than twenty minutes, okay. And don't eat any pomegranate seeds, either!"

"Oh, wow, a classicist reference, what a smart guy," Garcia sneered. "You know he minored in Latin in undergrad? Fucking dork."

"Oh, that's interesting," Emma said, dodging the bed again as one of the PAs came in to help Jesse move it towards the elevator bay. "I always wanted to take a dead language like that. Like Greek or Aramaic or something. Latin probably helped a lot in med school."

Langdon slid past, smirking triumphantly. "Yes, in fact, it did, Nurse Nolan," he said. He looked over her head at Garcia, who was probably making another mean face at him, if Emma knew her well enough. (Which… she did. She thought.) "Garcia doesn't speak anything. Not even Spanish."

"You wanna know Langdon's star sign, Powerpuff? Leo, of course," Garcia said dryly. "It's the arrogance for me. And the bragging."

"Aren't you a Leo too?" Emma asked, confused. Garcia snapped her chin to look at her, eyes widening, and Langdon laughed loudly. Emma flushed again, embarrassed. "Sorry, I just assumed - "

"Oh my God, I'm having the best day ever," Langdon said as he strutted out of the room. Garcia scowled after him and then wiped it off her face as she turned back to Emma. 

"Good guess," she said, with some visible effort, but she was smiling, so Emma took that as a good sign. "But no. I'll give you one more try today if you ride the elevator up with me, at least."

Emma relaxed a little. Garcia really was such a sweetheart, really, if you were a little patient, and gave her a chance to be. She really didn't understand why everyone called her 'the dragon lady.' Though Kim told her it was mostly a compliment. "Has to be Capricorn, then."

Garcia's smile widened. "Got it in one," she said. "C'mon. Just for that, I'll show you where the breakroom with the good snacks is."

"Cool," Emma said happily, ignoring Santos entirely as she matched Garcia's quick gait towards the elevators. Glancing back only once as they turned the corner, she saw Santos at a computer, typing away, seemingly not paying any attention to them at all. 

Surely it was something else, Emma thought. Dr. Santos probably just got really frustrated with newbies, that's all. Someone definitely would've told her if there was history there. 

2. Javadi and Whitaker share a look, and Mel catches it, which makes her wonder if there have been times when she hasn’t.

She's been talking for a while, and sure, she's talking fast, and yeah, her hands are twisting - and Javadi's eyes slide to Whitaker and Whitaker's eyebrows go up, just a little.

Mel knows what that means. 

3. She’d thought she might have better luck with Cassie, who is always nice to her.

But: "Oh - no, I can't," she says, before Mel has even finished asking if she’d like to go check out that new bookstore across the street. "I've got Harrison."

"Right," Mel says. "Of course."

"Rain check," Cassie says, and she squeezes Mel's arm on her way past.

Cassie does have a kid. That's a real reason. It's just that the no came so fast.

4. Robby comes back from sabbatical smiling and saying good morning to everyone, and Mel is glad to see him. 

But he’s more closed off than before, somehow. She tells him about the most interesting case she worked while he was gone but his eyes are somewhere beyond her and he doesn’t react to the parts of the story that she thought he would. 

She trails off and he claps her on the shoulder and says, "Good stuff.”

5. Frank has been getting happier every day.

It’s not, like, completely linear - he still gets frustrated sometimes, and he really doesn’t enjoy a few of the people they work with, but all things considered his mood has been trending upwards. 

They’re at the lockers and she’s taking her hair down. She's talking and he’s really listening, laughing and frowning in turn at all the right bits. She combs her fingers through her braid, and then fiddles with her hair tie after it’s all come loose.

"Hey," he says, looking at the maroon elastic between her fingers. "Could I have that? Sorry. That's weird. I just-“

"Sure," she says. He used to wear a black one on his wrist, for a few weeks after he came back to work, but he must have lost it. She would have given him one of hers sooner, if he’d asked.

She hands it over, and he just holds it for a second. Then he slips it onto his wrist and pushes it up, snug against his black beaded bracelet.