Chapter Text
You are not made by yourself,
but by the thing that you want.
—Fanny Howe, “Catholic”
Frank Langdon is nine the first time he steals.
A heatwave blankets Pittsburgh that August, with the double whammy of high humidity and blazing hot temperatures. The A/C wall unit in his mom's apartment hardly provides any relief from the heat—his hair grew too fast, dark strands sticking to his sweaty forehead and baby hairs curling at the back of his neck. The cotton t-shirt he wears clings to his skin, already in need of a clean one, and it’s not even noon.
He’s with his mother now at Family Dollar. Walking inside from the parking lot, Frank’s gaze lingers on its sign blinking in and out of oblivion, the A and R barely on life support, the store forever known as Family Doll in this childhood memory. Even at his age, he has enough hardened pessimism to know that it will probably never get fixed; nothing ever got fixed in this neighborhood.
Soon, he stands in the middle of aisle 10 (cereal, baking supplies, jars of jam and peanut butter), cautiously looking over his shoulder, hyperaware of both his mother and the teenage store clerk lurking next door in aisle 11 (canned goods and paper products). He knew he couldn’t take anything too big, and needed to find something small that he could easily slip unnoticed into his shorts pocket.
The pack of baseball cards, hanging like a vine down the stock shelves between the cold and hot cereal, is an easy target—in the event that none of the cards were actually worth anything, Frank knew he could spin it, play it up to clueless kids at recess that this card is so good, I’ve never seen it before. That’s gonna be worth so much money one day. Could probably pocket a couple of bucks.
He’s fixated on his idea now, bought in pretty easily by his own flimsy logic.
So, he carefully takes the pack of cards off hook, stuffing the shiny, plastic pack into his shorts, and he’s done it, walking towards the front registers where his mother is rounding the corners with her shopping cart—always frazzled, her dark curls pulled back into a silk scrunchie, frizzy in the heat. She moonlights as a barmaid right off Carson Street, on 14th, serving college students and townies at a hole-in-the-wall that has her coming home smelling like cigarette smoke and bleach, her ANGELA name tag slightly askew.
There are bags under her eyes. They haven’t talked about it (they never talk about it), but both of them are mentally stuck on yesterday afternoon: his parents screaming at each other from the living room over child support payments and utility bills, the loud smash that followed, booming like thunder. A baby wailing in the apartment unit next door. His sister, Nicki, and him huddling underneath the comforter in their shared room, trying to be so still and quiet that their dad would forget about them, and wouldn't come inside, seeking them out next.
(When the sitter comes over to watch them that night, his mom makes up some asinine excuse for the fist shaped hole in the apartment’s drywall, gaping like a crater.)
“Frankie, stop messing around and get over here,” she beckons, already unloading the grocery cart onto the conveyor belt, purse strap drooping down her shoulder. He’s mid-step, confidently sauntering to the front—so close, so close—when a large hand comes down hard on his shoulder.
“We saw you on the cameras, kid. Just give us back the cards you took and we won’t have any problems.”
He doesn’t have to turn around to know what’s in for him, to know that he’s been caught.
But: his mom starts yelling, demanding that the man get his fucking hand off her son and now all of Family Dollar—sales clerks, cashiers, patrons—watch as this surreal one-act play spirals out of control. When everything’s sideways, Frank does the only thing that feels right.
He makes a break for it, and runs.
Frank makes it three sidewalk blocks before he’s finally caught by a teenage cashier and spends the next two hours in the cramped back office with his mother, the store’s manager, and a police officer, attempting to scare him straight: you hear that, young man, one more mess-up like today and you’ll be done, sent downtown for juvenile booking before you can even think.
When he’s finally in his mom’s car, speeding to their church, she finally breaks the silence, “Why did you do it?”
Angry tears pool in her waterline, smudging her eyeliner. Long, red nails tightly curled around the steering wheel like an eagle’s talons. A beaded rosary swings from the rearview mirror like a pendulum. Silver crucified Jesus silently mocking him.
Looking out the passenger side window—a laundromat, trees, a busted fire hydrant, and an overflowing dumpster whiz past—he shrugs, “I don’t know…because I wanted it, I guess.”
“And people in Hell want ice water, Francis Anthony,” she snaps. “Doesn’t mean they can just take it.”
He’s a teenager the last time he stepped foot inside a church. All the way back to those confirmation classes at Saint Paul Cathedral at thirteen, where he was too busy trying to catch the fleeting attention of Maria de Campo for any of the theological teachings to truly stick. Frank’s fully lapsed; agnostic on his best day, atheist most of the time, and yet—
The complete privacy screen of the confessional booth slides over, his face now concealed via a tightly honeycombed divider, obscuring both of them from the view of the other. Total anonymity. The reason he dredged up these church steps in the first place.
Frank hears the loud, congested clearing of the priest’s throat, indicating for him to begin talking. Confessing.
“Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.”
Giving himself the sign of the cross is the most sacrilegious thing Frank’s ever done. The whole thing feels wrong, like he’s lying on the witness stand after having sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
“This is my first confession in almost two decades.”
There is a pause, like the priest is waiting for him to continue, and Frank realizes that he’s not going to get any type of verbal validation just for showing up. No that’s a long time, my child for him. They save those for the real Catholics. And it's not like he necessarily wants to be here, talking with an anonymous priest, but every other avenue seemed too loaded and raw.
His NA group, while being hosted down in the basement of the local YMCA and not in a church, the program still used out-dated Christian speak in their charter, constantly asking Frank to turn his will and his life over to the care of God. The wording made him antsy. Evangelical niceness. He made a note in his therapy journal to bring this whole “three to four required NA meetings per week” thing up to PTMC Human Resources when everything was said and done—he understood why he had to do it, but fuck, couldn’t they have found at least one secular option?
Besides, this, the reason he was here, wasn’t an addiction issue. He’s still clean; his ten month gold chip is a constant reminder of that, safely secured in the front pocket of his work backpack.
For a moment, that morning, he thought about texting his sponsor. Daphne was a sixty-year old middle school gym teacher, with closely cropped, stark white hair and a mean vice for her Elf Bar (Miami Mint’s my go-to; Blue Raz Lemon if I’m feeling frisky. Harm reduction is a wonderful thing, kid). She had a soft spot for professional women’s wrestling and Martina McBride. Her road to recovery was paved by a Vicodin dependency that evolved into a heroin addiction; she’d been clean for twenty-two years.
At their first initial meeting—in the Y parking lot to exchange phone numbers and personal schedules—it was hard: Daphne reminded him so much of Dana, in the way that she could seemingly see right through all of his confidence and swagger, smelling bullshit from a mile away. He needed that—especially when he first completed in-patient, where he left rehab angry and hurt and desperate to be useful again, feeling like the walls were going to cave in at any moment. Daphne was a good listener, and he knew he could call her at any time, no questions asked.
Just not about this. What happened last night.
When he took his wedding ring off.
Confession was free. Saint Paul’s had an opening on their mid-morning calendar. He could do this. Breathe, release, feel.
“I think my marriage is over.”
Embody Rehabilitation Hospital is a smooth-stone compound located on ten secluded, wooded acres in Chester County. It’s taken him six, depressive months of unemployment and fracturing for Frank to get here. He doesn’t want to think about how Abby’s parents are covering all the out-of-pocket costs or how they adopted the ill-advised golden doodle. Over the phone, he tells them that he would pay them back, but even he knows that's just another lie.
He didn’t bring much in the way of personal decoration: a wallet size photo of Tanner’s preschool portrait, his hair combed to the side, giggling into the camera lens. Three abstract crayon drawings of a squiggly rainbow, a sunflower, and Bluey, made by Eloise.
A picture of the three of them together at the park near his house, sitting on a picnic blanket. Eloise was still a baby then, laid up against his chest in a baby carrier, tiny head covered with a floppy, white bucket hat to protect her sensitive skin. Tanner's arms wrap around Frank’s neck, hugging him from behind. Taken with a thrifted film camera, Abby later posted the photo on her Instagram with the caption my heart followed with a slew of outdoor-themed emojis.
Eloise was at least semi-planned, unlike their son, who was unexpectedly conceived during their honeymoon. She was conjured during an afternoon where Tanner had looked so cute wrapped up in a beach towel after the end-of-summer party at their community pool— still wearing his inflatable arm floaties and life jacket—that Abby wistfully declared to Frank that she wanted to try for another baby.
“I can make an appointment with my gyno this week, if you’re sure? It would be so different this time,” Abby nuzzled her face into Tanner’s chlorine soaked hair. “The pandemic’s over, you have a better schedule now. You’re so close to being done, honey.”
The pandemic was not over, but Frank didn’t have the fight to restart that specific argument with her.
“You’ll actually be able to be in the room with me when the baby’s born,” she sighed, poking at the bruise which was her previous pregnancy. All he experienced during Tanner’s birth was the fuzzy connection of the FaceTime camera as he holed up in the EM staff lounge. Tears streamed onto the top of his face mask, knowing he had only a few more minutes he could live in this moment, before he had to toughen up and rejoin his colleagues in their makeshift COVID ward.
He couldn’t go home to them, stayed in the hospital, in the cots they had set up for emergency workers on the abandoned floor. How, in her first weeks postpartum, Abby would call him crying, detailing deeply intrusive thoughts about wanting to harm Tanner, how his late-night colicky wails were too much, so loud that she just wanted it to stop, no matter what.
Frank just stared helplessly at his phone screen, manically sending her psychiatrist referrals and virtual support group links and fuck, sliding down the break room wall, curling into a ball, and feeling like he was back in his childhood apartment, in his childhood room, under the comforter with Nicki. Trying not to make a sound.
“Yeah, Abs, I’ll be there, no matter what.”
(In hindsight, Frank knew that he should have never agreed to Abby having her IUD removed, knowing the detrimental butterfly effect that it would later cause: getting pregnant with Eloise; moving into a three bedroom house in the suburbs; pulling and irritating his back injury when his mom decided that she wanted to move closer to her grandchildren; his PCP prescribing him a thirty-day supply of oxycodone for pain management; him not disclosing his history of recreational drug use before hand; the thirty day supply turning into forty-five at his follow-up; stopped running, when the pain became too much; the forty-five evolving into rummaging through his medicine cabinet and pillaging what was leftover from Abby’s postpartum meds; trolling the same college bars his mother used to bartend at for Gen-Z, doughy faced dealers; paying in cash for Ziplock bags full of pills; fentanyl testing strips in his glove box and bottom dresser drawer; hiding pills inside the decorative jars on top of the refrigerator, so high that he’s children’s tiny hand couldn’t reach; supplementing his oxy dependance with an assortment of benzodiazepines from the PTMC medical supply, over-prescribing patient medicine, pocketing the rest to stash for later. Robby, leaving him to fuck off in the ambulance bay.)
He didn’t bring any pictures of Abby and him together. Looking at them felt wrong, like he was a different person when those cameras flashed, in those moments. When he finally agreed to go to rehab, it was after a blow-up fight between them, the stunning realization that he couldn’t remember the last few years of their marriage, spending most of it managing highs, figuring out the best times when he could take his pills, to feel like a person again. Get through the day; turn his mind off. She didn’t deserve that.
A handful of people from PTMC reached out while he was in rehab: Dr. McKay, who sent him a short DM on Instagram with an open invitation to talk at any time, attached with her personal contact info. Yolanda, who sent him a long block of text the night after that shift, ending in, Frank, if you are using, I swear to God, I will kill you. He never responded to that message, the read receipt blinking up at him like a taunt, like it knew that he was a coward.
Robby, with his emails of PDF forms, meeting times, stipulations, HR guidelines, waivers, daily drug test rules. Professional and cold.
He hadn’t heard from Dana, didn’t even know if she was still at the hospital. When he thought about it, he liked to imagine her with a large margarita and one of those pulpy, paperback mysteries she was always reading, on a beach in Key West, the salt water lapping at her ankles. It’s what she deserved.
Heather sent a card—a goofy looking dog on the front, her loopy, cursive writing taking up both the front and the back of the blank space. …I hope you can forgive yourself enough to try again, whatever that looks like…
He tapes it up right above his nightstand. The staff at Embody wouldn’t give him a push-pin—the suicidal ideation diagnosis, made from his initial intake meant he wasn’t even allowed to have access to a razor or shoes with laces. The tape never stuck, so Frank completes the daily ritual of re-sticking it to the wall, the cartoon dog’s wagging tongue a complete mockery of his current plight.
There was something else inside the card that Heather sent, something he didn’t want to think about too hard, still, as it was also posted up on his rehab room wall. The smallest print writing he had ever seen crammed on a pastel pink posted note:
Dr. Langdon, I know I’ll probably see you tomorrow, but thank you so much for your guidance today! I really appreciated it. I hope you get a good night’s sleep tonight—we need people like you too :D - Dr. Melissa “Mel” King.
At the bottom of her script, Heather wrote P.S.: I found this stuck on your locker the morning after your last shift. I thought you may want to know.
We need people like you too.
We need people like you too.
We need people like you too.
We need people like you too.
Before, Frank recreationally used three types of drugs:
I.
Weed, when he was in high school, mostly.
The summer between his sophomore and junior year, his mom started dating this long road trucker who was spending three months doing regional rig driving for a steel company.
Joe, he was a real blue-collar guy— a round, tobacco container always in the front pocket of his shirt, and would use his empty Yuengling can as his dip cup when he was over seeing Frank’s mom. Both him and Nicki knew his presence in their lives was temporary: the moment their dad called, begging over the static-y landline for their mom to take him back, Sean Langdon’s Chevy truck would be parked in the driveway within a week's time, like nothing had happened.
So, naturally, Joe and his mother’s relationship didn’t go beyond those months, but that man had a stellar music collection, and would often bring Frank thrifted 60s and 70s folk records as peace offerings. Frank would play them, read the liner notes, and be musically taken by places that seemed so outside his reach—the mountainous, Hollywood-hills of Laurel Canyon; the cracked, dry Joshua Tree desert. He fell a little in love with Joni Mitchell that summer, would imagine what it would be like to see her play; what her long, blonde hair would look like under the stage spotlights. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Frank Zappa, they were on rotation too.
The dank, heady weed smell embedded in the couch fabric and clothes for weeks on end, even if he’d washed them twice.
II.
Cocaine. So much cocaine.
He worked at a high-end steakhouse during medical school, right near Georgetown. University board members would make reservations in an attempt to wine and dine potential donors. Pocketing money out of the restaurant registers and off his co-workers tips—not every customer, just the ones who paid cash and left their money sitting out on the open table, just waiting to be swiped up by him—was second nature. He was always quick, efficient about it in a way that should have scared him, and used the money to buy dime bags off one of the hostess’ fuck-boys-of-the-week that loitered outside during close.
(The fattest line he’d ever snorted was in the powder room of Abby’s parents house, the first time they met for dinner. He’s the first person in his family to go to college, daddy, and look at him now, isn’t it amazing.
Very impressive, Frank. That must have really popped on your applications. Those people in admissions love a good underdog story.)
III.
LSD, one time. Right after Eloise was born, when one of his marathon training partners came back from Burning Man with a baggy full of micro dots and a dude, you have to try this, it will change your life, I promise, man endorsement.
It didn’t, in fact, change Frank’s life.
Frank doesn’t care when he gets his silver chip, 24-hours after intake. A participation trophy. Congrats on trying.
The red chip comes the same day as the EM educational fellowship application deadline. He eats a pudding cup in the Embody cafeteria, not thinking about the rescinded recommendation letter that he never even wanted and guttural fuck yous.
Green. 90 days. The day he is discharged from in-patient, loading himself into his mom’s minivan, sleeping the whole drive home.
The chips start to add up: purple, pink, dark blue, copper. Nicki buys him a vintage cigar box at Neighborhood Flea and he keeps all his old chips inside, displayed on the fireplace mantle of his mom’s house—him and Abby haven’t slept under the same roof since rehab, but it’s fine. She needed space.
(Except—in the darkness, counting the ceiling fan rotations until he falls asleep—Frank thinks about his childhood walks to elementary school, passing his next door neighbors yard, their pet dog chained to a pole next to the front porch steps. A husky mix named Roscoe, whose howls echoed through their neighborhood like a gunshot.
It should have scared Frank, when the dog completes its morning ritual of lumbering off the steps, barking, charging at him. He stands still, watching in slow motion as the chain snapped right Roscoe could cross over the grassy perimeter of the yard. Gravity hauls the dog's body back, flopping onto his back with a pathetic whimper as he gazes back at Frank with glossy eyes, begging. To gallop along the neighborhood sidewalks, maybe venturing to the park two blocks over, or running all the way to the look-out over the city skyline, the one where you could see the tourist riverboats floating along the Allegheny. Never looking back.
He feels like Roscoe now, constantly repeating the same failures over and over. Rinse and repeat.)
He moves back in with his mom. She gets weepy when he tells her about his job, Abby, the fragile state of their marriage—she overreacts at that news, convinced this means she will never see her grandchildren again when Abby inevitably uproots them back to D.C.
“I just have a feeling, Frankie, she’s going to marry one of those rich lobbyists, move the kids into a fancy gated community with a security guard and private pool, and forget all about us.”
At least Abby and him are on texting terms now that he’s out, progressing from only getting the most basic updates from her during rehab. Now, they're slowly rebuilding a digital intimacy through photos of their kids, recovery memes, and life updates, everything from: I’ve had ten orders come through Etsy this week for custom pieces!!!; Tanner wants to start T-Ball in the fall—would that work for you? He really wants his daddy to be there; Do you ever think we made a mistake getting married?
That’s awesome, Abs. You’re killing it; I don’t know what my shift schedule looks like right now and M, W, TH are no-gos (NA), but I’ll see what I can do; Yes, I think we make such good friends and parents but it feels like we are fitting a square peg into a round hole over and over and over (Message not sent).
Even though she’s out of his childhood apartment and into a new house, nothing has really changed—his room still had the Penguins pennant tacked into the corkboard, his high school and college cross country medals displayed alongside a Title Fight tour poster, commemorating their last live show ever played in Pittsburgh. Awkward prom pictures, him in an all-white tux he thought had looked fucking sick in at the time to now, as an adult, being confronted with the reality of just how young and awkward he really was back then.
The first night home, his mom makes him the lasagna that he loves, he FaceTimes his kids, and falls asleep to a broadcast of Brief Encounters on TCM.
To his horror, Angela Langdon still volunteered at the Parish’s fish fry every spring, making herself in charge of stapling and correlating the Holy Week scheduling materials. In an attempt to keep him busy, she decided to bring her work home, setting up a fold-out card table in the living room and enlisting him to help her staple the Easter Sunday programs.
She’s still trying to convince him to attend mass with her, guilt-tripping him into just making an appearance to let people know that he was, in fact, alive , which led to a tense conversation about abortion and religious imperialism and tax exemptions that made her not bring it up again.
He’s two paper cuts into the entire affair when his phone vibrates. At first, he thinks it may be Daphne, checking in between his NA meetings. He stills when he sees the Gmail icon, the email address, and the subject line:
From: Melissa.King92@gmail
To: FLangdon_MD@gmail
Subject: Saying Hi!
Dr. Langdon,
I hope this message finds you well! I’m sorry if I am crossing any boundaries by reaching out—
Frank deletes the email before even reading what Mel King sent.
During his senior spring at Carnegie Mellon, Frank’s laptop finally breaks.A hand-me-down from Nicki’s failed two semesters at Pitt, sure, but he’d been carefully nursing it through its last leg, hoping it survived until finals week.
But, the rainbow wheel of death marked its timely departure, so now he’s stuck hiking his text books and spiral-bound class notes to the Doherty Hall computer lab to type his final papers. Which, is where he’s headed—oversized backpack, Red Bull, wired headphones, and all—when he hears it:
Crying and sniffling from just around the corner. A pair of plain black ballet flats peek out from where someone’s sitting against the wall; a hand, with each nail painted a different pastel color. There is a canvas tote bag splayed out to the side that he recognized from the CMU new student welcome center, specifically made for the health professionals program tour groups; the front has a little scotty dog with a stethoscope around its neck. He thinks about the sign-up sheet from a couple of weeks ago, the one soliciting current students to act as program ambassadors for the first-generation prospective college student tour at the end of the month.
There’s no tour group around, just this one person, all alone in an empty hallway. Frank’s lived with two women his entire childhood, intimately knows how scary a man can be, so he doesn’t want to startle. Heavy footsteps make his presence known, but he can sense her trying to move away as he approaches.
“Hey, it’s alright, you don’t have to get up. I’ll be right over here,” he cautioned, sliding down the opposite wall to face away. He thinks he sees a flash of blonde out from the corner, but that might be wishful thinking—he did listen to all of Joni’s Hejira on the walk over.
“You don’t have to look at me,” Frank assures. “I just—are you okay?”
“Yeah,” a tentative voice answers back. “I’ll be okay, it’s just…could you stay with me for a second?”
“No worries. I’ll be right here,” he responds. The hallway envelopes both of them in a meditative silence. Usually, Frank’s mind would be wild with restlessness while sitting still, but he focuses on his lateral breathing and the person sitting next to him and the fragile responsibility he’s assumed.
It takes maybe five minutes, or thirty-five deep breaths, for a response: “I’m really sorry,” she says, sniffling. “I don’t want to make a scene, it’s not your responsibility to babysit me. It’s just been a day.”
“Nah, I’ve seen worse. This doesn’t even rank in the top fifty moments of the shit I’ve dealt with, trust me.”
She laughs, a watery one tinged with disbelief, and something inside Frank’s stomach hitches. “Really?”
“Choose your own adventure: cross country athletes, cock-sure biochem students, and my Irish dad’s side or Sicilian mom’s side. The scenarios and possibilities are endless.” She’s still chuckling, and something in Frank’s mind fixed on the huskiness of it, like it’s some divine reward. Like he’s doing something right.
“Look,” he continues, “you don’t have to tell me what is going on exactly. But, from the tote bag, you're probably on the first-gen tour.”
“Yeah, I am.”
“Well, so am I, and let me tell you, the whole admissions process is a mind fuck, truly a very elaborate humiliation ritual. And, listen, if you’re here at all, it means that you’re smart; they don’t invite just anyone on these tours. VIP access.” A sniffle, but no more crying. Good.
“I’m going to be honest with you, the people here are assholes. I shouldn’t be saying that, but it’s the truth. And that means something coming from me—I grew up here in Pittsburgh. The people at CM are just different,” he pauses. “Are there any other schools you’re touring?”
“Ohio State and IU,” she responds.
Frank nods to himself. “Both of them have good programs. Big schools. You’ll find your place, make friends. Have research conferences, teaching assistantships, and volunteer opportunities too—med schools love that.”
He’s good at this, making quick connections with people and finding an in, something to connect, to make people trust that he wasn’t giving them a raw deal (even if he was). He doesn’t know how, but he can feel this person soften next to him, the room suddenly lighter. “It’s hard, but schools need people like us, not just a bunch of psycho rich kids.”
Another laugh, this time a small one under her breath. He wonders how many laughs this person has, what each one means and how to earn them. How lucky her future classmates are going to be, to get them.
“Are you going to be okay? Do you want me to wait for you outside if you need someone to walk with you, catch up with the tour group?”
“No, it’s fine. You’ve done enough, thank you. So much, actually.”
He does his best to not go any further, respecting her space and the physical boundary they’ve accidentally created before their conversation even began. Somehow, he knew she wouldn’t be rejoining her tour group after this conversation.
“Good luck with everything," he says. "No matter what happens, you’re going to find your place. Trust me.”
Abby takes him back two weeks before his first day back at PTMC. Soon, he’s moved back into his suburban home and reads The Story of Ferdinand so many times to his kids that they beg him to stop and sleeps with his wife, shoulder to shoulder.
His memories from that first shift are like one of Tanner’s search and find books: jumbled, overstuffed, and chaotic. They assigned him alongside Dr. Mohan to chairs and he did his best to keep his head down and keep it moving: the elderly patient, showing early signs of sepsis. A traumatic, anterior neck injury with blood-tinged sputum. Auricular hematoma fluid draining from an infected cartilage piercing. Broken nose from an ill-fated game of beer pong; a pissed-off bridesmaid with a gallbladder infection.
(With that case, Frank can’t help but think about his own wedding—a summer ceremony on Abby’s parent’s boat, docked at the National Harbor Marina. Sage green and peach color scheme, with baby’s breath and eucalyptus bridesmaid bouquets. String lights over the reception dance floor that attracted every mosquito in Maryland. Live band, a complete open bar. Their first dance was to an Iron & Wine song that Abby loved and his wife ends the night drunkenly crying on the hotel bathroom floor, begging for an annulment.)
A seven-year-old in stage three anaphylaxis from a wasp sting at the Pittsburgh Zoo, whose grandmother had forgotten to pack an extra EpiPen for the day's city outing. He had to back away from that one, in the end, watching as Mateo prepped the epinephrine injection, inserting it into the boy's thigh, covering the site with a cartoon dinosaur sticker. Frank felt like he was back in medical school all over again, observing his MS3 rotations from the sidelines, his muscles craving movement, to do anything to disperse the chaotic energy that was bouncing around inside him.
Against the fluorescent light, paint, and linoleum of the emergency room, he hears his mother’s voice reminding him to Slow down Frankie, or you’re going to work yourself to death and fuck—he needs to take a break, needs to figure it out fast, because every movement suddenly seems too much and too hard sober and—
Jesus he’s on the roof, dry heaving into the city smog, back pressed into the cold brick. He doesn’t have his phone, can’t call his mom or Daphne or Nicki. Nicki, that’s who he would call, probably on her OSHA mandated break now…
“Langdon?”
…how the fuck did anyone do this job sober? Why was his heartbeat so loud, ringing in his ears like a fire alarm, and…
“Dr. Langdon.” A calm, authoritative voice pulls him to the surface, breaking through. “I need you to breathe."
It takes a couple of tries to really connect with his natural breathing rhythm, inhaling deep through his nose, holding it in his chest, exhaling into the muggy July air.
"Can you tell me three things you see.”
“Skyscrapers,” he mumbles.
“HVAC ductwork. Your ponytail.” Frank’s eyes are coming back into focus now, and he’s just now registering Mel King bent down in front of him. Her t-shirt is baby blue, white hair tie, and if Frank focuses, he thinks he sees tiny, lady bug studded earrings in each ear. He hasn't seen her for ten months, but the moment she comes into focus, it feels like only seconds passed.
“Good job, you’re doing great, Dr. Langdon. What are three things you can hear?”
“Your voice.” Please don’t stop talking. “Pigeons, on the other side of the roof, street noise.” He feels like his throat is on fire and the sun burns into his eyes. The whole scenario makes him silently delirious, overwhelmed and unsteady, so it doesn’t surprise him when he blurts out: “I like your earrings. They fit you.” The simple compliment lights her up from the inside like a sparkler and her eyes crinkle in the corners when her mouth spreads into a wide smile. "Can you tell me about them?"
“My sister bought them for me when I accepted my placement here. They came in a pack of four different stud designs: horseshoes, four leaf clovers, lady bugs, and rainbows," she counts off each one with her fingers. "Becca liked them because they’re all good luck charms, so I could hypothetically wear them to the hospital and always have a chance of having a great day.”
“Becca sounds awesome,” Frank tells the truth, remembering that shift together, when Mel excitedly told him that her sister and her were best friends, about the care center that relocated them to Pittsburgh, to PTMC. There’s an excitement when she talks about Becca, like she is mentally holding herself back from telling him every little detail.
“I have a sister too. Nicola, but everyone in our family calls her Nicki.” His mother could never get the Frankie nickname to stick outside of herself and his sister (when she was feeling spiteful, which was always). “Mom liked the fact that the final syllable of our nicknames were the same. Nicky and Frankie; Nicola and Francis. A matching set.”
“Same with Becca and I. Melissa. Rebecca,” she emphasizes each syllable and Frank finds it so charming it’s a little blinding. “But I don’t think my parents were thinking too hard when they named us. If it was solely up to my mom, I think she would have chosen Swedish names, like Freja or Alma,” Mel’s tone shifts when talking about her mom, slightly off and stilted. “She moved to Wisconsin from Malmö as a teen. She always wanted to go back, visit her own sister, but it just wasn’t in the cards.” With a shrug, Mel lets the subtext settle over their conversation like a shroud. “Are you and your sister close?”
“Yeah, pretty much, even if she tries to deny it. I know that she brags to her construction crews about me—when I got a 4.0 my freshman year at college, she talked a big game about how her baby brother made the President’s List, my full-ride scholarship, when I was named an academic all-American.”
You’re smarter than the rest, Frankie. Don’t forget about us peasants when you go off to be some hot shot doctor somewhere.
"Tell me about her."
“She's this Diehard Pirates fan. You can give her any year, and she can rattle off the starting pitchers, batting order, and team record—just a total wiz at stats. When she started working construction, her first adult paycheck went straight to season tickets. She taught me how to sneak out of our apartment, drive, and roll a joint. She volunteers at the neighborhood senior center every other Saturday for their game night, reads out bingo numbers and lets the old ladies flirt with her.”
The only paid time off Nicki took from her job was to attend Frank’s college graduation. It was a fool’s errand, trying to find his sister and mom up in the stadium seats, dots in the crowd like ants on a tree log. But he swore he could hear Nicki’s bellowing, roaring cheer as Frank walked across the stage, his diploma clutched tight in his hand.
He was the first person in his family to actually finish college, was so worried about being a fuck up that he would do anything to make sure he didn’t fall into the self-fulfilling prophecy looping, over and over again, in his psyche.
“Are you going to watch the fireworks tonight?”
She shakes her head, dubiously staring up into the cloudless sky. “Loud noises make me nauseous…Fireworks, popping balloons, my landlord’s chihuahua-mix when I go for morning runs.” Frank tries not to laugh at the mental image of a tiny menace of a dog yapping at Mel King’s retreating Reeboks.
“My mom loved them, though. She always made Becca and I go to the Appleton Fourth of July Parade, even if we watched most of the show with our eyes closed and hands over our ears.”
And he can feel this moment between them slowly come to a close. They need to get down from the roof and re-enter the fray of the ER but, “Thank you, Mel, for coming up here. You didn’t have to do that.”
“Well, I was happy to return the favor, even if it’s overdue.” She holds an outstretched hand out to him, helping him get up off the concrete roof floor.
Isn’t this one gorgeous? Abby texts him a Pinterest screenshot, an emerald cut diamond ring with smaller diamonds encompassing the band. It was her typical bedtime routine, aimlessly scrolling through all of her digital feeds, usually while Frank worked through his Step 3 prep workbook, side by side on the velvet couch in her D.C. apartment.
She doesn’t know yet, but he already has a ring picked out, currently hidden inside the top drawer of his dresser—Abby hates surprises, but he hopes she won’t mind when he proposes to her during their trip to the Grand Canyon after the national ACEP Scientific Assembly.
It would be the one-year anniversary of their first date—Putt Putt golf, where she kicked his ass. They spent months prior in the sex-with-benefits, Tinder hook-up zone of late night you up? texts. But after that night, it clicked. With Frank in medical school at Georgetown and Abby balancing her MBA with morning shifts at a fair-trade coffee shop, their schedules aligned. He liked freckles splattered across the bridge of her nose, the chunky statement necklaces she wore, and her strong opinions on things: loud chewers, pet owners who didn’t pick up after their dogs on walks, Skechers shoes, tomatoes, and people who preferred Jess to Logan on Gilmore Girls (that one hurt, but he knew one day Abby would see the power of season six Jess Mariano. Frank was playing the long game with that one. Logan sucked.)
He sends an emoji-thumbs up in response to the ring pic, along with I’ll talk to you in the morning before all the stuff at ACEP kicks off, if you’re free? It takes less than two-minutes for her to send a red heart emoji in confirmation.
ACEP isn't really Frank's scene. He finds conferences extremely self-congratulatory, always leaving him feeling exhausted and itchy. Mostly, he’s there to network with some of the big trauma hospitals tabled throughout the Las Vegas conference hall, and to actively avoid any cringe-worthy group activity—the immersive trauma escape room experience in Milwaukee still gave him night sweats from second-hand embarrassment—and maybe catch the pediatric resuscitation procedural lab.
On his way to the conference registration table to pick up his badge, he cuts through the research forum hall, where all the presentation posters were displayed on easels; its calming stillness like a balm to his nerves. None of the medical students or EM’s were buzzing around, so Frank could leisurely parse through ones that caught his attention. One on ECG ventricular fibrillation, another on extreme environmental temperatures and rapid responses to heat stroke patients.
The one he finds himself drawn to like a magnet is entitled Cost-Effectiveness of Early Non-Invasive Pelvic Ultrasounds for Suspected Gynecological Cancers. Nicki’s ovarian cancer scare last fall bubbles to the surface while reading through the abstract, methodology, results and Frank has to blink away tears at the memory. The research was conducted at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and three names are listed on the citation, the first being M. Ki—
“Dr. Langdon? I knew I recognized you.”
Turning around, the research is set aside for an awkward twenty minute walk-in-talk conversation with the attending at Children’s National Hospital, where Frank completed his peds rotation.
He makes a mental note to look up the full article on the Annals of Emergency Medicine website, but that thought evaporates the moment Abby says yes to his proposal under the hot, Arizona sun.
After—when red and blue fireworks explode into blooming, fizzy shapes in the night sky—he thinks about good luck charms and white, elastic hair ties. When his wife asks him about his first shift back, kissing his shoulder on his way in, he bites the inside of his cheek so hard it breaks skin.
“Yeah, Abs, I think everything is going to be just fine."