Chapter Text
Robby, 2:33 PM
It had been so close to the perfect shift. Quiet almost, even though Robby would never dare say that word out loud lest he gets a repeat of PittFest and Dana resigns herself to make him suffer a slow, painful demise as she would glare at him over the desks of the nurses’ station. He knew better than saying the Q-word out loud, but he still couldn't help thinking it.
It’s been a bit over two years since PittFest, but it still keeps him awake some nights. There were wounds from that night that still haven’t healed properly, like scar tissue left in places a better doctor than him would’ve been able to prevent. Sometimes, Robby looks at Langdon and feels like he’s lost something he can't quite put a name on. In the space vacated by their ruined personal relationship, there’s now only room for phantom pains and stilted HR-enforced meetings where Robby’s forced to ask questions he doesn’t want to be the one to ask and Langdon’s forced to answer questions he wishes he didn’t have to answer in the first place.
The meetings are stilted, atmosphere almost always stifling as they speak in voices lacking the warmth they used to have for each other. Langdon’s been more settled since rehab, even as he worked out his divorce with his ex-wife and a custody agreement that had seemed amicable from the outside. Robby hadn’t spent much time with Abby Langdon, but she’d always seemed like a reasonable woman with a good head on her shoulders.
It makes something inside Robby feel at least a little bit settled that he didn’t completely shatter Langdon’s life that night as he pushed him away and out of the Pitt by force.
Because there was guilt there, lodged deep in his sternum when he looks at Langdon across the Pitt sometimes. Memory echoes of Langdon in that hallway all those months ago, defensive and panicky as he told Robby why he tried to rationalise the drug use, why he felt like he had to turn to stealing medication in the first place. He can't shake it and he doesn't think he can try to talk to Langdon about it. At least not yet.
He might have played a part in the list of factors that put Langdon on the path to addiction, but he'd also been the one to force him to change direction. He doesn't get to make amends before Langdon's put himself back together, and Robby is not the one who can do that. Not when there's someone who has been doing that since the first day Langdon clocked back in at the Pitt.
Langdon’s become more settled over the many, many months that have passed since he got out of rehab. He can see it, even if they rarely talk outside of patient consultations and shift debriefs and those cursed HR-mandated meetings. How he’s calmer as he flits around the ER these days, less jumpy and more assured. It had taken months for him to find his feet in the Pitt again after he’d come back, Robby didn’t have to talk to Langdon to spot the careful look in his eyes as he went up to any of them that first month to ask for assistance prescribing meds or the hesitant pause in his step before following any of them into a trauma room, as if he’d still been unsure if he was allowed to be in there.
Over time, however, the symptoms of uncertainty in Langdon had lessened and these days he was more or less back to the assertive doctor he’d been before the events of PittFest. He was less cocky, more mature maybe. He'd still throw jokes and one-liners around to the colleagues who didn't gossip behind his back, but he balanced all of that out with encouragements when the med students looked hesitant when dealing with a particularly bad trauma, with warm smiles at patients who came into the ER panicky and afraid.
And it was quite obvious to everyone at the Pitt that they owed this version of Frank Langdon to Doctor Melissa King.
Mel’s had the day off today, a fact that would’ve been evident even if it hadn’t been Robby’s job to keep track of the staffing schedule because Langdon’s been more jittery than usual without her presence in the Pitt. When Langdon got off shift twenty minutes ago, he’d told Mohan he was heading to Mel’s sister’s recital at the center she was staying at, some of his nerves visibly calming at the prospect. Robby had looked from afar as Langdon had walked out of the glass doors and rushed to his car without saying goodbye to anyone else.
If you had asked Robby the day after PittFest who, if anyone, was going to be able to help Frank piece his life back together once he got clean, he wouldn’t have said the new resident who had spent one shift with Langdon only to not meet him again for seven months.
Mel had though, remarkably well.
On Langdon’s first shift back, eyes unsure and arms crossed over his chest defensively, Mel had taken one look at him and said “I have a patient with a head lac who needs sutures and I could need another hand. With me?”
Langdon had nodded and followed her, and Robby isn’t sure he has ever stopped following her since.
By month three, they’d started carpooling to work when their shifts lined up. By month ten, Robby saw a drawing on the inside of Langdon’s locker signed by Becca King, nestled between drawings signed by Tanner and Isabel. By month eighteen, Dana’s betting pool on when they’d get together hit fifty people placing odds.
Even Kiara had gotten involved, which seemed a bit unethical to Robby but calling her out on it would mean he'd have to acknowledge it even existed in the first place.
In the Pitt, the two of them worked together as if they operated on the same frequency. They moved around each other with practiced ease, handing each other gloves and syringes before the other even thought to ask for them. Langdon would let his hand linger an inch away from the bottom of Mel’s spine if they were forced to stand close together in a crowded room, wouldn’t hesitate to stay in the background if a patient presented as aggressive or hostile when Mel was put on charts. Mel, in turn, would watch him across the floor if they were working different cases, would keep a plain protein bar from the third floor vending machine- the only one that carried Langdon’s favourite flavour- on her at all times in case he’d need it.
So much practised ease, in fact, that Robby had been forced to pull Langdon aside into one of the patient rooms and ask him about it six months ago. He’d had to steel himself for it, unsure what Langdon’s reaction would be. Anger? Frustration? Defensiveness? Would he speak to Robby in the same tone as the day of PittFest, so desperate to hide the truth from Robby that he’d try and manipulate it into whatever he would have wanted Robby to see?
He hadn’t been prepared for the look of resignation to flash over Langdon’s features before he’d even fully asked the question.
“I’m not being selfish with her if that's what you're asking, and I'm not trying to trade my addiction to benzos for a new addiction to her. She’s too important. We’re just friends, Robby. I don't know how she feels about me, but she’s my best friend.”
When they got back onto the floor, Mel had come up to Langdon immediately to ask for a consult on a patient in South Sixteen and Langdon had followed her without missing a step, out of Robby’s sight again.
And that had been that.
All that to say, Mel had had today off, and Robby thought it had been a quiet shift. That's why he should’ve been more prepared for what was about to happen when Dana came up to him while he was updating a patient chart and said “car accident, pedestrian patient, two minutes out. EMTs report likely head trauma, bleeding around the abdomen and bruising around her chest. Pushed a kid out of the way and got struck instead. You up for it?”
“Sure,” he responds, already standing up and heading over to grab a trauma gown. “Any other patients coming in? The kid?”
“No, just her. The kid must’ve been treated at the scene and the driver was unharmed. He’s the one who called 911.”
“Okay, that’s good.” He reaffirms, scanning the floor to see who he could take. “Mohan, Santos, McKay, with me.”
They’re by his side just as the ambulance pulls up to the bay, gloves on and prepped when the automatic doors hiss open and the EMTs rush in. On the gurney, a woman lay unconscious with a yellow cervical collar around her neck, almost matching her blonde hair even though some of the strands are caked with dried blood. A sliver of blood was also smeared along her cheekbone, not unfamiliar.
Not unfamiliar?
“Mel?” Mohan says next to him, disbelief colouring her voice. Mel’s eyelids flutter open for a moment before they close again. “Oh my god.”
Robby rushes them towards Trauma Two before he can even begin to process the reality of the situation. “Okay people, focus. What have we got?”
The EMTs rattle off details as Robby takes her in as they run through the Pitt and past the nurses' station. There’s a laceration on Mel’s forehead with a bruise growing around it and her shirt has turned crimson by blood along her abdomen, a piece of metal from the car lodged into her skin. Jesus. When Santos cuts the shirt off, he can see the discolouration of her skin both above her lung and along her right hip. There’s pieces of gravel stuck in an abrasion on her right arm too from where she must have slid along the pavement upon impact, but his eyes keep going back to the piece of fender. Has Mel even realised it's there? Her entire right side is littered with injuries and blood. The only saving grace Robby can find is in the fact that her legs don't seem to be broken.
God.
"BP is 80 over 50, tachycardic at 130," one of the EMTs is saying, voice tight. "GCS is around 8, she's been in and out."
Mohan moves to focus on the laceration on Mel's forehead as Santos flits her fingers over Mel’s stomach, McKay slotting in next to her to measure Mel’s breathing with the sort of coordination that only working trauma cases in an ER can give you.
"Prep for immediate CT – head, C-spine, chest, abdomen, pelvis, I want all of them," Robby orders, his mind already racing through more potential injuries. "Mateo, get two large-bore IVs in, wide open. Bloods– CBC, BMP, coags, type and cross. Someone page radiology. And someone get Garcia in here, stat." He glances over to the EMTs. "Do we know how much blood she's lost?"
"Unclear. There was a trail of blood from where the impact happened and where she landed but most of her injuries seem internal," one of the EMTs says as she helps Mohan stabilise Mel's head.
Landed. Robby feels like he's going to be sick. McKay calls out for someone, Princess maybe, to get blood ready.
The other EMT, Isaac Robby thinks his name is, takes a step back to make room for Mateo. “She told a med student at the scene to make sure we don’t give her any benzos. Under no circumstance, she said. She might have a history of addiction.”
Of fucking course she did. Under any other circumstance Robby might’ve smiled, might have tucked that piece of information away for future use. Instead, he feels like a chasm has been blown wide open inside his chest.
Mel moans as Santos presses down lightly on her pelvis, eyes opening before going unfocused. “My head,” she rasps. “I think my head’s injured.”
“I’ve got you King, I’ve got you.” Mohan assures from above her. “I’ll worry about making the diagnosis, you just stay awake for me.”
The machines beep in the background now that Perlah’s hooked them up and the sound of Mel’s heartbeat becomes a grounding force amidst the chaos.
“She’s one of yours?” The EMT, Isaac, asks in surprise.
“Yes,” Robby grits out before reaching for Mel’s limp hand and leaning over her. “Mel, can you hear me? You’re in the Pitt. You were hit by a car.”
“Wasn’t his fault,” Mel groans. “He tried to brake.”
“Okay,” Robby says gently as he leans close. God, she really is the best of them. "Let's not worry about that right now. What can I do to make this easier for you? Do you want me to dim the lights?”
Mel shakes her head, or tries to at least, the cervical collar locking her in place. “You need to-” she gasps, flinching again as McKay puts her hands over her lungs. “- to see. It's not that bad.”
Robby freezes. The light is bad. Very bad. The fact that she disagrees sets off a thousand alarms all throughout Robby's nervous system. When he looks up to glance at Mohan, she nods grimly as if she had been anticipating the question already. She's Abbott's favourite resident for a reason, he supposes.
Robby has to confirm it though. When he leans closer to get a better look at her eyes, her pupils should've constricted already, but they haven't. One is slightly larger than the other.
Not a good sign.
“Christ Mel,” Santos whispers from across the table sounding dazed but doesn’t say anything else.
Mel flinches away from McKay’s hands and unshed tears are starting to glisten in her eyes in pain. God, how much pain must she be in, writhing on a table in a room she’s as familiar with as the back of her hand? Her colleagues' hands all over her when she’s so careful in always maintaining her distance otherwise. Robby wishes there was something he could do, but as usual Melissa King is right. They do need to see her if they want any chance to save her life.
Small mercies, that Mel seems so out of it she doesn't pick up on how bright the room is or how many people are crowded around her.
“Becca-” Mel gasps suddenly and clenches down on Robby's hand. “Becca, she’s at the center, she’s gonna worry.” Her speech is slurred now, eyelids fluttering as she tries to speak. Robby squeezes her hand back.
“Don’t worry, we’ll take care of it King. You just hang in there for us.”
Mel winces and Robby squeezes her hand lightly again, trying to distract her. “Don’t- please don’t call Frank right away. He’s with her, he can’t leave.”
Frank.
Just then Mel’s chest lifts off the table, her face contorting in pain. "It hurts,” she heaves. “I can't breathe."
“Likely pulmonary contusion," Garcia murmured next to him, her brow furrowed as she listened to Mel’s breathing for a few seconds. Robby hadn’t even registered her coming in. "Decreased air entry on the right. Sounds like pneumothorax in addition to the contusion." She listened to Mel’s breath sounds again with her stethoscope. "Yeah, breath sounds are diminished on the right side."
"Her pressure's dropping," Mateo called out, his voice urgent. "Down to 70 systolic."
"Two liters of crystalloid bolus," Robby shouts. "Let's get her on the rapid infuser. And prepare to intubate. Let's have propofol and dexmedetomidine ready instead of benzodiazepines."
The fucking benzos. Always fucking benzos. Will Robby ever have a traumatic shift that’s not plagued by the existence of benzodiazepines?
"She doesn't want us to give her benzos?" Garcia frowns. "Why?"
He holds her gaze for a second before shrugging and turning back to Mel, watching as she writhes in pain against where Mohan is steadying her again. "She's our patient, we go off of what she wants and don't speculate about her choices, we honor them."
Just then, Mel’s eyes rolled back and her hand went limp in his hand.
“Mel? Mel!" Robby urged, voice sharp. "She's desaturating! Get her on high-flow oxygen. What's her SpO2?"
"Eighty-five percent," Perlah reports, lips pressed into a thin line.
"We need to intubate," Mohan states firmly from the head of the table. "Likely chest trauma compromising her airway, and with her GCS we can't risk aspiration. Let's proceed with rapid sequence intubation using etomidate for induction, given her borderline hypotension, and have a ketamine drip ready for post-intubation sedation."
Santos prepped the intubation equipment before handing it for Mohan to use and when Robby turns his head up to look at her he can see her hands shaking slightly. As soon as Mohan finished intubating her, Mel’s body jolted off of the table and descended the room into chaos again.
"Levetiracetam, 1 gram IV push, now!" Robby ordered immediately. "Let's get a line in her femoral as well, just in case we need it. Mateo, have dexmedetomidine ready for sedation once the seizure is controlled."
"Significant pulmonary contusion and multiple rib fractures, and there's very likely a subdural hematoma in there too,” Garcia says grimly, sounding like she's citing it to herself rather than to anyone else in the room. “We’re lucky it's likely small, but given her fluctuating GCS it still concerns me quite a bit. Also, besides the shard of metal, the bruising and swelling along her abdomen suggests the possibility of internal bleeding as well, but we need to get in the OR to fully evaluate the severity of the bleeding."
“Jesus King,” he murmurs. “You were supposed to have the day off.”
"OR now," Garcia declared, her voice resolute and making Robby's head shoot up to stare at her. She holds his gaze as she nods her head to indicate to whichever nurse is standing behind him that they need to move. "There's no time for a CT, Robby. We're going to have to find out the damage as we go. We try and get her a CT and we risk aspiration and her choking on her own blood while she's in there. You know this."
He does, but this is Mel. They can't mess up with her, they can't miss anything.
"The head lac, her pupils weren't dilating properly earlier." He reminds her.
Her gaze softened, just a little bit. "You're not the only one who cares about her, Robby."
Then, without waiting for a reply, she waves Mohan over. "Dr. Mohan, you're free to join me to observe, Dr. Walsh is already there waiting for us. Mateo, keep a close eye on her neuro and respiratory status until we get there. We need to keep her ICP as low as possible and manage her ventilation to prevent any permanent brain injuries. Let's start a dexmedetomidine infusion in the OR for sedation, since she doesn’t want us to give her any benzos."
"Walsh isn't scheduled today," Santos says as they pull the railings of Mel's bed back up. "When did she get here?"
"Dana called her in. We're lucky she was nearby." Garcia doesn't look at them as she begins pushing Mel out of the door.
Mohan only takes a second to shoot the rest of the room a pained nod before following Garcia to the OR. One second they’re submerged in chaos, and the next they're all left standing in an uncomfortably quiet trauma room. Robby still feels like he’s drowning.
When Robby looks around he sees Mel’s blood on his gloves, on McKay’s trauma gown, on Perlah’s scrubs. Santos’ hands are still shaking in midair, as if she’s ready to put them back on Mel any second.
It’s not enough blood for the air to taste metallic, but somehow it does anyway. Maybe he’s imagining it, maybe he’s going insane.
“Hey,” he says when he sees the vacant look in Santos’ eyes. “It could’ve been worse. She didn’t crash, alright? She’s strong. Walsh is going to take care of her. You know she is.”
Santos nods slowly. “I know. I know she will, I just-” she inhales quickly. “I need a minute.”
“Take twenty,” he says as Santos walks past him, already heading out of the room. “You too McKay, Perlah, I’ll call her NOK myself.”
“Okay Dr. Robby,” Perlah says, voice tight. “I’ll ask Dana to pull up her chart.”
He stays in the room for another minute after Perlah leaves, closing his eyes when the door closes behind Perlah as she leaves. He takes a minute to just stand there, breathing in and out before opening his eyes back up to let the realisation finally sink in.
Melissa King. His best resident, probably. It’s hard to reconcile her with ugly words such as subdural hematoma and pulmonary contusion, even harder to have had to look at her as a patient. How many times had she stood in this very room, trying to save people from the same things she was now fighting for her life from?
Dana comes knocking after a while though Robby couldn’t tell you how much time has passed by then. She’s holding a chart, presumably Mel’s chart, to her chest as he turns to look at her and something must show on his face because hers fall almost immediately. “How bad was it?”
He runs his hand through his hair and down over his face. “The important thing is that she’s alive.”
She nods, face grim. “You need to call Langdon.”
Yeah, he knows. Fuck.
“You don’t think we should wait a bit longer, until she’s more stable? He just got off shift. She asked me not to call him right before she started seizing.”
“Doesn’t matter what we think,” Dana sighs before handing him the chart and his phone. He must’ve left it at the nurses’ station at some point before his shift went to shit. “She’s listed him as her emergency contact. No clue when.”
He takes it with unsure hands, staring at her for a beat before looking down to confirm it. There, in black and white under the section his eyes immediately go to, Dr. Frank Langdon. His name is followed by a phone number Robby has had saved on his personal phone for a long time, one he hasn’t used in almost two years now.
Fuck, he thinks again, like a mantra. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
“I’ll leave you to it,” Dana says but Robby can barely hear her over the ringing in his ears. When he looks at her, he can tell she’s trying to be assuring as she nods and squeezes his shoulder before leaving.
When the room is plunged into silence once again, he lets out a borderline hysterical laugh as he leans against the wall, as he slides down to the floor. With shaking hands he unlocks his phone and pulls up Langdon’s contact, hesitating for long enough that his mind decides to ruin his life, just a little. Am I about to blow up his life again, fully this time?
Robby swallows the bile that he can feel trying to claw its way up his throat, presses his fingernails into his thighs just to have anything else that his mind can focus on.
Then he sees an imprint of red on his forearm that he hadn't noticed before, it must've gotten on there when Mel first grabbed him, and presses his fingernails down even harder. He stares at it and counts to ten five times over in his head before he’s able to actually press the call button.
And gets promptly sent to voicemail. It startles another laugh out of him, the anticlimax of it all feeling horribly out of place. He has to try three more times before Langdon actually picks up.
He doesn't waste time with introductions.
“I’m off shift, Robby. Whatever you need from me, it can wait until I’m on the clock. You only own me on company time.”
He sighs. “That’s not- look, Langdon. There’s been an accident.”
“I can’t come in. Becca has a recital today and I’m waiting on Mel to show up, which is why I didn’t pick up, by the way. Now if that’s all,” Langdon trails off, tone agitated.
Robby's not focusing on that though.
I’m waiting on Mel. He’s waiting on Mel. Langdon’s waiting on Mel.
He'd known that, he knows. Mel had been in here, bleeding out on a table in front of him using the last of her oxygen to basically plead with Robby to not call Langdon, but it hits him like a hit to the solar plexus all over again. While she had been grasping Robby's hand and fighting unconsciousness Langdon had been waiting for her.
Robby stands back up on shaky legs and staggers over to the belongings the EMTs had brought in with them, sitting in a bag in the corner. He can't remember when they left, somewhere in the flurry of people running in and out of the room. Robby pulls her phone out from a bloodied tote bag and turns the screen on, a photo of Mel and Becca smiling at the camera from across a table at a diner Robby recognises from downtown lighting up on screen. He doesn’t have to wonder for long about who took the picture because his best guess is plastered across the screen.
Missed Call from: Frank (9)
Robby drags a hand over his face. Something withers and dies in the pit of his stomach.
“Mel’s here, Langdon. She’s at the PTMC.”
He’s familiar with anger, for denial, for questions when he has to tell patients their loved ones have been injured and taken into surgery. He’s prepared for urgency and fear. What he’s not prepared for is for Langdon to laugh.
“Put her on the phone then. God, you’re a bastard, you know that Robby? Why’d you drag her there for? It’s her day off. Tell her I'll come pick her up.”
For a second Robby wishes he could play it off, could pretend he dragged her in on her day off simply because they were understaffed. He wishes that was the truth, the reality being so much worse. As he runs his fingers over his forearm in an effort to ground himself his fingernails catch on another sliver of dried blood, Mel’s blood, that must’ve gotten on him at some point amidst the chaos. It can’t have been more than fifteen minutes that she was in this room, but Robby’s not sure he’ll ever be able to look at these four walls the same.
He’s not in the business of wishing though. He’s not allowed them.
His throat feels made of ash. “Langdon, listen to me,” he tries again. “Mel’s here because she was in a car accident.”
Silence. It's harrowing as Robby listens to Langdon’s breathing on the other side of the line. In and out, in and out.
Best friend, he’d said months ago, but Robby never fully believed it. He’d thought maybe it was just Langdon who was feeling more, who hesitated to cross a boundary Mel wouldn’t want him to cross. Robby had seen it after all, the degree of respect Langdon always had for her personal space even if she always let him get closer than anyone else. He’d seen the seriousness of which he treated situations where patients got too loud or too aggressive, always letting her handle it but staying close just in case she needed him at any point.
He’d said he wasn’t trading addictions, and Robby had believed him, but Mel seemed to have taken on his instead. Did Langdon know about that?
Eventually, Langdon speaks on the other side of the phone. “What are her injuries?”
Mel, 2:17 PM
Mel's running late, she knows she’s running late, but the line at the florist's is taking longer than she had planned for and now she can’t get out of line because Becca deserves flowers today. A whole assortment of them, in all of her favorite colors. Mel can’t find that at a grocery store, so she’s here. Standing in a line and ignoring Frank’s attempt to call her because she knows if she picks up and tells her she’s late he’ll leave the center to come pick her up and then they’ll both be late. At least one of them should be there on time for Becca’s pre-show pep talk.
It just happens that apparently every single person in Pittsburgh wants to buy flowers today. Extremely inconvenient and surprising.
By the time she’s managed to pay for a bouquet and headed back outside onto the crowded Pittsburgh sidewalk, Frank's tried to call her two more times. A part of her feels guilty, but a bigger part of her just wants to get to him as fast as she can and talking on the phone is going to take too much energy. Rather she gets there in time than talk to him right now.
However, all thoughts of Frank leaves her when, as she's waiting at a crosswalk for the traffic light to turn green, she can hear a man scream to her right, loud and piercing.
Her head whips towards the source, eyes searching until they lock on a child walking into the street on the other side of the road. She can’t be older than five, Mel's heart twisting when he realises she looks around Isabel’s age, stumbling as she follows a leaf as it floats in the air. Then her hearing kicks back in and Mel registers the grating, screeching sound of brakes being pressed of a high-speed car quickly approaching in her periphery.
She really wishes she’d be able to plan how to get herself out of this situation better, but there’s no time. Her instincts take over and she's off the sidewalk before she's even processed the decision.
Do no harm. She’s always tried to prevent harm too, if given the opportunity.
She drops the flowers- Becca’s flowers- as she runs across the street in as big strides as she can manage, pushing the little girl out of the way so hard she stumbles and falls on the pavement and tries to brace herself on her hands. Mel’s just about to reach for her to check for any abrasions when, well.
She gets hit by hard, unforgiving metal on her right side less than a second later. Pain explodes along her ribs as she’s tossed into the air from the impact and she barely has time to register the ground disappearing beneath her before she’s sliding along the pavement, gravel tearing her skin apart as she tries to brace herself on one of her forearms.
Her head is pounding as she finally comes to a stop, the sky a light blue above her. She must’ve slammed her head against the ground somewhere along the fall because her fingers come back bloody when she reaches up to check her forehead once the world stops spinning.
Great, she thinks, before closing her eyes for a moment to try and gather her bearings. This is probably going to make me even more late.
She tries to catalogue her injuries as she lies there, the world going quiet around her. She definitely has a head injury of some kind, and her entire right side feels like it’s on fire. Her arm’s a lesser concern, she doesn’t think it’s broken, but she can’t help but groan at the thought of dirty, unsanitary gravel embedded in her skin.
She can't rule out her injuries being worse than she's currently able to catalogue them. Adrenaline's a hell of a drug, Mel's seen it in victims coming through the Pitt. They'll act fairly normal when they get brought in, telling them they're fine, only to drop unconscious the next moment because throughout all that time they'd spent talking, they'd been slowly bleeding out internally.
Inhale, exhale.
Just last week, her and Frank had worked on a young woman who came in after being hit by a car as she was biking to work. She'd been adamant that, since she wore a helmet and she felt fine, they should let her go home. Turns out her liver was ruptured the entire time, adrenaline masking most of the symptoms. Frank had been the first to suspect it, and they'd gotten her into the OR just in time.
Frank, she remembers. I really wish I'd picked up the phone now.
Pain shoots up her hip suddenly and she gasps as she tries to keep her head still in case the head injury is worse than she would like. The world comes back to her as she blinks her eyes open again, the clouds going in and out of focus.
“Oh my god,” someone says above her, a car door slamming shut somewhere close. “Please don’t be dead.”
“I’m so sorry, oh my god,” comes from further away, a child crying to her right. “Thank you.”
“Call an ambulance, please,” Mel grinds out and tries to pretend the metallic taste in her mouth isn’t actually there. Inhale, exhale.
The man above her scrambles for his phone and Mel sees his hands shaking as he presses the numbers quickly, sweat forming along his hairline. His eyes are frantic as he watches her for a split second before the call connects.
She groans. “It’s not your fault, it was an accident.”
He doesn’t seem to hear her and before she can try again he’s speaking to an operator as he must get through to an operator. She can’t focus on the conversation for too long, only picking up bits and pieces as the man rattles off an address and answers questions while looking down at her like she’s a wild animal he’s trying very hard not to scare.
Which is ridiculous, because it’s not like she can go anywhere. She can’t even move her head too much to the side in case she’s injured her spine upon impact. She really wishes there was a Megan Thee Stallion lyric she could use to ground herself in this situation but if there is, she can't remember it right now.
Inhale, exhale.
"Woman in her late twenties, maybe early thirties," the man who hit her is saying from somewhere close. Mel wants to tell him the distinction doesn't matter but all that comes out is a groan. "Yes, there is blood."
She doesn’t realise she’s closed her eyes again before someone taps frantically against her cheek, entirely unwelcome but something Mel will forgive under the circumstances. When she opens them back up, a woman, a girl really now that Mel can see her, is pressing her jacket against Mel’s abdomen and making Mel gasp in pain.
“I’m sorry,” she’s saying. “I need to try and contain the bleeding.”
Mel tries to list off why stopping her bleeding is good for her in her head to distract herself. Buying time for paramedics to get to her is number one. It takes her more time than she'd admit to remember she should probably be worried about her blood pressure in all of this, that's reason number two. There's also something about oxygen and nutrients and preventing her from going into shock, but she can't focus for long enough to make sense of the words.
Wait, why is she bleeding?
Inhale, exhale.
“You a doctor?” Mel grits out instead, even as the pain gets worse.
“Pre-med,” she replies, one hand coming up to move some strands of Mel’s hair out of her eyes. “My name’s Mouna.”
“Nice to meet you Mouna,” she groans. “My name’s Mel.”
Mouna looks away from her for a second to look across from where she’s sitting, but Mel can’t focus on anything besides the expressions flitting across Mouna’s face. Mel can tell she’s putting up a front, but Mel can remember her own med school days. She’s probably scared, afraid to do the wrong thing.
Mouna looks back down at her. “Ambulance is right around the corner, hold on for me. They’ll be here any second Mel.”
“You’re doing great Mouna,” Mel replies instead. Inhale, exhale. “I think my lungs are injured too. Can you check my breathing for me? I can’t focus long enough to-” she winces. “-To do it myself.”
That makes Mouna pause, Mel can see it as something in her eyes shift. Her hands don’t lessen on Mel’s abdomen as she bends down to listen to Mel’s breathing up close, an almost loud silence settling around them for a few seconds. “They’re shallow and diminished.” Mouna says eventually, grimacing.
“What does that tell you?” Mel asks.
Mouna looks at her then, really looks at her. “Let’s not worry about it yet, I might be wrong, I'm only pre-med. Let’s wait for the ambulance to get here.”
Mel laughs before wincing, the movement sending a stabbing pain up the back of her skull. “I’m a ER doctor Mouna, you’ve already told me what it means.”
Her breathing is only going to get worse, she knows. If her lung's really punctured oxygen is going to become a rare commodity in a matter of minutes. She'll lose coherent thought soon enough, consciousness not much later.
Inhale, exhale.
Mouna looks terrified though, so Mel does the only thing she can think of to distract her from what is likely her first ever real contact with an actual patient.
"What area of medicine are you interested in?" she inhales sharply. "Do you know yet?"
Mouna looks at Mel like she's crazy for a beat before something's settling in her eyes. Mel's never been the best at reading social cues but she thinks it's something akin to conviction.
"Not sure, oncology maybe. After this I might consider Emergency Medicine."
Mel tries to laugh but it comes out as a cough again and Mouna reaches up to wipe something warm away from her chin. She puts in a valiant effort to hide the red from Mel, but Mel can taste the metal in her mouth all the same. Inhale, exha-.
Yeah, something’s definitely wrong with at least one of her lungs.
"Well," she grounds out as she pointedly ignores her throat feeling like glass. "If I make it out of this alive, come find me. I'll write you a recommendation letter when residency applications sneak up on you."
The lights of the ambulance break their eye contact before Mouna gets the chance to reply. She can see the relief bleeding out of Mouna almost instantly as she clocks its approach, red and blue reflected in her irises. Mel can’t hear it, which should probably feel more ominous than it does right then and there, bloody on a Pittsburgh pavement.
Right now, she has bigger priorities.
Inhale, ex- exhale.
“Hey,” Mel says, trying to get Mouna’s attention back. One hand reaches up to tug at Mouna's arm and Mel winces as she sees the blood she leaves behind on Mouna's white blouse. She goes to apologise but what comes out instead is, “I need you to do me a favour.”
“Did I miss anything?” Mouna says hurriedly as her hands press down harder and Mel flinches.
She tries to shake her head. “No, you were great. It's just, they're gonna-" she gasps suddenly, fire spreading along her veins. "I can feel the adrenaline starting to run out and in case I crash before the paramedics get to me, I need you to tell them,” her head is pounding now. Great, her body is having to put out more fires than it can keep up with. “Don’t let them give me any benzodiazepines."
The fact that she’s able to articulate the word benzodiazepines is something she’s going to take as a good sign though, even if it probably is just the adrenaline keeping her this lucid so far. She needs all the good signs she can get.
Inhale, exhale.
Mouna freezes from where she's now leaning above her. “History of addiction?”
Mel swallows another laugh, her head starting to feel heavy. She tries to think of Frank's red eyes one night nine months ago when he came over after Becca had already fallen asleep because for the first time in months, he'd gotten his hand on pills, completely accidentally, and instead of taking them he'd showed up on the doorstep of her apartment because I needed to see what I'd be losing, Mel. Thinks of his always warm but slightly unsure smile the day after as they spent the afternoon walking around Highland Park with Becca ranting about the different species of flowers they found along their way. Thinks of all the late nights on Mel's couch and the lights from the TV painting Frank's face in a pale blue. Thinks of all of those early mornings when they've dropped Becca off together.
Thinks of I need you and you're doing great and you're really growing on me. Thinks of everything else he's said to her since that day where his life had run out of road and he'd forged a new one for himself with his bare hands. Their relationship flashes behind her eyelids in a kaleidoscope of Mel's wanting, reaching for more things than she's able to articulate.
“Something like that. Just- tell them,” she slurs, oxygen starting to evade her. “Make sure they don’t give me any.”
By the time the paramedics reach her she’s gasping for air, black spots growing before her vision goes blurry. Great, that’s the head injury making itself known again too. In- in- In...hale?
Before she knows it she’s being lifted on a gurney, There are voices all around her, instructions and assessments being spoken from both left and right as she’s being lifted into an ambulance. Mouna’s hand falls from her body soon after but she doesn’t get to miss the heat, the pressure of them because, well.
By the time they do, Mel has already passed out.
The grey, metallic ceiling of the ambulance feels blinding as Mel opens her eyes back up again. Every inhale feels like she’s drowning, someone shouting about fluid buildup to her right and she winces at the loud noise. Inhale, exhale. One of her hands, the mostly uninjured one, comes up to remove the oxygen mask just for her to grit out “which hospital are we going to?” to the paramedic on her right.
She recognises him from somewhere, realises belatedly that she’s probably seen him at the Pitt loads of times when she’s been the one to receive incoming patients, but his name eludes her. His gaze is kind when he answers her, placing the oxygen mask back over her mouth.
“We’re taking you to Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, ma’am. It’s the closest one. We’re two minutes out.”
She’s sure she should have some reaction to that, something at the back of her mind objecting, wanting her to argue, but she passes out again before she can muster enough strength.
There’s a loud, constant hum ringing in her ears as she’s jostled around what must be a cramped space when Mel comes to the second time. Her chest burns as she struggles to breathe, shallow gasps trying their hardest to give oxygen to her starving, overcompensating lungs. Somebody above her is trying to say something, she thinks maybe it’s her name but she can’t really make out any words, and the next moment she’s gone again.
The third time it happens, she feels a bit more lucid as she spots Samira and Robby leaning above her. Someone’s bearing down on her hip so hard she has to fight back tears as she blinks back into consciousness, the overhead light bright and overstimulating. There’s too many hands on her too, making her want to crawl out of her skin as she lays on the table. She thinks Samira’s examining her head before remembering she most likely has a head lac that needs treatments.
This time when she tries to triage her injuries mentally, she keeps forgetting them as soon as she remembers them.
Samira only tells her to stay awake when Mel tries to tell her about her head, which feels a bit redundant to Mel. It’s not like she’s trying to pass out, fading in and out of consciousness.
There’s more noise as people work around her and it takes her a moment too long to recognise the new pressure in the palm of her hand as Robby, squeezing it every time he asks her something as if to reorient Mel’s attention back to him and away from the fire across her hip, the feeling of drowning every time she takes a breath becoming harder and harder to push through.
She tries to tell them about how it wasn’t the driver’s fault even as she can barely form the words as someone, she thinks it might be Santos, moves her hands to where Mel’s sure there’s a bruise over her lungs by now. Santos is saying something in return and then Mel flinches away from McKay’s touch reflexively as a weight feels like it’s been dropped on her chest but Mel can’t make any of it out.
Panic spreads through her as she realises she can’t think anymore. Her brain’s the best thing she has, and it’s not working anymore. It’s gone offline as pain is taking turns shooting through her body like she’s a pinball machine, taking turns moving from her hips to her chest to her head. What must she look like to Robby, lying here bloody and disoriented and barely functioning?
Inhale, exhale.
Clarity slams into her like a freight train suddenly. Becca. Becca’s waiting for her.
“Becca,” she rasps. “Becca, she’s at the center, she’s gonna worry.”
Robby’s saying something in response, she can see his lips moving above her in what she assumes must be assurances, but her hearing’s gone. If she was one of the doctors in this room and not the patient, she’d think it’s her vestibulocochlear nerve that’s being compressed, but she’s not and she can’t think.
Instead, what comes out is “don’t- please don’t call Frank right away. He’s with her, he can’t leave.”
Frank.
Frank Langdon, who’s probably waiting for her right now at the center. How long has it been since they last talked now, an hour? Two? God, she wants him here. If it was his hands treating her maybe the touches wouldn’t make her skin burn as much, wouldn’t feel so foreign. He’d be able to tell what she was trying to communicate without her having to find the right words. He’d become so good at that over the many months since he got out of rehab.
Mel’s never felt so seen as she does by Frank Langdon, and she likes to think she has the same effect on him. It should've been unsettling to feel his gazes on her across pizzas on her living room floor or from the other side of her couch as Becca rants about the best movies ever made but it never was, when it was him looking at her.
If he was here, she wouldn’t be as scared as she is. She trusts all of her colleagues implicitly, but there’s no one she trusts in the Pitt more than him. He slotted into her life one day two years ago and she’s been trying so hard to never give him a reason to leave ever since. God, they'd made so much progress.
Oh god, if only people knew how selfish Melissa King actually was, because she wants him here, now, so badly she could almost cry with it if her nervous system wasn't currently reacting to her body breaking down instead. She wants him so much, in more ways than she's ever going to be able to name, but she wants anyway. Desperately.
But Mel is well aware of what she's not allowed. Especially not now, when there’s nobody else around to take care of her sister.
She knows where Frank is more needed, and it’s not here with her. Mel can’t be selfish with this.
Inhale, exhale.
Still. She wishes she could be. Wishes it was his voice talking her through the procedures, barking orders and working on her with steady hands. Wishes it was his hands she was bleeding onto as her heart tried to keep up with the rapid blood loss, that it was those same, beautiful, strong hands that would have to intubate her in a few moments. Wishes it had been his calming blue eyes that had checked her pupils for signs of light reaction instead of Robby's, however long ago that was.
Maybe then she could've pretended this was just like any other time, any other case they've worked on together in this very room.
But they’re probably better for it because she’s pretty sure her lung’s collapsing a second later as she feels her chest heave, her back lifting off the table as she tries to inhale inhale inhale without any success. Someone, Santos maybe, hisses to her right as someone else presses down on her shoulders to keep her head steady. Inhale, inhale, INHALE, please god just let me inhale.
The noises around her go loud again but she can’t hear anything other than a low buzz in the background as she stares up at the ceiling of Trauma Two. Gauze and syringes and an intubation kit are being handed to people all around her, but she can’t make them out anymore, vision going blurry again.
Oh oh. Two of her senses can’t be going down at the same time, that doesn’t bode well for her.
Yeah, on second thought, Mel definitely thinks it’s really good that Frank's not in here with her and seeing her like this. Flitting in and out of consciousness as she keeps bleeding from at least four different places and a lung that’s running on fumes at this point. She knows they’ll need to intubate her soon, she can feel every place where her body slowly is giving up inside her and Mel's not sure she’d be able to handle the look on his face if he had to actually watch her go down.
Adrenaline can only do so much and now she’s coming up empty.
Frank Langdon, she thinks right before she knows she’s finally going to be pulled underneath the waves. I’ll see you on the other side of this one.
Mel exhales.