Archive of Our Own

When you break up with someone — in the middle of a parking lot with sun settling behind you, your eyes stinging with unshed tears, their mouth half open as they listen like they can’t quite understand what you are saying and then you walk away and never speak to them again — you don’t think about seeing your ex again. Sure, in some sick twisted fantasy, you do imagine some years down the road where you are successful and hotter than they are and they catch a whiff of your life and then sigh in dejected defeat but you don’t think about meeting them again — being in the same space as them again for long periods of time. 

It’s sort of painful when you do — like your heart aches. Well, it’s not always obvious if it’s because the anger bubbles over and make it hurt begrudgingly, or because the memory of them hurting you is still too fresh on your mind or because there’s a longing there that you’re scared the dam will break if you do think about your ex, seeing his blue eyes, his loose strand of hair, his five o’clock shadow that came out when he pulled double shifts. 

So Mel doesn’t. Think about her ex, she means. She almost purges him from her brain, forgets that someone named Frank Langdon ever existed in the first place. 

There is certainly no space to think about the aforementioned ex when he moves away after the end of his residency program and settles somewhere Mel is decidedly not curious about. She doesn’t ask about him, doesn’t mourn the fact that she spent her last year as a resident at PTMC without the person who was always by her side, always pressing up against her as he ‘innocently’ passed her in the hallways, always drove her home and came up with her. She doesn’t answer Becca in so many words when she starts asking where Frank is. 

She urges them both to forget. Completes her residency, applies for a job in Presbey and never looks back.

So it’s really unexpected to see the said ex — on the day of the conference, thirty minutes before talking about a topic she’s spent the better part of the last two years on (neurodivergence in the ER) — on the same panel, bouncing on his feet, swinging back and forth. “Dr. Langdon,” Dr. Balhara — the panel moderator — says, “I want you to meet Dr. Melissa King. She has had numerous research papers published in the last couple of years around neurodivergence and namely autism in the ED.”

She never thought she’d hear that name again — especially not nearly three years after she last saw him! — so it’s hard to keep track of Dr. Balhara’s explanation about how Dr. Langdon is also a perfectly impressive researcher in the area and that as someone who has ADHD himself, she is hoping that his insights offer interesting nuances in the panel. No, Mel is too busy trying to keep herself from panicking.

Throughout all of that, Mel can’t hear anything but the drumming of her own heart. 

Despite her better efforts — despite her polishing her memories from that time and neatly stacking them into a box, never to be opened again, hidden in some storage in her mind that she didn’t quite have a name for — she remembers him. She remembers him especially on that last day, his boxes loaded to the back of his car, done with Pittsburgh — it’s just too much to stay here, Mel, he had said, come with me like that was easy! You are the one who left me, he said on that day. Lies — as she tried her best not to cry and get her words out. 

“Nice to meet you, Dr. King,” he says and he sounds so natural — like he’s purged his brain from her, like he can’t recall her, like ten years is enough time to wipe his memory of her. 

She can’t find her voice, though. Can’t string along two sentences. You, too, she has to say but her brain doesn’t oblige. 

“Dr. Langdon did his residency in the same center as you did your residency in, Dr. King,” Dr. Balhara says. “Did you cross paths?” 

“We might’ve,” Frank says coolly, detached, “It’s been a long time since I was there and… I had a rocky fourth year, you know.” Dr. Blahara nods sympathetically, lightly touching Frank on the biceps. 

“Of course,” she says, “I understand. I hope you get along well. Seeing how you both are so valuable to the panel. Oh is that Dr. Jenkins? Sorry, you must excuse me. Get acquainted. Dr. King, you can come find me and ask any questions you have. We’ll reconvene tomorrow morning for the panel, yes?” Dr. Balhara doesn’t stick around long enough for Mel to find her voice — that would be a very long time after all. She doesn’t think she’ll recover from this — and then it’s just the two of them. 

For the first time in three years. Her thirty-year-old self would probably have a stroke. Her thirty-three-year-old self is very close to it, too. 

“Fancy seeing you here,” Frank is the one who breaks the silence, making her look up from the floor into his eyes. She is shocked by how familiar they look — how she still remembers the exact shade of blue they were (are, she supposes), how they have more wrinkles in their corners now that he’s older, the same shine in his eyes, the same cadence, really. There you are, is the first thing she thinks when he melts into them again, like an old friend she missed. 

She shouldn’t. 

“I thought you didn’t remember me,” she blurts out because of course she does. Because she can’t help herself around him. 

“Would you rather have explained to Dr. Balhara where we knew each other from?” he raises an eyebrow and she feels her face heat up. He’s right. Of course, he is. It would be embarrassing for both of them if they declared ‘conflict of interest’ right now since they are… Well, whatever they are. Panel-mates? Still, she can’t help the sting that settles deep in her soul, swirling and twirling until she’s very nearly losing her mind. 

“It would be very unprofessional,” she nods, the words very hardly moving through her throat and meeting the world out in the open. He just nods. She wants to ask questions — Dr. Balhara did say they ought to be acquainted — like how are the kids? Like does he find it a better fit to not live in Pittsburg? Is he happier now that he’s shattered her heart, leaving her stranded when she needed him? 

Of course, she doesn’t.

“How’s Becca?” he asks first, perfectly civil. 

“She’s good,” she hums, “lives in the center full time now. In the apartments there. She loves it there,” — despite the circumstances and the awkwardness in the air and the fact that this is not where she wants to be, she smiles at the mention of her sister — “teaches the art program for little kids now. It’s just — adorable.” 

He nods his head. “That’s great. Tell her I’m proud of her.” 

Mel clears her throat. It would be rude to tell him to shove it, right? Yes. probably. So instead, she asks about the kids. “How are Tanner and Penny?”

“Menaces,” he smiles in the way all parents do when they are asked about the children. Mel imagines that a lifetime ago, she used to have the same dumb smile on her face. She still has the friendship bracelet Tanner and Penny made for her tucked somewhere in the back of her drawer back home — the same drawer that has Frank’s wedding band locked inside of it (he forgot to take it one morning in the beginning when he was just finalizing his divorce and still wearing his ring and she never reminded him) and the bracelet and necklace he bought for her. “Tanner started school, you know. He’s in third grade right now — very small. And Penny, too. She’s going to start school in a couple of months. She’s very excited — insists that we call her Penelope now that she’s grown up.” 

“That’s great,” Mel says and she means it. It doesn’t matter how strange and screwed up everything got with Frank, she’ll always have a soft spot for those kids. They used to call her ‘Dr. Mel’ — they asked Frank to bring her on their ice cream runs, used to watch cartoons with Mel and Becca. Just the five of them in Mel’s living room. Her heart clenches painfully in her chest as she clears her throat. “What about…” she trails off. “Abby,” she finally settles on saying. “Is she alright?”

“She’s engaged, actually,” he says, the words coming quickly. “And yeah, she’s fine. Thanks for asking.” 

“Of course,” Mel nods, still stuck on ‘she’s engaged’. She has questions — when? Why? How? But she can’t ask him that. It’s none of her business. Three years surely was enough time for them to let go of the fling they had a million years ago when he was vulnerable and actively recovering and she was lonely and excited at the idea of companionship. Surely it was nothing more than that — surely, she isn’t still… 

Surely. 

“I have to, um,” Mel tries to come up with an excuse to run away. “Go through the material for tomorrow morning. We are one of the first panels, you know.” She clears her throat again — one more drink, she thinks, and then she’ll go up and probably cry herself to sleep. That seems like a good plan. A solid plan that means she won’t spend time with Frank. 

“Sure,” Frank says, neutrally. “It was really nice to see you, Mel.”

“Yeah, you too,” she replies almost on auto-pilot, not sure if she means the words or not. “See you tomorrow.” 

She skips the drink and goes right up to her hotel room. It really is quite stupid to have a social mingling before a conference, god. But they are in Vegas. 

Woo-hoo. 

She indulges in the mini-bar.

—

The panel goes well. It’s one of the beautiful things about medicine and ER in general: she tends to get lost in the chaos so much so that she doesn’t need to actively avoid thinking about Frank. It especially helps that the conversation starts as a discussion of neurodivergence in general and then quickly makes leeway for autism so Mel can spend the majority of time talking and not looking at him. Of course, it’s fairly disappointing that in a conversation about neurodivergence, ADHD is once again sorely under-represented (dyslexia and other learning difficulties are almost brushed off!! It’s infuriating, really) but Mel is too selfish at this particular moment to care. 

She spends the rest of the conference pointedly waiting for Frank to choose his next destination so she can avoid running into him. If he makes a right turn to go listen to Dr. Shabani’s keynote speech then Mel is running in the opposite direction to sit in on the poster-presentations of the interns in the ER. If he thinks Dr. Murphy’s insights on new methods of triage is interesting, then Mel is certain she can find more useful information if she listens to Dr. Krawlie talk about this and that (he really is dull so Mel doesn’t even know what he’s saying despite having spent two hours listening to him). 

By the end of the day, Mel is fairly optimistic that she can spend the remaining day of the conference not at all running into him.

But running all over the place, trying to avoid Dr. Langdon, leaves Mel wiped and spent by the end of the day. So when Dr. Balhara suggests that she join her and her friends in grabbing drinks in a bar nearby, Mel isn’t quick enough to come up with an excuse. “You were fantastic today, Dr. King,” she says, “Let me buy you a drink.” And eventually, Mel gives in, letting her buy a drink.

That’s the first mistake of the night (since bad things always come in three, you should probably look out for two more mistakes soon to follow and haunt Mel around).

The bar isn’t at all what she expected respected doctors who are planning on revolutionizing the ERs all over the United States would go to. She imagined somewhere lowkey with dim lights and a jazz undertone to be where they would sit and discuss the events of the day, like which panels they liked the best and what were the in-ignorable flaws in the speeches given out.

She certainly didn’t expect them to go to a casino. 

“It’s Vegas, Dr. King,” Dr. Balhara says with a cheeky grin when Mel says that maybe she should go back to the hotel and get some sleep. “It’s custom that you visit a casino! We do this every year,” which is enough incentive to compel Mel into never signing up for a CME conference taking place in Vegas ever again. But alas, she can’t leave because Dr. Balhara — “Call me, Jinx, please,” she says, smiling widely and Mel distantly knows that she never will — pulls her to make her sit around the table and orders them all shots. 

“It’s tradition,” Dr. Jenkins explains — he’s an attending from Yale who wears tiny glasses and is balding. He’s the last person she expects to be in a casino in Vegas but he is the first to down a shot and woo-hoo his way into another one. Mel obliges as well, following tradition. 

She isn’t usually included in very many things. Of course, she’s come a long way from her residency days where she was isolated. She now has colleagues with whom she grabs the occasional lunch or dinner and people who she can chat with about a new interesting paper that’s come out or about how Becca — or their significant other at the time — is doing. But still, nights out with people who voluntarily invite her is a rare luxury that she doesn’t take for granted. 

So when Dr. Balhara orders a second round, she downs the drink. When they call for Mel to finish her beer in one sitting, she pushes up her glasses and does it as they chant her name. She doesn’t tell them that she has a low alcohol tolerance, that she doesn’t deal well with hang-overs. 

She just drinks the things they put in front of her, hoping for the best. 

By the time the casino lights start to feel too bright — too white, like an operating room that never turns off — Mel is pleasantly, dangerously buzzed. Her limbs feel loose. Her thoughts arrive half a second too late, like they’re running to catch up with her mouth. She laughs more easily than she should. She gestures when she talks.

This, she knows distantly, is not ideal.

She loses five dollars at a slot machine Dr. Jenkins insists is statistically lucky (it isn’t) and then twenty more because she wants to prove a point she can no longer remember. Dr. Balhara — Jinx — cheers every time the machine lights up, even when it doesn’t mean anything. Especially when it doesn’t mean anything. 

She is so buzzed — floating on another planet entirely, really — that she doesn’t realize that the tall, blue-eyed man that joins their group (Dr. Balhara, the attending from John Hopkins, the respectable doctor that leads fellowship programs, actually throws her hands up and greets him, Dr. Langdon!!) is Frank Langdon. Not until he’s hovering over her, his eyes narrowed in worry. 

“Is she drunk?” She hears him ask but his lips have already moved like there is a dissociation between sound and movement. That makes her laugh, giggles spilling around. 

Dr. Balhara shrugs. “She’s having fun,” she says, waving a hand like it explains everything. “She earned it.”

Mel laughs again because that feels like the correct response to fun, even though the word doesn’t quite fit right in her mouth. The casino is too loud — no, not loud, layered. Coins clatter, machines sing, people shout in overlapping keys that don’t resolve. The carpet is busy in a way that makes her eyes ache if she looks at it for more than a second. The lights buzz faintly, a high-pitched whine she can’t tune out now that she’s noticed it. Her skin feels tight, like she’s wearing someone else’s clothes.

Frank’s face comes closer. Too close. Instinctively, she leans back, knocking her knee into the slot machine. It dings cheerfully, which feels rude.

“I’m not drunk,” she says, because the word feels inaccurate. Drunk is sloppy, drunk is spinning. She is floaty. (Ha! That’s a word Becca likes!) There’s a difference. “I’m just—” She gestures vaguely, her hand describing a shape she can’t name. “Delayed.”

Frank blinks. “Delayed.”

“My thoughts,” she explains patiently, because he’s always needed explanations. She misses the times when he would listen intently when she explained things to her like he wasn’t the teacher. Like she was right all the time and he was the one who needed corrections. She misses him — so much. She hadn’t even realized the feeling until she actually saw him. Three years, and still one glance was enough to send her heart soaring through the roof at the sight of him. She remembers having the same reaction when he came back from rehab — that child-like excitement that had her flying towards him to hug him. She feels the same sensation tugging at her right now that the drinks have loosened up her thoughts, destroying her defences. It’s so much harder to hide behind a mask she’s meticulously built when she’s this free. “They’re late. Like when the elevator stops on every floor.”

Dr. Balhara laughs. “I like her,” she says, delighted, and orders another round.

“No,” Frank says, sharper than he probably means to be. “I think she’s done.”

Mel frowns. The word done lands wrong. Finished things are put away. Archived. She straightens, a little affronted. She doesn’t want to be done right now — she wants to be here with Frank and not think about the consequences. She wants to pretend that this is a dream she’s having — one of those that she tracks in her journal and never talks about because talking about them out loud would be stupid and forbidden. “I’m sitting,” she points out. “So that’s not—”

“Mel,” Frank cuts in gently, and the way he says her name — careful, low, like he’s handling something fragile — makes her chest tighten in a way she doesn’t appreciate. “Hey. Look at me.”

She doesn’t want to. Eye contact feels like standing too close to a speaker. But she does it anyway, because there are rules about conversations and because Frank is very good at sounding like the rules. 

His eyes are darker up close. Less blue, more grey, like a storm thinking about happening. She wonders, distantly, if that’s new or if she’s just never noticed before. Or maybe she’s noticed — suddenly, she wants to pull out her sheets from back when they were dating and she was tracking everything about him. She wants to check to see if there is anything about ‘grey eyes’ in his files. She is sure if she finds her phone, she can check the google doc.

“You’re overstimulated,” he says quietly. “And you’ve had too much to drink.”

“I don’t like that word,” she mutters. “It’s imprecise. What does ‘too much’ even mean?”

He almost smiles at that. Almost. “Okay. You’ve had enough to drink.” 

She shakes her head, her lips certainly pouting. She can’t tell. “I don’t want to go,” she shakes her head. “Please, Frank, I don’t want to go.” His eyes soften at her — she can see the shift, the change from grey into the blue of a sky on the fourth of July. That was the day he came back the first time around. She misses them like that — still capable of human connection, still too innocent in their steps. Like a fresh canvas, ready to be repainted. His pupils are dilated now, Mel can smell alcohol. She doesn’t know if it’s her own breath, his or just the place they are in. “Are you drunk?” she asks, tilting her head. 

“I had a drink,” he manages to get the words out, his eyelashes fluttering as Mel laces her hands around the nape of his neck, making him stand still as she studies him. Her glasses start sliding down her nose, and he reaches forward, pushing them up by the tip of his nose. Mel is pretty sure she misses a heartbeat. “I just had a drink, I promise,” he says and Mel hears the implication, I was never addicted to alcohol so this isn’t a relapse. I’m not high. She grins. 

“You’re drunk.” 

“Yeah, that drink was a bad call,” he concedes. “Mel, we’re both drunk — maybe we should—”

“Maybe we should get out of here,” Mel completes for him, all filters gone. She feels giddy, slightly light-headed as his eyes widen, for a second he stops moving, gaping at her. 

He swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing, and for a second Mel thinks he’s going to say no. That he’s going to be responsible and careful and ruin this fragile, shimmering thing she’s holding between her hands. She doesn’t even know what she’s asking — how this is going to work, what she wants. But he’s close and she’s drunk and all the filters are slipping away and all the hard work that’s spanned three years is out of the window and she feels so much — overwhelmed and lost and so insane. His pupils have almost swallowed the iris of his eyes, dark and black in the low light of the casino. She wonders if their colleagues are looking at them, wondering about this strange thing hanging between them; unspoken words and a chemistry they couldn’t quite shake. 

She finds that she doesn’t care. 

He is going to pull back, she thinks bitterly, he’s going to say ‘no’. 

Instead, he laughs. It slips out of him, a quiet, disbelieving sound.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay. Yeah. Let’s — let’s get out of here.”

“Let’s have a drink,” Mel says, feeling giddy and warm in her suit, tugging at her collar. She wishes she could shed the coat, maybe loosen a button or two. She wishes she had gone for contacts that morning so she wouldn’t have to feel the heavy weight of her glasses on the bridge of her nose. 

“Mel—”

“It’s tradition,” she interrupts him, curling her fingers around his wrist and tugging at him until they have reached the bar. “Two shots, please,” she says and the sober part of her brain — the part that is recording all this and will show a slideshow of them to her tomorrow to kill her from embarrassment — is amused at the sentence. She’s never said that in her life — not even when she turned twenty-one and she went to a bar on her own the day after and tried beer for the first time in her life. Even back then she didn’t have the courage to go for shots. 

“Mel,” this time, her name comes out amused instead of alarmed. She just shrugs. 

She wonders if them bumping into each other is the reason Frank has been drinking. Ever since he came back from rehab, he made it a point to avoid all substances that he could grow dependent on — painkillers and opioids and alcohol and every other thing in between. It wasn’t needed — not even part of his PHP agreement — but he stuck to it. But now, he’s drunk and he accepts the shot Mel extends to her. 

Is she truly this powerful?

She is.

“Cheers,” he says, clinking their glasses together as they down the shot. Mel’s face scrunches into itself as the bitterness burns her tongue, travelling all the way from her esophagus to her stomach. She stumbles on her stool, nearly tipping over but Frank reaches out and steadies it, his alcohol-ridden breath spilling on her skin. He’s so close and he’s been far for too long. Her body remembers before her brain stops her, leans into him before she can even form a coherent thought. 

“Mel…” he whispers but he doesn’t get to utter another word cause she leaps forward and kisses him. It’s quick — blink and it’s gone, more an extension of something they used to do so leisurely once upon a time. She’s surprised at how well her body remembers, how easily it falls back into old patterns. When she pulls back, she’s biting her lower lip, looking up at him. Her glasses are once again sliding down her nose but she doesn’t bother pushing them up. She just looks up at him. 

He looks shocked — like his brain has short circuited. Mel is pretty sure he is fried, that he’s going to pass out or run away any moment now. What she doesn’t expect is him, tugging the stool forward until he’s practically trapped her between his legs and closing the distance between them again. The kiss catches Mel off garud, her eyes widening for a split second before she gives in, opens her mouth and presses her eyes shut. She pushes her fingers into his hair, a habit she hasn’t quite shed yet, scraping his scalp with her nail, hanging on for dear life. 

Frank lets out a groan, tilting her head to get a better angle, wrapping his long fingers — hands of a surgeon, she thinks distantly. She always thought so. That’s why he intubates better, because his fingers are long and narrow. That’s why he always managed to get her off after their shifts in his car without even doing much — around her throat, his thumb on her pulse point, pressing against her carotid to feel the rise and fall of the skin. “Fuck,” he breathes the word out, low and dirty. 

Mel sees stars when his palm presses against her back, pushing her into himself. She can feel him hard even as they are sitting down, even as she’s basically straddling his hips. “Bathroom,” she whispers when they pull away to grab air, her words muffled, syllables running into each other, fighting to get out. “Now — please.”

Frank doesn’t need to be told twice as he throws a couple of bucks on the counter, lacing their fingers together and pulling her behind him. Every few steps, they stop, once again melting into each other’s mouths like they are trying to find a treasure map here, people bumping against their back. Mel hates the feeling of others hovering close, of them breaking the moment every time they touch her, sending pain shooting up her body and so Frank presses her back to his stomach, hovering close as they leave the main area of the casino, his mouth pressing sloppy kisses to her neck. “Baby,” he breathes the word against her skin. “Mel.” 

She didn’t know — no, actually she knew. She’s known that about him for the longest time, really — that just her name could sound so dirty, send sensations pulsating all throughout her body, give her a near stroke, really. 

They don’t quite make it to the bathroom. There’s a line of people standing there, all of them groaning and frowning and Mel doesn’t have to tell Frank anything before he changes course. 

Frank barely breaks stride before he pivots, steering them away from the bathrooms like he’s done this before — like he knows the geography of escape from a casino by instinct. A quick glance over his shoulder, a sharp turn past a row of blinking machines, and suddenly they’re in a quieter corridor that smells faintly of carpet cleaner and citrus instead of spilled beer.

Mel laughs, breathless. It bubbles out of her chest before she can stop it.

“Where are we going?” she asks, words slurring just enough to annoy her tomorrow-self.

“Somewhere with fewer people,” he says, practical even now. “And less—” he gestures vaguely behind them, where the casino noise bleeds through the walls, “—that.”

They end up in a stairwell. It’s unglamorous and beige and mercifully still. The door swings shut behind them with a heavy thunk that sounds final in a way that makes Mel’s stomach flip.

For a second, neither of them moves. They have been here before — well, not really here but in a staircase, in PTMC, when they couldn’t keep their hands off each other and Mel could tell that Frank was going insane every time she stretched her arms above her head and her scrub rode off (she learned to mimic that from him in a revenge attempt that worked wonderfully). They were standing in a similar space, their breaths equally ragged and uneven. 

Mel thinks that this is it — they’ve both sobered up, thinking of a point in time that they can’t get back. 

But then Frank is pushing her against the wall, his mouth on hers so she figures, this is happening. She wants it to happen so her mouth is open before he reaches her and he takes full advantage of it, his tongue sliding in before Mel can even fully register what’s happening. She lets out a little gasp and Frank swallows that. “You like that, baby?” he whispers, his voice low and dirty, drawling and sticky. He presses his body against hers, trapping her under him. She revels in the weight, the way his palm is pinning her against the wall, his knees sliding between her thighs. All the words in the work will fail to convey how she feels in this moment — electric, connected to something larger than life itself. 

Elated. 

Frank’s hand comes back to its favorite place, wrapping itself around her neck as he kisses the corner of his mouth, sloppy wide-mouthed kisses trailing all the way from her face to her jawline. He bites the sensitive spot behind her ear, making her press her head back against the wall to give him more access. “So good to me, baby,” he whispers, licking the place he’s just bitten. Mel is pretty sure her soul leaves her body as Frank’s hand travels from her lips to press against the front of her pants, the fabric already soaked. “Fuck, baby, you soaked through your panties?”

She tries to remember what underwear she chose that morning. She hopes she’s gone for her simple black pair and not the spongebob ones that Becca got her for their birthday. Not that Frank would care either way. At least Mel doesn’t think he would. 

“Please,” she repeats the word from earlier. She doesn’t even know what she wants, her thoughts are muffled, all over the place.

“Patience, sweetheart,” he says, his mouth reaching her clavicles, biting down on it. She wonders if it’ll leave a mark. She wants it to — she wants to wake up tomorrow with a headache and look at herself in the mirror and see the bruises to be sure that this did happen. They were here and they were together. “I’m going to stretch you out and then I’m going to make you see stars, baby.” 

Mel can only make noises at this point, certain that no words have any meaning. Not when Frank unbuttons her shirt, slowly, kissing the skin as he goes along, untucking it from her pants and then undoes the button there. “Can I?” he asks when he gets to the zipper and Mel pushing him down to the ground so that he’s kneeling in front of her is all the answer she’s capable of giving. “Oh, baby,” he coos, unzipping her trousers and pushing them down until they are pooling at her feet.

He presses his face into her cunt, his nose poking her thighs and takes a deep breath in, “I’m going to ride you so fucking hard, sweetheart,” he whispers, his voice low. It’s gravel — scraping against her until she’s raw and sensitive all over. She feels the tears pooling in her eyes, all the muscles in her body spasming in anticipation. She once read that neurodivergent people tended to have better sex because their sensations were elevated in bouts of overstimulation — but this is just painful as Frank peels off her underwear (the black ones! A hurray for Mel and her common sense) slowly like he has all the time in the world. She whimpers, miserable. Why can’t he get on with it already?

“Frank,” she whimpers, her knees shaking. She doubts she’ll be able to hold her weight up. One of her hand flies to her face to wipe at her face. “Please, please.” He knows about this and he used to do this — make her beg for it. Be mean until she was a pathetic mess, just wanting him to give it to her. “Please.” 

“Okay, baby, no need to beg,” he soothes, angling her so she’s sitting on the stairs now — a reprieve for her feet — lifting his knees until they are resting on her shoulder. She briefly thinks about his back and then realizes that she actually doesn’t care. What she does care about is taking care of the waves that are rising inside of her, twirling inside of her and making her writhe in pain. 

Frank seems to have the same idea as finally — finally — he moves his mouth, his fingers perfectly in sync with his face and does something. Mel can’t describe what it is — she doubts she even knows where he’s touching, whether it’s his tongue hovering there or the length of her fingers. All she knows is that she can’t keep quiet. Her head gets tipped back, inhumane noises leaving her throat and whatever Frank is doing down there sends her over the edge of sobbing. Her face is tear-stained, the mascara she put on that morning running down her face, sweat clinging to her skin. “Oh, oh,” she whimpers as the wave builds higher and higher inside of her, until eventually, her back arches painfully, the stairs digging into her skin, and the relief comes. 

She doesn’t have the energy to do anything after that, her body going still on the floor as Frank moves up on her body, careful not to touch her as he hovers above her. She thinks she’ll combust if he does touch her now, after everything. “Okay?” he asks, his voice muffled and blurry. Maybe it’s that he’s drunk or maybe Mel’s cognition hasn’t recovered yet.

She nods, wiping at her face as a shaky smile makes its way to her face. 

She feels full, then — hollowed out and full and happy and content. 

She feels like she used to feel three years ago — electric. Magic. 

— 

Hang over is a menace. That’s why Mel tends to not get drunk. 

It creeps in slowly, like a bad diagnosis she’s been avoiding looking up. First the light — too sharp, too invasive, slicing straight through her eyelids like it has a personal vendetta. Then the dryness in her mouth, her tongue thick and useless, her throat feeling like she swallowed sand. Her head pulses dully, a low-grade ache that promises escalation if she so much as thinks too loudly.

She groans and rolls onto her side, burying her face into the pillow.

Bad idea.

Her body registers everything at once then: the soreness between her thighs, the tender ache in her neck, the unmistakable stiffness in her shoulders from being pressed against a stairwell wall. Memory floods back without mercy, vivid and unedited, like her brain has decided shame is an appropriate wake-up routine.

Oh.

Oh no.

She peels one eye open and takes inventory.

Hotel room. Her hotel room. Curtains half drawn, Vegas sunlight leaking in around the edges. Her suit jacket draped carelessly over the chair. Her pants folded — folded — on the desk, which is frankly rude of past-Mel to do because it suggests competence she absolutely does not deserve.

She is still wearing her bra. One shoe. Her glasses are on the nightstand, lenses smudged.

She closes her eyes again.

Frank.

The stairwell. His mouth. His hands. The way he said ‘baby’ like it still belonged to him. The way her body responded like it had been waiting three years for permission. She remembers that she started it — she teased him, kissed him, followed him. 

Her stomach flips — not with nausea this time, but something sharper. Panic, maybe. Or the delayed emotional hangover, which is always worse.

She presses the heels of her hands into her eyes. She tries to remember the remainder of the night, whatever that happened after she had one of the best orgasms of her life, but she can’t. Everything goes blank after the picture of Frank’s face hovering over her. She tries to imagine the route back. Did they share a cab or did he send her here alone? Did they do more? They must’ve at some point — her insides are sore, painful and numb at the same time so… they must have. 

She hides her face in the palm of her hands, feeling the heat that seeps into her hands. She tries to reach for her glasses, putting them on her face and blinking. Everything hurts — a dull throb that is slowly sharpening as she tries to look around the bright room. There’s a jacket draped on the sofa — one that doesn’t belong to her, three sizes too big — and a belt and dress shoes and—

Frank is on the floor of her room, his face pressed to the carpets that must not have been washed in ages. She cringes at the thought — even more so when she remembers his bad back. It must be killing him now — it will torture him once he wakes up. 

Mel stares.

Then, very carefully, like she’s diffusing a bomb, she exhales.

“Oh my god,” she whispers.

Saying it out loud makes it real. Makes him real. Makes the fact that he is here — in her hotel room, on her floor, breathing softly — impossible to explain away as a tequila-induced hallucination.

She swings her legs over the side of the bed and immediately regrets it. Her head swims. Her thighs protest. Her dignity packs its bags and leaves the premises.

She plants her feet anyway and stands, swaying slightly. The carpet is cold. She pads closer, peering down at him.

He looks… younger like this. Less put-together. His hair has fallen into his face, lashes casting faint shadows against his cheeks. There’s a crease between his brows, like he fell asleep mid-thought. She has the absurd, intrusive urge to smooth it away.

She doesn’t.

Instead, she crouches with a wince, resting her weight on the edge of the bed.

“Frank,” she says softly.

Nothing.

She tries again, a little louder. “Frank.”

“Baby, one more minute,” he whispers in his sleep daze. Mel’s heart soars at the mention of the word now that she’s sober. 

“Frank,” she repeats again, this time reaching out to tug on his shoulder. 

He shifts, groaning under his breath, rolling onto his back with a hiss that sounds suspiciously like pain. His hand goes to his lower spine reflexively.

Yep. Bad back. 

“Jesus,” he mutters, eyes still closed. “Baby, stairwells were a bad idea. I couldn’t even do it right when I was younger. My fucking back can’t take it anymore.”

Mel clamps a hand over her mouth. He says it so casually — like they are back in his apartment, crica three years ago, lounging around on their day off, falling asleep on the couch that leaves Frank’s back sore for the rest of the day, forcing them to spend it in the bed while eating take-out in between the sheets because Frank is not at all particular about his sleeping arrangement and he makes a million promises to do the laundry before Mel comes over again. They are not in Frank’s apartment — they are in a hotel room, three years too late, decidedly not together. 

He blinks awake slowly, pupils contracting as he squints up at the ceiling. For a brief, merciful second, his expression is blank — confused, unburdened. He doesn’t remember last night, for the faintest of moments, all he shows is relief.  

Then his gaze flicks sideways.

Up.

Locks with hers.

There it is. The exact moment everything snaps into place.

“Oh,” he says quietly.

“Hi,” Mel replies, voice cracking despite her best efforts.

They stare at each other. The silence stretches, filling the space between them, sitting on their chest and making it harder for them to breathe. Weighted. Like there are too many words crowding the room and none of them know which one should go first. There are too many words — a lifetime haunting them, actually. 

She thinks of that parking lot once more — of his eyes, of the question that died on his lips before it came out, of the desperation seeping into the asphalt as Mel watched him drive away, knowing that she was never going to see him again. 

Now he’s here. In the flesh.

Frank is the one who breaks eye contact. He scrubs a hand down his face, groaning again as he pushes himself up onto an elbow.

“Please tell me I didn’t snore,” he says.

She lets out a startled laugh. It escapes before she can stop it — sharp and breathy and a little hysterical. “You slept on the floor,” she says. “Snoring would’ve been the least offensive part.”

He winces, then glances down at himself, at the state of the room, at the belt abandoned on the chair like an afterthought. He glances down at himself, only in his boxer shorts. Mel imagines he might’ve felt cold at night — maybe he shivered on the floor as she wrapped the blankets around herself. A sense of shame seeps in. 

“…Okay,” he says slowly. “So this happened.”

“Yes,” Mel says. Then, because honesty seems unavoidable now: “Extensively. Thoroughly.”

He huffs out a breath, half amusement, half disbelief. “Good to know.”

He shifts again, pushing himself upright until he’s sitting with his back against the bed. His jaw tightens briefly — pain, definitely pain — before he looks at her properly. His eyes are inquisitive, almost pale in the light of the day, the sun fighting to make its way in and make it known to them that they are now in a new day.  

“How are you feeling?” he asks. “I mean, you okay?”

She’s heard this question asked a million times over — always the same two words as a constant. You okay? He’s asked this from her more than everyone else combined and always, she’s had a clear answer to it. A simple yes or no, with reasons spread out before her for each consensus. Right now, though, she doesn’t know. 

She considers lying. It would be easier. She could say fine, or hungover, or I’ve survived worse. But he’s looking at her the way he used to when he actually wanted the truth, and she’s too tired to build a wall that early in the morning. She’s too tired to work out a proper answer — to analyze and catgorize until she knows. 

“Like my brain is made of static,” she admits. “And like I might combust emotionally if I think too hard.”

He nods, accepting that without comment. “Yeah. You and me both.”

Another pause.

“I can leave,” he adds quickly. “I should probably— I mean, unless you—” He stops himself, exhales. “I don’t want to assume anything.”

She watches him — really watches him — and something in her chest softens painfully. This isn’t the reckless man from last night, all heat and instinct. This is Frank in the daylight: careful, restrained, trying very hard not to hurt her. She remembers him like this the most — after long shifts in the parking lot of the PTMC, waiting patiently for her as he leaned at the side of his car, looking up at the sky that was just growing dark or maybe counting the stars if it was winter and the sun had already gone down by the time they were off. 

“I don’t want you to go,” she says quietly.

His eyes flick back to hers, searching.

“I don’t either,” he replies. Then, softer: “I was afraid you’d wake up and wish I had.”

She swallows. “I don’t.”

The relief on his face is subtle but unmistakable, like a muscle finally unclenching. She wonders if her own insides are loosening, too — if he can see it on her face that she’s missed him. Despite everything that happened between them — despite the sharp memory of Mel sitting down in the parking lot long after Frank had driven away and hugging herself tightly as she sobbed — she’s missed him terribly. She wonders if he has, too. 

They sit there like that for a moment, suspended in the aftermath.

Eventually, Mel reaches for the robe hanging off the back of the chair and shrugs it on, more for warmth than modesty. There is no point trying to cover up now — he’s seen everything and more. He’s seen parts of her that even Mel, herself, hasn’t. “You can’t stay on the floor,” she says, practical instinct kicking in at last. “Your spine will actually revolt.”

He snorts. “Already drafting a formal complaint.”

She hesitates, then pats the bed beside her. It’s a small gesture, really, but his eyes light up. She is sure that if he had dog ears, they would perk up, pointy and alert and excited. The thought brings a little bile to the back of her throat (or maybe that’s just the side effect of the hang over).

“Sit,” she says, wincing when it does sound like something you would say to a dog. “I’m not offering cuddles. Just… You can... Sit.”

He rises carefully, every movement deliberate, and settles onto the edge of the bed with a sigh of relief.

“Thank you,” he says. “From me and my L4-L5 disc.” 

She laughs at that — he tends to do that; make her laugh. He’s funny — especially so when he explains the jokes or waits for Mel to get them with an expectant expression (it’s usually the subtle tilt of his head and a twinkle in his eyes and an anticipatory gaze). 

She laughs, then winces immediately after, a hand flying to her temple. “God. If I laugh too hard my skull is going to split open.”

Frank’s smile softens into something gentler. “Want water? Advil? I can do a full post-call recovery kit. I’m very competent in hangover medicine.”

“I’m very drug intolerant,” Mel mumbles.

“I know,” he hums, a small smile hovering on his lips. “How about just some water, then?” He stands up and walks to the mini fridge, getting two bottles of water and walking back, handing it to her. She notices the slouch of his back, the wincing as he takes steps and the obvious expression change when he drops back on the bed. If they were in the ER, she’d assess his pain and he’d probably rate it a seven just to save face when it’s actually an eight. She just takes a sip of her water, though. She’ll combust if she thinks about it too much, really. 

“Should we, um, talk about it?” she asks. She’s never hooked up with an ex before. She doesn’t know the decorum for it.

“Probably,” he nods. “Given… everything.” 

So here is what happened back then. She goes through it for the sake of refreshing her own memory to go into this conversation with clarity. 

Dr. Langdon came back to work with a wedding band on his fingers and a changed attitude. He then spent the better part of the first week apologizing to everyone — Mel is pretty sure she even saw him apologizing to the janitor which she didn’t know how it fit into his twelve-step program but she digresses — and then, they started… 

Well, Mel doesn’t exactly know but they worked a case together at least once every shift — more if he could help it. Since Dr. Robby was gone, Frank hovered around pretty leisurely. Dr. Al-Hashimi didn’t seem to mind it at all, raving about their patient satisfaction score whenever they were on the same case. 

Then, the cases turned into carpooling and the carpooling turned into grabbing dinner together and dinner led to movie nights and well… Netflix and Chill is the phrase, isn’t it? So they did. They chilled. And then they did so much more than that, they fell in love. 

He told her he was separated, caught in the middle of a divorce that was messy to say the least. He left his ring behind, though, and Mel hoarded it like a crow. He was gentle with her, clam and caring. 

So it really was out of the blue when he said that he had accepted an attending position in Philadelphia. She had thought it was a joke back then. He wanted to pursue a Med Ed fellowship. Wasn’t that his big dream? The Plan? Then, he said that Abby and the kids were moving and that he needed the money an attending position would offer him. Could she not understand that? Mel knew, then, that it was over one way or the other but she stood there, in the parking lot, after the last shift together when they were supposed to go out and celebrate, as the July sun burned the back of their heads, and she listened. 

I can’t come with you, she shook her head. 

Yes, you can, he insisted and then he pulled out that… ring. It was shining even in the dim light of the afternoon. I know this isn’t the right place to ask and I had a whole plan about it, but sweetheart, we can—

But she was already shaking her head, already taking a step back, already feeling her skin pricking with a thousand tiny pins that she couldn’t see. Her ears were ringing and her MCPs and PIPs were curling onto themselves to make a fist, cringing. 

This cannot be happening, she kept thinking back then. He wasn’t proposing, surely—

Will you marry me? He asked and the only answer she could give was ‘no’. Because she wasn’t ready and she didn’t want to move and she had Becca to think about. She knew he couldn’t stay either, couldn’t leave behind the kids or an attending position given his circumstances. She knew back then that it was over — that their paths had been separated. 

Then why is he here right now? Why did they end up here after all this time?

When she looks at him, she can see the same questions reflected in his gaze. 

“I’m sorry,” he’s the first to break the silence. “I know it’s too fucking late to say it, Mel. But I am. I handled that situation like an asshole — it felt like an ultimatum more so than a marriage proposal and I’m so fucking sorry. I’ve spent the last three years regretting it but I didn’t think I would ever… And then we…” He runs a hand through his hair, fiddling with the strands as is his habit when he’s nervous. Mel wonders if this is an appropriate conversation to have while they are both in their underwear but she concludes that she doesn’t care. They need to have this conversation. It might be three years too late but better late than never, huh? “And last night, I’m sorry—”

“Don’t apologize about last night,” Mel shakes her head, pushing her glasses up her nose. “I wanted it. I was the one who kissed you, remember?”

“Like I could forget,” he mumbles under his breath. 

“I didn’t say ‘no’ because I didn’t love you,” it’s Mel’s turn, she can tell by the pregnant pause Frank gives, the anticipation to say it out loud. “But — I couldn’t leave. I had to finish my residency and I had Becca and… I knew you couldn’t stay, either. Because of the kids. So, I just… I saw no other way out of it.” 

Mel is grateful that Frank doesn’t say ‘we could’ve made it work’ because Mel has spent hours going through that day, trying to see if they could make it work. But they wouldn’t be able to — long distance would’ve been grueling when Mel would cancel her flight because of a shift and Frank couldn’t drive down because Tanner was sick or because Penny had a dance practice or because he had a shift. They would’ve drifted apart and remembered their relationship as unanswered texts and long voicemails and eventually, they would’ve resented each other. Mel thought it would be better if they just let it go — said ‘goodbye’ when all they knew from each other was the good things. 

The highs. 

“Now what?” Frank asks, taking a deep breath. 

“What?”

“I mean — last night happened. Neither of us regrets it. Now what?” he explains, his eyes inquiring and sharp as he looks straight at her. Now what indeed. 

Mel stares at him like the question has physical weight, like it’s something she could pick up and turn over in her hands if she just concentrates hard enough. Now what is dangerous because it implies a future, and Mel has always been very good at surviving the present by refusing to look too far ahead. When her dad died, she just had to focus on getting them through the day, every day. When her mom got diagnosed, she just had to get her to the next appointment and the next. When she died, she just had to finish med school and take care of Becca — day by day, one step at the time. 

By the time her residency was over, it was the only way she had operated and there was no need to change that — to look over the horizon. 

But now Frank is sitting there and he’s asking. 

Now what?

“I don’t know,” she says honestly. Her voice is quieter now, stripped of the bravado and the haze from last night. “I don’t have a flowchart for this.”

He huffs a small laugh. “I was hoping you might. You always did.”

“I wish I did,” she agrees. Charts always make it better — they break things down, categorize them, and then the solution will jump off the page. Now, she can’t see it. “What do you want?” she asks. 

The answer comes out quick and certain, like Frank doesn’t even need a second to think about it. “You.” The word sends a sensation to a spot that’s already sore from last night. She banishes the thought, forcing it away to stay focused in the moment. “But the kids are at school now. I can’t leave Philly, Mel.” He says it plainly, like a fact he’s already accepted, not a bargaining chip. Like there is no way out of it and Mel knows that there isn’t. “I can’t leave Philly,” he repeats, quieter now. “They’re settled. Tanner’s finally got friends he doesn’t want to murder,” — he pauses, shaking his head — “he went through a murdering phase for a while there. Not that he committed any. He could just threaten it a lot.” — Mel laughs at that despite herself and Frank gives a small smile — “And Penny has a teacher she adores. I won’t do that to them.” A beat. “I won’t be that guy.”

Mel nods. She doesn’t need convincing. This was never the sticking point — it’s the constant. The gravity in every version of Frank’s life. The thing that makes him him. She loves the kids, she doesn’t want to disturb their lives in any way — she can’t be selfish when it comes to them.

“I know,” she says. And she means it in the deepest, least resentful way. “I would never ask you to.”

His shoulders loosen a fraction, relief flickering across his face. “Okay.”

They sit with that for a moment. The quiet hum of the fridge. Outside, the world is waking up again, stretching and yawning with the sound of car horns, distant and muffled. 

“And I can’t leave Presbey,” she adds, because fairness matters to her. Because she still loves him — she’s not naive enough to lie to either of them about this now. Not after everything — but she won’t change her entire life for the sake of them. “I just got my footing. I like my team — I have friends.” — Frank actually beams at her when she says the words, the excitement barely contained — “Becca’s there. I finally don’t feel like I’m drowning every day.”

“I figured,” he says gently, kindly. “You sound… good. When you talk about it.”

She looks at him then. Really looks. At the lines around his mouth that weren’t there before. At the way he holds himself — more careful, less impulsive. He was plenty careful when he came back from rehab; subdued somehow. But right now, he seems mature. Older and wiser. Distantly, she thinks of an owl and she would’ve told him (he’d be amused by that, she thinks) if they weren’t in the middle of a serious conversation. She looks at him — at the familiarity that still sits between them like muscle memory, undeniable and dangerous. She missed them like this — missed having someone who understands her so fully. 

“So,” she says, exhaling. “We’re back where we started.”

“Not exactly,” he counters.

Her brow furrows. “How do you figure?”

He shifts on the bed, turning toward her fully now. “Last time, everything was on fire. I was fresh out of rehab — I was in active recovery, for fuck’s sake, and I was still clawing my way back into myself. I needed that attending position. And you were an R4 — exhausted and scared and carrying everyone but yourself. And I knew that back then, too but… We were… desperate. Both of us.”

She doesn’t disagree. She remembers that last year — fresh off a break-up, having lost her anchor in the hospital, holding onto life painfully. She remembers coming home and being so exhausted that she’d collapse on the floor and sleep, not even having any time to cry herself to sleep when she felt so heavy inside. She remembers losing weight until her colleagues commented on it and each one of them made it a point to bring her something under the guise of ‘lunch’. 

She couldn’t have been in a relationship with him back then. And no doubt, he couldn’t have either. She doesn’t say any of that out loud. She doesn’t need to. Frank already knows — she can see it in the way his jaw tightens, the way his thumb rubs absently against his knee like he’s grounding himself.

“But now we’re both attendings,” he rubs the corner of his eyes, like he’s merely trying to float an idea out there. “And Becca lives alone, right? And the custody arrangement is signed and sealed properly. I have weeks where I don’t have the kids and you don’t have Becca and…” his voice drifts off as he raises his eyes to look at her, his head tilted. 

“So what are you saying?” she asks.

“I’m saying,” he says carefully, like each word has to be placed just right, “that I don’t want to pretend this didn’t happen. I also don’t want to force it into a shape that’ll break us again.”

Her fingers curl into the robe’s sleeve. She feels exposed in a way that has nothing to do with the state of her clothing.

“I don’t do well with ambiguity,” she admits.

“I know, sweetheart,” he says, softly, inching a little closer to her — she feels the sheets rustling, the heat of his body now seeping into hers. “How about this for clarity? I have been yours ever since I laid eyes on your and your blind optimism during that first shift. You were buzzing with excitement, do you remember? I think I will continue to be yours for the rest of my life. So — no ambiguity there.” 

“What are you saying?” Mel asks because she can’t trust her brain to deduce anything right now — she’s dehydrated, sweating alcohol out of her pores, hungry and he’s so close that it’s almost scary how easy it would be to just curl up against him and stay there. 

He smiles, shaking his head. “I’m saying I don’t need you to move. I’m not asking you to,” he says. “And I’m not asking you to marry me in a parking lot with the sun setting like it’s a fucking indie film.”

She winces. “Thank you.”

“I’m asking if we can try again,” he continues. “Carefully. With rules. With calendars and plane tickets and check-ins. We’ll start sharing our google calendar together and we can start a google document about all the things that we want to do and all the plans we have and we can make google sheets. You like them still, right?”

Oh, she hates how well he knows her — well enough to know how to tempt her, to sway her, to make her heart soar and dance. She feels choked up — like the walls are slowly caving in and the room is too small. She needs to be outside, in the air for this — she needs the sky and the sun as witnesses. Well, maybe not the sun. it would hurt too much to stare at the sun right now. 

“What do you think?” he asks, carefully and it’s only then that Mel realizes she hasn’t answered him. 

She knows what she wants him — him. Before he was her boyfriend, he was her best friend. He was the only person he had in the city that she could claim as hers even before they started dating. And then he disappeared and she was left to her own devices. No one to remind her to eat, no one to drive her home when she was too exhausted to move. 

“What if it hurts again?” she asks quietly. “What if we do all of this and I still end up watching you drive away?”

Frank doesn’t answer right away. He reaches out instead, resting his hand over hers — his fingers are soft but she can trace a few new callouses there. She wonders what their story is — if he cut himself while cooking or if it was a specially messy trauma case that required him to go through an HIV, Hep B and infection panel. She intertwines their fingers together, surprised by how well they still fit. 

“Then it’ll hurt,” he says honestly. “But it won’t be because we didn’t try when we actually could.”

She swallows.

“And this time,” he adds, softer, “I won’t disappear. Even if it doesn’t work. When we broke up, I lost my best friend, too, Mel — I don’t ever want to lose my best friend again.”

“Okay,” she says, because he reads her mind — because she knows the things she’s thinking of before she even thinks of them and he shares the concerns. And well, because she loves him. Then, because she’s Mel and clarity matters: “We go slow, right? No… surprise rings?”

“No rings,” he agrees immediately.

“Well, I mean,” she mumbles, feeling a flush rising to her cheeks. “No surprise rings.” 

Other rings — discussed rings — would be fine. After a while. When it makes sense. When we are not standing in our scrubs in a trauma bay and I am so exhausted I can’t even stand up let alone make the decision to spend the rest of my life with somebody, she thinks. She’ll make a note to say that to him later. A little down the line when the footing is solid and the discussions shall begin. 

He just smiles at the implication, inching closer and closer until his face is hovering over hers, barely an inch away. When he speaks, she feels it everywhere; spilled against her skin and travelling all the way down to leave her throbbing and wanting more. “You’re something else, Mel King,” he hums, “Can I kiss you or is that too fast?”

She answers that by kissing him first. 

—

Two years later:

Eventually, they decide to elope. One minute, Frank is in Pittsburg, gently running his fingers through her hair — he always takes advantage of the moment her hair is not braided, messing it up and tugging at it until she gives in and purrs in his lap like a cat — and the next, he narrows and his eyes and says, “What if we eloped?” 

She has the ring — he asked her to marry him one year, five months and seventeen days after they slept together in Vegas (she knows because she added it to their shared calendar the very next morning while he was in the shower) — and she looks at it. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” he pushes himself against the couch, pulling her with him. “We are going to get married, we have a date and we can still do that with our families and it’s going to be a couple of months until you can properly move to Philly,” — that was a decision that she made because a better offer came for her from one of the hospitals and it just made sense now that Becca was more on her own. She actually prompted Mel to take it — “and I don’t want to not be married to you for a second longer, Mel.” 

And because Mel is a sap and this is certainly not sudden, she agrees. 

(He also has a very good evidence-based argument. Strong longitudinal data. Excellent outcomes. High patient satisfaction, he lists as he tries to go over every reason that they should hop on the place and go to Vegas for a shotgun wedding. “I am the patient in this scenario,” Mel argued.

“And I am deeply invested in your prognosis,” he argued.)

So that’s how they get married — well, between themselves. She is still very set on having a spring wedding with flowers and Penny as the flowergirl and Tanner as his dad’s best man and Becca as her maid of honor — in a chapel with Elvis as their minister. 

She thinks it’s befitting. 

Considering how they got back together. 

So she doesn’t hesitate when fake — and fat. And… Mel thinks he’s Asian, too, but she doesn’t comment on that — Elvis asks them if she will take Frank Langdon as her lawfully wedded husband. She already knows the answer. “I do.”