listen how the heart beats, lying next to him
chapter seven: True BelieverÂ
frank langdon x ofc (reader)
PLEASE DO NOT READ IF YOU ARE SENSITIVE TO THESE TOPICS - TW: MASS CASUALTY INCIDENT - mentions a school shooting, child death(multple), graphic description of wounds, discussions of gun violence, gunshot wounds, reader being a victim of an unspecified school shooting, yelling.
cw: barely proofread because i don’t caaare, little to no mentions of medical cases and injuries, probably not medically accurate in the slightest, frank was never married and has no kids, post rehab frank, reader is (secretly) in recovery, a time jump (short), some sweetness happening here!! , angst and comfort, a frank pov chapter
authors note: I hope I was able to give this sensitive topic justice. I purposely did not include more graphic details than what is written here. It is not necessary. These very real events happen every day in America. You do not need more of my fictionalized version of these events than what I felt had to be included for the plot, if you, like me, witness these acts of violence as often as we do. And, yes, this is a political statement on how no child should ever be murdered while they attend school, while they learn, while they play. Do not come into my messages, reply, or read this work at all if you do not see it this way - i will block you, we will never see eye to eye, it is not important to me to see eye to eye with you.
“It’s slowing down. We can work on transferring our remaining cases to the night shift. All green are in family medicine already, so it’s just the yellow and red cases to switch over, some will head up to the pediatric intensive care unit. You did an incredible job with the hand we were dealt. I’m sure none of us had ever seen anything like it. I’m eternally grateful, and I know our patients and their families are too.” Robby’s voice gives out abruptly, astonished they’ve had to use this patient coding system again. There is nothing more to say.
Frank noticed it first, hours ago. You’d seen it click in his suddenly gentle eyes, observed his jaw tighten, and his shoulders go ever so slack, softer. You’re gone - not physically, you’re pushing the last of your strength through your legs to hold yourself against the wall. Your eyes, stuck wide, are so open. He’s noticed the flecks of green in them before, small stars in a sea of light brown, and he could get lost in them, but he’s staring and he can’t. He could tell your brain had stopped processing time, space, and whatever’s left after. He’d kept pushing, keeping you with him out of fear that you’d come to a complete stop. A part of him knew you would never do that, but he worried about it anyway.
He wouldn’t deny it - it was one of the worst shifts he’d worked. Worse than his first shift back from rehab. Worse or on par with Pittfest, he’d find out when he set himself down to sleep tonight. He’d heard, of course, of the scope of these kinds of events. How some doctors never came back after seeing them. Now he understood why they left and why a certain amount kept coming back until they finally broke. He didn’t want either of you to break, and god, he wanted you to come back.Â
He’s thrown back into the room from the recesses of his brain. His coworkers, Mel, Whitaker, Santos, hell, everyone, have begun to move. You were right next to him seconds ago, and now you’re gone, slipping at a diagonal towards a door. The stairs, he realizes as the door quietly shuts behind you. He wonders, so briefly, if there are any repercussions of him following you, or any repercussions to anything that happened before tonight. He disregards the thought, an immediate decision that he doesn’t care.
The voice he’s been pushing down is a screech now, a noise he’s heard from himself only in his darkest moments, when he was responsible for fucking his life to high hell, the one he’d spent trying to quiet by escaping through a capped bottle. He decided in an instant to listen to it now. This was a responsibility of a mentor, to ensure safety, to comf - you’ve gotta go now, man. It’s fucking cold and raining, going up there alone. Follow her. Fucking go.
He tells himself he just doesn’t want you to do anything stupid. He’d seen Robby head up to the roof, Abbott too. He knew only a sliver of the things they’d seen over the years - likely stuff he couldn’t comprehend. He knew they went up to test themselves, to see if this was the final time. They always came back downstairs, never committing to fully flinging themselves, never forcing themselves to clock back into their shift on a gurney.Â
But you, and this fucking day, and that roof. You didn’t strike him as a jumper, more of a woman with a shovel and a will to bury everything that risked you breaking as far below the surface as you could. He told himself it might be wrong for him to climb each stair - hell, maybe you just needed air. She could have gone to the ambulance bay for air. She chose the roof. Climb. He makes a mental note to punish his internal monologue if it betrayed him, if you didn’t want to see him, if you sent him away. Something like no Red Bull for a week, he’d force himself to sludge through shifts with no reserves.
He reaches the propped door leading to the roof. At least she left it open for you. No matter what state she’s in, she knew others were going to come here too. Before he pushes it open, a wave of heat, beads of sweat, stress, is pooling in his chest. If this is the worst case, I give permission to fuck your life up, just a little.Â
He divided his brain. It wasn’t time for a slight obsession with the way your hair fell, a strand always out of place when you leaned over a patient, resting on your cheek. And your eyes. Fuck, those eyes, deep but not dark, like bark on a tree where the moss has spread all over. He’d need to see through them and not get lost in the depth this time. And that smile, a toothy grin when something made you outwardly feel, when you chose to be vulnerable to the fun of life. And the soft one you gave when things were going well, the glance to the patient first, then him with your mouth turned upward and eyes significantly brightened.Â
And the smile plastered on your face when you saw him, after you’d granted his pleas for forgiveness, even if you’d remained a little guarded at first. He’d crawled his way back from the depths, his crown, weighed down with jewels.
Then there were the texts. A few hundred sent back and forth, recipes and activities the other might be interested in. Sending you a picture of a puppy at the park, you asking his prediction for your next shift. You asking for a ride to work, him blindly obliging and cradling you hand in his for the shortest leg of the trip. The set sent at 8:30 PM, every saturday,
Are you going to Evan’s thing?
You’d both kept your word on those, arriving together. Laughing with him, even at the first one, when he’d only just finished his apology, promising to never force you into a corner if you challenged him. You had, rightfully, ripped him to shreds. You’d started the minute you’d gotten into the car, he’d kept it in park. You’d said he didn’t give you the opportunity to do tell him at work that he’d taken something from you - the opportunity to learn, to bring a concern to a superior, to be heard by someone you trusted implicitly. You’d quieted and told him, “What hurts, Frank, is that you refused to apologize to me, as a student, as a person,” your voice then cracked, “as someone who could have been your friend.”
He’d admitted to it, even more, that he’d bared his teeth after he’d lost focus on the patient, out of fear he’d be be responsible for losing the patient, all because he’d treated you like you didn’t know what you were doing. That he was distracted by his treatment of you, that it felt like his only option to push you away again. He’d called it misguided, a choice made for self-preservation, to not risk a personal distraction again. An action that had had caused harm, caused distruction instead of making him feel safe, instead of making you feel safe. That he’d been worse since he’d hurt you.Careful to include at home, and at work. It’ll never happen again, okay? professionally or personally.
You, laughing with everyone, whispered in his ear each weekend after. The drive, twenty minutes each way, a devotional exercise to knowing each other, sacred to him. Hanging out together, in a large group of people, both of you always picking seltzer. You’d always pick the one he didn’t and let him try it. Several times, you’d demanded a switch, and he’d allowed it. He hadn’t introduced you to all of his faults, but he’d tested the waters with different stories, ones that he thought would scare you away. You never stopped asking if he was going, if he’d pick you up, getting in the passenger seat of his car, belonging there.
The curl of your lips the one time every chair was taken and you’d sat over his thigh, unprofessional to let you do that, he’d thought at the time, smart enough to let you. He’d snaked his arm around your waist, you’d played with the hair at the nape of his neck, fingers warm, sending fire through his entire body. The second time it happened, he’d angled himself to allow you more space to fall into him, you dutifully resting your head on his chest, nearly buried into his neck. He’d placed his lips to your temple, just gently enough for you to know to stay where you were.
Workplace boundaries remained, but you’d both tested them. More than once you’d brushed your hand against his, he’d done the same. Once, when listening to a riveting Dr. Robby and Dr. Abbott joint lecture, stationed shoulder to shoulder against the wall, he’d placed his hand on top of yours. You’d allowed it to stay, neither assuming it was an accident.Â
You’re wasting time, man. Go.
He’s only a few minutes behind you, he wouldn’t have lost you completely yet. He’s got a at least a foot on you and his legs are longer. You were fast and always kept up, and you may have had a head start, but he’d double-stepped some stairs. Reminded himself didn’t need a savior, someone to lift you out of this and promise to take you away from pain. He didn’t know if he was even capable of that. God, I want to try.Â
He’d seen gunshot wounds, every ER doctor had. This, though, maybe even Robby or Abbot hadn’t seen anything close to what he saw tonight - how big the bullets were that ripped through the flesh of tiny abdomens, effectively blasting the structure away.Â
The two children who had been ripped through the neck, shoulder and arms, all interventions rendered useless, only the hospital sheet left to pull over. The three kids - all unintentionally grabbed by both of you, working in tandem, whose faces had disappeared into themselves, who’d have to be identified by dental fillings, fingerprints, or their bloodstained clothes. He hadn’t understood something you’d said to him before, how fragile a child was in the crossfire of the world. You’d said, They go at school. They love their class. I want to give them a chance to not die and do what they’re supposed to be doing. He’d never seen that kind of carnage. Â
He’d wondered, in the thick of it, if you had before. Or something similar, maybe not bullets that big, maybe not small bodies broken like that. The way your eyes lost the brightness present early in the shift. Maybe, during your time on the twelfth floor, or when you were volunteering in the community. He’d never tell you he’d looked up your resume and research papers on child life, or he’d visited the floor, just to see, just to get an idea of what you loved so deeply. Just to respect her work, just to acknowledge her skill set.
 He comntemplated the crushing weight of imagining you walking away from him now. He resolved to be anything you needed right now, if he could be. If you gave him that honor, he promised not to ask for anything else. Even let you not need him, send him far away from you, banish him again.
He opens the door with a small push - he wants to make himself known but not shock you. Hell, if you’re on the ledge, that could be the undoing of everything. When he scans the area, deep blue sky as his background, you’re twenty feet away. Not even close to the edge of the building.Â
The sight of you, all of you, might break him. You hadn’t been a simple fantasy since the night you’d both ended up at that makeshift concert, since you’d spoken to him like a person, and he’d spoken to you, no medical jargon, no sheild. In the week after his his apology, you’d had begun to use the ER as a place to discuss smaller things. You’d discussed weekend plans, what he’d be making himself for dinner that night, videogames you were playing. Your eventual trip to California to see your family. You’d chosen to put your armor down with his.
 Right now, He can’t figure out which part is worse. The beginning signs of you being soaked from the rain, the uncontrollable shaking that must have started at the first stair, your face, tears streaming, locked in a near-silent scream. The minute you look up and your eyes lock, he knows you’re deep in shock. A rocket, heading towards the sun. He doesn’t want you to launch, but he knows you can’t help it. He braces for impact, prepared to pick up when you land.
Your voice is louder than he’s ever heard it or could have imagined it could get - it’s careful too, ensuring he’s the only one that can hear you, to not make a scene where others need to intervene. She trusts you to take this from her, so take it and hold it gently. He listens.
“That was fucked, Frank.” Your use of his first name anywhere near the emergency room stops him cold. He’s heard it plenty of times now, over text and in person, but never here . Unlike the first time, at the show, you had sounded like you weren’t prepared to spit it out, you used it freely, confidently, assured he would answer. Now, his first name sounded intimate, like a language only you shared.
“I can’t fucking do that, ever again. I have no idea what the fuck happened down there. What were we doing? We didn’t even fucking do anything - nothing we did mattered, not the blood bags, not the fluid, not the god-damn gauze. Not even able to take a second to pretend to make their hearts beat again. No applied pressure was enough, nothing mattered! Is that how it always is? Is that how it’s always going to be?”
He’s still. There’s more coming.
“We lost them all. We couldn’t even save one. We couldn’t ensure one future, one semblance of a happy family.”Â
He doesn’t know what he’s doing exactly. He’s flying toward you, a pace previously unseen even when a trauma is rolling in. He knows he’s making it up as he goes and only has an inkling of what this moment requires.
He wraps his arms around you the second he’s within reach. Pulling you in, close, against his chest. He’s warm and doing his best to hold you.Â
“We couldn’t save them.” You’re quieter, but the edges are still sharp. Consistent sobs escaping, his shirt is getting wet from the tears where your face has been placed against it. He’s got one arm wrapped, one snaked slightly over your right shoulder to rub the space his arm doesn’t cover.
“We couldn’t, not this time.” is all he has to offer.
Chapter eight:Â True Believer, part two
It’s all he says for a while. Just his arms, wrapped tightly around you and rubbing intermittently at your shoulder blades. Splintered between comfort and the seconds he’s savoring the opportunity to touch you while he’s at work, even if under the worst possible circumstance.Â
You welcome the touch, you want more. A string of demands drills from your brain - weighing what was considered harm reduction in this situation. A menthol cigarette. A sleeping pill. One dirty martini with kalamata olives. To pet Shrimp when you get home. To take him home with you. Sleep in his arms, if you can even sleep tonight. To not exist here, to remove this day from memory. A handle of vodka. Oblivion.Â
You’re hyper aware of your body - still shaking, but the tears have subsided for now. You know they’ll come back when you feign sleep for a few hours.
He can’t know you’ve been through this before. It isn’t fair to what he just experienced. It makes you far too human, far too in need of care, far too in need of fixing. He’s your boss, direct superior. You’ve already broken about a hundred rules. You are just friends, not even dating, he’s just your best friend here, he’s just the guy who holds your hand in public, holds on to you, calls you on your day off just to talk. He can’t fix you. You feel yourself burying it, but it won’t go too far down. It’s a lump in your throat, a choking hazard. The scar, rippling across your thigh burns from the history of it being denied.
“I need people to be able to survive. I can’t do this with no hope for a future for someone.” Your voice is shaky, drier than expected.
You know he doesn’t know what the right answer is or if you’ve asked a question. When he does open his mouth, his voice isn’t sharp or jarring like it is when you’re downstairs, barking commands. It’s soft like when he’s oscillating between explaining the best marinaides for salmon, when he’s called you to let you know he’s outside. Quiet and wavering just enough, just how it sounded during the first car ride, when he’d made amends, when the dog in him stopped bearing its teeth and began to wag its tail.
“I know. I can’t either. Can’t comprehend what happened tonight, what happened to us,” Us. The dog in you has fully rolled over, showing it’s belly, begging. “I want to think, or to tell you, or force you to hold onto hope that there is a future. Maybe the potential for this, for us, to change it so this doesn’t happen again, so we never lose another single kid like this.”Â
You try to bite it back, really. But it’s threatened to swallow you whole. This time, you don’t know if it’ll spit you back out. “Frank, what if it never stops?” You’ve begun to recite a list, something he thinks has lived in your mind far before today, “And these are just ones we hear about because enough children fucking died to make the news! And now fucking Pittsburgh.”Â
He’s holding you a little looser now - not any less caring or comforting, like he understands a little more space to get your thoughts out. You’re surprised that he isn’t faltering when you’re yelling at him, that he’s the only one here who’s strong enough to take it. Like he knows you’d never survive this line of thought alone.
It’s no longer buried, but your voice is softer, threatening to snap in half and force you into a lifetime of silence. “I mean, it fucking happened to me, that didn’t stop anything, did it?”
Your eyes are big again, mouth slack-jawed at what you revealed. “Fuck!” In seconds, you’ve weaseled out of his arms, beyond where he can reach you again. You’re screaming into your hands. It takes him seconds to internalize what you’ve let slip - something he had feared hours earlier was true, now real and threatening to take you again.
He doesn’t need time to think before he’s cradling you again, he hears himself telling you to “Breathe in, Breathe out, Big breath in, Big breath out.” It comes out as a command and a suggestion at the same time. He notices you’re following it and continues his directives, his promises to protect.
“We need to get out of here.” He proposes, no idea what will come after that. No pressure can be used to stop the bleeding - he knows there is no bandage for your admission. You’re still shaking against him.
“Take me home?” You’ve become small. You’re begging someone to take care of you - you should know better. You should know it’s too personal, he’s too close to you every day, that you’d be dismissing a lifetime of forced self-sufficency and bulldozing through about a thousand professional boundaries. Fuck, you’d already crossed too many to count, texting him, seeing him outside of work, running your fingers through his hair. You need him to say yes, right now, no thinking, so you can say yes, right now, no thinking.
You don’t even register the second part slipping out. “and stay”.Â
He nods, without a single second thought. He doesn’t have to think. Voice clear and unshakable. He doesn’t care, he’s taking you away.Â
