Oh my godd!!! If you ever decide to write a continuation for that newly back Frank fic where he gets the seizure??? I will trade you my newborn or something, the thing i dont expect coming back home? Idkkk it was sooooo yummmy. Throw that man under the bus pelaseeeeee
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*writes down hit Langdon with a bus in my ideas document* Got it.
Sequel to this ficlet. This one is uh. Is a bit long. But I’m really happy with it, so.
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Robby wasn’t the one to administer the lorazepam, at the end of it.
It had been Samira, actually, one of those close enough to step in and run the scene. She was a senior resident, she could do that. She was allowed, and he hadn’t made a motion to stop her.
Benzodiazepines were really it, when it came to their first line rescue medications. There were other things they could push, but those were more fallbacks in case their first tries didn’t work. In case they couldn’t get their patient to stop seizing.
It worked. Frank stopped writhing on the gurney. His heart rate started to drop back to normal. Samira asked Princess to go grab blankets for the guard rails, and he felt her eyes on him linger a second too long while she looked over the patient.
Robby wondered, blankly, who would contact Abby.
He had dipped from the room, a coward’s way out, as soon as he fucking could and didn’t go back to check on him for probably too long.
Sickeningly, Robby and Dana were most familiar with Frank’s epilepsy. It had been wanted at one point, something made with trust and necessity, an unspoken handover of ‘you’ll do what’s best for me’.
Robby hadn’t pushed the medication. He wasn’t sure if he had just frozen up because it was Langdon, or because he knew it was a benzodiazepine, or it if it was some blend of the two.
He ended up going into the room eventually, when Samira told him Langdon was in line for a CT just in case and asked who should call Abby.
“I’ll do one or the other, Robinavitch, not both.” Dana had told him when he asked her to handle the check and call for Langdon. It was fair. He could pass off the check to Samira, maybe even Al-Hashimi, or basically anyone else in the ED.
And then Dana said; “You’ll drive yourself crazy not knowing where he’s at. Just talk to him, Robby. I’m sure there’s not much bite after all that.”
He didn’t know if she underestimated Langdon’s snap or overestimated the man’s ability to be frustrating, but he got her point. She was right, as usual, and that was more annoying than anything.
The drag of the stool on the floor sounded like a scythe. It got Frank’s eyes to open, bleary.
“Can you tell me your name?” Straight to the point. Four questions, get in, get out. They were getting to the point in the day he was expecting to see men with their hands wrapped, shocked at the fact that explosives, explode.
“Frank Langdon. It’s um, it’s a Thursday. The Fourth.” He let out a half laugh, dragging one hand up to press it over his eyes. “I’m at the fucking Pitt, and guessing by the, amount of monitors, I had a seizure?”
Robby nodded, not quite looking at him. More so looking around. The monitors, the wall, the very interesting color of the cabinets. Anything but directly at him.
“Yep. Sounds like you got it all figured out.” He nodded, rubbing his hands together. “Well, if I’m not-“
“Why am I in a bed?” He asked after a moment, cutting Robby off. It made irritation spike.
“You had a seizure. When you drop in the middle of the floor, protocol is getting you away from the public.”
Langdon sighed, shaking his head some and dropping his hand. “No. I mean, yeah, but.. I have an IV.”
Both their eyes tracked to it. Robby felt his mouth dry up.
“You.. were seizing for more than five minutes. The IV was needed.” It scratched against him to admit, and God, he really hoped Langdon caught on and didn’t make him say it.
Call it shame, call it whatever you want, but he didn’t want to be the one to tell him. He wanted to be outside of this room, already on his way to the border, gone from this entire city and especially from the bedside of Frank Langdon.
He didn’t want to deal with the slow blinking, the way realization shone scared in the hospital lighting.
“Status epilepticus.” Langdon muttered, swallowing thick. Robby felt his eyes on him. He didn’t meet them. “Did- What did you-“
“Samira made the decision to push four of lorazepam. It worked.” Something quiet and hurt inside of him wanted to go for that easy assurance, that nothing else was done.
He didn’t.
Frank nodded once, twice, something Robby couldn’t quite recognize yet twisting on his face. “Yeah. Yeah, fuck, okay.”
It wasn’t until clumsy fingers pulled at the bracelet around his wrist, did Robby note the expression as the same one he used to wear after failing another attempt at quitting smoking.
It was also the first time today Robby saw that bracelet. That the one Frank had been so proud of, colorful and beaded and some of the letters half rubbed off from Frank worrying them between his fingers, was missing. Replaced with one that was sleek and uniform, a small charm in the center of it.
A sobriety band.
Nausea hit him like a truck when Frank finally dropped it to the bed, wrist bare again for the first time in years.
“Langdon-“
“All that fucking work.” His voice was tired, horrifically humorous like if he didn’t find some kind of divine joke in this he’d break. “Couple, couple months shy of a year and a seizure undoes all of that.“
Robby was pretty sure life saving measures didn’t count when it came to sobriety, but he also had no idea what kinds of meetings Frank went to. What kind of counseling he did. What his sponsor was like. He didn’t even know the name of the rehab he went to.
Everything he knew was from meetings with Gloria where it was given as proof and he approved it. No direct interaction.
Robby wanted to leave.
“It was necessary, Langdon, there wasn’t another choice.”
“That doesn’t mean shit, Robby, especially not right now and not from you.”
He blinked. Saw Frank do it too, maybe not having expected that to come out. He shouldn’t push at it. “What, does that mean?”
Langdon sniffed, rubbed a hand over his face when Robby glanced up at him and saw his eyes were glassy. It made his lungs seize up.
“It took, it took me having a seizure for you to talk to me, man.”
It was said so damn exhausted, Frank’s eyes back on him, and Robby wanted to squirm. “I don’t owe you forgiveness, Langdon.”
He expected a huff. A smile, something rueful, something mean. He didn’t expect the way Frank just deflated into the bed, sighing.
“Yeah. I know. But I owe you an apology.”
Robby wasn’t sure what he responded with, but he didn’t hear the door shut over the ringing in his ears.
