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“Avoidant/Restrictive,” she said.
Frank nodded, still looking at his phone. Abby had left him on read. Again. Quickly he put the phone away and looked up at her. “Food Intake Disorder?”
“ARFID, right,” Mel confirmed, smiling. Then the ambulance a few feet away started backing up, and she jumped like a startled cat. “Whoa!”
Frank reached for her. “You al—“
“Nope, nope, I’m fine, just surprised,” she said, collecting herself. “Yeah, ARFID.” The smile was back.
She seemed proud of him for remembering. It had been a long time since anyone had been proud of him, Frank thought. Except maybe Dana, who was proud of everyone. The den mother loved all her children equally. But coming from Dr. King…it mattered. Somehow, it mattered.
Frank shoved his hands in his pockets. It was unseasonably cool for an early August evening, and bugs were sluggishly flying around the ambulance bay’s overhead lights. “How is it I’m just hearing about this today but you know all about it?”
“Oh, well,” Mel said brightly. “There’s high comorbidity with autism, so.” She was the ED’s sharpest mind on the topic, and she was settling into what Frank thought of as her explanatory groove, clear and concise and resolutely upbeat. She knows so much, but she makes an effort not to sound like a know-it-all because it intimidates patients and bugs the shit out of coworkers. A lot of doctors could learn from her. Me included.
Frank nodded again. “The sensory issues, right.”
“Mmhm, and simple lack of interest in food? It presents as ‘picky eating’ in children, so it can go undiagnosed for years.”
“When was it added to the DSM?”
“Five. But without the psychological mechanisms that drive other eating disorders, medical professionals—”
“—are unlikely to pick up on it, right. Well, shit, it’s a good thing you caught it then. That kid’s parents were at their wits’ end.”
“Uh-huh. So was the kid.”
Frank winced internally. He and Mel had gotten close since his return, but she was still able to empathize with neurodivergent patients in a way he worried he never could, or at least never would. Not even with how close he’d become with Mel herself.
“Of course,” he conceded. “Patient first. Sorry.”
“What for?”
“I mean—”
“You never have to apologize to me,” she said. Her smile was softer now. Frank wasn’t sure what it reflected.
He ran his hand through his hair. “Okay. Thanks, Dr. King.”
Her smile brightened again. “You’re very welcome, Dr. Langdon. Walk you to your car?”
Frank’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. This was a first. “Sure!” he said, a little more forcefully than he meant to. He threw in a shrug to offset his enthusiasm. That’s it, Langdon, play it cool.
Mel seemed confused, but shook it off. “Okay then!”
Together, they turned and began heading for the staff parking lot, walking side by side. The hospital grounds were busy with visitors and staff coming and going.
“So,” he said, bracing himself to broach a topic he’d avoided for a while now. “You and Santos…”
“What?” Mel interjected before he could continue. She was flustered. “Is there…did we…what?”
“I was just…wondering what she’s like, as a person,” he said carefully. “I mean, you guys are friends, right?”
“Friends, right, yep. That’s what we are. Except for…but that was…you know, never mind! Yeah, Trinity’s gr— uh, Santos is great.”
Frank’s heart pounded in his chest. His stomach dropped like a stone. Oh God. Oh God, Santos told her. But still, he had to ask. He had to know for sure. “Has…has she ever said anything? About me?”
“Said?”
Mel paused for what felt to Frank like forever.
“She said, ‘Just be careful how far you trust him.’”
Relief flooded Frank’s body as fast as panic had just seconds earlier. He didn’t think Mel would lie to him about this. If Santos had told her she’d caught him stealing meds, Mel wold have said so. Fuck, Frank, she’d have said so right away. She'd have tracked you down. Of course Santos hasn’t told her. Yet.
“Oh,” he said. “Well, I’m sorry she feels that way.”
“Me too,” Mel said ruefully.
They walked in silence for a bit in the twilight, their feet echoing on the sidewalk as cars drove past and chattering hospital staffers on their way into work walked by in the opposite direction. Something about the quiet between them felt intimate.
Frank looked for something to say, and as their colleagues passed, he found it. “You know, I’m always amazed by how much the demeanor of doctors and nurses on their way to work matches everyone else’s,” Frank said “We’d look just like office workers if it weren’t for the scrubs.”
“Well, a job’s a job,” Mel chirped.
Frank raised an eyebrow. “You don’t really believe that.”
“No, but I think it’s what you’re supposed to say.”
Frank laughed, running his hand against the rails of metal fence. “I mean, it’s…it’s a calling, as corny as that sounds.” As Robby as that sounds.
“Not for everyone,” Mel said. “But for you and me? Yeah.”
She’d surprised him again. “‘You and me’? We’re a team now?”
Mel looked away, her shoulders twitching. “Oh, well, I just think we have so much in common. I mean of course we do, you’ve taught me so much. I mean, well, yeah.”
“Who taught who today though, huh?” He looked down at her. “Hm?”
“That’s fair,” she conceded.
“And it’s not like it’s the first time either. You were teaching me things from the jump. It’s one of the reasons I remembered you so well when I got back.” The words came out before he could consider them, but…
But they’re the right words.
“Yeah, I remembered you too,” Mel said, smiling. She turned to look at him at the moment the streetlamp above them switched on. Her glasses caught the light.
Her hair, too.
Frank put the thought away quickly. For the last month he’d kept his attraction to Mel out of the workplace, saving it for those times alone after Abby and the kids went to sleep.
It doesn’t affect how I think about her here, or how I treat her as a doctor or a colleague or a friend or a human being . It doesn’t mean anything.
Mel looked down at her feet, and Frank did too.
A cool breeze blew through, and Frank jammed his hands deeper into his pockets.
“Oh, hang on,” Mel said, stopping. Frank turned to look at her and saw she was taking off her dark blue jacket. “Here, take it, I’m fine without it.”
“Mel—”
“I mean it. We were always a naturally warm family.”
“It wouldn’t even fit—”
“Yeah, I’m not asking?” Before Frank could react, she reached over and draped it over his shoulders.
It smells like her.
Stop it. Jesus Christ!
But he couldn’t. He had for weeks, he had kept it under control around her ever since he first jerked off to that karaoke video of her and Santos on her Instagram, but he couldn’t keep the feeling down now. And he knew why.
Because she took charge of me.
The thought hit him so hard he had to physically stop himself from gasping. He played it off like he was adjusting her jacket on his shoulders. “Errhm. Thank you.”
Mel’s eyes narrowed, and that soft smile spread across her face again. “I can’t let my best student suffer, can I?”
Can’t you?
“I…thank you,” he repeated inanely.
“You, uh, you said that already.” Her voice was low.
Frank shrugged, hands upturned. “I was raised to be polite.”
Mel reached up and tugged the jacket closed until her hands met in the middle. She looked up. Through the glare on her glasses, Frank’s eyes met hers. Through that soft smile, she spoke.
“Good boy, Dr. Langdon.”
Thinking back on that moment later, which he would more times than he could count, Frank sincerely believed the only reason he didn’t faint from sheer arousal was because time stood still.
“Excuse me,” came a voice from a man in a white coat, trying to get past, and the eternal moment passed.
“Sorry,” they both said, scooting out of his way and falling back into step like the moment had never happened at all. Yet the evidence it had was tenting the pants of his scrubs as they walked. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
But it was his lucky night. They’d reached the reserved parking at nearly that moment. “So, where’s your car?” Mel asked in a shaky voice, craning her neck. Frank seized the opportunity and tucked his hard cock in the waistband of his underwear, hiding his erection.
“It’s, uhh,” he said, straightening himself before she could look his way. “It’s right over there.”
“Mine’s further down, I’m just, I’m heading right past your car anyway, so…” She sounded like she felt guilty for walking with him. Like we’d almost gotten caught doing…Doing what, exactly? What happened back there?
They were at his car before he knew it. “Alright, goodnight Mel,” he said.
“Night.” She walked off. That was that. Whatever had passed between them didn’t translate into a long goodbye.
It was just as well, because Frank needed to cum.
He got in the door and slammed it shut, tossing the keys in the center console.There was no question of driving home like this. He couldn’t bring this…whatever this was into his home when he walked through the door. He couldn’t be like this around Abby and the kids.
That’s it. Oh my God, that’s it. I can’t be like this, but I want to be.
Stop. Stop, goddammit!
But he didn’t listen to himself. He had developed a level of self-control that had saved his job and his marriage, but in this area it apparently no longer applied. The only commands he’d listen to here—
—are hers.
Shucking the jacket off his shoulders and placing it over his lap for cover, he spit into his hand, reached into his scrubs, lubed up his swollen cock, and stroked. It felt electric. She was in his mind immediately, as she always was when he did this — hair down, face angelic, looking down at him from above. Where she belonged. Where he belonged.
Jesus Christ, I’m going to cum so fucking fast.
She’d known what to call him, that was it. He didn’t know how, but she knew the words he needed to hear. He needed someone to tell him that they saw it, that it mattered, that they knew how hard he worked, how hard he works, every day, at home, in the hospital, everywhere. But he couldn’t count on Abby for that, or on Robby, not anymore.
His hand flew up and down his cock, pumping hard against the constricting fabric of his boxer briefs. I just want someone to tell me I’m doing good. That I am good. He leaned his head back, eyes closed, safe in the shadows of the recesses of his car in the sparsely lit lot. If she told me what to do and I did it…if it was always that simple…oh Christ, I’m gonna cum…it would be so easy, so easy to be a good boy, a good boy for herrrrrr…….
He came hard, spurting into his underwear. Gobs of semen wetting the fabric and dripping down over his hand and shaft and balls as he pumped himself dry.
A minute passed as he came back to himself. He was leaning back in the driver’s seat, eyes closed, breath slowing, hand still down his pants, when the tap came at the window.
“Gah!” He jumped, instinctively yanking his hand out from between his legs, scrambling to put both hands on the wheel like he’d been pulled over. Without even trying, he wiped his hand clean on the inside of Mel’s jacket as he did it.
Mel’s jacket.
Mel’s jacket.
Mel—
“Hi,” came the familiar voice from the other side of the glass. “I’m…sorry to wake you?” She sounded hesitant. “I just, I need my jacket back, or it’ll be a whole—”
“No yeah, totally,” he said. Praying that his dick was fully inside his pants, he began to crumple up the jacket with a hand that was still slightly cummy. If the fabric gets all rubbed together it may not be noticeable. In that horrifying moment any comforting logic felt load-bearing for his sanity.
He gathered the jacket together in his hands and lifted it up. His penis was safely concealed. Thank Christ.
“Here you—” Then he noticed the window was still up. “Whoop, sorry.” He started the car and rolled the window down, then passed the jacket through.
Just please God do not let her see what she made me do.
“Goodnight again,” she said, taking the jacket from him, not knowing how much of him she held in her hands.
“Goodnight again,” he repeated. He forced a smile.
She smiled back, and suddenly his own wasn’t so forced. “Yep,” she said, and walked off.
Frank watched her until she was halfway back to her car. He put both hands on the wheel and squeezed till his knuckles where white. He didn’t dare risk her seeing him again, so he pulled out, trusting the same calm that got him through the day to get him home in one piece. He could feel his semen drying on himself as he drove.
She knew what to call me.
She knows what I need.
The thought that she might have seen what he was doing didn’t occur to him until his keys were already in the door.
Oh n—
“Daddy!” The voices exploded in unison. Two children, that’s all.
“Hi guys!” Frank said, forcing another smile, this one even wider. He stepped inside.