Chapter Text
July 4th, 2026
7:00AM
10 months is a long time to be gone from anywhere, but you can live another full lifetime in just 12 hours in the Pitt. 10 months away from it is like he’s finally back from a round trip to the edge of the galaxy, he’s half expecting to walk through the doors and not recognise a single thing.
He realised in rehab that he had started to measure time by pain and pills. The length of time until he could take another, exactly how long that would last until the pain came back, how long he could deal with it before he’d just take some more. Take the edge off.
He started measuring it in days again while detoxing.
Number of days in the small isolated room sweating and shaking the worst of it out of his system (10), number of days in the solo transfer room (3), number of days in his shared dorm counting down until his stay ended (92).
And it did, end, and the world kept turning the same as it had while he was in rehab, and the counting became the number of days until the divorce gets finalised (98), number of days sober (301), number of days until his first probation shift (T-Minus 20 minutes now actually, he twitched his way through those first 6 months out of rehab arguing his case to Robby who charitably argued his case to the head assholes at PTMC). And so 304 days after the worst day of his life he gets to walk through doors he still stress dreams over and gets met immediately by his assigned hospital rep, Ahmad, and maybe terrifyingly Underwood herself. Robby used to cycle between calling her Underworld and Cerberus- the dog that guards the gates to hell- they amounted to the same thing, and neither were very clever, but the feeling was accurate.
“Dr. Langdon” she says, prim in a way all the suits are, the kind of attitude that comes from sitting behind a desk and coming up with ways to spend the least amount of money to save a life instead of, you know, saving the life. “We were hoping to catch you”
Obviously, he thinks and definitely does not say, How long were you haunting the staff entrance and freaking the fuck out of the newbies so you could catch the junkie before he hits your floor.
“Caught” he says instead, because he can make himself sound fine and nice as long as he sticks to using single words.
“Yes, well, as discussed in your last probation meeting the hospital will be conducting random drug tests throughout the week. This is the first”
Random tests multiple times a week, every week, for the entirety of his probation after which he gets to have more meetings about pulling back on restrictions. Maybe.
“Great”
“Ok, follow us”
Ahmad shoots him a small sorry man look and he shrugs back, his probation parameters were argued and outlined and talked to death, printed out in ink with his signature scribbled on the bottom. He knew what coming back was going to look like, he was desperate though, he would’ve agreed to anything they put in front of him.
So he sucks it up, misses Robby's start of shift pow-wow, too busy pissing in a cup upstairs, but he’s not going to complain. He already made that promise to a long line of people, somewhat miraculously including himself.
He’s back down in the Pitt in time to watch everyone scatter from the boards, off to different patients, out to chairs, looking at their silhouettes lost in a way he hasn’t felt since he first started here. The morning meeting would’ve been an immediate microscope to languish under but he at least would’ve been pointed in a direction.
“There you are” McKay says, coming up behind him, exasperated like he’s late for plans they’ve made, “Come on, I’ve got a bleeder in North 8 who’s giving me grabby vibes”
“Huh?” he tries, but she just puts a hand in the crease of his elbow and drags him across the floor, ignoring his sputtering.
“What, you're too good to be a human shield now?”
“I’d pretend to be gallant here but I’m sure it would fall flat”
“Lucky for you I don’t really give a shit about your manners” she says, handing him a pair of gloves, “Just need an extra set of hands”
The guy is a grabber, turns out, and while it’s better his ass than McKay’s he’s still not exactly a big fan of that welcome back.
“Ok Sir" he says through his teeth, as Cassie works on tying off the bandage, "We’re going to keep this leg wrapped up tight and get you set up with some antibiotics and care instructions"
He reaches out again, and this time Langdon’s watching close enough to side step the pinch.
“And I’d keep those to yourself unless you want to be treated for broken bones as well”
Mateo coughs something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like duty of care but he’s also definitely laughing at Frank so whatever. It’d be breaking his probation to assault a patient anyway.
The guy just smiles at him serenely, and Frank breathes in through his nose, patience is a pillar he reminds himself, huddling off in the corner while McKay orders a prescription. Patience is a key pillar to recovery, and he spent the majority of his rehab stay learning how to be fine with being bored as shit, so patience, he's learned he can do that.
He doesn’t get time to flex the skill though, the grabber gets left to Mateo and McKay drags him out of North 8 and down to North 15 to a guy with barbed wire wrapped around his torso- tried to jump my own goddamn fence - and what turns out to be an inexplicable country accent when Frank asks him where he’s from and he answers- born and raised Bethel Park. But who was at least smart enough to cut and leave the wire instead of ripping out the barbs. And then again, as soon as they're done, she's pulling him off to two more patients, talking the whole time about Harrison and her new apartment and embarrassingly it does take him till they're charting the last girl to realise what she’s doing.
“We a matching set now?” he asks, after helping her set the dislocated collarbone of a very snappy volleyballer who looked like she was considering popping Frank’s out of place to see how he’d like it. Misery and company and all that.
“Oh yeah, a very pretty pair of felony committing teacups” she says, tapping away at the iPad, and it doesn't even seem put on, this casual way she's keeping him afloat.
“Novelty salt and pepper shakers” he counters, he doesn’t want to be a teacup.
“Yeah alright, but I’m salt”
Which is a little unfair, calling dibs on salt before he can really argue his case for it, but he’d end up just giving it to her anyway probably. Gallant.
So he’s with Cassie for the next little bit, and he does genuinely appreciate the glue of her, remembers when she first came in with the ankle monitor, he hadn’t seen her in almost a month- off somewhere doing volunteer hours he didn’t ask about.
None of my business he remembers thinking, when it had first blared to life in the break room, her frustrated huffs echoing in time to its beeping as she stomped out of the room. And it hadn’t been really, at the time, they didn’t exactly know each other well, but maybe she could’ve used the ask anyway.
“Coke, by the way” she offers, when they've paused by the central desk computers to transfer their charts over.
“Hm?”
“My drug of choice” she says, “Hell of a lot more fun than Benzos, but it is embarrassing that out of the two of us mine is the wall street frat boy cliche, I mean look at you”
And he does look down at himself, his slightly oversized scrubs, his second worst pair of sneakers- half a size too big and the only ones that he can wear right now that don't kill his feet- the way everything seems to hang on him different now, like he’s wearing some kind of new skin. Or more likely, like he lost a bunch of weight in rehab and has only just started to bother putting it back on.
“They’d eat me alive on Wall Street”
“They’d convince you to steal an ambulance in a frat”
“Never did manage to get Abbey that Birkin” he says, plucking at the tab on his redbull as McKay types, “Think that’s why she left me?”
It doesn't even make her pause, but it does earn him an amused huff.
“It was probably mostly your personality”
“Ouch” he says, hand on his heart, “At least do the decent thing and blame it on the drugs”
“Yeah you’re right, it was probably 70/30”
He snorts, he always liked McKay, but they never really overlapped too much. Figures it would take a suspension and pill induced crash out to get him to notice she’s pretty awesome, but hey silver linings and all that. Gratitude is another pillar.
He pauses to watch as Whittaker speed walks past them, arms full of bandage replen, dodging around a stray gurney and almost eating shit before- pretty impressively actually- skidding himself upright and continuing on. The gurney isn’t empty which isn’t surprising, they’re already busy enough there’s people dotted throughout the halls, in wheelchairs and beds, the chunky wooden chairs they managed to dig up from somewhere two years ago taken up by two young girls with matching broken noses, Collins knelt down in front of them. This guy is strapped down though, soft restraints on his wrists and ankles, but he’s at least completely passed out and snoring like a chainsaw.
“He good?” he asks, as Princess swoops over, unlocking the brakes to wheel him closer to the wall, a little more out of the way.
“PCP- a handover from night shift, he’s sleeping it off, probably needs three more hours”
“Well at least someone in this hospital gets a break today”
“You wanna check into that hotel you can” she says, eyeing him a little, “It’s a big gurney”
It isn’t a drug dig, he doesn’t think, but then again it could be, and isn’t that going to be a fun little guessing game he gets to compete in for the foreseeable future- to be or not to be a paranoid weirdo. But McKay is frowning at her retreating back next to him, so he wasn’t the only one who heard it.
“Can I give you a piece of advice you can completely ignore?”
“I’ll add it to my collection”
“Own it Langdon” she says, making a point of catching his eyes and holding contact, “There won’t be a person in this hospital that doesn’t know, and they’ll fine-china or whisper unless you show it’s not a big deal”
She shifts a little, and he flicks his eyes down to see her right leg bouncing just slightly, he thinks about asking and then thinks about a better time he could do it. Maybe eek out one of those heart to hearts his therapist keeps bugging him to have.
“We all have shit, ours is just a little louder than theirs”
“Yeah, I mean-" he starts, then clears his throat when he feels it start to get tight, "I was gonna say Hotel is kind of generous. Motel would’ve been my go to line”
She smirks, eyes sparkling just a little, and he feels the tension that creeped into his shoulders easing it's way back out.
"PCP wouldn't be your bag anyway, not enough tie-dye in your wardrobe"
"As far as you know"
"Well Cheech, you can make yourself useful and type the rest of this up, I have to take a phone call"
She squeezes his shoulder as she heads off, and he gets the distant feeling of being somewhat Mum-ed, he hasn't felt that in a while. But it is nice, to immediately have an ally.