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The sweating never stopped, and his head would never feel like it was normal, the way that Frank twisted and turned the first couple of weeks of rehab. He used to sleep with an eye mask, now he just wished that he could sleep at all. He was uncomfortable, but he would never tell the staff of his rehabilitation how he felt, because he knew that he could tough it out—he had seen worse in the ER, after all.
Sometimes, Langdon forgot he was a person underneath it all, sometimes, he forgot that he even had a first name.
When he meets up with his psychiatrist and they ask how his sleeping is, all he asks was: Is it always going to feel like this?
Ten months sober, Frank remembers, “It’s going to hurt at first. And no, it won’t always feel like this.”
*
When Frank remembers leaving his rehabilitation program he had thought of how much he was going to fail, and how much he was going to miss seeing the people that he usually saw. He can’t remember the last time that he saw Abby in terms of the way that they used to see each other; in love, dreams of the future, a family that wasn’t tainted, a rewording of the word tainted because Frank was trying not to allow himself the freedom of ruining things because of his own addiction.
He had woken up on that first day with his black scrubs in his bag, a back ache that was already starting to itch, a quickness in breath, and a look over at the apartment that he was just finally starting over in. He had called his sons that morning as he made his protein smoothie because he was now trying to find ways to settle his addiction in different kind of routines and smoothies was one of them.
He didn’t know how to tell his therapist that he bought specific fruits because an account told him so, and that’s just how his addiction had worked. Sometimes harm and reduction was picking up stupid things like fruits, or even more stupid things like laundry. What kind to buy, because his brain worked differently, because it smelled nicer, because everyone keeps talking about it—because his brain shut off when he watched one video and then another and another—
It was all part of the process.
Still, at least he called his sons, and they cheerfully told him how they were getting ready for school too, how Abby made them pancakes even though she reserves that for weekends and it was fourth of July–but it was special because it was fourth of July and not the fact that they don’t all live together anymore.
Frank says something along the lines of being careful about the fireworks, and he can tell that they roll their eyes in the way that they say I know dad. He wishes he could see it.
*
Addiction crawls through everything, the way that he drives to work, his fingers gripping the steering wheel, if it had been ten months before he would have been more relaxed, his brain in a fog that was controlled, in his own mind, how his back didn’t fucking ache like it did now. How he couldn’t have anything to control it because if he did then it would make him spiral.
*
Bending down for his new locker feels like it’s own form of torture.
It’s not humiliation.
It feels like it.
*
He doesn’t know who to tell about Robby. He’s the second person that he wants to make amends with but he won’t even talk to him.
When he gets a moment, he calls his sponsor.
”My locker is at the very bottom. A patient we all know might die, my favourite coworker split their head, my kids are having pancakes on the day they shouldn’t—” he starts off in a stutter, but then he trembles. “Robby refuses to talk to me. My locker hurts my back and I—”
Ten months ago Frank would have felt relief because he knew how to get it.
Ten months sober all Frank feels is the knowledge that he is a better person for addressing it.
Going back to the Pitt all he can think about was this, ”I don’t sweat anymore you know.” with his therapist smiling at him.
He had been told to smile at his improvements.
*
Sometimes all that Frank can do is look down at his phone and look at his background and remind himself that it is all that he can do.
*
Sometimes he remembers the way that he and Abby used to fight when he was getting better. It always started with I love you and I know you’re getting better, but I hate you for what you did. and then a, I love you and I know you’re getting better, but I hate how you strung me along like this. That truth had hurt more than most, and it led them to Abby and Frank to both talk about it with his therapist.
Abby had later admitted she was sorry, but Frank knew the truth.
”I would hate to have been married to that me too.” He had squeezed her hand then, looking at their boys at a soccer game. It wasn’t the end of the world if it was at a soccer game.
*
Abby texts him support for his first day back. She’s always been good like that. She was never the villain in the story. It would have always been the addiction itself, Frank had a hard time of giving the addiction the term of it ‘it’ instead of ‘me’.
*
The world is calmer when he sees Mel. He doesn’t know how to tell her that the way she sees the world is the one that makes the most sense to him. That sometimes turning the lights off in the ER closes his mind, or the way that sometimes the adrenaline rush of what’s going on is the only thing that can keep him going. They just click, because they make it work. He might have let her down before, but he’s not going to do that again. He knows how much it means to trust someone when they say something like that.
Frank Langdon knows better.
He started using his first and last name again. Both of his names are now finally combined. They mean something. He’s trying not to forget that.