Chapter Text
“Dad! Daisy! We're home!”
Abby pushed the door open with her shoulder. Penny was pressed to Abby's chest, the baby's pink nose twitching in deep sleep. Tanner shuffled in behind her, shucking his coat, slamming the door.
Usually there's an answer. A voice from the couch. The television muttering. A cabinet closing. Evidence of another adult existing in the same space— if Frank managed to leave the ED on time, that is.
Tonight, there was nothing. Yet Abby knew Frank was home, because he hadn't left the couch all week. He didn't work. He didn't walk Daisy. He didn't play with the children. He simply rotted.
(He wouldn't tell Abby why, no matter how hard she pushed. She thought she knew, though, and she hoped she was wrong. God, she hoped she was wrong).
Which is why the empty couch set Abby on edge. Something inside Abby had already begun tightening— A slow, familiar dread moving up through her chest before her mind could explain it.
It wasn't new. It was the kind of fear that'd been living quietly in the house for longer than she'd admit, patient like mold in the ceiling.
The bathroom door was closed, she suddenly noticed. The door was closed, and flickering yellow lined the crack between the door and the floor.
The light was on.
Of course it was.
“Where's Dad?” Tanner asked, plopping himself down on the empty couch.
“Probably hiding from you,” she teased automatically. Followed by an almost desperate yell, “Frank! We're home!”
No response.
Abby knocked once, already knowing.
“Hey!”
Nothing.
There was an evanescent moment— one small, suspended second— where she knew before she saw it.
A kind of knowledge that arrived in Abby's body first: the tightening in her chest, the thin tendril of dread sliding inside her stomach.
Her hand was steady when she touched the handle. It was cold, so cold. Despite her strength— she had to be strong for her children, she knew she had to be strong— something was unraveling fast. Thread after thread pulled loose from the life she'd spent too long trying to keep stitched together.
The door opened.
There he was.
His breathing answered her, heavy and slow.
Abby thought, not for the first time, about how fragile the human body really was—how her husband's entire life could pause in the bathroom at 7:00 PM on Tuesday.
(She'd never understood Frank's devotion to medicine. Medicine took him from his family. More importantly, medicine left Abby alone, to raise their toddler and their baby, in an empty house.
Now, though, looking at Frank, Abby thought she understood. She suddenly couldn't fathom the fragility of the human body, and the helplessness which accompanied it).
At first, Abby's mind refused to assemble the picture. There was tile. The sink. The cabinet door, slightly open. A bottle, tipped over. Empty.
And Frank.
Frank slumped against the vanity, one arm bent beneath him. The bottle near the sink had spilled pale poison across the floor. Some had rolled under the radiator. Some remained in his palm.
He looked like someone who'd tried to sit down and had forgotten how.
At first, she simply stared.
Not shocked.
Not surprised.
Simply... afraid. It wasn't new fear. It was old fear, like the other shoe had dropped after an eternity of agonized waiting and holding breath. It was the kind of fear which lingered in every corner of their house. Their bedroom. Their marriage.
Of course, she thought bitterly.
Of course.
Abby kneeled anyway. God, she still had the baby, which she shuffled to one arm. With the other, she pressed on the clammy expanse of Frank's neck, searching for his pulse, ignoring the sweat which pooled in the hollow of his throat.
It was there, but it was weak.
Slow.
Stubborn.
“Mom, what's—”
She turned her head.
Tanner stood in the hall, watching her uncertainly. He stood at an angle which made it impossible for him to fully see what had happened. Thank God.
“Go back to the living room,” Abby ordered quickly. She shoved the baby at him. “Take your baby sister too. Turn the TV on.”
“Why do I—”
“Now.”
Tanner hesitated. Abby wanted to burst out crying. Above all else, she needed him to leave. She needed him to leave, because Tanner couldn't see his father like this. If Tanner saw him like this— Well, Abby thought she'd hate Frank forever.
Tanner ran back down the hall. She waited until the TV burst with noise— canned laughter and bright, artificial cheer filled the house.
She turned back to Frank.
“Christ,” she whispered.
She finally let herself study Frank's face: the slack mouth, the pale skin, the man she had loved and carried and resented in equal measure. A man who looked suddenly smaller, lying limply on tile.
She wanted to shake him until his teeth rattled.
She wanted to stand up, walk out, and leave him exactly where he was.
Instead, she sat there, listening to the thick drag of his breathing. She realized then, with dull, sinking certainty, that even if he survived, she wouldn't be happy. Frank had already crossed some sort of line, and it would never uncross. They were done. Ruined.
She smoothed his dirty hair, hoping fiercely but briefly for another life.
Then, Abby picked up the phone and called an ambulance. She only hoped it wasn't PTMC— for Frank's sake.