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When Jack walks into the Pitt at half six in the evening to start his shift, he does not expect the trouble that comes with the end of the day.
He enters via the ambulance bay and doesn’t even make it to the lockers before sensing the intruder. At the central hub stands a boy, tall and young, and Jack doesn’t need to be told what he’s looking at. The boy has that look on him: back straight, foot tapping in a typical rhythmic nervousness and new scrubs that scream they’ve been ironed to perfection for a first day.
Undoubtedly, a new student.
Jack immediately feels a scoff rise in his throat— and it’s not completely the kid’s fault, not really. For as long as Jack can remember, the big bosses and him have had a deal: no students on nights for a hectic rotation like the ED. Jack runs a tight ship, and frankly, it makes sense why he would. Students, with their inexperience and awkward bodies that they don’t know where to put when in trauma rooms, only get in the way. They slow the shift down to an unbearable mess with their bumbling around and wide, sparkling eyes.
Jack wonders, as he ducks out of the kid’s sight to go to the lockers, who the kid pissed off to make his first shift at the ED be a night shift.
He takes his time taking off his jacket and placing it in the locker. He takes longer putting his bag away, dreading the shift to come. To pass time, he aimlessly scrolls through his emails, flagging the ones that need relatively urgent attention (such as the upcoming admin meeting he needs to attend) and deletes the spam ones from when one of his residents, probably Ellis, now that he thinks about it, signed him up for yoga classes because he’d been strung high for two weeks in a row and it likely got on her nerves.
When he hears obnoxious laughter, he instinctively unclenches his jaw.
John Shen, the most relaxed R2 Jack ever had pleasure of working with, walks in holding the biggest cup of coffee Jack has ever seen. Still, despite the Cheshire grin painted on his face, he brings with him a steadiness that Jack has began to really appreciate.
“Evening, Doctor Abbot.” John says, easy as always. “I stopped to talk to Dana and Lena, but met the student instead. He’s funny.”
Jack shoots a glare in his way, taking back the mental compliment he’d given away. “You seen Robby yet?”
“Yeah, he was hands deep in Trauma One’s chest last I saw him.”
Jack hums, and decides to step out. He can go see Robby, maybe help out, and then get handover as soon as possible so that he can keep on top of the day. Or well, night.
That’s Jack’s first mistake of the night.
As soon as he steps out of the locker area, he accidentally makes eye contact with the kid he’d tried so hard to avoid in the earlier evening. When he meets his eyes, he doesn’t smile, and hopes that it’s enough of a hint to get the kid to back off and follow a resident rather than him.
Apparently, he’d judged the kid’s inability to stay still a nervous habit rather than what seemed to be an energetic personality quirk instead.
The second thing that Jack notes about the kid, aside from his height, are his eyes. A startling blue, big and bright and wide with excitement that only inexperience brings. His hair is styled in a purposefully messy sort of way, an attempt as feigning nonchalance, but Jack can see right through him. He looks like a kid dressed in clothes too big for him, trying to fit in with a fervour Jack’s unfamiliar with. Jack has never explicitly wanted to fit in anywhere; all his life, he’s always slotted in with others regardless.
He stops right in front of Jack, who is horrified at the prospect of having to tilt his head the slightest bit up to meet the kid’s gaze.
“Hi,” He says, and his eyes are practically twinkling. Jack has to look away. “I’m Frank Langdon. I’m here for my rotation.”
Jack sighs, resists the urge to dig his hands into his eye sockets. “What year?”
“Third.” The kid — Frank Langdon — says, adjusting his glasses a little.
He tries not to groan in front of him, at the fact that those upstairs couldn’t even give him someone a little more experienced, like a year 4 at the minimum. The ED isn’t a walk in the park, and definitely isn’t great as a first or even second rotation. They don’t have time to babysit puppies.
Plus, he can already tell the sort of kid Langdon is: trouble. A problem.
But Jack smiles anyway, and anyone who knows him can probably tell that it’s one of the most insincere smiles he’s ever plastered on his face, but luckily the kid isn’t someone he knows or is interested in knowing, so.
“Cool.” He replies and it sounds stiff to even his own ears. Langdon doesn’t notice because he grins wider than before, teeth all straight and perfect that Jack feels mildly annoyed just looking at them. “Welcome.”
Mercifully, he’s put out of his misery soon enough.
“Jack,” Robby says, rubbing his hands with a generous amount of sanitizer. “Good to see you here.”
Jack lets out a breath of relief at seeing him. Seeing Robby, however briefly, always brought a sense of peace that Jack missed deeply in his absence.
“Robby,” He reaches out for a half-hug and Robby meets him halfway. “Glad to see you haven’t crashed my ED.”
Jack feels a pair of eyes intently gaze at him. He ignores them.
“Your ED? Ooh, don’t let Adamson hear you say that.” Robby smirks. “I see you’ve met Langdon already.”
There’s a familiar mirth in his voice, and Jack knows that he’s teasing.
“Yep.” He says flatly, popping the ‘p’.
“I’m looking forward to learning a lot from you, Doctor Abbot.” Langdon chirps from where he’s standing. Robby huffs out an amused sound before he covers it with a cough when Jack shoots him a glare.
“Right.” He says coolly and feels the day shift doctors, Ellis and John join their little group, ready for handover. “Know how handover works?”
Langdon nods.
“Cool, then you can follow along.” Jack isn’t interested in teaching, even if they are a teaching hospital. Someone else can do the teaching. All Jack can do is scare off the kid enough that he follows someone else.
“Alright, say, when you assess the rhythm, you find the return of spontaneous circulation. What do you do next?” Jack can hear John ask.
“Start immediate post cardiac arrest treatment.” Langdon answers, voice light.
John hums, amused. “Which consists of?”
“Start with the A to E approach and aim for sats between 94 and 98 unless we know the patient is on a COPD scale. Also aim— aim for normal-ish partial pressure of carbon dioxide.”
“Normal-ish, huh? Great use of medical terminology there, Student Doctor Langdon.” Jack can hear the humour in his voice, can see Langdon’s grin widen. “What’s next?”
“Between 35 and 45, is what I meant. Normal. Um, next, ECG and—” He starts, but Ellis interrupts.
“I have an interesting case in the depths of triage hell,” Ellis calls out. “Wanna take a look?”
“Stealing my student, Parker?” John laments, voice light and airy and fun the way Jack knows it to be.
Langdon stops to look at Jack, waiting for permission, as if he were Jack’s student. When Jack shrugs, unbothered, Langdon nods at Ellis, who is having some sort of silent conversation with John.
“Yes, Doctor Ellis!” Langdon finally answers, bright and too energetic for nine in the evening. Jack suppresses a sigh.
“That’s what I like to hear.” She snickers, and Jack watches the two of them go with relief when she yells, “Not your student, Shen!”
At least he won’t have to deal with him for however long Ellis decides to keep him around.
The night is swamped with cases after that: high impact falls, MVCs and serial stabbing victims are all that Jack sees for a large part of his shift.
All throughout the shift from hell, Jack has a puppy follow him. He can’t even walk from Trauma One to Trauma Two, let alone from North 6 to South 20 without hearing Langdon’s light footsteps trail behind him like a shadow. He can feel him hover just behind him when he’s calling out instructions, writing away, furiously, in his little notebook, consuming more knowledge at once than Jack reckons his brain can probably handle.
But Jack can see through him.
Underneath the flashy smiles and the fake bravado, Langdon laughs a little too loud, talks a little too fast, and all Jack sees is a little kid who breaks all the unspoken rules and latches on to the jargon like he’s starved. Jack watches him chew over every word, hold each syllable in his mouth and digest everything with a frightening speed, as if he thinks everything will disappear if he doesn’t memorise it fast enough.
Jack wants to be irritated, wants to keep thinking about the minutes ticking by despite the cases that have kept his hands full. And yet.
Even when the ED falls into the slower lulls of early morning, when everyone holds their breath at the short moments of reprieve, Langdon doesn’t stop moving around. He talks to John and Ellis, chats away at the nurses with a bright grin, scribbling away in his notebook. Jack wonders what there even is to write. For most of the night, when he’s not two steps behind Jack, he’s on the receiving end of both, fond and exasperated looks alike by the other doctors and nurses.
To his surprise, another thing that Jack notes about Langdon, is that he’s not… bad. Not good, of course, that only comes with experience, and the kid is only at the start of his long journey. But he’s not bad. He learns quick. Probably quicker than most students do at this stage.
Around 1, Jack gets Langdon to observe as he sutures a relatively superficial gash on the leg of one of the MVC patients. The hairs at the back of his neck stay standing the whole time that Langdon follows his movements. Eventually, for the last few interrupted sutures, he passes the needle and thread to Langdon, who grabs them with an eager expression.
Jack watches as his hands shake and eyebrows furrow, watches as Langdon messes up once, and then the needle is back in Jack’s hands because Lena just informed him of a stab victim coming soon, and Jack doesn’t have time to teach a baby duckling— this is why they should’ve put him with the day shift, he thinks. He doesn’t have time for this, and maybe getting the kid to do this seven hours into his first shift isn’t the brightest idea Jack’s had. They don’t teach sutures on real patients in med school.
Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the embarrassed blush on Langdon’s cheeks, and he thinks that maybe he’s successfully scared him off from following him.
And yet, when he leaves after finishing to stabilise the stabbing patient, Jack comes back to see Ellis nod in approval as Langdon repeats the same set of sutures he observed less than an hour ago. Jack sees the way his hands are steadier, watches as he grins up at her and doesn’t repeat the same mistake twice.
So, not bad.
It’s only when early morning rolls around, around five, with two hours left to go (give or take) that Jack decides he’s tired of the shadow that follows him. The decision that comes next is easy — send him to chairs, maybe he can take a patient history by himself before one of the residents checks over, saving time for them all. Even if it is quiet in the trauma rooms.
He walks towards the hub and abruptly turns around. Langdon almost bumps into him.
“First rotation?” Jack asks.
“No, it’s my, er, second.” Langdon says.
“Good. How confident are you with taking histories?”
“Very, sir.” Langdon smiles, all perfect teeth and glimmering eyes. Jack fights to keep his face very neutral. “Had to do a lot of those in my past rotation.”
“Cool. Alright, in the first triage room, there’s a patient that hasn’t been examined yet. The nurse that brought the patient into the room had to leave for an emergency, so they’re struggling a little today, so why don’t you go help them out, take a history and then find a free resident to present to.”
“Could I—” Langdon hesitates. “Could I present to you?”
Jack stills.
“Never mind. It’s okay. Never mind!” He says quickly, feet already moving towards the triage area. He doesn’t give Jack enough time to respond. Well, it's not like Jack wants students anyway.
“Other way!” Jack yells after him when he sees Langdon turn right instead of left. The stupid grin and thumbs up he gets as an answer almost has feeling entertained, to his own horror.
It’s been a long night.
Jack resists a grand total of ten minutes in the merciful slowness of the ED on a warm, early Sunday morning before curiosity gets better of him and he ventures his way to triage to check on Langdon.
He finger salutes Lena on his way, who shoots him a questioning look, and makes sure to stand in a way where the triage patient and Langdon can’t see him, but he has a perfect view of him. He can’t see the patient because of the yellow curtains and counts it as a win in terms of privacy.
“Okay, so your mother had diabetes? Do you know if she’s the only one in your family that has it?” Langdon’s voice is confident and clear.
“Fuck if I know,” the patient says. “What’s that bitch got to do with my pain?”
Jack stiffens where he stands, ready to intervene, but Langdon’s voice is smooth.
“It just helps us identify whether you have a higher risk for developing other diseases. It’s a standard question, Sir, I didn’t mean to offend you.”
For a brief second, there’s silence.
“…Nah, you’re alright, whatever, man.” The patient says. “When can a real doctor come check me out?”
“Uh— soon, I hope.” Langdon says. “They’re all a bit busy tonight. Today. I think they’re a bit understaffed.”
The patient hums and Jack wants to laugh at the absurdity of the answer.
“Alright, so moving on to some questions about your social history, Mr Anderson.” Langdon tells him, voice more careful now. “Do you smoke?”
“Always carry a lighter.” The man laughs and his words slur together at the ends. Jack stands straighter.
“Around how many cigarettes do you smoke?” Langdon asks. “Half a pack? Less, or more?”
“More!” The man answers, loud. “Pack a day, baby.”
“…Okay, right.” Langdon says. “Have you… have you ever thought about, um, quitting?”
“Quitting?” The man echoes. “Quitting! Nah, man, don’t wanna. Have you ever tried it?” Jack can’t hear Langdon’s reply. “Ah, that’s why you wouldn’t know, kid. Let me tell you, it’s the best feeling ever. I’m telling the truth. Try it.”
Langdon hums noncommittally. “I’m okay, thank you. What about alcohol?”
“I have, like, a drink once or twice.”
“A week?” Langdon asks.
The man laughs. “A day.”
Jack can see Langdon write in his pocket notebook, an easy smile on his face. Huh, maybe the kid will be alright.
“Have you had any today?” Langdon raises an eyebrow, and Jack can hear the man giggle.
Jack decides he’s gonna give it another second or two before leaving.
“Do you take any recreational substances?”
And with that singular question, Jack can see the whole vibe shift from Langdon’s body language.
“Who’s askin’?” Jack can hear the shuffling, hears feet hit the ground. “You tryna’ get me into trouble with the big shots?”
“No, Sir, most certainly not.” Langdon replies, but there’s a nervousness in his voice now, the slightest of trembles. “I just took a peek at your chart before walking in. This is also a—”
“A standard question?” The man interrupts, and Jack can hear him walk closer. “Alright, kid, enough with the nonsense questions, I don’t see how they relate to my pain.”
“Mr Anderson, I would appreciate it if you could return back to the trolley—”
“Fuck your trolley,” Jack steps closer to the door as the man walks closer to Langdon. Jack pauses, sees if Langdon will need the help or if he’s competent enough to not need intervening. “I’ve been out there waiting since fucking— yesterday, and you still wanna ask me these stupid ass questions?”
“I’m sorry for the wait, Mr Anderson, but I unfortunately can’t control—” Langdon says, and there’s rustling before there’s a loud crash, and Jack is halfway through the door, calling for security and pushing the curtains aside before Langdon is even done speaking and the loud thud has a chance to echo under the white fluorescent lights.
The harsh sound was likely made by the blood pressure machine that lay sideways on the floor, knocked over by the tall, burly man who’s still standing over Langdon. Langdon’s crouched in the corner of the room, arms curled protectively around himself. His pocket notebook is open, and Jack sees a long list of acronyms and abbreviations neatly written on the pages.
“What’s happening here?” Jack asks, voice loud, even though he’s heard the better part of the conversation. He steps in front of Langdon, and before he fully turns to face the man, he sees him look up, with wide, blue eyes. He looks younger than Jack’s seen him look all night.
“You a doctor? What the fuck took so long?” The man says, but he’s already backing away and taking a seat on the trolley.
“My name’s Doctor Abbot. Why, may I ask,” He steps closer to the patient, wills the image of Langdon on the floor to go away, “is my student on the floor?”
He hears Langdon quickly stand back up.
The patient shrugs. “Dunno. I figured doing this,” he gestures to the machine on the floor, “would be the fastest way to get a real doctor to see me.”
Jack narrows his eyes.
“This is a hospital, man. You can’t do that here.” The man starts to speak again but Jack interrupts, slightly louder than he means to, “If you pull anything like that against my staff again, you will be asked to leave. I don’t tolerate that kind of behaviour in my ED. We clear?”
The man doesn’t say anything.
“Are we clear?” Jack repeats.
“Yeah, man, whatever, alright.” The man says and he avoids eye contact.
Jack turns around, nods at Langdon to follow him and moves to leave. He pauses at the doorway. “A different doctor will be with you shortly, and I sincerely hope we do not encounter each other again today.”
He walks out, Langdon following behind quietly.
“You good?” He asks him, and Langdon nods.
“Yeah. Yeah, um— I’m sorry.” Langdon says meekly, and even if Jack has only known this guy for less than 12 hours, he can tell that the behaviour being displayed is out of character for him. “About what happened in there, I mean.”
“Why are you apologising? Wasn’t your fault.” Jack stares at him for a long moment. “Did you get hurt?”
“No, it was— it was a light push.” He smiles, but still looks a little shaken. “My body just decided to be dramatic, I guess.”
“Push?” Jack says, surprised at having missed that. “He pushed you?”
“It was more like a tap, to be honest, but I’m good. I’m— I’m okay.”
Jack narrows his eyes. “You’ll have to fill out the incidents report form.”
Langdon groans, remembers who he’s talking to and then nods, a quick, jerky movement. “Yes, sir. I’ll do that right away.”
Immediately, he walks away but Jack's eyes stay on him, catching his mumbled, it really wasn’t that serious, and decides that the kid will be alright. He’s cheeky enough to make it.
When, later that morning, Jack walks around to bring the stab patient’s family to them, he catches a glimpse of a neat set of sutures.
He looks towards the hub, where he knows Langdon stands, happily yapping away at Robby, like nothing happened, giving his own version of a handover before Jack comes.
Not bad, indeed, he decides.