Chapter Text
Frank's first month back slides by monotonously.
There are a few intense days here and there, a highway pile-up merging unhelpfully with a kitchen fire in the city, or a particularly memorable few shifts after a norovirus outbreak in a nearby elementary school.
Beyond the extremes that come with the job though, things are starting to blur.
He's stable. He knows that's good.
He’d gotten the help he needed at the time. Emergency intervention, forced accountability, professional guidance. But as the days meld together and the bags under his eyes keep growing, it's starting to occur to him that he might need a different sort of help right now.
Now that he's locked into a program keeping him in line, now that he's back into the swing of things at work. Now that he's been shoved right back into the exact scenarios he was operating in before.
He’s not using, anymore. He doesn't want to, and he's doing everything he can to stay that way. He's good.
But he’s not exactly fixed, either.
He's so embarrassed, sometimes. Mortified, by things he'd done. It'll side-swipe him at odd moments, a sick sense of déjà vu bringing a physical memory back to life around him, making him flinch at the recollection.
Stuck in triage, tubing connections will click together just so, and suddenly Frank will remember exactly how far he'd drifted from his potential, the sloppiness that’d invaded his work without him realising. He'll flush saline and the phantom ghost of shakes will come over him, the ones that came on if he wasn’t able to get to a dose in time. He'll speak clearly to a difficult patient and be reminded of trying to do the same whilst strung out, snappy and cruel, oblivious to the effects of his mood.
He'll correct Santos on something small, and in the brief eye contact they make he'll feel something go cold inside of him.
Nausea still rolls, when he thinks about how he'd treated her.
He liked teaching. It was something he was good at. He'd forgotten that, somewhere along the way.
Santos had made mistakes; she was overconfident, keen to prove herself. It happened, sometimes. Frank had seen it plenty of times before, and he knew it was his job to check the behaviour, to keep it in line in a professional and meaningful way.
Instead he’d exploded. Standing over a patient, surrounded by staff. He'd humiliated her, without a second thought.
“Being in the Pit is like playing a team sport. A team has to be able to trust each other.”
He doesn’t blame Santos for not trusting him now. He doesn’t blame her for not seeing the months of work he’s put in, how his entire life had been spiralling out from under him, not just his job. She didn't know that she was just the tip of the iceberg, the unfortunate soul who'd caught a blow because she'd been standing in front of him at the time.
He knows she doesn’t see it that way, and every time her stony gaze falls on him, it reminds him that not everyone will.
His brain tracks opportunities to divert meds on autopilot now. Most of the time it’s annoying, a remnant habit still lingering in his neural pathways. He has to kick himself back into gear with a frustrated shake of his head, a quick flash of shame flaring in his stomach.
Other times, he realises he’s doing it and he can't quite stop himself so quickly. Sometimes he takes a moment to follow the thread a little longer, to remember the rush of a successful switch, the slam of his heart in his chest as he snuck a trip back to his locker.
Even with the monitoring he’s under, there are still blind spots in the system. There are still risks he could take, moves he could pull. He's thought about it too much, now, and he can't help but see them.
It makes him panic, every time he finds himself lingering like that. He'll look around and reassure himself no one's noticing his hesitation, taking deep, steady breaths to recentre himself as discreetly as he can.
It takes a lot longer, to shake those moments off.
He's doing good. He's good.