vampyrmar - Tumblr blog

vampyrmar · 2 days ago

Text

nanny au

idk that i'm gonna finish this so here u go enjoy it as it is

Mel liked kids and she liked her job, truly; it always felt like she had to defend it preemptively when she told people what she was up to these days. An au pair? her old roommate had said when Mel told her. Like, in the movies? The woman who takes the rich babies to Central Park? Are you serious?

We live in Pittsburgh, Mel had said. Central Park is in New York. Trinity hadn't really found that very funny.

The truth was that the money was very good, the hours were flexible, and the kids were cute and wonderful, which was a banger three out of three for Mel. She'd been with the Langdons for about three months now and she liked almost everything about it - the nice but not ostentatious house, with its large finished basement and the pool in the backyard and Mel's room, a roomy mother-in-law suite off the northeast side, so she could watch the sunrises in the morning.

Tanner was eight and Millie, five, both of them a little wild and rambunctious but not in a way that signified neglect or worrying patterns to Mel. Tanner liked music and wanted to learn guitar; Millie loved gymnastics and digging holes in the backyard with the dog. The mother, Abby, was one of those very put-together wealthy ladies who wore makeup to her yoga classes and never looked disheveled, not even at five am in the kitchen when she wandered downstairs to make sure Mel was up and making breakfast. (Mel always was.) They had a professional relationship - not unfriendly, exactly, but not exactly warm, either - which was how Mel preferred it. She worked part time at some PR firm and spent the rest of her time carefully composing shots for her Instagram, which had led Mel to discover her respectably popular TikTok account, one of those mid-level influencers who talked extensively about how to do motherhood the right way without actually really talking about anything concrete involved in that process, because she didn't honestly spend that much time doing it. (Right now she was promoting a prayer app that had contracted her for six videos and three promoted posts. It was called Prayr.)

But that was none of Mel's business. Her job was to feed and entertain the kids and make sure they were clean whenever Abby came home so she could kiss their little cheeks and tell them how good they were and then waft off into her office, telling Mel what to make for dinner. Mel did this happily and quietly, because Abby was paying her sixty grand a year plus a thousand dollars of pocket money each month for incidentals, and she didn't care when Mel took entire days off to go visit Becca, as long as she knew about it in advance. Mel was in her second year of med school and this job could last her, maybe, optimistically, another two or three months, before she'd start her rotations next year and then she'd probably have to quit. Not having rent alone was enough to make this a dream job, not to mention the decent salary on top of it and the pocket money she used mostly on Becca or little gifts for the kids that she knew Abby would never buy them. (Abby thought guitars were crass, she wanted Tanner in cello lessons, so Mel bought concert movies on her own Prime account for him, which he'd watch from her lap, entranced. Millie loved bugs and Abby obviously didn't like that, so Mel had an ant farm in her room and one of those netted caterpillar habitats, just a small one, that she kept outside on the walk-out deck so Millie could feel like she was taking care of it. If Abby ever noticed it, she'd never said anything. But she probably hadn't.)

The only snag in the plan was the husband - ex-husband. Frank Langdon, thirty-nine, attending physician at PTMC, which was the reason Mel had snagged this job in the first place. One of her professors had invited a Dr. Abbott from PTMC in for a guest lecture on emergency triage, and Mel had hung around at the back of the classroom afterwards, jittery with excited questions, and she'd apparently impressed him so much that he'd invited her to the hospital for a sort of informal tour - something between a shadow day and just a look around - which had been so exhilarating that Mel hadn't been able to stop smiling all day. She'd mostly just followed him around for a few hours while he idly talked about what he was doing and where everything was and how it all worked, and Mel tried not to get in the way or say anything weird, but towards the end of her four hours there she'd followed Abbott into a trauma room with a critical patient with a Le Fort III fracture and internal bleeding from a car accident, and standing over the bed was this tall, floppy-haired doctor reaching into the man's mouth and physically pulling his face back into place, which Mel had watched with so much fascination that he'd actually looked up at her and laughed.

"Gold star to the new med student," he said, in a jovial, commanding sort of way. "The youngest one I've seen to not throw up when they saw that."

"Don't steal my new kitten, Langdon," Abbott barked, which made Mel jump and look at them warily, but they were both grinning. "King, what's Van Horn doing over there on his neck?"

"Marking the cricothyroid membrane in the event that you need to perform a surgical cricothyroidotomy," Mel rattled off, and saw Langdon snap his eyes over to her again, still grinning.

"And why do we have the patient in a left lateral position?" Abbott said, hands busy and efficient at the head of the bed, preparing the C-collar, a short female nurse pulling up a tray at his elbow with a set of epistats and some bite blocks.

"To allow for blood drainage so it doesn't impact his airway more than it already has," Mel said, her back pressed up against the wall so she wouldn't be in the way, feeling like she was almost in a trance as she watched.

"How would you intubate, Dr. King?" Langdon barked, and Mel jumped a little and looked up at him. It wasn't the first time anyone had used the title 'doctor' with her, but it felt like the most significant first time.

Mel glanced up at the monitors. "He's in peri-arrest and he's unconscious, so your only options at this point are either surgical, or an RSI with a direct laryngoscopy."

Langdon grinned, shark-like, with all his teeth. "Another gold star," he said, then without looking up from the patient, yelled, "Garcia, quit fuckin' around, I need your hands!"

"Keep your panties on, Langdon, I'm scrubbing in!" someone called, from the anteroom through the east door. Mel just kept watching, transfixed by the controlled chaos, the four different things happening at once, the way Abbott and Langdon were smoothly addressing the most urgent issue (airway) while already preparing for the next one (maxillofacial trauma).

"What's the 3-3-2 rule, King?" Abbott bellowed, stepping back out of the way to allow a willowy, beautiful woman in surgical scrubs take his place, already gloved and gowned.

"It's an evaluation of the airway," Mel said on autopilot. "3 fingers between the incisors, 2 between chin and hyoid, 2 from thyroid notch to hyoid."

"What's this kiddie shit going on in here?" the surgeon said. She glanced up at Mel as she and Langdon moved in sync, preparing the patient for - something, Mel wasn't sure. The cricothyroidotomy, probably?

Abbott laughed shortly and said, "she's an MS2." He put a little more emphasis on the 'two,' naturally.

"What?" said the woman. Her eyebrows flew to the top of her forehead, and she glanced up at Mel again, most of her concentration still on the patient. "What's she doing here?"

"Oh!" Mel cried, when she figured it out. "You're prepping for a submental orotracheal intubation! I see now. That's really smart!"

"That, mostly," Abbott said lazily. Garcia looked a little begrudgingly impressed.

Langdon just laughed again, his hair dangling down in front of his eyes as he carefully repacked the face, just controlling the hemorrhaging as best he could while Garcia worked quickly to prepare for the SMOI. Mel vaguely recognized the temporary measure they'd taken to keep him breathing in the meantime, but she couldn't remember the name at the moment and that was now driving her crazy. "Where do you find these kids, Jack?" he asked. "Do you lurk around the bars on campus or what?"

"Excuse me, I am a professional," Abbott said. "I lurk at those bars for personal reasons."

"Ladies, if you wouldn't mind," Garcia said, leaning over to start the procedure, "I'm trying to work."

"He's gonna need ortho down here for the leg," Langdon said idly. Mel glanced down and her eyes went wide - she hadn't even noticed it, so focused on that Le Fort fracture. It was completely mangled. "Poor son of a bitch."

"Hopefully he works a desk job," Garcia quipped. (Somehow, it didn't feel mean. Even though it objectively kind of was.)

Unquestionably the best day of Mel's career so far, hands down. She wasn't sure she was even technically supposed to be there - it definitely wasn't anything official through the school - but Abbott let her stay for another half hour, just observing and answering pop quizzes when he remembered to give them. Then at a short lull, he pulled her aside and told her to go home before someone named "Dr. Robby" got in and they both got into trouble, but he gave her his card and told her if she wasn't thinking about specializing in EM then she was wasting a lot of God-given talent.

"Oh no, I am," Mel said eagerly. "This was amazing. Thank you so much."

"You did good, kid," Abbott said, and gave her a weird smile, sort of like he was trying to stare inside her head at the same time that he attempted to look polite and encouraging. It was weirdly kind of cute, Mel thought. "Didn't she, Langdon?"

"Hell yeah," Langdon said, making Mel jump as he popped up behind her, tossing a pair of used gloves into the hazard bin on the wall. "You're really only in your second year?"

"I read ahead," Mel said. "And I'm loading up on classes this year so I can focus more fully on rotations next year."

Langdon clicked his tongue, digging around in his scrubs pockets for a second and then coming up empty. "Shit, I don't have any business cards. Do you want - "

"You have business cards?" Abbott said, with a sneering, yet friendly, laugh. "For what?"

Langdon shot him a dirty look and ignored him, saying instead to Mel: "give me your email. When you're ready for your EM rotation shoot me a line and we'll see what we can do about getting you in here, okay?"

"Oh, I have cards!" Mel said excitedly, which made them both stop and grin at each other again. Again, it would feel meaner if Mel weren't so genuinely hyped up, jittery with adrenaline and excitement. "I had them made just in case, they're nothing special, but - "

"Melissa King," Langdon said, taking it from her. He shot her a crooked smile. "Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you too, Dr. Langdon," Mel said, beaming, "but most people call me 'Mel.'"

"Alright then, Mel," Langdon said. He glanced over at Abbott and said, "breath of fresh fucking air, indeed."

"Right?" Abbott said, raising his eyebrow. And Mel didn't know what that meant exactly, but she could guess, and it made her feel like she was floating all the way home.

Anyway. That part wasn't the snag, that was the part Mel was holding on for, the metaphorical light at the end of the Cheerio-dusted tunnel. The snag was that he'd sent her a warm, funny message in response to her very professional 'thank you' email, and that she'd lost her mind and replied back, until they were sort of doing the modern-day equivalent of pen pals, exchanging these essay-length emails back and forth where he told her about all his interesting cases and she asked him a million questions about anything she could think of, just because he was so interesting to talk to. And then in March he sent her a message that said: hey, just a thought, but my ex-wife is looking for someone to watch our kids while our regular nanny takes maternity leave. You interested? You wouldn't be dealing with me much, just Abby and the kids. She asked me if I knew anyone responsible and you came to mind, naturally, and we pay well. (No offense, but med students always need money. I assume you're in a ramen/instant rice situation like I was.)

And it was a little weird, maybe, especially since Mel very much wanted to work with him next year, if she could possibly swing it. But she needed the money, Becca was going to stay at her care facility all summer like usual and Mel's dorm would close, so she'd need to find a cheap place to live, and the kids were wonderful and adorable and the first time Mel met them they both peppered her with questions about all of the novelty keychains on her backpack, which made them all instant best friends somehow.

Abby was distant enough that Mel didn't really have to think about her, other than making sure she was always sort of put together when she was in the common areas of the house, and following the instructions she got in a Google Doc every morning like clockwork, but - when Langdon had the kids, it was a different story. He only had them two days a week at the moment and the details of the custody agreement seemed both fraught and touchy, so Mel hadn't really inquired for more information.

They were very well-behaved around their mother, but every time Langdon dropped them off, they were like different children entirely - giggly and rambunctious, hyped up with sugar, laughing and climbing on the furniture, refusing to follow directions. Honestly Mel had been a little relieved the first time she'd seen it happen, because her biggest concern for these well-pampered kids had been how rigid their schedules were, and how their mother didn't seem to approve of anything that actually seemed fun - but the first time Langdon had dropped them off after Mel started, at the end of a long day at the zoo, they'd been slightly sunburnt but obviously so happy they were exhausted, and Mel had relaxed, just a little.

"Sorry," he said to Mel, carrying Millie in his arms while Tanner ran into the house before him, holding a gigantic stuffed zebra. "I tried to wear them out and I got this one handled - " he jostled Millie a little, a fond smile on his face - "but Tanner will be up for a while." He winced. "He talked me into ice cream. So - sorry."

"MEL GUESS WHAT I SAW," Tanner said, sneaking up behind them and ramming his body physically into Mel's legs. "IT WAS A HIPPO AND IT WAS PREGNANT!"

"Oh wow," Mel said. "Did you take a picture for me?"

"I TOOK SO MANY PICTURES AND I ALSO FED THE GIRAFFES," Tanner said, in his whisper-scream voice, which Mel had negotiated him down to when he was inside of the house, a compromise between talking normally and outright shouting.

"I love giraffes," Mel told him, standing up and gently taking his hand. Tanner bounced and pulled on it but let her keep holding it, while Langdon followed behind them, into the living room, cradling his sleeping daughter against his chest.

Abby wasn't usually there, for the drop-offs, perhaps for obvious reasons, but it was fairly clear that it annoyed her - how Langdon would take every opportunity to take them somewhere fun, do something physical outside, introduce them to something new, get their little hearts pumping fast. (Mel thought this was smart. She tried to make sure they got some exercise during the week, but Abby didn't want them going to the park or anything. She said it was too 'dangerous,' but Mel suspected that she just didn't trust Mel to do it alone yet, which was fair enough.)

And Mel thought that was sort of understandable, because it did seem a little bit like Langdon was bribing them, which of course was probably not great in the long run. But she wasn't sure what other alternative there was - they'd barely ever leave the house, if it weren't for his custodial days. It was sometimes the only opportunity they had to even go outside, other than the brief reprieves in the backyard during the day. Abby had a whole list of activities she wanted them to work on during the week, and if Mel didn't keep up with them, she'd get cold and snippy, and start criticizing Mel's cooking more, so Mel begrudgingly did it - and it wasn't as if they were all stupid things, most of them were intellectual or artistic, things that were clearly designed with care and intent, to nurture their curiosity and personalities. (Nature documentaries instead of cartoons - art therapy workbooks instead of free drawing on paper. Very regimented, but - well-intentioned, Mel could tell.) It was just - there was something very strange about a parent who thought her daughter's clear and eager interest in science was - to quote Abby - "something to discourage." Or her distaste for Tanner's rambling stories, how she'd cut him off in the middle of a long diatribe about his art projects or a book he was reading by saying, "that's nice honey, but can you give Mama some quiet time right now please? Thanks, baby."

It wasn't that she was a bad mom, just - not the sort of mother Mel would want to see, for two kids like Tanner and Millie - full of energy and curiosity, prone to chaos and mess. They were more like their father than their mother, Mel could quickly see. And the longer she was there - living in her weird little suite off the back of the house, tiptoeing into the kitchen at night for water, trying her best to do everything Abby wanted the way she wanted it done because she really needed at least four more paychecks - the more she thought that she was maybe becoming incredibly biased towards one parent rather than another, for reasons that had very little to do with parenting styles.

Because Langdon was very handsome, was the problem. He was a talented doctor, whip-smart, and he knew how to talk to Mel in a weird, instinctual way, noticing things that men usually never noticed. (The way she flinched at bright lights, how overwhelmed she got when she felt like she was doing something wrong, her strange and blunt way of talking.) They still emailed occasionally - talking mostly just about medicine, though he'd begun to tell her bits and pieces of personal things too, about his days with the kids - but mostly it was drop-off evenings that she looked forward to, when Langdon would cart his exhausted children back in, and help Mel bathe or feed or clothe them, while they chattered excitedly about whatever cool-ass thing he'd done with them that day.

He was also older than her, which didn't escape her notice. By nearly a decade, with an entire life she didn't know about. He was sober too, a subject that made Abby go coldly clinical, the one time she'd told Mel about it. He worked insane hours even though he didn't have to, another detail Abby had let slip. And Mel was very aware of the power differential, here. Not just that she worked for him, sort of (technically Mel worked for Abby, but it was both their money, so maybe there wasn't that much of a distinction) - but also that he was more experienced, a little too charming sometimes, a bit of an asshole, if he wasn't reigning himself in. (The first time Mel had heard Langdon and Abby sniping at each other, she'd stood there frozen, mostly taken aback by the real venom in both of their voices. Not that it was any of her business, but - nothing was the nanny's business, right? But she was still supposed to manage it all anyway. That was how this job worked.)

But he called her Mel in this grumbly, affectionate sort of way, a different way than anyone else had ever said her name, really. And he watched her sometimes with the kids, leaning against the front door with a weird smile on his face. And he asked her questions about Becca and seemed genuinely interested in the answers. And when she was having trouble with something for school, he helped, and explained it in a way that made sense in her brain, and he never made her feel young or naive or stupid.

Just a crush, she kept telling herself, when he'd text her a selfie at noon of him and Millie, grinning in front of a big dinosaur skeleton at the museum. Or when he'd sit cross-legged on the front step so Tanner could finish his story, because Abby was filming a video inside and Mel had warned him ahead of time that she'd get upset if the kids were loud when they came home. There were a lot of reasons not to pay any attention to it, but most important was that it was just a really stupid idea. Mel was twenty-three, she had Becca to think about, her career, school, rent. PTMC and Abbott were a good connection for her to have, and the last thing she wanted was to ruin her own reputation before she even finished school by being the slutty nanny cliche for a doctor who was clearly one of the favorites. He had a complicated life too - a busy one, a tense one. A rocky co-parenting relationship with a very high-strung ex, two children who demanded his attention, a high-stress job, some sort of addiction issue, not to mention the twelve-odd years he had on her. There were lots of reasons on paper why Mel kept thinking: oh, this is just silly.

Not that he even - he was very professional, really. He'd thrown her the job lead to be nice, and he liked that she was good with his kids - that was it. Mel was a deeply practical person, she had to be, and Langdon was loud and charming and brash and he'd been married to Abby, who was so different a person from who Mel was that it was almost kind of funny. One previous partner didn't necessarily mean anything of course, but - his eyes didn't linger, and he never flirted, as far as she could tell. He was friendly and their email conversations were always long and interesting, but it was always mostly about medicine. Mel wasn't going to compromise a good thing by letting her daydreams get away from her, especially when she very badly wanted to nurture and maintain that first good impression at PTMC. And she didn't have time to date. Not that she wanted to date him. Or that he wanted to date her. Just - she didn't have time. For anything. In general.

So it was silly, and she knew it was silly. She was going to try not to think about it much. At least she wouldn't have any classes this summer, she thought with faint relief. One less thing to worry about, in a life full of worries. You had to look at it from a shorter-term perspective, in that sense.

#oh this is it #will be thinking abt this all week #kingdon fic

250 notes · View notes