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Trinity Santos was well aware that medical residency would be hell especially because she chose to do it in the er. She however did not know that the homeless wet cat (also known as Whitaker) she adopted after her first shift would be essential to her staying alive.
Trinity had spent most of her teenage years as a competitive gymnast, a sport known for its creepy coaches and enforced terrible relationship to food. And boy both were true in her experience. It had taken her friend killing herself to bring police investigation to what was happening and with it national attention. And while Trinity had been a minor and testified anonymously there was still a finite number of girls on the team all tied to the case. She had taken the settlement money, bought an apartment and went to medical school.
When she was training she had a super specific diet to be eaten precisely, when she stopped and nobody told her what to eat anymore she just stopped eating. Without the training she didn't feel hungry and it felt good to remove her body entirely out of his control and solely into hers. trinity did however hate being weak, during medical school she mostly turned it around ate at a normal schedule and made sure she would never faint in front of anyone else again (there may have been some projection applied to javadis crash nickname)
But now she was an ER resident and had a problem. Everybody knew residents were worked impossibly hard and in a unit like an ER where everyone is already at wits end it really catches up. She found herself falling into automatic bad habits. Nobody really ate at the er except of course for Whitaker who was still like a squirrel storing food away for winter.
When in med school a policy of not eating would be a marker of weakness and standing out, anyone who stopped to eat in the ER was the weak one.
When Santos started getting home after her impossibly long shifts and the idea of eating made her sick she knew she was back in trouble. She knew she was at home and it was different but the idea of sitting to eat real food that wasn't a protein bar on the go filled her with a feeling of weakness like she was failing patients she wasn't even with.
Whitaker noticed curse him. From the moment he moved in he started cooking regularly and so he immediately noticed that he was almost the only one eating it.
The only thing Santos could appreciate was he didn't try to talk about it, but he started making a thing out of eating dinner together, packing her food for the shift and checking up on her. The worst thing about the human wet rat is that being mean to him did nothing but make her feel bad now.
But despite Whitaker's best efforts she had to admit that she was not doing too hot in that regard.
This month her and Whitaker were working opposite shifts and all his hard work was really going down the drain. She hardly touched the food he left at home and without his not so subtle reminders the packed snacks often stayed sealed away.
It was starting to affect her work, she wasn't as sharp as she should be not catching everything. She fucked up during surgery, if Garcia wasn't there she would have killed a man. She was banished to trauma for the rest of the shift with a word from Garcia and she spent the next 4 hours in a stupor, doing stitches on autopilot while Mackay looked on.
She found her way to the roof by the end of the shift. Trinity couldn't help but be shocked when Garcia found her there.
Trinity was sitting on the inside of the roof with her back against the railway when Garcia walked out. Trinity stood but felt the ground dip out under her feet and her vision blur and she found herself in an inelegant heap on the ground. She supposed she should be grateful that she didn't hit her head on the railing on her way down.
“You and Langdon are like twins separated at birth.” Yolanda said. Trinity probably would have preferred to have fallen off of the roof then hear that.
She picked herself off of the ground and leaned back against the rail subtly using it to prop her up. “I'm sorry, I made a terrible mistake and almost killed a man I promise I know I don't know everything I'm so sorry someone almost died because of me”
Santos formulated her best apology
“Really that's it? That's all you're apologizing for? You're playing dumb as if you aren't playing with everyone's life just like Langdon did?”
Santos tried to take a step back only to be met with the rail, for a moment the street below called her telling her it might as well be now. It had to happen eventually there was no reason to believe she could make it much further she ducked under the rail only to be grabbed by Yolanda. In different circumstances her strength would be hot but now it was just frustrating. Yolanda dragged her back from the ledge toward the door. When earlier her expression really was angry now it was clearly just fear.
“Are you going to come home with me now or do I need to check you into psych”
“Home” trinity managed to croak out. Yolanda held her arm until they had gotten down the stairs going into the car with her.
The car right back was in silence and Trinity rethought her decisions. She thought about today and had to admit - working malnourished is not that much better then working high industry standards be damned. When they entered Yolanda's apartment she made two sandwiches as Trinity sat mute at the counter.
Eventually Yolanda started.
“Do you think I'm stupid? To not notice you never finishing the food we eat together to not hear from the people in the Pitt that whiticher is constantly telling you to eat but you never do, to not physically see it despite seeing you naked all the time? Fine I might have been stupid once I didn't notice Langdon, and I didn't notice you felt pressured by me but damn it i refuse not to notice things that are in front of my face anymore.
“If you knew all this time and this is for some reason a problem why didn't you say anything? Why did you just wait for me to mess up? Why didn't you help?” Santos didn't actually know if she preferred Yolanda to have done something but she hated the idea of being watched and scrutinized like that.
“When you work down in the pitt you see patients on the worst days of their lives and you need to talk to them. I don't talk to patients, I meet them for 5 minutes. Patients to me are like dolls or puzzles. I don't know how to say these things to check these things. You practice this every day and you're still kinda shit at it and you're not my patient which makes it worse because it means I actually care for you. So yeah I didn't know how to say anything about it and I kept my silence but today I had to say something. Today it endangered a patient. The conditions we work in as doctors especially in the pitt are bad enough and residency is basically a glorified hazing ritual- you being in there in a weakened malnourished state can only lead to lives being lost.
So I'm going to be clear- either you actually handle this and I have complete confidence you can or I will tell Robbi just like you told him about Langdon.”
When Yolanda finished her tirade she softened up, “look I'm really worried about you especially after today, and I know your so scared of being weak but I need you to be talking to me because I was so scared when I saw you fall from nothing and then try to jump off the roof today.”
Trinity didn't have anything to say, she was mainly trying to stop herself from crying, she felt the sinking Pit of guilt in her stomach and really all it did was make things worse. She looked at the knife that had been used to cut the cheese she imagined-. Stop. She closed her eyes and let the tears drip out. She counted in her head to 10. She looked down at the sandwich in front of her cheese baloney and humus and took a bite. It tasted like cardboard and eyes.
“Can you stop looking at me?” She knew she sounded like a wuss, like an insecure teenager like- before she had time to continue down the stream of thoughts Yolanda turned around and started washing the dishes in the sink.
Trinity felt a swell of gratitude in her chest and thought maybe this was going to be alright after all. She took another bite and another forcing what felt like cardboard down her throat. She thought of Langdon that Robbi had later told her had started stealing the drugs after developing the problem but couldn't tell anyone to get help because of fear of professional repercussions. Santos didn't think it was just that. She imagined herself addicted to drugs and having to tell someone- not just someone her boss and everyone something permanent on her record. A bit like what came up when you googled her old gymnastics team. She gagged tasting the cheese tinged with acid focusing on keeping it down and not spilling it on her plate. She pushed the plate away, maybe she couldn't do this. She really was like Langdon but it wasn't fair. Langdon had everything he destroyed himself over what a silly injury? Santos experienced far worse on the bars she was sure, had competed with far worse had been cornered alone in the locker room with far worse. She had lost her childhood, the first girl she kissed, her trust in her family and he destroyed his life over a backache. It was different. Yolanda was looking at her now that she wasn't eating and the sympathy in her eyes made her want to scrub her skin off.
Trinity imagined herself telling her train of thought to Yolanda or Robbi “I have a better reason to destroy myself and put patients at risk so it's fine”.
She opened her mouth dropping her defenses
“I'm sorry, I don't know what to do and I'm scared. It's so hard in the Pitt, hard as a resident. I feel like they want me to feel like shit all the time to never eat or sleep. If these are bad things that can hurt our patients, why do interns get only 2 days off a month and second and third year residents even less?”
“Your right. This whole thing is an elaborate hazing ritual and it's not fair. But I need you to be safe and healthy even though there are so many forces working against it. Think of it as something more to prove to me, I know you can do incredible things, can you do them without reducing yourself to ashes in the process?”
“I don't know.” Santos answered.
That’s alright, can you try anyway?”
“Yeah.”