Chapter Text
The mirror shows a woman who looks fine.
Trinity stares at her reflection like it’s lying to her. Hair tied back, shirt buttoned, face blank. No bruises. No bleeding edges. No proof of what got carved open in LA.
No trace of what she finally said out loud.
Coach Chavez.
Uncle Ray.
Even thinking his name now feels like dragging barbed wire through her throat.
The interviews blurred together — sterile rooms, clinical questions. She’d spoken in detached, exacting detail. Dates. Places. The things he said. The things he did. Stuff she’d spent ten years trying to forget and now had to put into words that made it real again.
She told the truth. The whole truth. Over and over. To lawyers, to the police, to strangers with notepads and blank eyes.
And now she’s home. Staring at a mirror. Trying to recognise the person who survived all that.
She looks fine.
Which is absurd. Because inside, she feels nine again.
Small. Hurt. Wrecked.
Nine, she thinks.
Nine.
Nine.
Nine
.
Like a faulty emergency code blaring inside her head.
Nine, when everything shifted. When the language for what happened didn’t exist yet. When she stopped being a kid and started becoming evidence.
She touches the edge of the sink, grounding herself. The tile’s cold under her feet. Her stomach churns — slow, greasy discomfort. She breathes through it, steady.
How does she still look normal?
Her gaze drifts to the scrubs tossed over the counter, waiting for her.
Maybe this is beyond her.
Maybe she’s not as strong as she pretended to be.
Maybe she should quit.
She goes through the motions like muscle memory’s the only thing keeping her upright.
Toothbrush. Deodorant. Scrub top over a tank. Shoes tied tight. ID lanyard in her jacket pocket. One step after the other, like if she stops moving, she’ll break apart entirely.
A headache blooms behind her eyes — dull and pulsing, like a fist pressing against bone. She swallows a Tylenol dry.
The fridge hums at her when she opens it.
Inside, tucked in wax paper, is a pastry box from that Cuban bakery in LA. Guava pastelito — Sadie had insisted. She meant to eat it on the plane. Never did.
Now it just sits there. Too sweet. Too cheerful. Too untouched.
She shuts the door and grabs her bag.
Outside, the morning is brittle and grey, the air sharp against her skin. Pavement still wet from an early rain.
She texts Sadie as she walks toward the ED:
back. on shift. left food for you in the fridge.
Sadie replies almost immediately with a string of chaotic energy:
Lobster. Explosion. Middle finger. Angel. Bread. Fire. Tombstone. Slice of cake. Cigarette. Juice box. Snake. Wide eyes.
It reads like a mood swing in hieroglyphics — a warning, a welcome home, and possibly a death threat.
Trinity huffs a laugh. Of course. Only Sadie could turn emojis into an emotional support scream.
It helps. A little.
The ED glows ahead — bright, buzzing with life. She steps inside, and the scent hits her instantly: antiseptic, floor wax, burnt coffee. Home, in its own twisted way.
The vending machine is flashing ERROR in angry red letters. A candy bar hangs suspended, half-ejected.
Of course it is.
She wasn’t hungry anyway.
She’s barely crossed the floor when Robby spots her.
“Ah!” he calls, tugging gloves on as he heads toward a room. “Santos returns. Good to have you back. Rounds in five!”
She lifts a hand in acknowledgment, a vague half-salute. Everything around her is in motion — nurses charting, residents bickering, monitors chiming — and for a second, it’s disorienting.
It’s all exactly the same.
McKay’s arguing with a tiny elderly woman wielding a handbag like a weapon. Perlah and Princess are huddled by the nurses’ station, gossiping between vitals.
It should feel familiar. Grounding. Safe.
But the longer she stands there, the stranger it feels.
She looks the same.
They treat her the same.
But they don’t know.
They don’t know what she said. What she had to drag out of herself. What she relived under fluorescent lights across conference tables.
Only Langdon knows. And he’s not here. Took her weekend shifts without blinking, even skipped time with his kids.
Bastard.
Still, he showed up for her.
And now here she is — back in the machine.
They think she’s the same.
So she better act like she is.
She opens her locker and finds her granola bar stash completely cleaned out. Just a lone wrapper balled in the corner, like a joke someone forgot to laugh at.
She stares at it, already halfway into the motion of grabbing one, and sighs.
The vending machine.
She’s halfway across the ED when she remembers why she hasn’t used it in her 6 months of working at the ED; because it’s always broken, flashing that smug little red ERROR at anyone desperate enough to try.
Right. Of course.
“Dr. Santos?” Whittaker holds up a tablet. “Can you confirm this dosage for me?”
Trinity steps closer, peers at the readout—and for a second, it’s like trying to read a clock underwater. The numbers blur. Shift. Swim.
She blinks hard, pulse ticking in her neck. Focus.
“Yeah,” she says finally. “Looks right.”
Whittaker nods and walks away. No hesitation.
But Trinity feels it. That little crack between thought and instinct. That breath too long to come.
The shouting hits just as she rounds the nurses’ station.
A woman’s voice, sharp and cracking. “You people just left him there— you left him!”
Trinity turns and sees her. Mid-forties, strung out on panic and fury. Eyes rimmed red. The kind of grief that has nowhere clean to land.
“My father’s in there and no one’s telling me anything ! What kind of hospital is this?”
“I’m Dr. Santos,” Trinity says, hands up, voice even. “He’s being assessed right now—”
“Don’t lie to me. I saw you. You walked right past. You don’t even care. None of you care!”
“I understand that this is—”
“You don’t understand anything! ” The woman lunges half a step forward, finger jabbing at Trinity’s chest. “Do you even know who he is ?”
Security's already closing in. A quiet buzz of radios, the scuff of rubber soles.
“I bet you don’t even know who your own father is,” she spits.
It’s like a backhand. Not just the insult—but how fast it hits something buried deep and ugly.
Security moves in. The woman screams something else, unintelligible, as they steer her away.
Trinity doesn’t move.
“You okay?” Donnie asks, coming up beside her.
She blinks. Finds her voice. “Yeah.”
He gives her a look but doesn’t press. Just walks off.
She has to stand for a minute, breathing through the fight or flight that filled every inch of her body. Making her feel hot, but also freezing cold. She feels sick. The danger- the threat was gone, but her body disagreed.
The doors sliding open and the bustle of a new trauma case shakes her out of it. The cold air rushing in to meet the warm ER air, chilling her exposed skin.
“Twenty-two-year-old male,” the EMT rattles off. “Motorcycle versus sedan. Helmet cracked, GCS dropped en route.”
Blood already soaks the collar of the guy’s shirt. He’s pale, lips tinged blue.
Trinity gloves up, moves in. Checks pulse, barks orders.
Someone slices through his shirt. She leans in to check his pupils—
—and stops.
His eyes are brown. Wide. Unfocused. A little too familiar.
For half a second, she’s not here. Not in the trauma bay. Not in scrubs.
It’s a changing room. Or a hallway. Or the passenger seat of a car, lights sliding past the window, and a voice she hasn’t let herself remember for years.
Don’t tell anyone. You’ll ruin everything.
“Dr. Santos?”
Collins is looking at her.
She blinks. Swallows.
“Equal. Reactive.”
And just like that, she’s moving again.
She slips away as soon as the trauma's stable.
The hallway is dim and cool. She finds a patch of wall and leans into it, hands braced.
The silence makes her aware of everything: the ache in her head, the churn in her gut, the sour taste of adrenaline.
She breathes through it. Just stress. Just fatigue.
Just not sleeping. Not eating. Not talking about it.
She’s fine.
Straightens up, takes a deep breath and walks back into the noise.
The ED explodes into motion as a call comes through.
“Peds incoming. Seven-year-old male, altered mental state. Possible ingestion.”
Trinity steps into the trauma bay as the doors burst open. A small boy, limp in his panicking father's arms, is rushed in and almost thrown onto a gurney. His skin's pale. Saliva clings to the corner of his mouth.
“They said it was soap or something,” the father says, barely holding it together. “He was playing near the laundry stuff, then just—he collapsed. He won’t wake up right.”
Trinity's moving. Gloves on. Assessment mode.
“Okay, let’s get IV access and push fluids,” she says. “Could be dehydration—check blood glucose.”
Robby appears beside her, scanning vitals. “BP’s tanking. Bradycardic. Pupils pinpoint. What you thinking?”
Trinity hesitates. “Opioids maybe—yeah, Narcan—”
“No,” Robby says, too fast. “It’s a cholinergic toxidrome. SLUDGE symptoms. It’s not drugs—it’s detergent. They don’t just burn—they inhibit enzymes. We need atropine. And a tox panel for organophosphates.”
It lands hard. Because she should have known that. The symptoms were textbook.
She looks at the kid—his chest hitching in weak, wet gasps—and feels her stomach drop.
“Damn it,” she mutters, already stepping back in, adjusting orders, catching up to where she should’ve been in the first place.
Robby doesn’t say anything more. He’s too busy saving the kid.
But the silence says enough.
Trinity stands there, heart pounding, the adrenaline laced now with humiliation.
She’s supposed to be better than this.
The doors hiss open behind her, and Trinity steps out of the side entrance like the outside might have air she can breathe.
It doesn’t.
The winter air is sharp and damp and not nearly cold enough. She shivers anyway. Heat flares at her neck, flushes her skin, but her hands are clammy. She's shaking — not visibly, not quite — but she feels it deep, marrow-level. The kind of tremble that starts in the soul.
You should’ve caught it.
You missed it.
The thoughts come like kicks to the ribs.
A kid. Seven years old.
She almost—
God.
Her eyes squeeze shut, and all the day's weight slams down at once. Like her body waited until now to let her feel it.
She should quit.
She should quit.
Her brain turns traitor, dredging up old echoes.
“You’re not going to make it anyway.”
Uncle Ray’s voice, slick and amused.
“You don’t have the fight, Trinity. You just don’t.”
She was sixteen when she told him she wanted to stop playing. Thought maybe if she left the team, changed schools, tried something new, moved to live with her mum—it would be over.
He laughed at her. Got angry , then cold.
“You think they’ll believe you?”
“You think anyone wants to hear a pretty little nothing say that?”
“You’ll ruin your life trying to ruin mine.”
“Your mum left your life years ago, Trinity. She. Doesn’t. Want. You.”
She’d swallowed those words. Buried them for over a decade.
And now they were surfacing again. Feral. Familiar.
The interviews in LA. The sterile rooms. The lawyer’s tight mouth, her own voice cracking. Every question peeling her open. They wanted proof of pain. Chronology. Consistency.
But the trauma didn’t come with timestamps.
She couldn't even cry at the time. Couldn't scream. Didn't fight. She just— left her body . And even now, sometimes, she still hadn’t come back.
Her stomach curls in on itself.
What if it gets out?
What if they know?
What would Robby think, or Whittaker, or anyone in the damn building?
They think she’s competent. Cool under pressure. A bit hot-headed sometimes, sure. But a victim?
They don’t know she’s a mess. A freak. A statistic. A girl who let it happen. A woman who’s still letting it wreck her. Who almost killed a kid today.
Maybe they would be right not to believe her.
Maybe she wouldn’t either.
She presses her fists into her eyes until colours bloom behind them. She’s unravelling again, coming apart like a threadbare seam, when—
A scream tears through the night.
Raw. High. Real .
Trinity’s eyes snap open.
And she runs.
She sprints around the corner.
The scream’s still echoing—frantic, jagged.
In the ambulance bay, chaos blooms. A man lies sprawled on the pavement, blood slicking the concrete beneath him. A woman kneels at his side, screaming his name through sobs.
And a few feet away, another man stands—knife still in hand. His chest heaves. Blood splatter across his shirt. Eyes wide, animal, disassociated. Like he’s the one in shock.
No sirens yet.
No backup.
No one else out here.
Trinity doesn't stop to think.
“Hey!” she yells, hands up, stepping forward, way too close for comfort. “Hey—look at me.”
The man’s eyes flick to her. Wild. Full of fear. Not just of her—of himself .
She keeps her voice steady. Low. Commanding without being loud.
“Okay. Okay. I’m not a cop. I’m a doctor. That guy’s still breathing, but he won’t be for long. I need you to put the knife down so I can help him.”
He doesn’t move. His jaw tics. Blood drips from the tip of the blade.
She glances at the man on the ground—his chest rising, shallow and fast.
“Please,” she says. “Let me do my job.”
For one awful second, she thinks he’s going to lunge. That maybe this is how she dies—already unraveling, already empty.
But then his hand shakes. His knuckles go white on the hilt. And—
He lets it drop.
The clatter hits louder than it should.
She’s already moving, dropping to the ground beside the bleeding man.
“Pressure,” she tells the girlfriend, dragging gauze from deep in her pocket. “You hold here, keep it tight, do not let up.” Then she presses her hands down on the wound near his liver. Deep, wet warmth soaking through the fabric.
Behind her, the guy who dropped the knife drops to his knees, like someone hit his kill switch.
“We need a gurney out here—now!” Trinity yells toward the doors. Her voice cuts through the cold like a blade.
Everything else fades.
Her shame. Her fear. Her fuck-ups.
She’s here.
Hands bloody. Breathing. Working.
A minute later, the cavalry floods out—Collins, Jesse, EMTs with a stretcher. They lift the wounded man onto it with practiced urgency. Jesse starts compressions. Collins barks orders, calling for blood to be prepped.
Trinity doesn’t move. Her knees ache on the concrete. Her hands are slick, blood up to her wrists, soaking her scrub top. There’s a smear across her cheek she didn’t even feel land.
“Hey—” Robby crouches beside her, quick glance to check she's not actively falling apart. “You did good. He’s got a chance. Come find us when you're cleaned up.”
Then he’s gone, jogging beside the gurney as it disappears through the bay doors.
Trinity exhales, almost collapses. Heart pounding in her throat.
A stifled scream breaks behind her.
The girlfriend—folded near the ambulance bumper, sobbing uncontrollably—tries to follow the stretcher, but security gently holds her back. She's barefoot, hands stained, shaking.
Trinity steps over, crouches beside her.
“He’s in the best place,” she says, firm but not unkind. “He’s going to get everything we’ve got. I promise.”
The woman’s eyes lock onto hers, wild with fear. But she nods.
And then—
Another noise. A shout.
The knife guy—cuffed now, restrained between two security guards—is still writhing, breathing like he’s drowning. Eyes glassy, frantic.
Trinity rises and faces him.
“Hey,” she says, stepping into his eyeline.
He freezes. Just a flicker.
“They’ll help you. If you let them,” she says, low. “Don’t let your worst moment define you.”
His shoulders slump. Not much. But enough.
Just enough.
She washes up fast. Swaps out her top for a spare. Uses the scrubs exchange like a pro. Gets changed in the toilets like a normal person and not in a cubicle with a dead guy (she’d laughed for hours when Whittaker had mentioned that during one of their wine and film nights a few months back). The scrubs are stiff, the trauma still echoing in her joints—but something’s shifted. Not fixed. Not better. Just… quieter.
She glances back once, toward the ambulance bay.
Then she walks into Trauma 1. Determined.
The trauma bay is controlled chaos.
Monitors beeping erratic. Gloves snap. The air smells like blood and adrenaline.
“He’s hypotensive,” Collins says sharply. “Chest rise is uneven. Could be tension.”
“Needle decompression,” she adds, turning. “Robby?”
Robby’s already watching Trinity. “Santos?”
Trinity’s pulse spikes.
She hesitates—half a beat—then, steady: “Yeah. I’ve got it.”
He gives the smallest nod.
She grabs the kit, peels the sheath off a 14-gauge, and positions herself. “Second intercostal, midclavicular,” she mutters—more to herself than anyone else.
“On your go,” Robby says.
She breathes in once. Then plunges the needle in.
A hiss of air. The monitor ticks up. Relief slides through the room like a current. She almost swears (but doesn’t, Robby’s reminded her about appropriate workplace language too many times). So cool.
“Good,” Collins says, already pivoting. “Let’s keep moving.”
Robby meets her eyes, just for a second. Not a smile. But approval.
That’s enough.
The rest of the shift is a blur—stabilising vitals, handing off labs, charting between cases, her feet aching, her brain humming. She handles two more consults, redirects a patient trying to leave AMA, stitches a forehead lac on a teenager who won’t stop cracking jokes.
Normal chaos. The kind she can ride like a wave.
But hours later—when the shift finally ends, when the adrenaline fades—Trinity finds herself on the surgical floor.
Room 14.
The stabbing victim, Miguel, is propped up in bed, IV lines snaking from his arms. His girlfriend’s beside him, holding his hand. He’s pale, bandaged, but awake. Talking.
Then a blur of motion: two kids rush past Trinity, bursting into the room. “Dad!” one yells, flinging himself at the bedside. A woman follows, Miguel’s mother maybe, tears in her eyes as she kisses her son’s forehead.
Trinity watches from the door.
Alive. They get to have this.
A father. A son. A partner. A family.
And her chest aches in a place she doesn’t have words for.
“You did good,” a voice says from behind.
Trinity turns. Yolanda García leans against the wall, scrub cap off, hair in a loose knot, eyes sharper than usual—though the usual sarcasm’s softened at the edges.
“Heard you saved a life today.”
Trinity smirks, defaulting to deflection. “Please. I save lives every day.”
García grins, a flicker of teeth. “No, seriously. That was clean work. Fast thinking. Even Collins said so.”
That lands harder than she expects. Trinity blinks. “Uh… thanks.”
For a second, García just watches her. Like she’s sizing up more than her clinical skills.
“You’re pale,” she says finally. “You okay?”
“Of course I’m okay,” Trinity says breezily. “I had a chill, trauma-filled, knife-wielding maniac kind of day. Textbook. Very restful.”
“Right.” García arches an eyebrow. “Well, if you pass out, aim for soft surfaces.”
She turns to go but glances back once.
“Take care, Santos.”
Then she’s gone.
Trinity lingers a second longer before heading for the stairwell. Her legs are lead. The hallway echoes with distant laughter, ringing phones, the squeak of sneakers on tile.
She presses a hand to her stomach as another twist cuts through her middle—sharp, cramping.
Probably still stress. Or hunger.
Or something else.
She doesn’t know anymore.
All she knows is the walk to the staff parking lot feels longer than usual. And that somewhere inside, something is still… off.