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Yolanda Garcia opened her eyes to a whole new world on a random September morning, just before the clock struck ten.
The usual music followed: screams of pain, alarms ignored despite their insistent beeping, the overlapping chatter of presentations and handovers spinning melodiously around her. A normal day at the Pittsburgh Medical Center. So normal that she moved on autopilot, muscle fibres tugging themselves into familiar arrangements.
It was odd that one could find happiness amidst the grief coloured shroud the emergency department was cloaked in. In fact, if you’d asked Yolanda herself just a few years ago-when she was still far too wet behind the ears- she would have told you as much. Back then, she had dreams. She still had them of course, dreaming was simply human, but back then her dreams had bent themselves unapologetically towards the fantastical.
One day, she would say to herself, she would be able to see the fresh greens of the leaves lining each tree when summer came. The vast blue sky that swallowed her up in a comforting bubble and held her there. Perhaps even red, the colour of love and passion as she lay side by side with her soulmate, in perfect happiness.
Back then, that had been what she needed to be happy- her soulmate. Now, she was rather content with something much simpler: a job well done.
Mami had been the problem. Where most other parents were quick to dissuade their children from infantile follies- like the entire idea of soulmates- Mami had done precisely the opposite. Like most people, she’d never been able to see in colour, her daughter’s still grey face looming over her at her deathbed, but that had done nothing to hinder her belief nor her encouragement for her little Yolita to find the one.
“It happens all at once,” she’d said. “Todo pasa de golpe.”
Yolanda had listened attentively, her hair in two braids, dark grey ribbons tied neatly at the ends. One moment the world was nothing but ash and shadow; the next, it was flooded with colour so bright it hurt to look at. A kaleidoscope of new discoveries.
That was how you knew, Mama had said. That was how you knew you had found them.
Your soulmate.
Yolanda would play the story out imagining what they would be like, her two barbies side by side. What colour eyes would they have? she’d wonder, did they laugh loudly without care or did they try to hide it, saving their joy for just the two of them?
She wondered what they would do with their hands when they were nervous. If they preferred the quiet of early mornings or stayed up late, talking until the world felt smaller. She imagined the sound of their voice when they spoke her name, whether it would feel familiar the first time she heard it.
She wondered if they liked the same foods she did, if they drank their coffee sweet or bitter, if they believed in small rituals the way her mother did. She wondered if they had also been waiting.
She never wondered if they would love her. That much was certain.
They were soulmates.
In her pre-med neurology seminars she’d learnt about “heightened emotional stimuli”; a surge of oxytocin and dopamine increasing blood flow to the cones of the retina, allowing dormant pathways to fire. Nothing more than the brain, briefly overwhelmed by attachment, interpreting excess input as revelation.
She wrote essays on the topic, putting words to paper that would have made Mami revolt. But in her heart of hearts, perhaps because she’d been raised on a steady diet of their love story, the way an accent clings no matter how carefully you try to sand it down, she still believed.
One day, her mind echoed Mami’s words, her world would flood with colour.
It was barely nine a.m., and already she was running out of time.
That was one thing unique to the Pitt: the earth might still get its twenty-four rotations on its axis, but inside these walls the sun rose and set at someone else’s discretion. Time moved faster here, compressed by urgency, measured in heartbeats and blood loss rather than hours.
Her fingers danced a quick waltz across the surgery locker room keypad, the thin sweater that wasn’t the best choice for mid September was hurriedly shucked off in place of her scrubs. Her hair went up next, the curls pinned back with practised ease.It was a day just like any other. Perhaps that was why some part of her did derive such happiness from her work, it was habitual, habitual in its crises perhaps, but habitual nonetheless.
Her pager beeped a moment later and just like that the day began. She strolled over to the stairs, taking them two at a time. She liked to do the stairs early in the day, before images of grey, almost black, liquid pooling out of every orifice and the orchestra of panic overwhelmed her senses.
The trauma bay was already loud when she pushed through the doors. Collins was running the resus: a man, red in the face and gasping with what looked like a nail protruding from the left side of-
“Whoa,” Yolanda said, already moving, “that looks intracardiac.”
She tuned out the rest of the ER on instinct, the noise receding as the familiar pathways lit up in her mind. Nail to the precordium. Possible ventricular penetration. Risk of tamponade. Remove it here and he could bleed out in seconds. Leave it in and pray the pressure held long enough to get him upstairs.
She stepped closer, eyes flicking between the wound and the monitor.
“He's tachycardic with borderline BP,” Robby spoke up. Yolanda could have guessed as much looking at the patient but she liked Robby. Even if he didn’t half love the sound of his own voice; she couldn’t exactly fault him for it, it was fifty percent of why any of them did this job.
“Standby with two units whole blood, “ she nodded, “stat card-”
She stopped.
Because there, just beyond the foot of the bed, stood the most beautiful woman Yolanda had ever had the joy of laying eyes on.
Standing in full technicolour.
Her hair was like a chocolate bar left in the sun too long, a richness to it that had Yolanda longing to reach up and pull free the hair tie restraining it into a polite ponytail. Her face was all strong lines softened by movement, the kind that made you look twice without knowing why. She was lighter than Yolanda, the sort of face that would warm easily outdoors, and her lips, when she spoke, curved with purpose rather than politeness.
And her eyes, Yolanda struggled to look away. Her eyes were the best jewel there was.
She found herself wishing she still carried around the worn chart Mama had once made for her, the one with all the careful labels and comparisons, just so she might know the right words to describe the woman in front of her. Because whatever they were, whatever name they carried, she was certain they were her favourite now.
“Garcia?” Dr. Collins prompted, as the patient let out another scream- half laced with fear, the other half with pain.
“Yes,” Yolanda tore her gaze away from the woman. From her soulmate.
The word landed fully formed and impossible, and with it the rest of the room surged into a focus she had never imagined. Too much. All at once. De golpe. Blood was a horrid colour, she thought distantly, visceral and obscene, and she forced herself to stop drinking in the world around her and look back at the patient bleeding out in front of her.
“OR can take him in ten minutes,” she said, voice steady despite everything. The sooner she saw this patient, the sooner she could find her soulmate and start the rest of her life in perfect happiness.
Her soulmate was Trinity Santos. At least according to the frightened medical student she’d cornered.
“Trinity Santos,” Yolanda repeated silently, tasting the name again, her tongue curling around the ts. She was certain Mama, if she were still here, would have found it humorously ironic that Yolanda, who had fled at the very mention of anything to do with Sunday afternoons spent roasting in the crowded hall of their church, was fated to be with a Trinity Santos.
Mama would have loved you just for your name, Yolanda thought, a quiet laugh curling in her chest.
But it was true. Mama would have loved Trinity anyway.
Because Yolanda already did.
Yolanda remembered the day she’d first told Mama. She remembered even more clearly, how young she’d been when the knowing had settled in her bones, quiet and unshakeable. She hadn’t had the language for it yet, not really. Just the conviction that in all her make believe games and in all the stories she had told, he had always felt wrong. Mama had looked at her for a long moment, studying her the way she always did when something mattered. Then she had smiled, soft and unsurprised.
“Entonces será una ella”, she’d said simply, as if Yolanda had told her something obvious. As if this, too, had always been part of the plan.
Yolanda had waited for the fear after that. For correction. For doubt.
It never came.
She spotted those eyes once more through the frosted glass doors of one of the trauma rooms. Langdon was with her. Ordinarily that might have dissuaded Yolanda, she liked Langdon, even considered him a step above ‘work colleague’ and had said as much to him, not without cushioning it in some old fashioned teasing (or bullying as the workplace conduct PDF Gloria had sent round as a ‘polite reminder’ called it), but he had never let a moment pass without ribbing her about her “obsession with soulmates” as he called it. Apparently she shared that with his daughter, Penelope, who was four.
Yolanda could only imagine what he might say if he found out their newest intern was said soulmate.
“What have we got?” she rushed out as she all but ran into the room. Trinity had to have felt it too. Sometimes it sucked working at a major trauma centre, what she wouldn’t give right now to blow off work and take Trinity down to one of the local bars or maybe even home and- she was getting ahead of herself now.
“What have we got?” another voice echoed hers, Robby. She made a silly joke, still looking at Trinity, who had for some impossibly odd reason, looked away.
Langdon started his spiel but she cut him off, “stop,” she commanded in the way her ‘friends’ in medical school, though friends was a strong word for people she no longer spoke to, fellow gunners worked better perhaps, had said wouldn’t win her any favours, “I want to hear from Dr Santos.” She wanted, no needed to hear the sound of her soulmate’s voice.
The woman in question blushed prettily, a delightful warmth blooming across her cheeks. Red, Yolanda knew that now. Red, the colour of love and passion, of hurt and anger, of blood.
All at once.
“Isolated chest trauma,” Trinity said, voice steady, eyes fixed firmly on the patient rather than on Yolanda, “obvious flail chest. POCUS is clean. Sats and vitals are stable.”
Why won’t you look at me, Yolanda wanted to say, but this wasn't the place. “Excellent presentation,” she said instead, meaning it.
Red. Again.
It bloomed across her soulmate’s cheeks like a second pulse, vivid and unmistakable, and Yolanda felt her breath hitch despite herself. That had to be her favourite now, red. Not because of roses or flags or any of the things she had once imagined it might mean. Red because it belonged to Trinity Santos. Because it appeared when she smiled, when she was flustered and when Yolanda spoke her name.
She forced her attention back to the patient. She needed to get to theatre soon, but not before one more attempt to anchor herself to Trinity Santos.
“Dr. Santos,” Yolanda smiled at her.
Trinity’s hands were fidgeting, though not from nerves, Yolanda thought. It looked more like readiness, like she wanted to do something, start on the nerve blocks Robby had suggested, perhaps. A traitorous part of Yolanda’s brain insisted it was something else entirely. That Trinity wanted to reach out and touch her, almost as much as Yolanda wanted to do the same.
“Call me with the CT results,” Yolanda said, voice steady, “extension one-one-two-one.”
At least now, she could guarantee they would have to speak again.
She spent the rest of the sluggish, chugging shift trying to steal as many moments with Trinity as she could.
It wasn’t exactly the done thing to spell it out. With the rarity of soulmates-and the resulting lack of belief- Yolanda couldn’t very well pull Trinity into an empty sluice and confess her love right there and then. No matter how much the irrational part of her wished she could.
So she settled for crumbs.
Trinity was a Scorpio, apparently. An unexpected match, if the astrology app an ex-girlfriend had once downloaded on her phone ( the app Yolanda had never bothered to delete and had eventually started checking daily) was to be believed. But fate had placed them together, and that couldn’t be wrong.
She was stubborn and confident, maybe a little too confident, which Yolanda counted firmly as a plus. She liked them stubborn. Liked the chase. Liked the idea of a special softness she might one day coax out, just for herself.
Besides Yolanda had spent close to a lifetime hearing those words too, how ugly adjectives can be twisted, she was uppity where they were self assured; always obstinate and never tenacious. It was what made her such an excellent surgeon, and perhaps what now had caused fate to draw the two of them together.
At just after half past twelve, what was technically her lunch break, according to the PDF she’d been sent all those years ago during orientation week, she finally scrubbed out of surgery and headed back down to the emergency department.
She’d never thought she’d feel like this. Almost victorious, and at the expense of her poor patients, no less. Guilty, too, for the thought, but when she spotted the now-familiar figure of Trinity Santos, standing at the head of a trauma bed, all competence and quiet focus, the feeling won out anyway.
“He just dropped his BP and sats,” Trinity said, sharp and immediate.
Yolanda tried to temper down her proud grin, but from the odd look Robby gave her, she wasn’t quite successful. “Hmm,” she said, nodding once, forcing herself back into the room, “two units O neg.”
“Already done,” Trinity replied and there went her focus again, “the haemothorax is now a huge collection of blood.”
“Prep for a chest tube,” Yolanda said, her voice steady despite the warmth curling low in her chest. Trinity had been angling for one all day. Teaching opportunity, she told herself. That was all this was. Not a moment to linger, to take that soft, slightly rough hand in hers, feel the warmth and see, finally see, the slight redness from the effort as they pushed in together.
“I would love to do the chest tube,” Trinity piped up. Of course.
Yolanda watched her lips closely as they formed around the word love, the way her pink tongue darted out and touched the roof of her mouth delicately. How would the word sound, she thought, directed at herself. How would it taste?
“You got it, I’ll guide you,” she hoped her hunger wasn’t as obvious to the rest of the team as it was to her.
Trinity’s gloved hand closed around the scalpel. Her movements were careful but slightly uncertain, the kind of hesitation Yolanda usually stepped in to correct immediately.Instead, she took a half-step back, maybe she was the distraction.
Then, suddenly, a clatter.
A sonorous chorus rang out as the scalpel slipped from Trinity’s fingers, looped and somersaulted in the air lazily as though gravity had forgotten it, before at last burying itself, slotting through the tight weave of Yolanda’s sneakers, to find its home right inside her foot.
“Fuck!”
Blood bloomed quickly through the thin fabric of her shoe. Red, vivid and undeniable. Yolanda barely had time to register it before Trinity was crouching, hands shaking, eyes wide and shining with something far more intense than professional concern. Finally, she wanted to say, finally.
Oh my God,” Trinity said, the words tumbling out of her, “are you okay?”
Her gaze was still locked on the blood.
“Leave it!” the pain carved her words into something far uglier than Yolanda had intended, and she regretted it immediately as Trinity flinched back.
She turned back to the patient, cursing her distraction as she finished making tracing over the incision and inserting the drain.
Trinity came to find her later, hovering by the door of the unused room, half awkwardly, half guiltily.
“Can I… can I draw your blood?” she asked, too quickly, “for the panels I mean- um I can do Silas too. The protoco-” she continued, stammering.
Yolanda watched her for a long moment, taking in the tightness in her shoulders, the way her hands wouldn’t quite still.
“Do you see colour?” she asked simply. She’d imagined this conversation over Indian or maybe the new Greek place that had opened up in town, but south 16 was as good a place as any, she supposed.
Trinity froze.
Yolanda waited quietly for her to respond, squeezing the bottle of distilled water gently over her wound.
“I do,” Trinity said at last, “I have since this morning, from the moment my eyes met yours.”
“Green,” Yolanda added because it felt important, “that’s the first colour I saw, your eyes. The same green as the leaves dancing gently in the wind, the kind of colour that covers the world in the summer, the sort that breathes life right into you.”
Trinity laughed weakly, scrubbing a hand over her face, “I haven’t um- haven’t had the chance to look at the names of the colours yet.”
Yolanda shrugged at that, it didn’t matter.
“Sorry um,” Trinity continued awkwardly, “I don’t know what to think about this whole,” she waved her arms wildly in the air, “business. Do you want me to suture for you?”
“No,” Yolanda shook her head, “you can assist,” she offered instead just to see Trinity’s smile, but she wouldn’t let her completely change the subject, “business?” she pushed.
“I-I mean I never really believed,” she looked away from Yolanda, fast enough that she wouldn’t see the hurt clouding over Yolanda’s brown eyes. In all her wondering, she’d never once thought her soulmate wouldn’t believe. What does that even mean?
“It’s ridiculous isn’t it? Doesn’t make sense,” Trinity continued, “I mean you’re a total stranger, how can you be my-” she laughed again at that. It wasn’t a funny laugh.
The words stung more than the cut but Yolanda absorbed it anyway.
“I half expected,” Trinity went on, rambling now, “to end up with some pot-bellied, middle-aged man who smells faintly of disappointment. Just my luck, right?”
Yolanda exhaled slowly.“Well,” she said, carefully, “we don’t have to be anything.” It hurt to say. It hurt more than she had expected, but she supposed Trinity was right, they were strangers.
Trinity’s head snapped up, “I didn’t mean-” she paused, “sorry, I can see you really did believe. I’m sure I’m the opposite of what you were expecting,” there was that laugh again, self-deprecating, Yoanda settled on, as the word to describe it.
“First I nearly amputate your entire foot and now I’m here making things even worse.”
“I do,” Yolanda corrected, “present tense. I do believe. Still.” She took a deep breath and carried on, “You’re right Dr Santos,” she couldn't call her Trinity, not yet at least, “you don’t have to believe anything just because I do. We are strangers.”
Santos stared at her.
“But,” Yolanda continued, voice soft, “but I’d really like to change that. How about you make things up to me, for ‘nearly amputating my foot’ Dr Santos?”
She took another deep breath to prepare herself, conscious of the fact that this was the first time she’d baulked at the thought of asking out a woman, before adding cheekily, “I’m quite partial to a cocktail?"
There was silence once more, so much silence Yolanda said a quiet prayer to every deity in the heavens and above to open up the earth and swallow her whole, but eventually-
Santos smiled, nervous but real, “Cocktail?” she echoed, "I’d like that.”