Work Text:
Lesson 1: How to kill your Midwestern roommate and make it look like an accident
“If I trust you to save a life, I trust you to order takeout!” Whitaker shouts, his voice echoing from the depths of the bathroom.
From the living room, Santos shouts back. “I don’t know if you understand what you’re getting yourself into!”
“I promise it’s fine!”
Santos looks down at her phone, where the DoorDash app is open to the menu for her go-to place for Friday night takeout. She’s ordered from there so many times her order is automatically suggested, but this time is different. Tonight she’s taking Whitaker’s Thai food virginity and he’s letting her pick everything they order. (When he told her he’d never had Thai before, she almost cried. God, what a sad life, to have gotten to twenty-seven without it.) It would be great to double-check her choices with him, but she’s pretty sure if she walked into his room right now she’d find him freshly showered in just a towel, which is something neither of them want to experience. At that precise moment her stomach rumbles—a helpful reminder that they really should have ordered dinner on their way back from the hospital.
“Seriously, go for it. I trust you,” he calls out.
What Santos doesn’t hear is what he mutters to himself under his breath: “It’s just takeout. How bad can it be?”
Forty-five minutes later, with Dennis’ damp hair curling around his ears and Trinity dressed in head-to-toe gray sweats, they both learn how bad it can be. Huddled as they are around their card table-turned-dining room, there’s nowhere for Whitaker to hide when he takes his first bite of green curry and immediately panics. Trinity glances over from where she’s still unpacking the rest of their order.
“Oh, shit, sorry,” she says, reaching across the table and taking the plastic container right out of Dennis’ hands. “That’s for me.”
“It’s—so—spicy,” Dennis rasps, reaching for his water bottle. His voice is so hoarse it sounds like a smoker of forty years or someone fresh off intubation.
“Okay, it’s not that bad, you baby.” Trinity swaps the green curry she ordered for herself with the red curry she ordered for him. “Here’s yours. It shouldn’t kill you.”
Ignoring the fact that Dennis has eaten some of her food, which would normally be cause for the death penalty, Trinity happily digs in. If she were alone she would moan at how good it tastes. There’s nothing like her comfort food after a long shift of saving people’s lives and smelling nothing but blood and antiseptic for hours on end. She closes her eyes and lets out a satisfied breath through her nose, feeling like her sinuses are clear for the first time all day.
When she opens them again, she’s greeted with the sight of Whitaker, redder than she’s ever seen him, with watery eyes and a runny nose. He looks like a guest on that hot sauce-themed talk show after eating the spiciest wing. Thank God he’s not a celebrity, Santos thinks. That show would actually end his life.
“Okay there, Huckleberry?”
Dennis nods. He fumbles for his water and Trinity has to cover her mouth to hide her laugh when she sees his hand is shaking.
“‘s great,” he says, after he’s taken a long sip. It doesn’t seem to have helped; he’s still so raspy he sounds like Myrna. “‘s really good, thanks.”
Between them, Trinity reaches for the edamame and pops open one of the pods between her front teeth. “Is that right.”
Dennis nods. “Uh-huh.”
He sounds like he’s dying. It’s not like she ever forgets her roommate is from Nebraska, but it’s moments like this that remind her he’s really from Nebraska. She chose the mildest spice level for his order, but she really should have left a clarification: not just mild, but Midwestern mild. White people spicy, as some say. Even more Midwestern is the fact that he’s pretending to like it so she doesn’t think he’s ungrateful, even as snot rolls down from his nose onto his upper lip. Finally, after she watches Dennis steel himself to take another shaking bite of his curry, she decides to show mercy. In the middle of the table are plastic containers of salted edamame and spring rolls with sweet and sour sauce, which she pushes towards him.
“Okay, this is sad. I’m trying to expand your horizons, not poison you. Trade?”
“Huh?”
Trinity shoves the rolls and edamame at him. “You can have these if you give me your curry. I’ll have it for leftovers this week.”
Dennis eyes the appetizers with the yearning of a dog who wants table scraps. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, dude, eat ‘em before I change my mind.”
“Oh my god, thank you,” Dennis replies, with audible relief. “Wait, these aren’t spicy, right?”
Trinity snorts as she clicks the lid back onto the green curry and sets it aside, watching Dennis fall upon the edamame and spring rolls like he really is a starving stray. Even with his mouth full he still manages a smile and a thumbs-up.
“These are really good,” he says, rather muffled. “Thank you, seriously.”
Trinity snorts. “Maybe we stick to pizza next time.”
Lesson 2: How to have a sexuality crisis while watching G-rated movies
“Let me get this straight,” Santos says, pointing the remote at Whitaker accusingly, “your parents didn’t let you watch Harry Potter, but they let Great Value Ellen DeGeneres sing to you about Jesus?”
“It’s not about Jesus,” Whitaker sighs, already exasperated. He reaches for the DVD case and holds it up between them. “His name is literally on the cover. It’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, not Jesus Christ Superstar.”
“Okay, fine. Joseph, whatever. Doesn’t change the fact that Evil Ellen is currently on my TV screen and it’s kinda freaking me out.”
Whitaker tilts his head, considering the blonde woman currently paused mid-monologue on the television, who maybe does look a little like Ellen DeGeneres, if he’s remembering who Ellen DeGeneres is. They’ve made it less than ten minutes into their movie night before Santos paused the film to interrogate him. If she keeps it up, they’re not going to get through even one of the films on their list, which had been Trinity’s idea in the first place. After her millionth reference to a film Dennis hasn’t seen, she demanded to know what he actually was allowed to watch as a child. Considering how thoroughly his parents disapproved of most mainstream media—the corrupting influence of Hollywood and all that—the resulting list was only long enough for one movie night. In any case, it’s really not helping Dennis beat the Amish allegations.
“I guess she does kind of look like Ellen, now that you point it out,” he concedes. “Can you just play it now? This movie’s only like eighty minutes, but at this rate we’ll be watching it all night.”
Santos ignores his plea. She taps the remote against her chin. “I’m assuming you weren’t allowed to watch Ellen either.”
“Oh, yeah, absolutely not. She’s a terrible influence,” Dennis scoffs. “What if she turned me into a lesbian?”
Santos barks out a laugh and sinks back into the couch, blanket over her lap, bowl of popcorn nestled between her legs. She clicks play, at which point a young Donny Osmond, looking very much like Jesus, enters through the haze of a fog machine into an auditorium full of children, who all begin to sing. Trinity stares at the screen, utterly transfixed.
“I’m starting to understand why you’re so weird,” she mutters, almost to herself.
The movie proceeds and Dennis does his absolute best not to bop his head along to the songs, which he knows like the back of his hand. Trinity is blissfully quiet until they get to the scene where Joseph gets stripped down to a loincloth, and suddenly Donny Osmond’s toned, tan, shiny chest is glistening on their secondhand TV and Santos is smirking in Dennis’ periphery.
“You said you watched this movie how many times…?”
Dennis feels his flush creep all the way up to his ears. “Leave me alone. I was only allowed to watch like five movies. There were a lot of repeats.”
“Did your parents think it was weird when you wanted to rewind this scene or did they just think you were studying up for a quiz in Sunday School?”
“Shut up, Trin.”
She snickers and brings a handful of popcorn to her mouth. The movie continues. She’s forced to concede that some of the songs are pretty fun, but she stares flabbergasted at the television during the scene where the pharaoh does an Elvis impersonation and reaches her limit during “Benjamin Calypso” towards the end. As a bunch of mostly-white cast members in ethnically ambiguous garb affect Jamaican accents to defend their brother from the pharaoh’s justice, she rubs her temples.
“Okay, so, this feels kind of racist.”
Beside her on the couch, Dennis cringes. “Yeah, I’m realizing that now.”
She snorts and offers him the popcorn. “What, you were too distracted by your burgeoning sexuality crisis to notice the racist overtones?”
“Uh,” Dennis says, thinking about the many times he watched this movie as a kid and how much he liked particular scenes of Joseph. How he got a tingly feeling in his stomach watching him be seduced by Potiphar’s wife. He shovels popcorn into his mouth and nearly cracks a molar on a stray kernel. “Yeah, something like that.”
Trinity gives him a sidelong look. “You are psychologically fascinating, Huckleberry.” She reaches over and ruffles his hair. “I wish I could admit you to Psych just to see what they’d find up there.”
Whitaker mumbles something under his breath that sounds a lot like fuck off.
Two hours later, Whitaker gets back at her when they’re midway through Prince of Egypt and he looks over to discover Trinity has been staring at the screen, hand hovering motionless over the refilled popcorn bowl, every time Tzipporah appears throughout “Through Heaven’s Eyes.” He can’t really blame her. He might bat for the other team, but he can still recognize that Tzipporah is gorgeous. Actually, now that he really thinks about it, with her long limbs, high cheekbones, and strong eyebrows, she reminds him a little of Dr. Garcia. Whitaker smirks in Trinity’s direction before waving a hand in front of her face.
“Earth to Dr. Santos.”
Santos grabs his wrist and yanks it out of the way. “Block my view again and I’ll bite your hand off.”
“I’m just saying, it looks like I’m not the only one drooling on the screen tonight.”
A piece of popcorn bounces off the side of Whitaker’s head.
“Hey,” Santos says, accusatory, “at least my crush isn’t a fucking Mormon.”
Lesson 3: How to handle a sleepwalker
The first time it happens, Whitaker nearly has a heart attack. One minute he’s sleeping the dreamless sleep of an overworked, underpaid, under-fucked resident physician, and the next he’s being jerked awake by the sound of shuffling footsteps alarmingly close to his ears. Instantly he’s back in the little room on the eighth floor wing, listening for the sound of security guards or custodial staff down the hall.
Except he’s not in the hospital, he’s in Santos’ spare room where he’s lived for the past six months, so when he opens his eyes the bedroom is illuminated by jaundiced yellow light from the streetlamps just outside the window. He sees a figure shuffling across his threshold like a zombie and shrieks.
The zombie shrieks back.
Dennis fumbles for the bedside lamp. Soon a warm yellow glow falls across his bed, and, a few feet south of that, on the confused face of Trinity Santos standing in the middle of the room. Her hair is held back with a scrunchie and her eyes are barely open. She’s wearing an old t-shirt and sweatpants and only one sock.
“…Whitaker?” she mumbles. “What the hell are you doing in my room?”
“In your room? You’re in my room. I mean, your spare room— you know what I mean.”
Blinking slowly, Trinity takes in her surroundings. The meager possessions, the duffel bag currently serving as a laundry hamper. The secondhand mattress on the floor and the stacked medical textbooks fashioned into a nightstand. The guarded look on her face disappears when she realizes she is, in fact, in Dennis’ room and not her own, replaced by a look of profound chagrin. She rubs her eyes and groans.
“Ugh, not again.”
Dennis sits up. Mercifully he wore a shirt and pants to bed last night. If Trinity saw him shirtless again she would gag.
“Trin…” he starts, squinting at her in the half-light, “do you sleepwalk?”
Trinity peers over her shoulder at the open doorway. “Do you sleep with your door unlocked? That’s so unsafe.”
“Trinity,” Dennis says, louder this time, “do you sleepwalk?”
She drops her hands with a sigh. “Used to, yeah. When I’m stressed. Sorry about that, Den. Should’ve warned ya.”
Dennis has half a mind to ask if she’s okay, but she’s already mumbling goodnight and shuffling out of the room. Even after he hears her doorway click shut down the hallway, his heart is racing too fast to go back to sleep. He ends up staying up for another forty-five minutes, reading up about sleepwalking on Reddit. He learns that it can be caused by stress, which makes sense given their line of work, and disruptions to one’s normal sleep schedule, which also makes sense, because Santos worked a double recently and it threw off her whole Circadian rhythm.
Huh. Suddenly he’s glad that his main responses to stress are stuttering and headaches. If he walked into Santos’ room while she was sleeping she would brain him with a lamp. Actually, knowing her, she probably sleeps with a baseball bat under her bed.
The next time it happens, he’s marginally more prepared for it. He’s awake too late in the living room, doomscrolling on his phone, when once again a zombie-like Santos wanders out of her bedroom and into the shared space. Her eyes are open but distant, the bags underneath more pronounced than usual from a bad few days at work, and she makes towards the sink like she’s going to pour a glass of water. She manages to fumblingly turn the sink on but does nothing else, just letting it run over the dirty dishes piled up beneath. Recalling the advice he found on Reddit, Dennis rises from the couch and creeps towards her, just like he used to approach his family’s easily-spooked horse. With the lightest of touches he can manage, Dennis lays a hand on each shoulder and steers her away from the sink, but not before turning off the water.
With gentle guidance, she moves surprisingly easily. She shows no sign of recognition as he guides her down the hall and back into her room. Once she’s within a foot or two of her bed she simply collapses face-first onto it, not looking up even as Dennis pulls her blanket up and over her back. He creeps out of the room quiet as a church mouse and softly pulls the door shut behind him.
The next morning, Trinity wakes up in her bed with the door closed and her blanket pulled up to her chin. She rubs her eyes and looks up at the ceiling fan. She hasn’t sleepwalked recently, not that she knows of: since the night she wandered into Whitaker’s room and scared the shit out of him, she hasn’t been startled awake in any weird places and Dennis has studiously not mentioned it again. But she’s had some pretty vivid dreams since the day she worked a double, which usually correlate to nighttime wandering. Also, her throw blanket was definitely at the foot of the mattress when she fell asleep last night, and now it’s up at her chin like when she was little and her mother used to tuck her into bed.
Huh. So she’s sleepwalking and what—Whitaker is putting her back in her room and not mentioning it? The other option, that she’s managing to get herself back into bed without banging her shins or waking herself up, seems far less likely.
Trinity squints against the morning light. She expects to feel skittish and even a little scared at the thought of someone interacting with her while she’s out of it, but instead she only feels a mild sense of amusement at how much her sleepwalking must freak Dennis out. She can only imagine the look of terror in his big blue eyes as he tries not to wake her up and unleash her wrath. Underneath the amusement, there’s also an undeniable rush of gratitude that he’s looking out for her and making a point of not bringing it up. He probably thinks it would embarrass her to admit she needs help.
Damn, she thinks, staring at the ceiling fan where it turns lazily on the ceiling. I guess we’re getting to know each other pretty well.
Lesson 4: How to line dance
“Excuse me, Huckleberry, I thought you said you can’t dance.”
Dennis looks up from where he’s curled up against the edge of the couch. Trinity is looming over his shoulder, shamelessly spying on his phone. He clicks the screen off and shoves it in the pocket of his hoodie, but not before she’s seen the contents of his feed.
“I can’t,” Dennis says, scratching the back of his head sheepishly. “Not really.”
“Then why are you getting sponsored ads for line-dancing events?”
Dennis groans and covers his face. Trinity doesn’t move from behind him, a sign that this passing interaction is going to turn into one of her many interrogations. They’ve been living together for about half a year and she already knows most of his secrets. He’s pretty sure she could get him to tell her his full SSN if she tried. That is, if she doesn’t know it already.
“I dunno,” he deflects. “Demographics, I guess? That’s how sponsored ads work.”
“Mm-hm. Sure,” Trinity says, in a way that indicates she doesn’t believe him. She crosses from the side of the couch to the front, flopping down beside Dennis and poking him with her toe. “You got something you wanna confess, farm boy? Have you been hiding some secret square-dancing skills this whole time?”
At the look on Whitaker’s face, Santos’ eyes widen. “Are you serious? Can you square dance?”
“It was a unit in PE,” Dennis mumbles.
“You’re joking.”
“I wish I was.”
“You learned how to square dance in gym class? While the rest of us were running laps and doing the Pacer Test, you guys were having honky-tonks? Man, that sounds like so much more fun.”
Sometimes Dennis really wonders what Trinity is picturing when she pictures the Midwest. He would take offense at her stereotyping except for the fact that it’s usually accurate.
“Wait, what other dances can you do?” Trinity prompts. She turns to face Dennis and props her chin in her hand. “Square dancing, what else? Can you Riverdance?”
“Yeah, because there’s a big Irish immigrant population in Broken Bow,” Dennis deadpans. “No, I can’t Riverdance, and I can barely remember how to square dance. It’s been a long time.”
Trinity gives him a knowing look. “Don’t hold out on me, Whitaker.”
“Okay, fine,” Dennis says, with a put-upon sigh. “I may or may not know the line dance that goes with ‘Cotton Eye Joe.’ Don’t look at me like that, it’s a classic.”
The look of abject glee on Trinity’s face is a sign he really should not have revealed this information. “No way.”
“Unfortunately, yes way.”
“You have to teach me.”
“What?”
“It’ll be a cultural exchange,” Trinity says, with a smile growing across her face. “I teach you about the magical world of seasoning your food and you teach me how to line dance. Come on, it’ll be hilarious.”
Because Whitaker has the resistance of a wet paper towel, twenty minutes later Santos has “Cotton Eyed Joe” queued up on her phone and Dennis is standing in the middle of their living room with the coffee table pushed out of the way.
“Ready?” she says, holding up her phone.
“As I’ll ever be.”
Santos clicks play. For the first fifteen seconds they just stare at each other, Santos sitting and Whitaker standing, vaguely nodding his head to the beat, before the signature instrumental kicks in. The dance comes back as easy as breathing: the heel taps to the front, toe taps to the back, crossing his leg in front and then behind, stepping to the side then spinning. At first it’s a little slow and subdued, but then he catches the look on Santos’ face. He expects mocking but instead she looks utterly delighted.
“Okay, Huckleberry!”
The instrumental repeats and so does the dance—it’s a pretty repetitive number, as line dances go. This time he’s a little looser with it, more playful, more like the dancing at his brothers’ weddings when they’ve all had a few beers and are sweating through their button-ups. The second time Whitaker adds a clap to punctuate the beat; the third time, he adds the lasso move during the spin. At that, Santos cackles in amusement. Soon she stands, dropping her phone on the couch and toeing off her socks. The song continues to play, slightly tinny and muffled from where it’s half-buried in the sofa cushions.
“Okay, okay, my turn” she says, nudging Dennis to the side with her hip. “So, we start with a heel tap, right?”
The next week, Whitaker walks into the staff room at the Pitt, craving a cup of slightly-burned, slightly-stale coffee, where he finds Santos washing out her own mug. To his unending amusement, he catches her humming a familiar tune under her breath.
He nudges her with his elbow. “Where did you come from, where did you go,” he whispers.
Santos snorts.
Whitaker responds by extending his boot just slightly, lightly tapping his heel to the ground twice, before extending it back and tapping his toe on the linoleum tile behind him. Santos, trying very hard not to smile, repeats the motion with him. Silently and in sync, they extend their right legs to the side, then cross in front of their left, tap their boots, then repeat the motion behind them. When they spin and clap, they’re greeted by the sight of Dr. Robby and Dana standing in the doorway. Behind his glasses, Robby is staring at them with a look of bemused amusement. Beside him, a full head shorter, Dana has her arms crossed over her chest and a trademark smirk on her face.
“Nobody told me this ED turned into a honky-tonk,” Dana says. “Is this what happens when you two have unlimited access to caffeine?”
Dr. Robby tilts his head down to look at them over the rim of his glasses. “Looks like our farm boy is rubbing off on you, Dr. Santos.”
Whitaker’s face turns a traitorous pink. To his left, Santos folds her arms over her chest and sticks out her chin, daring them to tease her.
“Sorry, Dr. Robby, Dana,” Whitaker mumbles, though he’s not really sure what he’s apologizing for.
Robby laughs wryly. He moves over to the coffee maker, where he refills his thermos and takes a sip, studying them over the rim. “Don’t apologize. It’s good to know you two are cultivating skills outside the workplace.”
As cowed as scolded schoolchildren, Santos and Whitaker scurry out of the room. Over his shoulder, Dennis watches Dana slap Robby on the shoulder.
“Hey, maybe we should organize a talent show! Give all those folks in the waiting room somethin’ to watch other than the news. Whaddaya think that would do for patient satisfaction scores?”
Whitaker covers his face with his hands. He is never going to live this Huckleberry thing down.
Lesson 5: How to do karaoke when you can’t really sing
They’re already drunk when they arrive at the bar, but not drunk enough that Dennis doesn’t feel the wave of nervous energy that crashes over him when he remembers their destination. Through the rectangular window beneath the narrow black awning of the bar, he catches sight of a group of bubbly blonde girls gathered around one microphone belting atonally over the instrumental track of “Dancing Queen.”
“Uh, Trin…” he says, hovering awkwardly on the sidewalk. “Are you sure this is a good idea? It’s getting kinda late, and we have a shift tomorrow, remember?”
Over her shoulder, Santos gives Whitaker a baleful look that verges on pleading. “Come on! Don’t be such a wet blanket. You said you’d do karaoke, so we’re gonna do karaoke.”
Ahead of them, their friends—that is, random girls and gays they’d picked up at Blue Moon who agreed to come along when Santos said she wanted to do karaoke—are already showing their IDs to the bouncer. Whitaker is aware he’s fighting a losing battle, but his stomach turns at the thought of having to get up in front of people and sing. He hasn’t sung in front of anyone since he was a choir boy, and that was before his voice dropped. So, like, fifteen years ago.
“Trin…”
“Come on,” Santos says, grasping at arms with her warm, slightly sweaty palms. “This is my culture, Whitaker. Don’t you know that? You’re going to disrespect my culture? That’s actually, like, sooo problematic of you.”
“Ugh, fine.”
Dennis is carded by the bouncer, who scrutinizes his ID for so long that Dennis thinks he might need to get out of some form of hospital identification as proof that he’s older than twenty-one and has been for the last six years. Once he’s finally let inside—stupid baby face—he finds Trinity, who has wasted zero time queuing up to add her songs to the list. Dennis lingers a few feet behind, amazed at Santos’ ability to connect with people she’s just met. In the time it took him to convince the bouncer to let him in, he’s pretty sure Trinity has already arranged a duet with a girl who she met in the bathroom of Blue Moon not an hour ago. He’s seen her connect with people like this in the ED, coaxing some of the toughest patients out of their shells, but it’s different in the wild—not a careful, measured approach like she uses with her patients, but nearly effortless in the way she strikes up conversations with people and magnetizes them to her side.
He wonders if everyone else who agreed to come along can sing, or if there are others like him, who have no particular gift for music. Then Trinity is shouting his name and dragging him up to the DJ, who looks at him expectantly.
“Uh, hi,” Dennis says.
The DJ looks bored. He’s also hot, which isn’t helping Dennis’ anxiety situation. “Song?” he deadpans.
Dennis looks to Trinity for help.
“Your song, Huckleberry,” she urges. “Tell him what you’re gonna sing. Hang on, gotta make sure my duet partner’s still good to go.”
She leaves Whitaker standing awkwardly in front of the DJ, who is busy checking his nails. Dennis leans forward, both hands resting awkwardly on the booth.
“So, uh, I don’t know if you can tell, but I’ve kind of never done this before,” he says sheepishly. “What do you recommend for someone who can’t sing and is being forced to do so by his roommate who may or may not be punishing him for not wanting to go out on a work night?”
That gets the DJ’s attention. He raises an eyebrow. “You can’t sing at all?”
Dennis shakes his head. He can feel his face doing that expression that Dr. McKay says makes him look like her son’s pet hamster.
“Then you’re gonna want to pick something you can sort of yell instead of sing,” the DJ says. “Ideally something that’ll get other people singing over you. You know any songs that fit the bill?”
“Uh, yeah,” Dennis says, a small smile creeping across his face. “Yeah, I just might.”
His own song choice is completely forgotten from the moment Santos climbs up onto the small elevated platform that serves as a stage. In a dive bar like this, there’s one stage and one screen, so everybody watches everybody else perform. Whitaker doesn’t know the song she chose, but everyone else does. From the first note, all eyes are on her.
Holy shit. Trinity can sing.
It’s a sort of dance-y song, he thinks, dance-y but sad, and he might not know the song but Trinity’s voice carries with it such emotion that he finds himself inexplicably with tears in his eyes. There’s something spectacular about her up there, elevated from the crowd by only half a foot of a plywood platform but also by the melodic tone of her voice and the feeling she imbues in the lyrics. Under the colorful lights of the bar, her dark hair shines and her striking blue-gray eyes glimmer with emotion. Dennis glances around the crowd. About half the girls they came with from the gay bar look like they’re already in love with her.
He snorts. Typical Trinity.
She wraps up her song to deafening applause, then finds Dennis and drags him over to the bar for some of the cheapest and most disgusting-tasting well drinks he’s ever had. He only agrees to it because he knows his song is coming up next, and he’s calculating how many drinks he’ll need in the time between now and then to make sure he blacks out.
When he gets up on the stage, his knees are weaker than during the first day of his first rotation. Mercifully, thanks to the copious amounts of liquor sloshing through his veins, the sight of the crowd looking expectantly at him is the last thing he remembers from the night.
The next morning, Whitaker wakes up with throbbing temples and twenty-some texts across multiple group messages. Groaning, he rolls over and picks his phone up off the floor. His battery is at 7%. It’s just enough for him to unlock his phone, open the group chat with all the PTMC med students, and scroll up to see the source of all the chatter.
There, sent by Santos just before 3 AM this morning, is a heavily-pixelated video that drops his battery to 5% just trying to download it. It’s blurry and dark as fuck, with strobing blue and pink lights and crackly audio that only serve to make his headache worse. With growing horror, Whitaker recognizes the song playing in the background. Worse, he recognizes the subject of the video: himself, blackout drunk and soaked in sweat, belting “Thnks Fr The Mmrs” like his life depends on it. From the video you can tell that everyone else is singing along, but Dennis’ own voice is loud and clear above the crowd, filled with a level of passion he can only blame on the rum and coke he chugged before taking the mic. He sounds like shit, of course, but he deserves some points for effort.
He minimizes the video. With a blush already creeping up his face, he confirms that Santos actually sent this to half their coworkers—which she did—and that nearly every single one of them responded. He double checks who’s in the chat and briefly thanks his lucky stars that Dr. Robby hasn’t been added.
[2:46 AM] Victoria Javadi
um
oh my god
[2:49 AM] Samira Mohan
holy shit, whitaker’s got pipes
[3:00 AM] Melissa King
I love Fall Out Boy!
Just checking, Trinity, did you mean to send this to us?
[3:05 AM] Trinity Santos
totallyyyyy
our baby boy is growing up
[3:10 AM] Frank Langdon
@Trinity Santos, did you just add me to this group message?
[3:12 AM] Trinity Santos
yea
u had to see this
enjoy it before I kick u out again
[3:15 AM] Frank Langdon
@Melissa King I love fall out boy too :)
[3:20 AM] Samira Mohan
ok but why are we all awake rn
[6:30 AM] Dennis Whitaker
this is the worst day of my life.
and you all saw me get peed on that one time.
After typing out his message and sending it—a task that drives railroad spikes into his eyes—Dennis groans and throws his phone to the foot of his bed. He’s never going to hear the end of this.
+1: How to cure a hangover (with Dr. J)
Later that day, the followers of Dr. J ✨🧚♀️ are treated to a new video uploaded to her TikTok and Instagram feeds. In the video, a very chipper-looking Student Doctor Victoria Javadi sits under fluorescent lights, sporting her signature purple hoodie, next to a young woman with blue-grey eyes and dark hair pulled back in a half-ponytail and a young man with sandy hair who looks like the ghost of a Victorian child. They’re matching with their black scrubs and miserable expressions.
“Hi, everyone! I hope you’re all having a fun start to your weekend,” Dr. J says. “If your weekend has been a little too much fun, as it has been for my colleagues here, I’m going to give you a little advice about what helps with a hangover.”
Beside her, the young woman groans and puts her head down on the desk. The young man presses his hands to his eyes. “Don’t drink, kids,” he mumbles.
“That’s a good place to start!” Dr. J exclaims. “But if you are going to drink alcohol, remember, you should always eat something hearty first, and start and end your night with at least eight ounces of water. Even better, something with electrolytes. Gatorade or coconut water are both great options—”
The other girl lifts her head and glares. “You can’t even drink, Crash!”
“Yeah, and that’s why I don’t need an IV at work!” Dr. J turns back to the camera, flashing her bright smile. “Remember, kids, always use substances legally and responsibly. And if you need help to get fixed up, that’s what we’re here to do.”