Chapter Text
Poor Trinity.
Whitaker knew she was having a shitty day. He knew she wasn’t expecting Langdon to be back, not today or ever. He knew she was upset that Garcia canceled their plans, leaving her alone in the shitty apartment. He (gleefully) knew that she was pissed that he agreed to housesit for Robby because she was going to miss him, and he knew that all of these reasons combined amounted to a pretty miserable, angry Santos.
She’d spent the day making snide comments and lashing out at him, so Dennis didn’t feel all that bad for his roommate when McKay gently reminded her that, “Hey Santos, technically your shift was over and you’ve been here since 5 am!!” After she yelled at the absentee father in a “God, Guns, and Girls” American Flag T-Shirt, who brought his 9-year-old son in for the 3rd degree sunburn.
All of this aside, Whitaker knew, deep down, that he probably shouldn’t have left his roommate alone. So he clocked out as well. He wasn’t of much use anyway; the nightshift was starting to come in, and besides, the ED was running around like headless chickens, trying to get a psych hold on Robby.
Lucky for him, he escaped just in time, at least according to Javadi. A big firework explosion on the beach meant all hands on deck, and what was left of the day shift was stuck in the hospital for the foreseeable future.
Still, the apartment was alarmingly quiet when Whitaker got home. Even when called for Santos, she didn’t respond.
It was only a quarter past eight, so Trinity couldn’t have already been asleep, and the stream of light pouring from under her door made it clear she was awake and ignoring him. Dennis knocked a couple of times, an uneasy feeling rising in his gut. When he finally pushed it open, he was expecting an angry Trinity to lunge out of bed, swearing at him, or something. But instead, he got nothing. She wasn’t even in her bed.
Whitaker stepped into her room, slowly padding towards her bathroom, as if his body knew. Like his whole being just fucking knew.
Because there she was, sprawled out in the bathroom, in a pile of her own blood.
-
Earlier that summer, Trinity had shown Dennis The Virgin Suicides. It was one of their Friday-night movies, a tradition they had silently adopted, and it was her week to choose. He didn’t find it that good (not that he even got to hear the dialogue, over Trinity's constant stream of opinions, criticisms, and thinkpieces); it was pretentious and dramatic, with a sorrowful, gloomy kind of ending that reminded him of the rainy season in Nebraska.
Dennis did find the opening scene interesting. Does it look like that in real life? He had voiced as they watched the youngest girl bleed from her wrists to the bathtub, It's not really something you ever see in the ED.
Trinity had agreed with him; she hadn’t ever seen anything like that in the Pitt. Then she scolded him for talking through the scene.
It didn’t really look like the movies, and Whitaker should’ve known that. It was less dramatic. The expression frozen on her face was one that Whittaker had only seen in fleeting moments. The sight of his roommate, the girl with the thick skin and high walls, so vulnerable and lifeless on the ground, was too much. He felt the stomach bile rise in his throat as he stared at her.
Every piece of medical knowledge slipped his mind as he stared at her on the bathroom floor. He couldn't believe Trinity Santos had been reduced to something so spiritless.