Chapter Text
00: writing the list
Like most experiences Victoria mentally runs into the ground for longer than the moment physically breathes—like an obsessive director refilming indistinguishable variations of B-roll for those coming-of-age movies Victoria would secretly watch at 14, holed up in her bedroom while her parents were at work, and her colleagues were on campus, and she was supposed to be doing O-chem problem sets—the whole 'workplace-birthday-open-secret disaster' ends up being a much smaller ordeal than she'd initially catastrophized.
The dive bar closest to PTMC, which she didn't even know existed until last night, was minimally seedy and decorated as extravagantly as two on-shift nurses and an Amazon Prime budget of $40 could aspire to.
A glittery pink "Birthday Girl" banner is draped against the chipped, ruddy wall, under a dartboard that's been tilted askew from too many drunk throws. And confetti is littered across beer-slicked checkered tiles under the feet of coworkers mingling at the bar, and in brown vinyl booths, and on top of an already wobbling pool table.
And it's fine. It's fun.
Victoria douses herself in body mist until the stench of sweat-slicked antibacterial sanitizer is overpowered by sugared violets. She takes the shot Princess offers her and hugs Perlah a second longer than is probably socially acceptable. She lets herself yield into the haze of warm, breathing bodies like she'd slip into a 4 week stint of rotations she wasn't particularly looking forward to. She flirts, badly, with a guy with curly hair and only thinks about night shift to remind herself just how much she shouldn't be thinking about it. She takes a break on the porch steps, watches the new doe-eyed nurse swallow funny at something Joy says, and walks away when Oglivie tries to quip with her.
She takes another shot. Hopes the alcohol will soothe her or excite her or do literally anything to merit the obsession society seems to have with it.
It doesn't.
She sighs. Opens CaRMS. Closes it. Sighs again. Stares at the calendar app floating on her home screen.
Summer’s just started. She's days out from being 21. The last time she went to the beach she was 16 and crammed into a car with her cousins, skin sticky with sunscreen as the others preplanned sunbathing schedules for even tanning. She's days out from turning 21 and almost killed someone today. Watched someone else die regardless.
She's starting to get tired of her own excuses.
And so when stretching-induced joint cracks and mentions of daycare drop-offs finally bleed the building empty, Victoria borrows a dry napkin from the neighbouring table occupied by a semi-conscious man no one else seems to be concerned about, sits down, and makes a list.
⋆ ⋆ ⋆
01: move out
It's not until the fifth minute of relentless knocking—as the bubble of itinerary-fueled adrenaline keeping her floating seven hours later starts wheezing out deflated air, leaving her slumped against the worn mahogany and wondering, absently, if this is the kind of neighbourhood where old men wearing robes held together by a single, disintegrating, band of string stomp into hallways waving baseball bats to berate young women for trespassing—when a raspy voice on the other side of the door croaks back an unconvincing, "Nobody's home."
The promise of life is reinvigorating and Victoria returns to her increasingly frantic knocking.
There's a rustle and a thud of a body hitting the floor in response. The voice is unsteadier the second time around, out of breath. "No one's—fuck just come in, it's unlocked, just stop fucking knocking you're giving me an aneurysm."
Victoria frowns. It felt a lot less like she was overstepping when she imagined the door being opened for her instead of having to creak it ajar herself. The lights are all turned off and she pats the wall closest to her for a switch as she mutters, "That's not how aneurysms work. You should probably know that as an R2."
The sharp white glow is sudden and her eyes water as she blinks at the glow until they adjust. She almost wishes they hadn't. The place looks so much worse in the light. Curtains drawn, half empty boxes of Chinese takeout cluttering the legs of the coffee table as the glass top is entirely hidden from view by stacks of canned beer, the air suffocating from the lack of ventilation and open windows. A distinctly different living room than the one Victoria remembers walking into just a month ago, when she'd asked Whitaker a question about Step 2 assuming he'd give her that brush-off non-answer all med students do and had been met with an invitation to walk home with him after changeover for a chat over dinner instead.
There's a disgruntled groan from across the room and Victoria follows the noise to find Trinity curling into the gap between the floorboard and the coach where Victoria assumes it's darkest. She clears her throat but Trinity doesn't look up. Just mutters, almost indecipherably, "We don't really have valuables but if you want to steal the T.V. I can help you lug it downstairs as soon as this sledgehammer banging against my skull lets up."
Victoria finds it hard to wrangle back her high-octave pitch when she retorts, stepping closer, "I'm not here to rob—are you drunk?"
Trinity freezes, suddenly registering the voice. Makes the slowest attempt to roll over and just blinks blankly for a minute when she finds Victoria cross-armed staring down at her. She takes a big, gaspy inhale like she's trying to get her brain enough oxygen to process the scene in front of her. "Not drunk. Just…hungover?"
Her voice comes out more confused than she'd probably meant it. Hair frizzing up from being rubbed against the floor and shirt askew enough that Victoria can see the sharp points of her collarbone from the lopsided way the collar's been stretched with wear. Skin weirdly pale and pink and extra fleshy against the stark black of her tattoos under the big light.
Victoria wishes she could blame the all-nighter on her inability to be compassionate at this, pretty objectively, pathetic sight in front of her but, admittedly, Trinity's always been her blindspot and that was even before Victoria came to the revelation that she isn't as good of a person as she'd once thought, so instead of asking if Trinity's okay or helping her up, she states, sharply, "Well can you sober up please, the first apartment viewing is in an hour."
"Maybe I am still drunk," Trinity muses, eyes rolled up to the ceiling. Victoria nudges her side lightly until Trinity grunts, slapping her boot away and easing from her spot on the floor, gently pinching at the side of her legs to kickstart the circulation, taking sneaking glances at Victoria like she's a hangover-induced mirage set to disappear.
Victoria shakes off the stare. Starts gathering the empty cans piled on top of the coffee table and ignoring Trinity's objections as she moves to the kitchen. She remembers there being a trash can in here somewhere. God, the things she could've done with Joy's eidetic memory.
"If you wanted to drink so bad you could've just come to my birthday party," she says finally, watching Trinity join her before overfilling a glass with sink water.
Droplets run down to her wrist as she gulps the whole thing down and her mouth is all wet when she smiles, teeth-bared, "Why, miss me?"
Victoria rolls her eyes. "I mean you threw it, why go through all the effort if you're not even going to bother to show up."
Trinity shakes her head, corrects, "Princess and Perlah threw it."
"Yeah because you blabbed to them."
Trinity waves a hand vaguely in Victoria's direction. "You couldn't go home with no fun after the day we had, would've been too depressing. Like seeing Bambi's mom get shot."
Victoria raises her brows. "You mean the way you did?"
"Wasn't my birthday," Trinity shrugs, turns to open a cabinet where Victoria assumes she keeps the advil.
"Technically wasn't my birthday either," she mutters under her breath, inadvertently staring as Trinity stretches on her tip-toes, over-sized t-shirt lifting to reveal blue plaid boxers and long legs as Victoria snaps her head away. She's so tall. Victoria always forgets how tall she is as soon as they're not standing right next to each other. Her eyes search desperately for literally anything else to focus on, in a way that Trinity would definitely make fun of if her back wasn't turned. Rushing to fill the silence before it turns suspicious, Victoria asks, "Hey, where's your coffee machine?"
"I don't have one," Trinity answers, mouth half-full dry-swallowing a pill.
"What?"
She swallows. "Why?"
"You're a second year resident?! And the coffeeshop near the hospital sucks and the coffee pot in the hospital sucks even worse but with a line," Victoria responds, increasingly exasperated for some reason she can't quite name. It feels a little bit like her brain is trying to retroactively find an excuse for her racing heart and warming palms and maybe it'd be worth asking herself what the true cause of those physiological reactions are but frankly she's been trying to cut back on the introspection. Makes her lazy, her mother says.
Trinity looks at her with narrowed eyes. "No, I mean why do you want a coffee machine?"
Oh good, something she can actually answer. "Because I can't drive on no sleep so you need to sober up, quickly."
"You came from the dive bar?"
"Yeah, and actually we've wasted enough time," Victoria answers decisively, moving to open the fridge and trying to not exhale a sigh reminiscent of one of her mother's at the sight. She edges her wrist past the plastic bag of molding oranges for the nearest energy drink. Takes a sip and shivers at the carbonated acidity before thrusting it to Trinity.
Trinity blinks again like she's moving in slow motion. Or maybe it's just that harrowing to see Victoria in her space. "Sorry, what's happening?"
Victoria scowls. "Were you seriously not paying attention?" Then decides it's probably best not to bite the hand that's driving her and all that so she forces a smile that Trinity immediately double-takes at and announces cheerfully, "You're helping me move out."
Immediately Victoria knows the smile was a bad idea. Trinity tilts her head, leans forward with both elbows on the counter and looks, for the first time all morning, properly amused. Taking a mile to Victoria's inch. "Out of the kindness of my heart? That doesn't sound like me."
Victoria huffs, shifts from one foot to the other and checks the time on her phone before relenting. A headache forming at the base of her neck before the words even leave her mouth. "I'll get my mom to write you that recommendation letter, okay?"
Trinity seems to mull it over before taking a considerable once-over at Victoria, probably finally noticing the stray flyaways and sheen of sweat Victoria was really hoping passed as deweyness. She had tried to fix this all in the bathroom beforehand but couldn't do much about the slightly crazed look in her eyes. Besides, packing up twenty years of your existence made all her one-ply napkin usage futile. "Does your mom even know you're moving out right now?"
Victoria crosses her arms again.
"Victoria." Trinity gasps, fake scandaled.
Her face goes hot. She imagines taking Trinity to one of those holiday volcano sites a patient in a tiki patterned t-shirt and cargo pants mentioned over stitches and dangling her over the edge. She was being an idiot, wasn't she. Wasn't thinking at all, just followed the steps to the last location pre-programmed in her hippocampus, as if she'd ever been known for impulsivity. She'd only pulled off the MCI once, then never again.
Just as she's about to turn around, call the whole thing off and return back home with her tail tucked between her legs before collapsing on the same bed she's had since she was 8, Trinity rushes to say, tone rushed, "Okay, okay, Jesus. Who knew Bambi had a death glare," before chugging the entire can of Redbull like an admission of guilt.
"I thought I was Bambi's mom," Victoria deadpans.
Trinity has that look in her eye, like she's going to bring up MILFs again so Victoria rushes back to the door before she has a chance to speak. "Can you hurry up though, the uber was already mad at me for forcing all my boxes in his trunk."
Trinity chokes a little, pounding a fist on her chest before exclaiming, another, "What?"
Victoria shoots her a glare but hobbles trying to put her shoes back on so she's not sure it has the same impact the second time around. "Seriously, what part of apartment hunting did you not retain?"
"I would've bet a thousand dollars that I dreamed that part of this conversation."
"And that's why Dr. Collins told Ahmed you're banned from all future betting pools," Victoria snarks, swinging the door open and hopping down the first set of stairs so that when Trinity goes on her routine, exasperated complaint that interdictions should expire once the person who set them no longer works there, she has no choice but to follow her down first.