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Trinity Santos is not one to admit when she’s over done it, but there’s a chance she can’t avoid it this time.
This day has been far too long for Trinity’s liking. Too much coffee and stress, not enough food or sleep. At least that’s what she tells herself as she struggles to get through the last of her charts and finally leave. She’s got the day off tomorrow; she can lounge around in bed for as long as she wants. Besides, it’s not like she has plans anymore. Maybe she can talk Huckleberry into doing something. Hell, maybe she can talk him into sticking around for the weekend, just this once.
She’s regretting saying anything to Robby; maybe if she hadn’t, she wouldn’t feel like she’s being abandoned for a whole new reason.
It’s not until she tries to get up that everything seems to hit her at once, taking her by surprise. The adrenaline, the exhaustion, insanity of this fucking day. Her stomach swoops aggressively, her chest flipping uncomfortably. Her legs feel shaky like they did last week when she told herself she could handle that extra mile on the treadmill.
In a second, she’s gripping the countertop to stay upright, praying that no one sees her faltering. Without turning her head, she does a quick survey of her surroundings. Trauma rooms one and two are right behind her, the commotion coming from there a familiar comfort. Most of the day shift has left already. She just needs to get back to her locker to an on-call room so she can pass out in private. The last thing she needs is anyone seeing her like this.
She just wishes that her knees wouldn’t have buckled as soon as she stepped away from the desk. Maybe then she could’ve held onto a bit more of her dignity.
Trinity barely has time to catch up to the sensations she’s feeling when an arm loops around her lower back and keeps her from hitting the ground. Before she can panic, Ellis’ low voice rumbles in her ear, smooth and concerned.
“Hey, hey, alright. I got you.”
“How… where did you come-.”
“Finishing with a patient in South twenty-two. Thought I spotted a resident in crisis. Talk to me. What’s going on?”
Now that someone is holding her up, the floatiness of her body feels like it’s been ramped up to a million. Trinity grips at Ellis’ hand on her waist like her life depends on it. She licks her lips though it does nothing to fix the state of her dry mouth.
It’s harder to focus than she’d care to admit.
“My um… my visions a little spotty. Chest feels funny.”
Ellis’ hand slides from where she was gripping the inside of Trinity’s arm down to her wrist, pressing in for a radial pulse. “Definitely tachy. Could be better. I’ve seen worse.”
Trinity would laugh if her head didn’t feel like it was seconds away from falling off her body. “Reassuring, really.”
Ellis rolls her eyes. She tightens her hold around Trinity’s waist, maneuvering her into the nearest seat. Trinity’s arms drop lamely into her lap as she sits, staring down at her palms as the receding adrenaline begins to shake it’s way out of her limbs.
“You need to be checked over. Do not get up from this seat, you hear me?”
She nods subconsciously, rubbing her eyes. By the time Ellis is out of sight, Trinity has already made up her mind about leaving. It’s going to take a while before an attending is free and Trinity doubts Ellis is going to come back without one. That gives her at least ten minutes to collect herself before she tries to get up again.
By the five minute mark, she’s already wagered the likeliness of her getting to her locker and out the door without being spotted. If she breathes real deep and focuses on one spot on the wall, it’s almost like she’s not moving. Trinity gets to her knees again, sticking close to the wall and somehow keeping her strength. If only Ellis could see her now.
She just needs to get to her locker without being noticed. Ten feet stands between her, her car keys, and the long promise of sleep.
Trinity makes it all of six steps before her legs start to revolt again. She blinks harshly, keeping her eyes focused in front of her. Just a little further and then she can go home and pretend that nothing about this terribly long day ever happened. Pushing away from the wall, Trinity overcorrects as she rounds the corner, her feet getting tangled in front of her. Suddenly, the whole jig is up.
She catches herself as she goes careening into the far wall, meeting the lockers with a dull thud. Trinity folds in on herself, chest meeting her knees. It’s not exactly comfortable. She needs to move. Or she would, if she could feel her hands or feet anymore. Her heart feels like it’s racing. It’s… it’s hard to see all the sudden.
All she needs is five minutes to sit here. She’s just going to close her eyes for a minute, then she’ll get up again. That’s all she needs.
She’ll be fine after that.
Whitaker rubs his eyes for the fifth time in as many minutes. He’s ready to get out of here, exhausted from how today turned into one thing after another. As much as he’s glad that he talked with Trinity about their living situation and him house sitting for Robby, there’s still worry lingering. Something more than Langdon being here and Garcia pushing her away is bothering Trinity, but he can’t put his finger on it. Maybe they can spring for pizza or hit that pho place around the corner that Trinity turned him onto.
Just as he’s making his way to the hub to check in with an attending, Ellis appears behind him, sounding bewildered. “Where did she go?”
None the wiser, he asks, “Who?”
“Santos.”
Something about her tone makes his stomach drop, a cold fear filling him. He looks up finally, realizing that Dr. Abbot and Dr. Al-Hashimi are hot on Ellis’ heels. Shit. She looked rough earlier, but Whitaker didn’t say anything about it because she hates when he hovers too much.
He whirls around at top speed, trying to lay eyes on her. If she’s hurt or sick, he needs to do something. “When was the last time you saw her?”
“Not even ten minutes ago; girl damn near keeled over on me.”
“She can’t have gone too far,” Al-Hashimi notes. “We can split up and find her faster, I’ll check chairs.”
Ellis starts moving as she calls out, “I’ll hit the bathrooms, see if she slipped in there somehow.”
“I’ve got the roof covered, hopefully I catch her halfway up,” Jack says, pushing away from the counter, moving towards the elevator.
“The roof?” Jack stops and fixes Whitaker with a knowing glare, adding to his concern. “Shit, right, right. I’ll get my phone, maybe I can track her location or something.”
Whitaker makes a quick break for the lockers while the other three head off in their own directions. He’s held up briefly by Dr. Toomarian asking for a reminder where the PDS is and two different patients being wheeled in front of him on gurneys, neither of them moving at a particular urgent pace. Whitaker grits his teeth, breathing heavily out of his nose and desperately trying to hold onto his patience.
Rounding the corner to the back hallway, he stops short at the sight of another doctor getting into a lower locker- and then at a second glance he realizes it’s not just someone, it’s Trinity. Leaning against the wall and folded in on herself like she had no say in the matter at all.
“Oh Jesus Christ.”
Whitaker drops to his knees in front of her feet, reaching to shake her shoulders. She doesn’t even blink or fight him off. Panic threads through his hands as he realizes how clammy her skin is. Whitakers shifts Trinity’s legs out in front of her so that she’s not so crunched together; her head flops forward on her neck and he moves in close to lean her weight against his side, gripping her tightly.
Her head tilts lamely onto his shoulder, and for a brief second, Whitaker forgets everything he’s ever learned about modern medicine as fear takes over.
“Okay, okay, we’re okay,” Whitaker says mostly to himself, turning his cheek into her hair. “You’re gonna be okay, help is coming.”
Caught up by the sound of his own voice, he barely catches the rustle of plastic followed by the dull smack of something hitting the ground.
His attention shifts briefly. There’s no room between him and Trinity for anything to have dropped between them and his phone is still in his locker. Leaning over carefully, he looks around- startled to find a packaged scalpel on the ground inches away from her hip.
He knows about the scars on her leg; the apartment gets muggy in the summer making anything other than shorts and a skimpy shirt practically unbearable. They’ve never talked about her past that personally, but Whitaker knows enough to know how they got there. He got the impression it wasn’t something she wanted to talk about.
He assumed it was no longer a present tense issue.
Ellis’ voice carries from out in the hub. “Whitaker?”
He reaches across her quickly, sliding the scalpel under the nearest doorway without a second thought. “Hey, I found her! We’re back here!”
Be it from the uptick in volume or the commotion of Ellis and Al-Hashimi rushing around the corner at once, Trinity stirs minutely. A sparse, thin whine slips from her throat and Whitaker covers the top of her head with his hand.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he says in a rush, not entirely sure that she can hear him. “I’m here; Ellis and Al-Hashimi are gonna help you. You’re gonna be fine. Just hang on for me, ‘kay?”
If she was lucid, Whitaker is sure she would hate every second of this. Ellis and Al-Hashimi start prodding her immediately to take vitals; Ellis shifts her limp limbs this way and that to increase blood flow while Al-Hashimi listens closely with her stethoscope. Whitaker keeps talking to her the entire time, narrating everything that they’re doing. It’s the only thing he can think of since he’s not the one treating her.
Trinity begins to tremble unconsciously just before Ellis gets a glucose reading.
“Found the culprit, her blood sugar is sitting at 50; no wonder she passed out. Has she had anything other than coffee today?”
It takes Whitaker a beat too long to realize the question was directed at him. “I uh, I’m not sure. Maybe a half a bagel before her shift? She left before me this morning.”
“I’ll check in with Abbot then find her a bed,” Al-Hashimi says, pushing to her knees. “Get her saline and a glucose tablet, repeat labs every fifteen minutes until her blood sugar is over sixty-five again.”
Whitaker nods though he’s barely tracking what’s happening anymore. Ellis says something about a wheelchair so they can transport Trinity, and in the blink of an eye it’s just the two of them once more. Her pale face makes something inside of him feel sick. A deep sense of guilt that he hasn’t felt in ages stirs up inside of him so suddenly that he feels the overwhelming need to confess his sins-
He pushes it down for now. Trinity needs him. If he can focus on nursing her back to health, maybe it’ll make up for missing so much for so long.
When she comes to, Trinity is painfully aware of how cold she is.
The chill seeping into her arms and up through her chest hits her before the realization that she’s even awake. Something smells like isopropyl alcohol and that lotion that Ellis refuses to share the name of… wait.
“Where am I?” She says, or at least tries to. Trinity’s words come out so slurred it’s a miracle that she even produced them. Her eyes are bleary, having trouble focusing on what’s in front of her. Her brain feels more like a jigsaw puzzle, all the pieces scrambled and struggling to fit together like they should.
Looking down, Trinity finally catalogues the lean, tattooed arm curved across the front of her ribcage, carefully holding her back from the edge of the gurney, and she quickly realizes that this isn’t a trick her brain is playing on her.
Ellis croons from behind her. “Hey tough guy- told you it was worth a shot- can you tell me how you're feeling right now?
Bad. Like worse than that time she forgot her bag and coach wouldn't let her go to the water fountain at the gymnastics meet to teach her a lesson. The humiliation was worse than the thirst after a point. Trinity doesn't voice any of that. She's too foggy to make words for the moment.
Ellis says something to someone else over her head again, a question about labs or a blood draw. Confused, Trinity picks her head up to get a look at them- to get an idea to who else is seeing her like this- but all she can make out is a scrawny blob of black scrubs walking away from her quickly.
“I don’t… who-?”
“Don’t worry about it, just another resident,” Ellis says, even softer than before somehow. “Your vitals are still all over the place. Take a minute, no need to wear yourself out again so soon.”
She groans softly, letting her eyes fall shut again. Letting the hand on her back guide her, Trinity moves slowly as she rolls over and rests her head on Ellis’ shoulder. She’ll blame it on the wooziness later. She’s touch starved and already looks as pathetic as she feels as far as she can tell. Why not lean into it?
She tries not to think of the Langdon of it all or Garcia pushing her away or the fact that it feels like she’s losing her only friend all over again. It doesn’t feel any better closing her eyes and trying to sleep, but at least the world turns off for a little while.
Trinity barely realizes any time has passed when she wakes up in her own bed.
There’s an ache lingering behind her eyes and a dryness at the corners of her mouth that makes her long to brush her teeth. Sitting up she feels… rested, somehow. She doesn’t have a clue what time it was when she left the hospital, but her alarm clock shows a quarter to ten which is the latest she’s slept in in ages.
She’s in different clothes, she realizes as she sits up. A black t-shirt that’s been cut along the collar to expose her neckline and a pair of gray joggers that she forgot that she owned. She barely remembers getting home last night, much less changing out of her scrubs, when would she have-?
It dawns on her suddenly that she can hear someone puttering around in her kitchen, playing something other than funk or eighties music for once. A conversation is being held in low voices, just barely audible over the music.
Trinity gets up without thinking twice about, moving slowly down the carpeted hallway until she reaches the lip of her kitchen and living room, peering around the corners carefully. There’s a blanket on the couch and an extra pillow that wasn’t there before. Of all people, she’s not expecting to find Parker Ellis standing in front of her open oven, pulling out a tray of baked goods that smell like blueberries and melted butter. There’s an open carton of eggs next to her and a bowl of fruit.
More than that, she’s not anticipating Dr. Al-Hashimi to be leaning against the counter making conversation with her.
“Um, hi?”
Baran straightens up. Parker looks over her left shoulder, eyes a little wide as she leaves the hot tray on the island behind her. “Hey, sleeping beauty. I was wondering if you were ever going to get up. You alright?”
“Never better,” Trinity drawls, stopping at the edge of the countertop. She pushes her limp hair away from her face, wincing when her thumb catches on a tangle. She needs a brush. And a shower.
“I hope that we aren’t intruding too much,” Baran says, pushing away from the island. “After last night, I’d be remiss if I didn’t check in with you personally. Has anything like that happened in the past?”
Trinity doesn’t realize how much closer that Baran has gotten to her until she’s less than a foot away. The smell of perfume is rich under her nose; notes of jasmine and something else that Trinity can’t place. It’s strange, realizing that her brand new boss saw her in such a pitiful state. Baran tilts her head, concern blooming, and Trinity realizes she’s still waiting on an answer.
“Uh, no, not like that. The day just… got away from me.”
“Hopefully we can make sure that it remains as a one off. I would hate to see someone as promising as yourself burn out. You’re an excellent physician, Trinity.”
Baran’s hand squeezes her arm briefly before backing away, and Trinity feels like she’s entered the twilight zone. She shakes her head, forcing herself back into the moment. “Thanks. Not that I’m complaining, but how exactly did you guys get in here?”
“Well, I didn’t let myself in, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Parker chimes in. “Coffee should be here any minute.”
“You ordered coffee?”
“And pay extra for delivery? No ma’am I did not.”
Trinity doesn’t have to ask. Seconds later, Whitaker comes strolling through the front door with a tray of drinks in his hand, dressed in jeans and that same t-shirt he was wearing after Pittfest. Trinity can’t remember the last time she saw him in it, but for a brief second, it feels like they’re back at the end of that horrific day, learning too much about each other in unavoidable ways.
Whitaker locks eyes on her, a relieved look on his face that she’s never seen directed at her before, and in a second, he’s dropping the drinks on the counter and rushing to throw his arms around her shoulders. Trinity staggers slightly, taken aback by the force of him less than the closeness. Her arms loop loosely around his ribs, resisting the urge to drop her head onto his shoulder.
Every day she’s a little bit more surprised by how much she trusts him.
Whitaker takes a step back, his eyes tracing across her face like he’s convincing himself that he hasn’t seen a ghost. “Are you okay?”
She nods. “You didn’t go to Amy’s.”
“She can survive without my help for one weekend. You scared the hell out of me.” He glances over at where Parker and Baran are engaged in conversation again. “I’m sorry for inviting them without a heads up, they wanted to help and I needed help getting you home.”
“Huckleberry, it’s fine,” Trinity insists. “Really, I’m… thank you.”
He ducks his head in a bashful smile, and Trinity drops her fists into her pockets. The emptiness of them catches her attention. A fragment from last night comes back to her, staring at the open tray of utensils like it would give her all the answers. Patting around her hips, Trinity steps back towards her open bedroom door, trying to nail down where it could have gone.
In a voice so slow only she can hear him, Whitaker says, “If you’re looking for the scalpel, you’re not going to find it.”
Trinity’s head whips up in his direction, her hair flying. For a second, all they do is stare at each other. Whitaker meets her with a stony glare, concern shading him in at the edges once again. It’s a new kind of feeling caught, and an unfamiliar one at that, Trinity realizes. A crossroads between her friend and her oldest vice isn’t something she planned on.
After a beat, her shoulders drop in resignation, nodding slowly. Despite the odd feeling it leaves in her chest, she takes stock in Whitaker’s visible ease.
Trinity urges, “I didn’t mean to freak you out, I swear.”
“I know. Look… I know that it’s not always easy, but I need you to tell someone when you feel bad, even it’s not me. Even then, I don’t care if you shout or call me a fuckleberry or whatever else you want, please just keep talking to me. Okay?”
Trinity forces herself to look away when her eyes start to sting, blaming it on the turmoil from the last twenty-four hours. “Okay,” she says softly, trying her best to sound like she means it. “I can do that.”
Across from them, Parker clears her throat as she sheds the oven mitt from her hands. “Sorry to break up the moment, but I am not about let this blueberry goodness cool and have it gone to waste. Plates?”
Trinity smirks, pointing to the cabinet closest to the fridge. “Second shelf, can’t miss them.”
Parker hands out the plates while Whitaker finds a fork for everyone. Baran nudges one of the kitchen stools closer to her, urging Trinity to take it. She finds herself going willingly, some of the exhaustion from sleeping so long pulling at her. As the conversation turns away from the topic of work and Trinity focuses on listening and enjoying her food, she tries to imagine what the morning would be like if she had woken up alone. Would she have even made it home in the first place if someone hadn’t found her?
A shudder runs through as she tries to piece that option together.
Throughout the morning, Whitaker remains by her side, nudging her every once and a while when she looks faraway or lost in thought. She nudges him right back, assuring him that she’s okay. For his sake, Trinity wants to mean it. More than that, she wants to feel like it can be true someday.
Only time will tell.