Archive of Our Own

Friday started in a way that was, not great, but manageable.

The waiting room was full, it was always full, but there was a rhythm to it. Beds turning over, charts moving, nobody standing in the middle of the floor looking lost. Trinity had learned early that a busy ER wasn't the problem. A stuck one was.

She was at the central hub with Mel and Dennis, technically reviewing the board, actually arguing.

"I'm just saying," Mel said, "you'd look great in a costume."

"I would look insane in a costume," Dennis said. "I would look like a person having a crisis."

"That's the point. It's a ren faire. Everyone looks like that."

"I don't want to look like that."

Trinity leaned against the counter. "We already bought tickets."

"You bought tickets."

"For you."

Dennis turned to look at her. "You bought tickets for me without asking me."

"June," Mel said. "You have months to mentally prepare."

"I’m not going."

"You'll be there," Trinity said. It wasn't a question.

Dennis opened his mouth to argue further, but Princess appeared at his elbow, rescuing him.

"Whitaker. Room four."

Dennis pointed at Trinity as he backed away. "This isn't over."

"No, it’s not!" she called after him.

He gestured vaguely without turning around. Trinity watched him go like had already won.

Then the bay doors opened.

The paramedics were moving fast, which meant she was already pushing off the counter before she'd fully registered why. Stretcher, male, conscious. Very conscious, actually. Loud enough to be heard across the floor.

"— my own stepson, I want that on record, my own stepson did this —"

The arrow was still in his abdomen. Trinity clocked it, clocked the entry angle, clocked the fact that he was talking which meant his airway was fine and his blood pressure was probably holding.

She and Mel fell into step on either side of the stretcher.

"Sir," Trinity said, "I need you to tell me where it hurts."

"Where do you think it hurts?"

"On a scale of one to ten."

"Eleven! I got shot with a bow and arrow, I think that earns an eleven!"

Mel caught her eye over the stretcher. Trinity kept her face neutral with some effort.

Trauma 1. Baran was already gloved when they pushed through the doors, which meant she'd seen them come in. She moved to the head of the bed right away.

"FAST ultrasound," she said. Not a question.

"Already on it," Trinity said.

The patient was still talking. He had a lot to say about the stepson, about the archery class that had apparently been a gift, about the fact that he had specifically asked for a gift card. Trinity tuned it to background noise and focused on the exam.

The ultrasound confirmed what the presentation suggested, no free fluid, nothing catastrophic. The arrow had missed everything it shouldn't have hit. He was lucky, though Trinity suspected telling him that right now would not land well.

"Get him stable," Baran said, "and let's move him upstairs, please!" For just a second, less than a second, something crossed Baran's face that Trinity was almost certain was a suppressed eye roll.

She stripped her gloves after stabilizing the arrow, a nurse materializing to escort him upstairs. Mel was already starting the chart. Trinity pushed back through the doors to leave.

She was heading for the board when she heard Dana's voice, a few feet away.

"Of course, Jack. No, please don't worry about it. We'll — yes. Take care of yourself."

She hung up. Her eyes found Baran immediately, who had come through the trauma bay doors behind Trinity and was already reading the situation off Dana's face.

"Dr. Abbot?" Baran said.

"Sick. He can't make his shift tonight."

A beat. Something moved through Baran's expression and was gone before Trinity could fully understand it.

"I'll figure it out," Baran said. "Someone can cover."

Dana nodded and Baran turned, already scanning the floor, already three steps ahead of whatever came next.

"Dr. Shen."

Dr. Shen looked up from across the hub, his iced coffee halfway to his mouth.

Trinity watched them for a moment, then she turned back to the board, found the next name on the list, and told Dana which patient she was taking.

She went right to it.

By six, Trinity was losing a war with her own charting.

It wasn't that she'd fallen behind on purpose. It was that the shift had kept moving and charting required sitting still, and those two things had been in direct conflict for the past five hours.

She'd stolen ten minutes at the hub around three, another fifteen after a laceration in north seven, and now she was looking at the accumulated damage and accepting that she wasn't going home on time.

Dennis materialized at her elbow with his coat already on.

"Tell me you're ready."

"I'm not ready."

He looked at the screen. Looked at her. "How far behind are you?"

"An hour. Maybe two." She didn't look up from the keyboard. "Go. I'll be fine."

Dennis stood there for another moment. "Text me when you leave," he said finally.

"Go home, Huckleberry."

The sound of a chart hitting the counter made her glance up.

Baran was two feet away, phone in hand, reading something on the screen. Trinity looked back at her own work. Then Baran said, very quietly —

"Fuck."

The hub was quiet enough that she heard it clearly, and apparently Dennis, who had not actually left yet, heard it too, because they both looked up at the same time.

Baran never swore. In the months Trinity had worked under her she had heard her be blunt, be sharp, be colder than necessary and then precisely as warm as required, but she had never once heard her swear. It landed wrong, like a note played in the wrong key.

Baran was already moving, phone to her ear, heading for the stairwell. The door swung shut behind her.

Joy appeared in fresh scrubs, badge still swinging from where she'd just clipped it, starting her shift with impeccable timing.

"Well," Joy said, watching the stairwell door. "That can't be good."

"No," Trinity agreed.

"I guess we'll find out what that was when she comes back."

"I guess we will."

Joy drifted off toward her patient. Dennis, who had definitely been standing there the whole time, finally actually left.

Trinity looked at the stairwell door for a moment longer than necessary.

Then she went back to her chart.

The next hour and a half passed slowly. Trinity worked through her charts methodically, taking small victories where she found them.

She was crossing the hub toward Dana to ask about a patient's labs when she noticed the head nurse was busy. Crouched down, actually, talking to a little kid, maybe six years old. A young woman stood beside them with a backpack hanging off one shoulder, waiting.

Trinity turned around and found Perlah instead. She got her answer, went back to her charts, and forgot about it.

By eight, she was still there. She pulled up the next chart and told herself twenty more minutes, which was what she always told herself, and settled more in her chair.

The north alley was in her sightline from where she was sitting. She wasn't looking at it specifically, but her eyes moved there anyway. It was the kind of awareness you developed after enough shifts. Background processing.

Which was how she clocked the kid.

He was just walking. That was the thing that caught her attention before anything else, not running, not crying, not with anyone. Just wandering along the north alley with confidence . She recognized him as the same kid from earlier, the one Dana had been talking to.

He was alone.

Trinity was already standing up.

She thought about the curtained rooms along that corridor. The things behind those curtains that a kid had no business seeing, nothing catastrophic on a good night, but still. Lacerations, and confused patients, and the specific category of person who ended up in an ER on a Friday evening and was not always in a condition suitable for six year olds. She thought about the other kind of person. The random, bored, unpredictable kind.

Not on my watch.

She left her charts where they were and walked straight toward him, keeping her pace even so she didn't spook him. He hadn't seen her yet. He was looking at something through a gap in one of the curtains with a certain focused attention.

She pulled up beside him.

"Hey, kid." She kept her voice easy. "You lost?"

He turned and looked at her with dark, unhurried eyes. Considered the question with seriousness.

"No," he said. "I know where I am."

"Right." Trinity glanced at the curtain he'd been inspecting, then back at him. "Where are you supposed to be?"

A pause. The particular pause of a child calculating honesty against consequence.

"The break room," he said. "But I finished my chapter and it was boring in there."

"How long ago did you finish your chapter?"

He thought about it. "A while."

Trinity looked at him for a moment. He looked back at her with complete composure, hands in his pockets, apparently unbothered by the fact that he'd been caught wandering a hospital corridor alone. He wasn't scared of her. He wasn't scared of much, by the look of it.

"Okay," she said. "Let's get you back in there."

He fell into step beside her without argument, which she appreciated. As they walked she tried the obvious questions.

"What's your name?"

"Kian."

"Who brought you here, Kian?"

"My babysitter." He said it, shrugging. "My mom is still working."

"Your mom works here?"

"Yeah." Matter of fact. Already moving on.

Someone on staff, then. Trinity did a quick mental scan, probably a nurse's kid. There were a lot of nurses. She held the break room door open for him and let it go.

The break room was quiet, usually inhabited. A backpack on the chair, a blanket bundled on its back, the small evidence of a kid making the best of a long wait. A book sat face-down on the table, spine up, cover worn at the corners in the way something has been read more than once, and definitely too big for a six years old.

She picked it up.

The Neverending Story.

She looked at him. "This yours?"

"Yeah," he said.

"I've read that."

The look he gave her was immediate and evaluating. "Actually read it, or you just know the movie?"

Trinity almost smiled. "Actually read it. I was older than you though."

Something shifted in his face. Not quite convinced yet, but interested.

"What part are you at?" she asked.

And that was all it took.

The Neverending Story, as it turned out, had a lot going on.

Trinity had read it at eleven or twelve, borrowed from a school library and returned two weeks late because she'd read it twice. She remembered the broad strokes, Bastian, Atreyu, the horse, but Kian was filling in details she'd let go fuzzy with time, and he did it with intensity.

He had a lot of thoughts. She found she didn't mind.

There was something easy about talking to him. No register to maintain, no professional distance to calculate. He said what he thought, expected her to do the same, and moved on. It was uncomplicated in a way that Trinity hadn't realized she'd been missing until right now, genuinely engaged in a conversation about a children's fantasy novel from the eighties.

She thought about Mel, briefly. That had been a surprise too, the ren faire thing, the discovery that they had an entire overlapping section of interests that neither of them had thought to mention until Mel had made a passing comment about chainmail and Trinity had said wait, actually and they'd lost forty minutes of a slow shift to it. She hadn't expected it. It had been a genuinely nice thing to find out about a person she already liked.

Dennis was going to hate the ren faire. He was also going to come, because that was how Dennis worked, resistant until he wasn't, and then fully, helplessly present. Trinity was looking forward to watching it happen.

"— and I know it's a horse," Kian said, pulling her back, "and I know he's supposed to, like, give up. But I still cried."

Trinity refocused. They'd gotten to Artax. Of course they'd gotten to Artax.

"First time I read it?" He was looking at the table, picking at the corner of the cover. "I had to stop for a bit. I didn't want to keep going."

"But you did."

"Yeah." He looked up. "But I cried."

He said it the way kids said things, without embarrassment, daring you to make it weird. Trinity didn't make it weird.

"That's the right response," she said. "Anyone who didn't cry is lying."

He considered this with great seriousness, then nodded, apparently satisfied.

He was mid-transition into his theory about the Nothing, whether it was scary or sad, and his position that it was both, which Trinity thought was genuinely a good read, when the break room door opened.

Baran Al-Hashimi walked in.

She didn't see Trinity. That was the first thing. She came through the door and her eyes went straight to Kian like she been thinking about this moment for the last several hours and was finally here. Whatever attending she'd been thirty seconds ago had stayed outside in the corridor.

"Hey." Her voice was different. Softer at the edges. She crossed to him and crouched down to his level, one hand coming up to the side of his face briefly. "I'm so sorry I couldn't come sooner. You shouldn't have had to wait this long."

"It's okay," he simply said.

"It's not, but thank you for saying so." She pulled back to look at him properly. "How are you doing? Are you hungry? Did Dana get you anything?"

"She got me a snack earlier."

"Good. Good." A breath. She was still in her scrubs, still wearing the shift, and Trinity could see the tiredness on her now that she was looking. It had gone past tired and come out the other side into something that just kept moving because stopping wasn't an option. "I'm sorry about tonight. I know this isn't how you wanted to spend your Friday night."

Kian shrugged. "It was okay. I read for a bit."

"Yeah?"

"And then I got bored and walked around a little."

Baran went very still. "Walked around."

"Just a little."

"Kian."

"I didn't go far." He paused. "And then I found her."

He pointed.

Baran turned.

The half-second that followed was genuinely something. Trinity watched her attending's brain do visible work. Baran's expression didn't change exactly, but something behind it did.

Trinity gave a small wave. She was aware it was slightly awkward. She did it anyway.

"Oh," Baran said.

Just that. A single syllable that managed to contain several things at once.

Then she straightened, and the attending came back, the composure settling back into place like a coat she'd shrugged back on. "Dr. Santos." She stopped. Started again. "I hope he wasn't bothering you."

"I wasn't," Kian said immediately. "We were talking."

"Kian —"

"She's read The Neverending Story. Actually read it." He said this with the tone of someone presenting evidence. "She knew about the Swamps of Sadness!"

Baran looked at Trinity.

Trinity looked back at her. "He wasn't bothering me," she said. "We were having a good conversation."

Something moved through Baran's expression. She'd been braced for polite deflection, Trinity could tell, and the absence of it had caught her slightly off guard. She opened her mouth, closed it, and then seemed to arrive at a decision.

"I believe owe you an explanation," she said. "Dr. Abbot called in sick this afternoon and I couldn't find anyone to cover his night shift. Night shift can't run without an attending and I'm the most senior one available, which means I'm — " She stopped. "And Kian's babysitter couldn't stay past seven, and he's six, he can't be home alone, so I had Dana — I should have found another solution, I know he can't be here, it's an ER, it's not — I'm sorry. I'm working on fixing it, I just haven't — "

"I can watch him," Trinity said.

Baran stopped mid-sentence.

Kian looked between them.

Trinity became aware, approximately two seconds after saying it, that she had just volunteered to take her attending's child home for the night. The offer was out there. She couldn't walk it back without making it worse. She held her ground.

"Dr. Santos," Baran said carefully. "That's very generous, but I can't ask you to do that."

"You're not asking. I'm offering." Trinity kept her voice easy. "I can take him to my place, or bring him back to yours if you'd rather he sleeps in his own bed. Either works for me."

Baran looked at her for a long moment. Then she looked at Kian, which was a mistake, because Kian had clearly been following all of this and had assembled a position.

He looked at his mother with large, patient, devastating eyes.

Baran's jaw tightened slightly. The look of someone whose argument was being dismantled from multiple directions simultaneously.

"Go get your backpack," she said finally.

Kian got his backpack.

Baran watched him go, then turned back to Trinity. Something had shifted in her expression, the composure still there, but something underneath it that was less managed, more real.

"I'll be right back," she said. "Don't — just, one minute."

She stepped out.

Trinity stood in the break room and looked at the closed door and thought, fairly calmly, well. That happened.

Kian walked closer to her with his backpack on both shoulders and his book tucked under his arm, ready to go, apparently completely unbothered by the fact that he was about to be taken home by a stranger he'd met forty-five minutes ago. He had the confidence of a kid who trusted his own read of people.

Trinity found she didn't mind being trusted.

Baran came back with her phone already open. "My address." She turned the screen toward Trinity. "And my number. I'll put it in your phone, you should have it in case anything…" She was already talking faster, the composure fraying slightly at the edges now that the decision was made. "His bedtime is nine-thirty, ten at the latest, there's food in the fridge, help yourself to whatever you need, I'll send money for a Lyft —"

"You don't have to —"

"I want to." Firm. Non-negotiable. "Please. It's the least I can do."

Trinity accepted that, and let her keep going.

She had worked under Baran Al-Hashimi for several months. She knew the attending version, precise, focused, never using two words where one would do. She'd seen her run a trauma bay with authority without needed to raise her voice. She had never, in any of those months, seen her talk this fast.

It was the same woman. Same posture, same measured tone underneath the speed of it. But the edges were different. Less managed. She was running through bedtime and snacks and emergency contacts and the specific shelf in the kitchen where the food is, … And Trinity could see, underneath all of it, the need to feel like she still had both hands on something even as she handed it off.

Trinity understood that. She let her have it.

"He should be fine," she said, when Baran finally wound down. "We'll be fine."

Baran looked at her. Then at Kian. Then back at Trinity, with an expression that Trinity couldn't fully read, something careful and a little overwhelmed and something else underneath that she didn't try to name.

"Thank you," Baran said. Quiet. Like she meant it past the politeness of it.

"Get some sleep when you can," Trinity said. "Or try to."

Baran almost smiled. It didn't quite make it but it was close.

Trinity held out her hand to Kian. He took it without thinking and they walked out of the break room together, down the corridor, through the doors.

Behind them, she didn't look back. But she thought, somehow, that Baran watched them until they were gone.

The apartment was nice.

Trinity hadn't let herself look too hard when they'd first arrived, it had felt intrusive, but she'd gotten over that approximately thirty seconds into searching the kitchen for something to feed a six year old. Baran's cupboards were organized in a way that suggested a person who had strong opinions about organization. Everything had a place. Everything was in it.

She found pasta. She found the good kind of cheese, the kind that wasn't technically for mac and cheese but worked anyway, possibly better. She stood in her boss's kitchen at nine in the evening and made the most reliable meal she knew, which was not what Baran would have made, she was certain of that, but Kian ate two bowls and declared it good, so.

After dinner, they ended up on the couch with the TV on, flipping through documentaries because Kian had opinions about what counted as a good show and reality television did not make the cut. They landed on something about Atlantis, which Trinity had put on mostly to buy time, and which turned out to be genuinely interesting. Kian lasted forty minutes before his commentary started slowing down, the gaps between observations getting longer, and Trinity looked over at some point to find him leaning sideways with his eyes most of the way closed.

She got him to his bed without much resistance. He was too tired to protest and too proud to admit it, which she recognized as a personality trait. She tucked the blanket around him, turned the light off, and pulled the door mostly closed.

Then she went back to the couch and finished the documentary.

It was good. Actually good. She made a mental note to tell someone about it and then remembered that the most likely candidate was currently asleep in the next room.

She was still thinking about a particular theory they’d raised, something about ocean floor topography she was going to have to look up, when her phone buzzed.

Farm boy: where are you? u coming home tonight?

Trinity looked at the message. Then at the apartment around her. Then back at the message.

She typed back.

Trinity: yeah, i’m just babysitting, last minute thing

The response came fast, he had been waiting.

Farm boy: babysitting who

Trinity: a kid

Farm boy: trinity

She could hear exactly how he’d said that. One word, flat, the tone he used when she was being unhelpful and he wanted her to cut it.

Trinity: a small child, very well behaved, going great

Farm boy: you don’t have friends with kids

Trinity: I have friends

Farm boy: with kids?

She looked at the ceiling for a moment.

Trinity: …don’t freak out

Three seconds.

Farm boy: you’re scaring me

Trinity: it’s Dr. Al-Hashimi’s kid

She put the phone face down on the cushion beside her. Picked it up again.

The three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again. Stayed there for an unusually long time.

She could picture him exactly, sitting up straighter on their couch, cereal bowl probably forgotten on the side table.

Her phone rang.

She answered it before the second ring, already smiling. "Hi."

"TRINITY SANT —"

"Keep your voice down, jesus!"

A payse. Then, quieter: "Trinity."

"Hi, Huckleberry."

"Explain. Now. Everything."

She explained.

It came out in the right order, mostly. Dennis made noises at appropriate intervals. She could hear him settling deeper into the couch cushions, fully committed now, cereal definitely abandoned.

She got to the part where Baran had handed her the keys and the address and talked through three rounds of instructions, and then stopped.

The apartment was very still around her.

"Dennis."

"Yeah."

"I'm in my boss's apartment."

"...yes."

"I'm sitting on my her couch."

"That does follow from the —"

"I made food in my boss's kitchen. I used her pots. I went through her cupboards." She looked at the kitchen. The pots were washed and drying on the rack, which somehow made it worse. "I put her kid to bed."

"Trinity —"

"Where do I sleep?"

A pause. "What?"

"Where do I sleep, Dennis. Do I sleep on the couch? She said help yourself to whatever you need but she can't have meant — there's probably a guest room, there might be a guest room, but I can't go looking for a guest room because that means walking around her apartment looking in doors and that feels —" She stopped.

"That feels insane."

"The couch," Dennis said. "You sleep on the couch."

"What if she comes home and I'm on the couch."

"Then she sees you on the couch. You're babysitting. You needed somewhere to sleep. The couch is fine!"

"It feels weird."

"Trinity." His voice was very patient. "You are a person who is babysitting. Babysitters sleep on couches. This is not a strange thing to do."

"I went through her cupboards."

"To feed her child."

She pulled her knees up to her chest. The documentary was still running. The narrator said something about tectonic plates. "I just feel like I'm — I don't know. Trespassing."

"You have a key," Dennis said. "She gave you a key. On purpose."

"I know." She exhaled. "I know, you're right."

"The couch," he said again. "Sleep on the couch. In the morning it will all be very normal and you will feel very silly about this conversation."

"I already feel silly about this conversation."

"Good. That means you're getting there." She could hear him settling back. "Is the documentary actually good or are you using it to avoid thinking about where to put your legs."

She looked at the TV. "...both."

He laughed, proper this time, warm and unhurried. "Go to sleep, Trinity."

"I don't know if I can."

"Couch," he said. "Blanket. Documentary off. Goodnight."

He hung up.

She woke up on the couch.

She had fallen asleep somewhere around the underwater cave systems and hadn't moved since.

She checked her phone. 6:57am.

Trinity lay there for a moment, doing the math. Baran had started at seven yesterday morning. Night shift ran until seven. If the incoming attending was on time, if handoff went smoothly, if there wasn't a last-minute crisis that needed her specifically, she'd be home in thirty, forty minutes. Maybe less.

She got up.

The apartment had a different quality in the morning light, softer, the organized bookshelves less formal somehow. She moved quietly to the kitchen and found the coffee, which was exactly where she'd expected it to be because of course it was, and got it running. It was the good kind.

She was standing against the counter, mug in both hands, when she heard the door down the hall.

Kian emerged in stages. First the door, then a small figure in the doorway, then the slow process of a six year old who was technically awake but not fully yet. His curly hair was a complete disaster. His eyes were most of the way closed. He made it to the kitchen table by some navigational instinct that had nothing to do with vision and lowered himself into a chair with the careful dignity of someone managing a very difficult situation.

Trinity looked at him.

He looked approximately nowhere.

"Morning," she said.

He made a sound.

She found cereal. It felt less wrong than last night, going through the cupboards, she knew where things were now, had a rough map of the kitchen in her head.

They were quiet together. It was a comfortable quiet. Outside, the city was starting up, the soft noise of a Saturday morning. Trinity finished her coffee and considered making a second one.

She was reaching for the pot when she heard the key in the lock.

Baran came through the door and stopped.

She took in the scene, Kian face-down in his cereal, barely functional, Trinity standing at the kitchen counter with a mug in her hand. She was still in her scrubs.

She looked exhausted.

She was also, and Trinity wished she could report otherwise, extremely attractive. This was not new information. There was something deeply unfair about Baran Al-Hashimi looking like that after a twenty-four hour shift in scrubs, and Trinity was going to need a moment with that fact.

Trinity was aware this was not a useful observation. She observed it anyway.

"Hi," Trinity said.

"Hello," Baran said. Her voice was different from last night, quieter. She set her bag down by the door and crossed to Kian first, because of course she did, and put her hand briefly on his back, kissed the crown of his head. He leaned into it without looking up from his cereal, automatic and easy, and something about that small thing made Trinity look away.

"How was he?" Baran asked, straightening.

"Perfect. We made mac and cheese, watched a documentary about Atlantis. He made it halfway through before he went down."

Something crossed Baran's face. Fond, tired, a little undone. "He loves documentaries."

"I noticed."

Baran looked around the kitchen. At the washed pots on the rack, the tidy counter, the coffee already made. She seemed to be assembling something.

"Coffee?" Trinity offered.

Baran looked at her. "Please."

Trinity got a second mug.

They stood on opposite sides of the kitchen counter while Kian slowly re-entered consciousness between them, and it was… nice. Surprisingly nice. The kind of nice that Trinity hadn't expected, standing in her attending's kitchen on a Saturday morning in yesterday's clothes, but there it was.

It was Kian who broke it.

"Henry’s birthday party is today," he said, to his cereal bowl.

Trinity looked at him. Baran went very still.

"Is that today? What time do you have to be there?" Baran said.

"Nine, at the park we go after school sometimes."

A beat.

"He’s in my class," Kian continued, turning to Trinity. "I didn’t really know anyone when I started at my new school. But Henry talks to me at lunch sometimes. And he invited me." A pause. "He actually invited me!"

Trinity looked at him, then at Baran. She watched the older woman do the math, drive him there, come back, sleep. She looked like someone trying to solve a problem with not enough pieces.

"I can take him," Trinity said.

Baran turned to her. "You've already —"

"It's probably on my way home. I'll take the bus, drop him off, go home." She kept her voice easy, practical, like it was obvious. "There's no version of this where I let you get in a car right now. The fact that you made it home is already something."

Baran opened her mouth.

Kian looked up from his cereal and looked at his mother with large, patient, completely devastating eyes.

Baran closed her mouth.

She looked at Trinity. Then at Kian. Then back at Trinity, like someone who had lost an argument from two directions at once and was accepting it with whatever grace she had left.

"Okay," she said.

Kian slid off his chair and disappeared down the hall to get dressed, and the kitchen settled into something quieter. Just the two of them and the last of the coffee.

"How was the night?" Trinity asked.

Baran exhaled through her nose. Not quite a laugh. "Long."

"Anything bad?"

"Nothing we couldn't handle." She wrapped both hands around her mug. "Two MVAs around two in the morning, a cardiac event around four." She stopped.

Trinity nodded. She knew that particular kind of tired, the one that came not from any single thing but from the accumulated weight of a shift that just kept going. She'd seen it on attendings before. She hadn't expected to see it look like this, though. This unguarded.

Baran glanced toward the hallway where the sound of Kian getting dressed was filtering through, a drawer opening, something being knocked over.

"He really was fine," Trinity said. "In case you're still worrying."

"I'm always still worrying," Baran said. Matter of fact, no apology in it.

Trinity smiled. "He’s a good kid."

Kian reappeared, dressed, backpack already on, book tucked under his arm. Ready to go.

Baran set her mug down and reached for her phone. "The address." She typed something, sent it. Trinity felt her phone buzz in her pocket. "And the parents' names are — " another send, "— I just texted you everything. Their number too, in case you need it, but I've put my number on the note for Kian to give them so they can reach me directly if anything —"

"Baran."

Baran stopped.

It was the first time Trinity had used her name. She became aware of that approximately half a second after it had happened. Baran seemed to become aware of it at the same time.

"He'll be fine," Trinity said, keeping her voice even. "I'll text you when we get there."

A beat. Something moved through Baran's expression, too quick to name.

"Okay," she said quietly.

She crouched down to Kian's level, straightened his collar. Told him to have fun, to be kind, to eat something that wasn't just cake. He nodded enthusiastically.

Trinity watched from across the kitchen and felt something shift quietly in her chest.

She thought about her mother. The particular way she used to do exactly that with her collar, some universal instinct in mothers to send their kids out into the world with their collar straight. Like that was the part that mattered. Like if the collar was right, everything else would follow.

She hadn't thought about that in a while.

She looked away when Baran stood up and turned to her one more time.

"I owe you," she said. "I mean it. I can’t tell you how much you’re helping right now." She stopped. Started again. "Thank you."

Trinity paused beside her on the way to the door, close enough that it wasn’t by accident. Her hand found Baran’s arm briefly, a light pressure.

"Go to sleep," Trinity said. "As soon as we leave."

"I will."

"I mean it."

The corner of Baran's mouth moved. Not quite a smile but the shape of one. "I know."

Trinity held out her hand. Kian took it, backpack on, book still tucked under his other arm. They stepped out into the hallway. Trinity heard the door close softly behind them.

The park was easy to find. Kian had been narrating directions from memory the entire way there, which turned out to be accurate, which Trinity chose to find charming rather than alarming for a six year old.

She could hear the party before she could see it, the sound of children who had been given sugar. Kian's hand tightened slightly in hers as they came through the gate, not scared, just taking it in.

A woman broke away from a cluster of adults near the pavilion and came toward them with the easy smile of someone who had been watching for arrivals.

"You must be Kian." She crouched down to his level. "I'm Henry's mom, Layla. He's been talking about you all week."

Kian stood up slightly straighter. Trinity watched him absorb that information with great seriousness.

"I'm Kian," he confirmed.

Layla straightened and turned to Trinity, hand already extended. "And you are —"

"Trinity. I'm a colleague of Dr. Al-Hashimi's." She shook her hand. "She had a late shift last night and couldn't make it this morning, but she'll be here for pickup."

"Oh, of course, no trouble at all." Layla waved it off, genuinely unbothered. "We're just glad he could come. Tom —" she called over her shoulder, and a man looked up from where he was attempting to untangle a banner — "this is Kian."

Tom gave up on the banner immediately and came over, which Trinity appreciated.

They were good people. People who were genuinely warm rather than performing it. They asked about Kian like they'd heard about him already, which matched what Layla had said, and Trinity felt something loosen slightly in her chest.

"Here," she said, pulling out her phone. "Dr. Al-Hashimi's number is on the note Kian has for you, but take mine too. If anything comes up before two, call me first. She's been on since yesterday and she needs the sleep."

Layla took the number without making it a thing. "That's very kind of you."

Trinity looked down at Kian. He was already watching the other kids, tracking the chaos with focused interest, identifying his entry point.

She nudged his shoulder lightly. Go.

He looked up at her. Smiled, wide and sudden, the kind that took over his whole face, and said "Thank you, Trinity!" already moving, and then he was gone, absorbed into the noise and colour of it within seconds, Henry breaking away from a group to grab his arm like he'd been waiting.

Trinity stood at the edge of the park and watched.

He was laughing before he'd fully reached them. The three of them cut across the grass in a wide arc, Kian already mid-something, already in it, already fine.

She took out her phone. Filmed thirty seconds of it, the running, the laughing, the girl trying to catch both of them and nearly managing it.

She sent it to Baran.

Dr. Al-Hashimi: dropped off the kid. he's going to collapse in his bed tonight if he keeps running like that all day.

She put her phone away and turned to go.

She was almost at the gate when she heard it. Two women standing just off to the side, voices low but not low enough.

"— nanny again, apparently."

"She didn't come herself?"

"Does she ever." A small sound, the particular dismissive kind. "You'd think she could make an effort. It's his first party at this school."

"Some people just —"

Trinity walked through the gate.

She kept her pace even. Kept her face neutral. Didn't look back, didn't slow down, didn't say a single word.

She kept walking until the park was behind her and the street opened up ahead, the thing sitting hot and tight in her chest, all the way to the bus stop.

When she got home, Dennis was on the couch in his pajamas, bowl of cereal balanced on his knee, spoon halfway to his mouth, television on something she didn't recognise. He might not have moved since Friday. It was genuinely possible.

He looked up when she came in.

She dropped her bag by the door. Crossed the room. Fell onto the couch beside him.

The apartment smelled like coffee and the particular nothing of a Saturday, it was quiet and familiar and hers, and she hadn't realized until this exact moment how much she'd needed to be back in it.

"Dude," she said.

Dennis waited.

"I have so much to tell you."

He set the cereal bowl on the side table, pulled his knees up, and turned to face her with the full, settled attention of someone who had absolutely nowhere else to be.

"I’m all ears," he said.