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By the time Trinity got to brunch, she already regretted coming slightly. Not enough to cancel. Just enough that when getting off the bus she had to have a brief moment of pause to reconsider several life choices she’s made.
The restaurant sat crowded and loud beneath striped awnings downtown, outdoor tables packed tightly together beneath the heavy summer heat. Music drifted faintly from inside while waiters carried trays of iced coffees and pancakes through the chaos with expressions of spiritual exhaustion.
Normally Trinity loved this place. Today the smell of bacon made her stomach turn slightly. Not ideal.
“Finally!” Jessica called dramatically from one of the patio tables. “The healthcare system released you.”
Trinity slid into the empty chair beside her with a groan. “I’m only out on parole.”
Ava snorted into her mimosa. “You look rough.”
Trinity dropped her sunglasses onto the table. “Okay, what the hell is happening today? Why does everyone keep saying that to me?”
“Because you do,” Melissa replied.
“That’s just my face in the early morning.”
“It’s nearly midday, hardly early.”
Trinity frowned at her menu. The letters swam slightly for a second before settling again. Weird. Probably dehydration.
She’d woken up feeling vaguely gross that morning. Not properly sick. Just uncomfortable in that annoying, hard-to-pin-down way med people were professionally talented at ignoring. A little nausea. A little abdominal cramping. Nothing too dramatic.
Certainly nothing worth ruining her first non-hospital related social interaction in weeks.
“You want the usual?” Ava asked.
Normally the answer would’ve been immediate. Breakfast hash. Extra hot sauce. Side of fries because she deserves nice things.
Instead Trinity found herself staring blankly at the menu while her stomach rolled unpleasantly. “…maybe just toast.”
Both women looked at her immediately.
“What?” Trinity said defensively.
Jessica narrowed her eyes. “You always order enough food to frighten me.”
“I’m evolving. Growing as a person.”
“You must be sick.”
“I’m literally not.”
Unfortunately the waitress arrived before Trinity could defend herself further. She ordered coffee she immediately didn’t want and toast she definitely wasn’t going to eat.
By the time the drinks arrived the nausea had sharpened slightly into something more uncomfortable. Not pain exactly. Pressure. Low in her stomach. Persistent enough to irritate her.
Trinity shifted in her chair subtly. The movement tugged unpleasantly somewhere along the right side of her abdomen. Still probably nothing.
She sipped the coffee. Instant regret. “Oh, that’s evil.”
Jessica blinked. “I’ve never seen you meet a coffee you don’t like.”
Trinity pushed the cup away slightly. “I think my stomach’s trying to revolt against me.”
“You sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine.”
The answer came automatically. Too automatically maybe.
Ava studied her for a second longer. “You’re pale.”
“You’d be pale too if you did my shift pattern.”
“You work in emergency medicine,” Jessica pointed out. “You know when people say ‘I’m fine’ they are probably lying.”
Trinity pointed at her warningly. “You are dangerously close to losing brunch privileges.”
Jessica looked deeply unconcerned.
The conversation drifted after that. Office gossip. Somebody’s disastrous hinge date. Jessica’s ongoing feud with her landlord. Trinity contributed where she could, but concentrating was becoming oddly difficult.
The pressure in her stomach had become sharper over the last half hour. Still manageable and ignorable. Just increasingly annoying.
She shifted again. Bad idea. Pain flared suddenly along the lower right side of her abdomen, sharp enough to steal her breath for a second.
Trinity froze.
Ava noticed immediately. “…Trin?”
“I’m good.”
“You really don’t look good, what’s wrong, hun?”
“I think I moved weird.”
Jessica stared at her. “You’re sweating.”
The heat outside gave her a convenient excuse for that. Unfortunately, her body had apparently chosen betrayal today. Another wave of nausea rolled through her hard enough that she closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths before plastering a smile back on her face.
Okay. That was less ideal. Not emergency room worthy though. Absolutely not emergency room worthy. She worked in an emergency room. There were rules about these things.
The waitress returned with their food. Normally Trinity would’ve inhaled half the table before anyone else got started.
Instead the smell hit her stomach like a brick. “Oh no,” she muttered under her breath.
Jessica looked alarmed immediately. “You are sick.”
“I’m not sick.”
“You just looked at eggs like they hurt you.”
Trinity pressed one hand briefly against the lower right side of her abdomen. The tenderness there had definitely gotten worse.
A tiny cold thread of concern slid quietly down her spine. No. Absolutely not. Not appendicitis. Not on her day off. Not while wearing denim shorts. That would be humiliating.
“No,” Trinity decided aloud, pushing her chair back slightly. “I’m going home.”
Jessica looked relieved immediately. “Oh thank God.”
“I’m serious,” Ava added. “You look awful.”
“Thank you all so much for your continued support during this difficult time.”
Trinity grabbed for her bag beside the table and stood carefully and immediately regretted it. The world tilted unpleasantly sideways. Pain bloomed hot and sharp through the right side of her abdomen hard enough to steal the breath from her lungs.
“Oh,” she gasped softly.
Not good. Not good at all.
Jessica was halfway out of her chair instantly. “Trin?”
“I’m okay,” Trinity said automatically.
Then her vision fuzzed violently at the edges.
The patio noise around her suddenly sounded far away. Too bright. Too loud. Heat pressed against the back of her neck while nausea rolled upward hard enough to make her mouth flood unpleasantly.
Ava’s face sharpened with alarm. “Sit back down.”
“I just need-”
The sentence never finished. The next wave of pain hit hard enough that Trinity’s knees simply crumbled under her.
One second she was standing. The next the world dropped violently out from beneath her. Someone shouted.
A chair scraped loudly against concrete. Then arms caught awkwardly at her shoulders before she fully hit the ground.
“Holy shit!”
“Trinity!”
Pain radiated white-hot through her abdomen now, curling her instinctively inward around it. She became vaguely aware of people staring from nearby tables. Music still playing somewhere inside the restaurant. Jessica crouched beside her looking terrified.
Oh. That was embarrassing.
“I’m fine,” Trinity managed weakly.
Ava looked ready to physically fight her. “You just collapsed!”
“I’m being dramatic.”
“You are literally on the floor.”
Trinity squeezed her eyes shut briefly.
The nausea had become overwhelming now. Sweat clung cold against the back of her neck despite the heat outside. Every tiny movement pulled painfully through the lower right side of her abdomen.
And underneath the embarrassment, underneath the denial, a horrible little part of her medical brain had started whispering: Appendix.
Jessica was already fumbling for her phone. “Okay nope, absolutely not. I’m calling an ambulance.”
Trinity’s eyes flew open. “No.”
Both women ignored her completely.
“Jessica-”
“You passed out!”
“I did not pass out.”
“You collapsed!”
“Different thing.”
Ava crouched beside her, one hand hovering uselessly near Trinity’s shoulder. “You need a hospital.”
“I work at a hospital.”
“Great,” Ava snapped. “Then you should know this is bad.”
Unfortunately, that was the problem. Trinity did know.
The worsening right lower quadrant pain. The nausea. The rebound tenderness she was absolutely not checking herself for right now because that would make it real. Shit.
Jessica was already speaking rapidly into the phone. “Yes, she collapsed at brunch. Severe abdominal pain. No, she’s conscious.”
People kept staring. Trinity wanted to die. Preferably not from appendicitis on a restaurant patio.
A fresh spike of pain twisted through her abdomen hard enough to make her curl forward with a sharp inhale.
Ava’s face went pale. “Oh my God.”
“I hate this,” Trinity muttered through gritted teeth.
Jessica lowered the phone slightly. “Ambulance is coming.”
Trinity dropped her head briefly into her hands. Somewhere in the distance, sirens started wailing faintly through the city.
Perfect. Absolutely perfect.
If she was going to end up in the emergency department as a patient, at least the universe had the decency not to send her to the Pitt.
Because if Robby saw her arrive by ambulance for ignoring textbook appendicitis symptoms for twelve hours, he might actually kill her himself.
—
The ambulance ride was humiliating. Trinity lay strapped to a stretcher while a paramedic took another set of obs and tried very hard not to look amused by the fact she kept apologising every time the road bumps made her swear.
“Pain still on the right side?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Nausea?”
“Yes.”
“Fever?”
“I work in emergency medicine,” Trinity informed the ceiling tiredly. “This is appendicitis until proven otherwise and I hate that for me personally.”
That at least earned a snort from the other paramedic.
By the time they rolled into the emergency department at Presby, the pain had sharpened from alarming to genuinely miserable. Walking from the stretcher to the hospital bed required more concentration than Trinity wanted to admit.
The department itself blurred together in bright fluorescent fragments and for the first time since collapsing at brunch, something uneasy curled properly in her chest. She was alone.
Jessica and Ava had followed separately in a rideshare, but they were still somewhere behind her. The paramedics disappeared after handover. Nurses moved around her efficiently. Questions started immediately.
Pain scale. Allergies. Medical history. Last oral intake. Trinity answered automatically, slipping into patient-mode with increasing resentment.
A nurse pressed gently against the right side of her abdomen.
Trinity hissed sharply through her teeth. “Jesus Christ.”
“Sorry.”
“No you’re not.”
The nurse smiled slightly like she’d heard that before. “CT’s ordered already,” she said. “Doctor will come see you soon.”
Trinity slumped back against the pillows carefully. Her stomach hurt. She felt nauseous. And now that the adrenaline from collapsing had worn off, exhaustion was starting to creep in too.
This sucked.
A different nurse appeared beside the bed holding a clipboard. “Okay,” she said kindly. “We’ll need an emergency contact or next of kin for your chart.”
The question should’ve been simple.
Instead Trinity hesitated. Because technically she had options.
Her mother, who she hadn’t spoken to properly in almost two months after their last argument. A cousin in Chicago she liked but barely saw. Random friends. Dennis maybe, except Dennis was at work with Robby and would panic so hard he’d probably crash his car trying to get here.
And then, almost immediately, another answer surfaced so naturally it startled her slightly.
Jack.
The thought arrived without effort at all.
Of course Jack.
Jack would answer. Jack would know what questions to ask. Jack would come.
The realisation settled strangely warm somewhere beneath the pain.
The nurse waited patiently.
Trinity cleared her throat. “…Jack Abbot.”
The nurse nodded easily and held out the clipboard.
“Phone number?”
Trinity recited it from memory. Not because she’d deliberately memorised it.
Just because somewhere along the line, between late-night pickups and grocery lists and Jack calling to ask if she wanted dinner before shift, it had become familiar.
The nurse scribbled it down. “Perfect. Do you want us to call him?”
Trinity nodded softly, feeling like a child.
The nurse moved away again. Only then did Trinity realise fully what had happened. When somebody had asked: ‘Who comes if something’s wrong?’ Her brain had answered immediately. Jack Abbot.
—
By the time Jack arrived, Trinity was floating somewhere pleasantly adjacent to consciousness.
The morphine had taken the sharpest edges off the pain about twenty minutes earlier, leaving her warm, slightly more nauseous, and emotionally fragile in the deeply unfair way strong painkillers tended to create.
A curtain separated her from the next bay over where somebody was loudly insisting WebMD had diagnosed them more accurately than their doctor.
Trinity contemplated murder briefly. Then the curtain at the entrance to her bay shifted open.
“Hi sweetheart.”
Trinity blinked upward blearily.
Jack stood in the doorway looking like he’d gotten dressed during a small natural disaster.
His curls were flattened unevenly on one side from sleep. Glasses sat crookedly on his nose. He wore a faded Pitt hoodie over joggers and was balancing heavily on his forearm crutches, one trouser leg pinned neatly where his prosthetic clearly wasn’t attached.
And despite the exhaustion written all over him, he was fully alert now in that specific terrifying doctor way. Scanning everything immediately. Monitors. IV fluids. Her face. Pain level. Chart hanging at the end of the bed.
The whole assessment happened in less than three seconds. Then his expression softened when he focused back on Trinity.
Something in Trinity’s chest tightened unexpectedly at the sight of him. “Oh my God,” she mumbled suddenly.
Jack paused halfway toward the bed. “…that usually sounds more enthusiastic.”
“You were asleep.”
The words slipped out before she could stop them. Jack blinked once. Then glanced toward the wall clock like he genuinely hadn’t realised what time it was either.
“Huh,” he said thoughtfully. “I was.”
Trinity stared at him properly now.
The crutches. The hoodie dragged on in a rush. The faint crease marks from a pillow still pressed against one cheek. He’d come straight from bed.
Guilt hit her hard enough to cut briefly through the morphine haze. “Jack,” she said weakly, “I’m sorry.”
His face changed instantly. Not angry. Just immediate confusion.
“For what?”
“You were supposed to be sleeping.”
Jack looked genuinely baffled by this. “Baby, you’re in the emergency department.”
“At Presby.”
“Yes,” he agreed patiently.
“You hate Presby.”
“I can make do when I need to.”
Despite herself, Trinity snorted softly. The movement tugged painfully at her abdomen.
Jack noticed immediately. “There it is,” he murmured, swinging himself carefully closer to the bedside. “Don’t do that.”
Trinity watched him settle awkwardly into the chair beside the bed, crutches clattering lightly against the side rail.
He looked tired. Not regular tired. Night shift tired. Bone-deep, heavy around the eyes, held together mostly by caffeine and professional obligation. And still he’d come.
“You really didn’t have to,” she muttered quietly.
Jack looked up from adjusting the blanket over her legs.
“You put me down as next of kin, of course I’m here.”
Trinity blinked. Right. Heat crept faintly up the back of her neck. “Oh.”
Jack’s expression softened further somehow. “You okay?”
The question was gentle enough that it nearly hurt.
Trinity looked away toward the curtain instead. “I think my appendix is trying to kill me.”
“Rude of her honestly.”
“I had plans.”
“You’re being very brave about this terrible betrayal.”
She huffed another small laugh.
Jack smiled faintly at the sound before his attention shifted automatically back toward the monitor beside her bed. “Pain better?”
“Little.”
“Nausea?”
“Still gross.”
“Mm.”
He nodded once, all easy clinical competence now. Not detached. Just familiar. Comfortable.
Trinity watched him quietly for another second before the guilt returned. “You should’ve stayed asleep.”
Jack finally looked directly at her again. There was something almost offended in his expression now. “Trinity,” he said gently, “what exactly did you think was gonna happen when the hospital called me?”
She opened her mouth. Closed it again. Because honestly? The answer had simply been. He’d come. No doubt about it.
Jack reached out then, smoothing one hand briefly against the top of her hair with easy affection before leaning back again. “Besides,” he added lightly, “I was having a bad leg day anyway. Probably would've just spent the afternoon bullying Michael from the couch.”
“Sounds healthy.”
“It’s called marriage.”
The curtain shifted suddenly as a nurse stepped inside carrying paperwork. “Oh good,” she said brightly. “You made it.”
Jack smiled automatically. “How’s she looking?”
“Inflammatory markers are through the roof and CT’s pretty convincing for appendicitis.”
Trinity groaned softly into the pillow. “Humiliating.”
The nurse laughed.
Jack only reached over and squeezed her hand once. “Yeah, honey,” he said sympathetically. “But at least now you get to win every argument for like two weeks.”
—
The next hour passed in a blur of hospital movement. Bloods and consent forms. Another set of obs. Someone from surgery introduced themselves while Trinity tried very hard not to look too closely at the words laparoscopic appendectomy written across her chart.
Jack stayed the entire time. Not hovering exactly. Just… there.
Settled in the chair beside her bed with one crutch hooked loosely beneath his arm and his reading glasses slipping steadily further down his nose while he quietly took over every practical thing within reach.
He fixed her blankets and lines when they tangled. Adjusted the bed without being asked. Intercepted questions when she looked too medicated to answer properly.
At one point a nurse arrived asking about allergies for the third time and looked automatically toward Jack instead of Trinity. “Any medication reactions we should know about, Dad?”
Jack didn’t even blink. “Nope,” he answered easily before glancing toward Trinity. “Unless morphine still makes you threaten violence.”
“She started it,” Trinity muttered toward the ceiling.
The nurse laughed softly and moved on.
Trinity stared after her blearily. “You didn’t correct her.”
Jack looked genuinely puzzled. “She was carrying sharp objects and is clearly stressed. Didn’t wanna embarrass her.”
His phone buzzed against his thigh. Jack glanced down immediately before swearing softly under his breath. “Oh right. Michael.”
Trinity winced slightly. “You didn’t tell him yet?”
“I texted him to call me when he got a second.”
Jack shifted carefully upright in the chair, already reaching for one crutch as the phone started vibrating in his hand. “Speak of the devil.”
He answered immediately. “Hey honey.”
Even through the morphine haze, Trinity could hear the sharpness in Robby’s voice on the other end. Jack’s expression softened almost instantly.
“She’s okay,” he said immediately. “Breathe before you yell at me.”
A pause.
“Yes, actual appendicitis. I know. She’s deeply offended about it.”
Trinity covered her face with one hand. Jack glanced over toward her and smiled faintly before listening again.
“No, they’ve got her sorted here. Surgery’s getting ready to take her up now.”
Another pause. Jack’s eyebrows lifted slightly.
“Michael.”
Pause.
“Honey, you cannot abandon your emergency department because one of the kids is unwell.”
Trinity blinked slowly. The kids. The words landed somewhere warm and strange in her chest before the morphine could fully process them.
Jack sighed softly into the phone.
“I know you want to come.”
A beat.
“I’ve got her.”
Whatever Robby said next made Jack glance briefly toward Trinity again.
“She’s scared and pretending she’s not,” he said mildly.
“Jack,” Trinity hissed weakly.
“She can hear me and she’s glaring right now.”
Another pause. Jack’s mouth twitched faintly.
“Yes, I’ll tell her.”
He shifted slightly in the chair, lowering his voice just a fraction.
“No, seriously, Michael. Stay at work. You leaving halfway through shift helps nobody and she’s already got one overprotective ED attending in the room.”
Trinity groaned softly into the pillow. “Oh my God.” Jack ignored her completely.
“Yes. I’ll update you after surgery.”
Another pause.
“Love you too.”
He hung up and immediately pointed at Trinity. “He says you’re an idiot.”
“That feels medically unprofessional.”
Before Jack could reply, his phone buzzed again almost instantly. He looked down. Then barked out a laugh. “Oh no.”
“What?”
“Dennis.”
Trinity physically covered her face with both hands this time. “Absolutely not.”
Jack answered anyway. “Hi sweetheart.”
Instant panicked Dennis voice burst faintly from the speaker.
Jack winced slightly and held the phone further away from his ear. “Yes, she’s alive.”
Pause.
“No, nobody’s ruptured.”
Pause.
“She’s being very brave about it. I’m so proud.”
Trinity made an offended noise. Jack grinned. The panic on the other end did not appear to lessen. Jack’s expression softened again, gentler this time.
“Hey,” he said quietly. “Breathe for me.”
Trinity looked away suddenly, throat unexpectedly tight.
“Its okay,” Jack continued softly into the phone. “She’s okay. They caught it early.”
Another pause.
“No, honey, you absolutely should not try and leave shift.”
Jack listened for a second before snorting softly.
“Yes, Michael already tried that too.”
A nurse appeared beside the bed then, smiling apologetically. “We’re ready to take her upstairs.”
Trinity’s stomach dropped unpleasantly. Jack noticed immediately. His attention snapped back toward her without hesitation.
“Okay,” he said softly into the phone. “They’re taking her now.”
Pause.
“I’ll stay with her until theatre. I promise.”
Jack hung up and shoved the phone back into his pocket before levering himself upright carefully with the crutches.
The bed brakes clicked free beneath the nurse’s hands. Suddenly this felt horribly real.
Trinity looked toward Jack automatically. He reached down without hesitation and squeezed her hand once.
Warm and steady and certain.
“You’re alright, sweetheart,” he said quietly.
And somehow, with Jack standing there half-dishevelled from sleep and balancing on crutches in the middle of a hospital he hated just because she’d needed somebody to come, Trinity almost believed him.
—
Waking up felt like drowning upward through warm water. Voices came first. Soft monitor beeping somewhere nearby. Shoes squeaking across linoleum. Somebody laughing faintly down the corridor outside the curtain.
Then pain. Not sharp anymore. Heavy and deep. Wrapped thickly in medication.
Trinity made a small noise before she could stop herself.
“Hey, hey.”
Robby’s voice. Close. Steady.
Trinity forced her eyes open slowly.
The recovery room blurred into focus in pieces. Fluorescent lights. Pale curtains. IV line taped to the back of her hand. Robby sitting beside the bed still wearing his dark scrubs from shift, exhaustion carved clearly into the lines around his eyes.
The second he saw her focusing properly, something in his face softened. “There she is.”
Trinity blinked sluggishly at him. “…Dr Robby?”
He huffed a quiet laugh immediately. “Little late to bring the doctor thing back, Trinity.”
Oh. Right. Robby. Her brain felt packed with cotton wool.
“How’re you feeling?”
“Like somebody stole an organ.”
“Well,” Robby said mildly, “technically.”
Trinity squinted at him weakly. “You’re hilarious.”
“I know.”
His hand settled briefly on her shin over her blanket, grounding more than restraining.
Trinity looked around blearily. “Where’s Jack?”
“At work.” The answer came gently, immediate enough that he’d clearly expected the question. “He stayed until they took you into theatre,” Robby continued softly. “Then I got here and bullied him into going to shift.”
Trinity frowned faintly. “He should have been sleeping.”
“He should be a lot of things,” Robby replied dryly. “Unfortunately that man can’t be stopped. Trust me, I’ve tired.”
Despite herself, Trinity let out a weak little laugh. The movement pulled uncomfortably at her abdomen.
Robby noticed immediately. “Easy.”
His hand shifted automatically toward the bed controls, lifting her slightly more upright before she could even ask.
The ease of it made something ache unexpectedly in Trinity’s chest. Drug emotions. Definitely drug emotions.
“…sorry,” she mumbled.
Robby’s head snapped up instantly. “For what?”
“All this.”
He stared at her for a second like she’d started speaking another language entirely. “Trinity. You got appendicitis,” he said. “You didn’t key my car.”
The tears arrived so suddenly it genuinely offended her. “Oh my God,” she whispered hoarsely. “No. Absolutely not.”
Robby looked alarmingly unsurprised by this development. “Ah,” he said quietly. “Anaesthetic crying.”
“I’m not crying.”
“You are literally crying right now.”
Trinity scrubbed furiously at her face with the heel of her hand. “This is humiliating.”
“Mm.”
“You’re supposed to disagree.”
“No point lying to you while you’re chemically vulnerable.”
A watery laugh escaped her before she could stop it. Robby smiled faintly.
There were still shadows of worry beneath it though. Exhaustion too. The kind that sat deep in the bones after long shifts and longer fear.
Trinity looked at him blearily for another second. “…Jack came really fast.”
Something changed subtly in Robby’s expression then. Softened maybe. “He was asleep when they called, luckily he sleeps light when he’s on nights,” he admitted quietly.
“Oh no.”
“Hey.” Robby leaned forward immediately. “None of that.”
“I woke him up.”
“You had emergency surgery.”
“But-”
“You did exactly the right thing.”
The firmness in his voice cut cleanly through her spiralling thoughts.
Robby watched her carefully for a second before continuing more gently “I mean that, Trinity.”
The recovery room buzzed quietly around them. Nurses moving somewhere beyond the curtains. Machines humming steadily in the background.
Robby lowered his voice slightly. “You called someone safe,” he said simply. “That’s a good thing.”
The tears threatened again immediately. This was ridiculous. She blamed the morphine entirely.
Trinity swallowed hard. “I didn’t even think about it.”
“I know.”
That more than anything made her look at him properly. Robby sat beside her still in wrinkled scrubs after a full shift, eyes tired and warm and worried all at once.
Like this mattered to him. Like she mattered to him.
“You scared us,” he admitted quietly after a moment.
The honesty in it settled heavily in her chest.
Before Trinity could figure out how to respond, the curtain shifted open and Dennis appeared balancing two coffees and looking close to emotional collapse.
The second he saw Trinity awake his entire face changed. “Oh thank God.”
Trinity stared at him confused. “…you look worse than me.”
Dennis looked genuinely offended. “I’ve had a terrible day.”
Robby snorted softly beside her.
And suddenly, despite the hospital gown and the surgical pain and the IV tugging at her arm, Trinity felt something warm settle quietly into place around her.
Safe. Completely, overwhelmingly safe.
—
Trinity started insisting on going home approximately twelve minutes after returning fully from anaesthesia.
Robby blamed this entirely on the drugs. “You had surgery today,” he reminded her for what felt like the fiftieth time.
“And now I’m done with surgery.”
“That is not how recovery works.”
Trinity shifted stubbornly against the hospital pillows and immediately regretted it, face tightening briefly with pain.
Robby pointed at her without mercy. “That.”
“I can be in pain at home.”
“You can also be monitored in hospital.”
“I don’t want to spend the night here.”
The words came quieter that time. More honest. Robby studied her for a second from his chair beside the bed.
Hospitals looked different once you became the patient in them. Trinity knew that. Knew the strange vulnerability of being woken every hour, the noise, the lights, the lack of privacy. She’d spent enough time working in medicine to be able to explain exactly why she suddenly wanted desperately to be anywhere else.
Dennis hovered nearby clutching terrible vending machine coffee. “She probably would rest better at home,” he offered cautiously.
Robby looked at him. Dennis visibly reconsidered participating in the conversation.
Trinity immediately pointed at him triumphantly. “See?”
“You’re both terrible,” Robby informed them.
“We’re persuasive.”
“You’re post-operative and sleep deprived.” Robby sighed heavily, rubbing one hand over his face before looking back toward Trinity again. “If I take you home,” he said slowly, “you listen to every single thing I say.”
Trinity straightened slightly. “I always listen to you.” Both men stared at her. “…okay that sounded fake when I said it out loud.”
“Because it was fake,” Dennis muttered.
Robby ignored both of them. “You take the pain medication properly.”
“Yes.”
“You let somebody help you walk up the stairs.”
“Rude but fine.”
“And,” Robby added, narrowing his eyes slightly, “if anything hurts worse, spikes a fever, starts bleeding, or looks remotely infected, you tell us immediately.”
Trinity softened slightly at the us. Not hospital staff. Not doctors. Us. “…okay.”
Robby watched her another second like he was checking for lies. Apparently satisfied enough, he stood with a quiet groan from the chair. “Alright then.”
Dennis blinked. “Seriously?”
“I’d rather monitor her myself than have her self-discharge at three in the morning.”
“That feels targeted.”
“It was, sweetheart.”
The discharge process took another hour. Instructions. Prescriptions. One nurse very sternly explaining post-operative restrictions while Trinity nodded with the exaggerated patience of somebody already planning to ignore at least half of them.
Robby caught every single lie immediately. “No lifting.”
“I know.”
“She means it, Trinity.”
“I heard her the first time.”
“You looked directly at your phone halfway through.”
“That’s because Dennis sent me a meme.”
“It was surgery themed,” Dennis defended weakly.
By the time they finally left Presby, the city outside had settled fully into night.
The warm summer air hit softly as Robby helped Trinity carefully into the passenger seat of his SUV while Dennis climbed into the back clutching discharge paperwork and pharmacy bags like he needed to protect them with his life.
Trinity slumped carefully against the seat with a miserable little sigh. Everything hurt. But she was a hundred times better than she was at that stupid brunch.
The pain meds wrapped warm and fuzzy around the edges of it all, leaving her sleepy and emotional and deeply aware that Robby had brought a blanket from home at some point without her noticing.
The car pulled quietly out of the parking garage. For a few minutes nobody spoke much.
Then the bluetooth system crackled softly overhead.
Incoming Call: Jack Abbot
Robby answered immediately through the steering wheel controls. “Hey, honey.”
Jack’s voice filled the car a second later beneath the distant noise of monitors and hospital chaos. “Well?”
Trinity smiled tiredly before she could stop herself.
“She survived,” Robby replied dryly.
“Debatable,” Trinity mumbled.
Jack ignored her completely. “How’s her pain?”
“Tolerable.”
“That sounded suspiciously automatic.”
“She’s medicated,” Robby informed him.
“Ah. So she’s emotionally vulnerable and lying professionally.”
“Correct.”
Dennis snorted softly from the backseat.
“What’d surgery say?” Jack continues.
“Appendix looked nasty but no rupture,” Robby answered. “She’ll be sore for a few days but otherwise should be okay.”
A small pause followed. “Good.”
Simple word. Heavy with relief anyway.
Traffic lights painted shifting colours across the dashboard while the city moved quietly around them outside.
“You heading home after shift?” Robby asked.
“Couple more hours,” Jack replied. “Got a psych hold currently trying to baptise security in apple juice.”
“Reasonable.”
“Can’t trust these kids to keep themselves out of trouble.”
Trinity closed her eyes briefly against a sleepy laugh. “Sorry.”
Jack’s voice softened immediately. “Oh sweetheart, none of that.”
Robby glanced briefly toward her from the driver’s seat. “You hear him?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Good.”
The car settled into comfortable quiet again for a second before Jack spoke once more. “You going to set her up in her room?”
“Already planned it.”
“Extra pillows?”
“Yes, Yankl.”
“Water bottles and snacks?”
“Jack.”
“Just checking.”
Dennis looked between them slightly. “You guys are terrifying.”
“Correct,” Jack answered.
That finally pulled a real laugh out of Trinity, sore and sleepy and exhausted as she was.
And as the car turned toward home beneath the warm glow of streetlights, wrapped in pain medication and the quiet noise of the people who’d shown up for her without hesitation, Trinity realised she couldn’t remember the last time being taken care of had felt this easy.