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Trinity presses down on the door handle softly, putting her head through it to take a look inside. The room is half-dark and feels almost a bit muggy. She should probably open a window to let in some fresh air. Her brother is lying in bed, blanket almost up to his ears. He might be asleep, but she can't tell from so far away.
"Mike? You sleeping?" she asks, barely loud enough for him to hear.
"Ugh, no," he groans, sounding a bit stuffy. "I tried falling back asleep but it doesn't work."
That doesn't surprise Trinity. He's been out cold for most of the day, and at a certain point sleep just starts eluding you when you're not doing anything that needs energy. She steps into the room and opens one of the windows to let in a bit of air.
"Why are you back so early?" Mike croaks, pushing down his blanket a bit in order to sit up against his headboard. He looks flushed, and his T-Shirt is probably soaked through with sweat.
"Half the team and coaching staff is out sick with whatever bug you caught, so no training today," Trinity tells him, yanking open his closet to grab another shirt for him. He's at least coordinated enough to catch it when she throws it at his face.
"Sucks," he says, switching clothes while Trinity fiddles with the water bottle she brought. She hands it to him, as soon as he's fixed his newly ruffled hair.
"Where's Gabe?" he asks, flipping up the built in nozzle to take a few sips.
"Study group. It's just us for now," she tells him.
"Whoo, peak sibling bonding time. Yay…"
"You could at least try to sound excited about it," she teases, and Mike just rolls his eyes. He's still sitting up against his headboard, so she takes a seat at the foot of his bed, leaning back against the wall. She has a book with her that she still needs to read for class, and she can do that anywhere.
"I'll stick around here for a while if you don't mind. You can sleep if you want to, but I don't like you being in here alone with me next door," she says. Mike is still taking tiny sips from his bottle, chewing on the nozzle a bit.
"Don't think I'll be able to sleep. But I'm not good for conversation right now either. What's that book?"
"School mandated reading," she says, showing him the cover. It's a deep red colour with a single black eye on the cover. The title is written across in bold white letters. EREBOS.
"Looks ominous, what's it about?" Mike asks, putting the bottle away. Trinity hands him the thermometer she brought instead, to check his temperature.
"I just started, but it's about some viral computer game that makes people do stuff in the real world. And they get like, rewards in the game for completing quests outside."
"Shoundsh cool," Mike mumbles around the thermometer in his mouth, letting Trinity take it once it beeps. His fever has gone down a bit, so he should be on the mend already.
"Want me to read out loud a bit? I know you've been getting bored like this," she offers. Mike complained about the TV hurting his eyes and books making his head ache, so he'd been staring into space for most of the last two days.
"Please," Mike says immediately. "If I knew I you would offer that, I'd have gotten sick sooner!"
"Dumbass," she snorts, throwing one of the small pillows he keeps on his bed at his head. It hits him square in the face and he groans dramatically. Once he's recovered, she flips open the book and clears her throat:
With every day that passes my reality becomes less valuable. It’s loud, disordered, unpredictable and arduous.
Reality – what can it do? Make you hungry, thirsty, dissatisfied. It causes pain, strikes you down with disease, obeys laughable laws. But above all it is finite. It always leads to death.
It is other things that count, that are powerful: ideas, passions, even madness. Everything that elevates itself above reason.
I withdraw my consent from reality. I deny it my assistance. I dedicate myself to the temptations of escapism, and throw myself wholeheartedly into the endlessness of unreality.
It doesn't take long for Mike to fall asleep again, but she keeps reading anyways.
"Rise and shine, principessa! Your alarm has been going off for ten minutes!"
Trinity is usually a bit more chill about her roommate, but Paiges ringtone has been going off and is only getting louder. She doesn't really like the girl on her best days, but her remaining good will is rapidly draining out of her. Any other time she'd just shut it off herself but she'd been in the shower for most of the beeping.
When there still isn't a reaction from Paige, she throws on a shirt and just stalks out, determined to throw the phone at her roommates head. What she doesn't expect is to find said roommate in bed, looking dead to the world despite the almost ear-splitting standard iPhone ringtone blaring right next to her. That's a bit strange.
Trinity presses one of the buttons on the phone to shut off the alarm. Paige is still lying in bed, still out cold. Suddenly worried, she gives the girls shoulder a hard shake, rolling her on her back to check her breathing. She's a bit clammy, and her breathing sounds a bit ragged. Trinity shakes harder, until Paige finally stirs.
"Shit," she groans. "Fuck me, man."
That's a bad sign. Paige never swears. According to the girl herself it's in preparation for her career as a future middle school teacher who of course will have to watch her language. Trintys private opinion had always been that she was a basic wholesome horse girl who just didn't know how to swear effectively.
She's being proven wrong right now.
"Paige, what the hell? Are you hungover?" she asks, unsure what could be causing the sudden personality transplant.
"Sick, I think," Paige groans, before sitting up. She gets a traitorous greenish tinge in her face and Trinity is glad for her athlete's reaction speed as she presses the trashcan next to the bed into Paiges hands. Not a second too late, since the girl immediately throws up into it. Trinity tries not to sigh out loud, as she takes the trashcan back from an embarrassed Paige.
"Okay. Just lie back down at this point, I'll go deal with this," she says, leaving Paige to her own devices for a moment. She lugs the trashcan into the bathroom and puts the bath one next to the door to put next to Paiges bed, in case she throws up again. Back outside, Paige rummages through her closet at a fifth of her normal speed. Trinity fills a glass with water before perusing her medication stash that she keeps behind the mirror and picking out a few things that might help.
When she gets back and hands Paige the glass with the instruction to drink it, the girl is wearing a new shirt. It's a horrible pink abomination with a joke Trinity doesn't understand embossed on it. There's glitter and stuff. She looks away before she goes blind from it, but not before quickly checking her temperature with the back of her hand against Paiges forehead. It's not a fever, at least.
"Probably a stomach bug," she diagnoses, with all the confidence being a newly minted med-student affords her. Paige rolls her eyes at the obvious.
"Hey, look at the positive: This is just your body adjusting to your future reality of spending a lot of time with sick little kids that will make you get the flu every year."
"Ugh," Paige groans, burrowing back under her blankets. "Is it too late to switch? Maybe I should just go into finance."
Trinity refills her glass of water and leaves it at the bedside table, before leaving for her own class that she's a bit late to already. It's boring, since the professor is only rehashing the reading they had to do - again. She drudges through the day, sending a carefully unbothered text to Paige somewhere around lunch.
You: Still alive?
Paige (roommate): Yes.
On the walk back from her afternoon training she decides to swing by the library, because she knows that Paiges friends usually do their study/hangout there around that time. None of them know or like her very much, but they're all to happy to copy their notes for her to give them to Paige. On a whim, she stops to get a few groceries too.
"Here's your biology notes," she greets Paige when she gets back, tossing the stapled together pages at the half-asleep girl. Of course she doesn't catch them, batting them away from her face instead. Before Paige can start complaining, she dumps her bag onto the foot of her bed.
"Some ginger ale, should help with the nausea," she says, putting a can next to the empty glass of water still next to the bed. "And I got some crackers and those apple-sauce pouches you always leave lying around. Maybe you can keep that down."
"Thanks," Paige mumbles, already grabbing one of them and twisting off the cap. Trinity drops onto her own bed and switches the volume on the TV louder. It's one of those horrible soaps Paige liked to watch when it's her turn to pick. Under normal circumstances, Trinity would switch to her own programme of tacky reality TV now, but she feels bad subjecting someone already sick to that kind of stuff.
So she leaves it, trying her best to melt back into the mattress after the strain training put on her body today. She's close to falling asleep, when she suddenly feels Paiges eyes on her and looks over. The girl is studying her, like a bug under a microscope.
"You're so strange, Trin," she says, like she's pondering one of the secrets of the universe. It's one of the tamest insults Trinity has ever had directed at her.
"Thanks, I'm working hard to keep it that way," she says, only half joking. Paige shakes her head.
"No, I mean. You're such a jerk sometimes," she elaborates, which is objectively not untrue. "But then you go and do stuff like this. How did you even know I missed bio today?"
"Your offensively ugly color-coded time-table takes up half our wall," Trinity mumbles, closing her eyes.
"See!" Paige exclaims, "You're nice in such a mean way. Should be studied."
Trinity laughs at that, but doesn't respond anymore. She's tired. Hopefully Paige is better tomorrow, and hopefully she doesn't think this means Trinity and her are going to be friends now. Because she doesn't do those anymore. The sound of an evil twin coming back on the soap in the background lulls her to sleep.
It's offensively hot outside, and Trinity - like the idiot she is - agreed to referee a kids soccer game because she's stupid. She's only in this position because she doesn't know how to say no to pretty women who ask her things, which is why she's subbing in for the original referee who had something come up with her parents unexpectedly.
The kids are fine, and they're still pretty young so they're not even playing a full ninety minutes anyways. But still. Their little legs are moving over the grass with lightning speed and more than a few of them are red in the face from running around in the heat. She lets the breaks run a bit longer, so they can cool down in the shade too.
"Hey!" she yells, after blowing her whistle and jogging over to the two pre-teens tumbling over each other. "No fighting guys! Hunter, what did I tell you about biting people?"
"That I get a blue card if I do it again," the boy says sheepishly, letting go of the forearm he was just about to put between his jaws.
"Exactly," she says. "And Toby: You know pulling on peoples shirts is not allowed. What do you say?"
"Sorry, Hunter," Toby apologises. When Trinity gives him a stern look, he holds out his hand for Hunter to shake. Very sportsmanlike.
"Good job, boys," she says, before blowing her whistle again to finish off the last five minutes of the match. There aren't any other incidents, so she ends the game on time and sends them back into the shade to grab a drink. The kids start filtering out quickly, swept away into cooled down cars by their parents. She busies herself with collecting the little cones that mark the edges of the pitch, watching the few stragglers still standing around near the bench.
Once she's collected everything, only one of them is left. He doesn't look to hot.
"Hey, Jace," she says, kneeling down next to where he's sitting on the grass. "Everything okay?"
"Don't know," he says, sounding close to tears and clutching his water bottle. There's pictures of spider-man all over, and Trinity had told him that she liked it at halftime.
"Does something hurt? I know you ran into Sarah on the pitch earlier, but you both looked fine after."
"Not that," he says, shaking his head before wincing. "It doesn't hurt like that. It's more… like my head is going to explode."
Trinity balks, grabbing his wrist to check his pulse. It's a bit fast, but still okay for a kid who just exercised. He's not too clammy as well, and his temperature feels okay. So it probably isn't actual heatstroke just yet. Still, he shouldn't stay out here.
"Let's go inside, okay? It's cooler there and you should drink some more."
He nods and stands up with some help from her, still clutching his water bottle. She makes him sit down on a bench inside and puts a wet towel in his neck to help with cooling. There's also a bit of dextrose left in her pocket and she breaks off a small piece for him so he doesn't collapse from low sugar on top of the heat.
"Is someone picking you up? We should call your parents, hm?"
"I usually walk home," Jace says, playing with his water bottle again. She's refilled it for him and made him drink at least half of it. He looks a bit better already. "It's not far, like five minutes or so."
"Okay," Trinity says, looking down at the bright yellow ref jersey she's still wearing. "If you give me two minutes to change I'll walk with you okay?"
She doesn't want him walking around alone and collapsing somewhere. He gives her a nod and she steps into the room next door to switch back into her street clothes, leaving the collected cones and the ref jersey in the small room they call an office at this pitch. When she gets back, Jace has switches shoes too.
"C'mon, lead the way," she says, herding him out. He walks in front of her, and after watching him lug around his bag she slips her hand under the shoulder strap.
"Let me take it?"
"Okay," Jace agrees, sounding a bit tired out again. It's not far, but Trinity is glad when she spots the shady porch Jace is walking towards. Someone looks out the window, and then a woman appears in the half open door at the front.
"Hi mom," Jace greets, grabbing his bag back from Trinity. He says goodbye quietly before squeezing past his mom to get into the cooler interior of the house. She can see him sit down on the floor to pull off his shoes.
"I everything okay with him?" his mother asks, sending a worried glance over her shoulder before looking back at Trinity. "And I'm sorry, but who are you? You're not his usual coach?"
"Oh, no," Trinity says with a nervous chuckle. "I just refereed for the game as a favour, and I noticed he seemed pretty exhausted. He should be fine if he keeps cool today and drinks enough."
"Ah, this heat," his mother sighs. "It's way too hot for exercise anyways, but thank you for keeping an eye on him. I was just about to leave and go look what was taking him so long."
"No problem," Trinity says, itching to get away. "Bye Jace!"
He waves at her, and Trinity waves back before turning on her heel and walking back to where she's parked her car. She remembers Jace clutching his little water bottle and thinks that he looked just like her brother in that moment. Fuck that. She really needs to learn how to say no to things.
"How can you grow up in Bumfuck, Nebraska and still be such a lightweight," she complains, to the backdrop of Whitaker emptying out his stomach in the toilet for the third time today. He's unable to give an intelligent response, resorting to a few noises that sound like Frankensteins monster with a stutter.
"I know, I know, your stomach probably only knows beer and moonshine and rebels at it's first taste of a cocktail that actually tastes like something people would want to drink," she teases further, patting the back of his neck as she hands him a glass of water to swish out his mouth. "It's the sugar that messes you up!"
"Oh my god, Trin," he groans, heaving again. Nothing comes out though. "Just shut up! You did that on purpose! There's no way you matched my drinks, you look completely fine."
"Ah, sweet naive Huckleberry," she drawls. "I just used my hard-earned experience with alcohol and put in a tactical maneuver last night."
"You asshole," he blurts out, his usual filter completely defeated by nausea and headache. "Tell me you didn't actually go and throw up yesterday. That's so dumb."
"It's strategic, if you actually want to feel alive the next day," she scolds, walking back into the kitchen to take out the bottle of Gatorade she keeps on stock for times like these. Whitaker staggers out shortly after her, clutching one of the buckets the keep around for cleaning like a lifeline. He sinks onto the couch and she takes pity on him, picking up the Gatorade along with some water and zwieback for him to settle his stomach a bit.
"Here, you need to rehydrate," she tells him, putting everything onto the table in front of him. "That's whats causing the headache. Then something easily digestible so your stomach doesn't start dissolving itself."
"Okay Doc, thanks for the treatment plan," he snarks, roughly ripping off the cap on the Gatorade. He's the only person she knows who actually likes the red flavour, but at least that means he doesn't touch her own reserves whenever she stocks up the fridge. He leans into the couch, head lolling back onto the backrest.
"I'm never going out with you again," he complains. "My ears are ringing, my tongue feels like sandpaper and my legs are wobbling like I ran a marathon."
"You should really work on your stamina if one night of clubbing messes you up like this."
"Leave me alone, I'm getting to old for this..."
"I'm older than you!"
"Stop being mean to me," he whines, turning away from her to hide his face in the pile of cushions the keep in his corner of the couch. Trinity can't hold back her laughter anymore. She feels a bit bad about it, since he's clearly miserable - but they had so much fun that night. And it's babies first hangover, a special occasion in their friendship.
"Ah, man up, Huckleberry," she teases, before getting back up again to start working on some actual food. "Take a nap while I figure out the nourishment situation for us, and the world will look completely different once you wake up again."
There's no response, only the little whistling noises he insists aren't snores coming from the couch. She busies herself with cooking a bit, changing his sheets since they're slightly compromised by vomit and doing a load of laundry. He peacefully snoozes away next to her watching reruns of some crime drama with subtitles on, only stirring when his stomach starts making noise.
She makes him drink a bit more water before handing him a bowl of food - his portion even lighter on the spice than usual. He looks way better already, less like a corpse and more like the victorian orphan she knows him as. She shoos him back to the couch before he can even think of returning the dishes to the kitchen himself.
"So, hows our status?" she says, and he rolls his eyes at her.
"Fine, way better actually," he admits. "I have decided that we can go out again, but only if you don't try to get me drunk like that again."
"That was all you," she snorts, sitting down next to him and grabbing the remote. "Turns out Dennis Whitaker is a real party animal once he's had three shots of tequila."
"Oh god, stop, I'm throwing up again," he groans, hiding behind a pillow. Trinity laughs at him, before ceremoniously handing him the remote.
"Since I feel bad for you, I will let you pick what to watch next," she says seriously, like she's bestowing a great honor upon him. He snatches the remote from her, not needing to be told twice. For inexplicable reasons, he likes watching kitschy medical dramas, so now Trinity has to suffer through two doctors awkwardly flirting over a coding patient beneath them.
"Has anyone ever told you you'd make a great doctor?" Dennis asks, with a dumb grin on his face.
"Watch it Huckleberry," she threatens, "One more bad joke and I'm revoking your media privileges."
He shuts up after that, polishing off the Gatorade Trinity bought specifically for him and terrorising her with a marathon of inaccurate hospital drama. She's glad that she ended up making friends again.
Trinity should have realised that something might be wrong, when she wakes up to Garcia clinging to her like a koala. It's not that the surgeon isn't usually cuddly, she just doesn't like to show it under normal circumstances, carefully pulling back and sneaking out before Trinity can "wake up" most mornings. She's less subtle about it than she likes to think.
This morning, she's already late by her standards and she's holding onto Trinity like a shipwrecked sailor holds onto a plank. Not that Trinity doesn't like it, but it's almost uncomfortably warm and she needs to get ready herself by now. She peels off one of Garcias arms, and lightly taps her shoulder until the woman stirs.
"Shit," she groans, voice still rough with sleep. "What time is it?"
"Ten to six," Trinity says, after a glance at her phone.
"Okay, fuck. I need to go, sorry," Garcia scrambles, uncharacteristically loosing her cool a bit and almost kissing the floor when her foot gets stuck in the blanket. Trinity bites her lip to stop herself from laughing out loud.
"I'll call you!" Garcia says over her shoulder as she rushes out with her clothes only half on, and Trinity gives her a dorky salute and walks into the bathroom to get ready. It's only when she arrives at work and pages surgery, that she realizes Garcia never made it into work that day. And in retrospect she can see it, the slightly glassy eyes and the mildly reddened nose. It irks her for her whole remaining shift.
That's the reason why she shows up at Garcias place with soup, some vaporub and an assortment of other treats and cold meds after work. It takes too long for the door to open, and the woman peering outside from behind it, is only a shadow of herself. With a runny nose, bleary eyes and in a frilly robe, Garcia really doesn't look like herself.
"What are you doing here?" she asks, sounding pathetic. She's immediately wrecked by a coughing spell, and Trinity uses the distraction to shove herself into the apartment. Garcia is to weak to offer any resistance anyways.
"Why didn't you say something this morning?" she asks, trying not to sound too offended.
"It wasn't that bad," Garcia defends, sneezing midway through. "And then I got here to change and felt like I might die any moment. So I called out of work last minute."
Trinity sighs, crossing her arms and assessing the damage. Garcia looks pitiful and miserable. She's probably dehydrated, her nose must be clogged and she looks like she's going to fall asleep standing up. Making short process, Trinity takes her by the shoulders and steers her back into her bedroom.
"Off with the robe," she says, and Garcia only tugs it around her tighter, pouting. Trinity wishes she could take a photo of that moment.
"But I'm cold!" she protests, sounding like a stubborn five year old. It's adorable, but her determination is no match for the raw force of Trinity Santos manhandling her out of her robe and making her lie down in bed.
"You'll only sweat in that thing, and that's making it worse," she lectures, hanging the robe onto a hook by the door. Garcia is moaning and groaning dramatically, seemingly unable to handle tucking herself in under a blanket. Trinity does it for her, subtly checking Garcias temperature as well. A bit higher than normal, but not a real fever. Before Garcia can start complaining again, Trinity waltzes out of the room and into the kitchen to bring her spoils to the bedroom.
It quickly becomes clear to her that Garcia is an actual big baby about being sick. Her ears and tonsils are fine, but she has a stuffy nose and a sore throat on top of a headache. Trinity makes her drink half a liter of water and some ginger-apple juice concoction that feels like it burns away any coughing fit. Garcia swallows a few pills to help with her headache and lies down for a nap while Trinity gets started on making food. The labelled meal prep container for today still sits in the fridge untouched, so she's reasonably sure Garcia didn't eat anything of substance yet.
She decides to do the dishes stacked in the sink as well, because they'll need them anyways and Garcia is in no shape to do them herself at the moment. After the soup has reached a nice temperature, she fills it into a large mug and wakes Garcia up from her slumber. It takes a bit of teamwork for her to sit up in bed, but she at least manages to hold the mug herself, taking little sips while it's still hot enough to burn her tongue.
"I hate being sick," Garcia grumbles, looking adorably angry with both hands clutched around the warm mug. "Fuck whoever infected me with whatever this is…"
"I think I can diagnose it," Trinity says solemnly from her place at the foot of the bed. One of her hands is resting on Garcias shin, mindlessly stroking up and down. "You have… the man flu."
"Not funny," Garcia groans, leaning her head back against the wall.
"It is," Trinity insists, suppressing her giggles. "You have a common cold, and you're being a big baby about it."
"Hey, I didn't even ask you to call my mom for me yet to tell her I'm dying," Garcia argues with a weak grin. At least she hasn't lost her sense of humour. It can't be that bad then.
"Well, just tell me when. As you wish, and all that."
"Stop quoting bad movies at me when I can't even breathe through my nose properly," Garcia complains, before drinking some more soup. Trinity hums disapprovingly at that.
"It's not a bad movie," she says. "You're uncultured if you think that. In fact, it's the perfect movie to watch when you're sick."
Garcia doesn't respond in favour of finishing her soup. Trinity takes the empty mug from her and switches it out for another glass of water. Once she's happy with Garcias fluid intake again, she takes a look into the bathroom, satisfied when she finds plenty of soft looking towels.
"Want to take a shower?" she asks, and Garcia nods immediately. She complained earlier about feeling gross, and Trinity is no stranger to the icky feeling being sick brings about the whole body. The steam will probably help with Garcias clogged nose too. So she trudges to the shower and everything seems fine, until the water stops running and there's a sudden, loud crash coming from the bathroom.
Trinity abandons her current project of searching Garcias closet for something comfy and breathable and sprints to the bathroom. Luckily the worst thing that seems to have happened is a opened bottle of shampoo lying on the floor. Garcia looks down onto it angrily, but doesn't make a move to pick it up. So Trinity bends down and puts it back onto the shelf, before pointedly holding out her hand for Garcia to take.
"Balance issues?" she asks, a touch more concerned than before.
"No," Garcia says, still sounding a bit miffed. "It just slipped. And I don't feel like my balance is shot, but I'm a bit… wobbly. Right now."
She sounds pissed off at that, and Trinity shakes her head as she holds out a towel for Garcia to step into. The woman does look a bit unsteady on her feet, which means Trinity isn't letting her out of her sight until she's back in bed. She even hovers behind her as she's brushing her teeth, to Garcias visible annoyance.
"I'm not collapsing," she states, but Trinity still keeps one hand at her back as she steers her back to her bed. Once Garcia is settled half-upright into the stack of pillows Trinity built for her, she grabs the tin of vaporub and wriggles it in her face. Garcia sighs, and slips off her shirt again.
"I can do that myself," she offers, but Trinity shakes her head as she unscrews the lid.
"Nonsense. Then you need to get up and wash your hands again," she argues, batting away Garcias hand. She spreads a copious amount onto the surgons chest, before putting the cream away again and disappearing into the bathroom. Then she makes Garcia drink another glass of water and some juice before tucking the woman in again and climbing into bed on top of the covers next to her.
Garcia looks way better already, seeming reasonably alert again. Maybe a bit tired, but that's normal. Trinity stretches out her legs and boots up the shitty laptop Garcia keeps around for things like this. She deftly navigates the world wide web, until the first few frames of her chosen movie flicker across the screen. With the lights dimmed, she settles the laptop between them, so Garcia can watch comfortably too.
"That movie is so dumb," she complains half-heartedly, as Westley and Inigo start fencing. But Trinity can tell she doesn't mean it. They watch the movie without talking, Trinity content to follow the story and Garcia seeming more tired with every passing minute. She's half asleep by the time the credits roll. When Trinity closes the Laptop and gets up to put it away, Garcias hand shoots out and curls around her wrist.
"Wait," she says, eyes wide again. "Stay here."
Trinity doesn't know what to say to that. She freezes for a moment, before carefully inching closer again. Her heart is beating faster, suddenly. She looks at Garcia, who's gearing up to say something else.
"I'm cold," is what comes out. "And you're like a space heater."
Always so practical. And casual of course. Trinity lets out a breath she didn't notice she was holding and nods stiffly, scooting down so she's lying next to Garcia on the bed. The other woman wastes no time to curl around closer, making the best of the warmth Trinity is radiating. One of her hands ends up in Garcias hair almost by accident, combing through the loose strands. She's out like a light almost immediately.
Trinity takes longer. She's got the day off tomorrow, so she'll be able to hopefully nurse Garcia back to health over the course of the next day. Then they can go back to pretending Garcia doesn't like to cuddle when she's sleeping, like they have the whole time. Trinity sighs and closes her eyes. Back to casual.
When Trinity wakes up on a cold morning in early Febuary, she immediately knows she has a problem. Her vision is blurry, her head feels like it's going to burst and everytime she tries to breathe her throat rebels immediately. She grabs her phone off the bedside table, blearily looking at the time. It's early, but she already knows she can't go to work like this. She wouldn't make it there, and treating other people in this condition would be reckless endangerment at the very least.
So for the first time in her one-and-a-half years working at the PTMC, she calls in sick.
That leaves her alone and to her own devices. Dennis is out frolicking around on the farm, and her newly minted girlfriend of three months is working today. For a second, she considers texting Yolanda. But then again, what good would it do? It's not like she can just leave work to baby Trinity for the whole day. She lies back down, slipping back into a restless sleep for a few more hours, before the sensation of her drenched sleep-shirt clinging to her gets too uncomfortable to sleep.
The first thing she sorts out is a shower and copious amounts of water along with a bit of electrolyte powder to make up for the sweating. She's got a fever, so she downs a few pills to get that under control and puts on fresh clothes to spend the rest of the day on the couch. There is still enough saltwater nose spray left in her bathroom to make it through the day and she downs a portion of cough-syrup for good measure.
Trinity doesn't get sick very often, but she has a tried and true routine to get back onto her feet quickly and without disturbing anyone else. It consists mainly of drinking a lot of tea with honey, napping in front of the TV and aggressively treating any sign of infection with whatever medication she can get her hands on. She's done it that way since she can remember, and she's never been out for more than three days.
She curls up under a blanket on the couch with a random documentary channel running in the background. The monotone narration is calming and lets her slip away into short naps frequently. She gets up periodically to refill her tea and eat some of the potato smiley faces she found in the back of the freezer. By the time the evening arrives, she doesn't really feel better, but she also doesn't feel worse.
Part of her wishes, that she wasn't alone right now. Yolanda texts her sometime around her shift ending, but she ignores it for now, in favour of falling asleep again. The calm voice that's describing the mating habits of wild geese in the background fades and gets replaced with hazy memories from her teen-years.
It was time between christmas and new years eve and her body was giving up on her. Somehow she never got sick during the school year, only ever over break. She'd been confined to her room for the last two days by her mother, so she didn't get anyone else sick. Gabe and Mike took turns with dropping some lukewarm food off at her doorstep, but it felt like they were prison guards delivering her rations with they way they put it down on the floor before knocking.
She split her time between her half-dark bedroom and the tiny en-suite bathroom where she kept puking her guts out. Neither water nor food stayed down and she spent one night sleeping bent over the toilet because moving made her nauseous. She lost a few pounds that way, and she only remembers that because her coach congratulated her when she got back to training after the holidays.
She's never been sick like that again since. Maybe some part of her body remembers how horrible that was and just doesn't let it get that bad again. In comparison to a week of vegetating in a cramped bedroom, the freedom of dozing on the couch feels luxurious. Her peace gets interrupted by a few rapid knocks on her front door.
It can only be Whitaker, realistically. Maybe he forgot his keys again. She tumbles off the couch and makes her way over to the door, swinging it open. To her surprise it's Yolanda standing in the doorframe, looking a bit concerned. Right. She never texted back.
"Hi," she says, the scratch in her voice having been smoothed away with copious amounts of honey already.
"Dana said you're out sick today," Yolanda says instead of a greeting. It sounds a bit pointed, and Trinity shrinks back further behind the door. "You didn't respond to my texts, so I got worried."
She doesn't want to worry Yolanda. She doesn't want to worry anyone, actually.
"I'm sorry," she apologizes, unable to look at Yolanda. She didn't want to make her angry by ignoring her. "I was asleep. It's fine, just a bit under the weather. I'll be fine in two days."
Yolanda doesn't really react to that, and Trinity isn't sure what to do. They stay in this awkward standoff for a few minutes, before Yolanda gestured to the door.
"Well, are you going to let me in or do you want me to grow roots out here?" she asks, only half joking.
Trinity balks at that. The hand she keeps on the door handle twitches. Yolanda doesn't need to come inside. She's got everything sorted out in here and she'll only get the other woman sick. And Yolanda hates being sick, she said that herself. It would be downright irresponsible to let her in.
"It's fine," she says instead of explaining that whole reasoning. "I'm okay. Sorry for making you worry, but you can go home."
"Nonsense," Yolanda insists, putting a bit more pressure on the door. "I'm not going home when you're sick and on your own here."
Other than Yolanda, whose strength practically seeps out of her when she gets sick, Trinity retains all her bodily functions with most of the usual intensity. So Yolanda trying to force her way in doesn't work at first, until the woman threatens to heave the door out of it's hinges if Trinity doesn't let up. So she gives in, reluctantly. Yolanda bursts in, looking across the apartment with her gaze catching onto Trinitys little station on the couch.
Now both of them feel out of their depth. Trinity awkwardly locks the door again, and Yolanda studies the documentary that's still running. Instead of geese it's a segment about european wild boars now. Trinity takes the chance to refill her tea before moving back to the couch. She feels a bit sluggish again by now.
"I'm really not fun to be around right now," she tries again, looking at the screen instead of Yolanda. "It's really fine for you to go home. I'm only sleeping and drinking tea anyways."
Yolanda sits down next to her instead, looking at the screen as well. They watch a few little boar piglets run around in the forest for a few minutes, before Yolanda looks over at her.
"Do you want me to go?" she asks, carefully. "If you really want to be alone, I can do that. But don't just say that because you think I don't want to be here."
Trinity doesn't say anything. It's not that she specifically wants to get rid of Yolanda. But why would she want to stay? She's boring like this, they can't make out or have sex like this either and she's not in a state where she needs someone to spoonfeed her.
But it would be nice to have some company. They can just watch one of their shows and it will be like any other evening, except for the fact that Trinitys head hurts a bit and she has a sore throat. So she shakes her head, and Yolanda makes a satisfied noise before settling deeper into the couch. Trinity hands her the remote so she can cue up the next episode of whatever they'd been watching last.
It is nice and unintrusive. Trinity only remembers that she's got company, when Yolanda stops her from getting up herself for another tea refill. She makes a point to check her temperature and hands her another pillow and fetches cough drops from the kitchen counter when Trinitys cough flares up again. And it doesn't seem like she minds doing that for her either. It almost brings tears to Trinitys eyes.
"Time for bed?" Yolanda asks at some point, when Trinity must have dozed off again. She doesn't remember falling asleep, but she nods and lets herself be pulled up by her girlfriend. Trinity walks into the bathroom on autopilot and brushes her teeth mechanically, before traipsing to bed and falling into it face first. She can hear Yolanda laughing at that and feels the blanket settle over her. Sleep takes her before she registers Yolanda joining her.
When she wakes up the next day, it's late for her standards. But she's not alone. She's lying on her stomach, and there's a warm hand drawing patterns across her back. It's relaxing. She turns her head to meet Yolandas eyes, still lying next to her and looking as relaxed as ever.
"I thought you were scheduled today?" she croaks.
"Took the day off," Yolanda says, pressing a kiss to her temple. Trinity closes her eyes at the light pressure. "Your temperature feels way better than yesterday. I think the worst is probably over."
"I do feel a bit better," Trinity concedes, before looking at her again. "But you really didn't have to do that. Taking off on such short notice means you probably agreed to cover another hellish shift to switch."
"Trinity," Yolanda says, suddenly serious. "Just let me be there for you when I want to. I'm your girlfriend now, that means I'm around for the not-so-fun parts of life too."
"But…"
"No buts," Yolanda interrupts. "It doesn't come as natural to me as it does to you, this whole taking care of people thing. But I'm trying. Please let me."
She's giving Trinity those big brown puppy dog eyes, and to Yolandas luck Trinity still doesn't know how to say no to pretty women. So she agrees, and lets Yolanda play manservant for the day. She fetches tea and water and towels and clothes without complaining, and something about it makes Trinity fall for her even more. It's strange to have someone be there for her like this. But now she wouldn't want it any other way.