Chapter Text
It had been two days since the absolute nightmare that was the fourth of July shift and Trinity was exhausted. The shifts themselves have not been bad in the overall tiring way E.D. shifts could be, but they had been exhausting in an emotional sense. Between trying to avoid one Yolanda Garcia, keeping her minimal interactions with Langdon civil, adapting to Al-Hashimis’ style of running the E.D. and trying to stabilize her relationship with Dennis now that he decided to stay in the apartment with her; the emotional juggling she’s been doing these past two days had her emotionally exhausted. Her emotional exhaustion certainly didn’t help at keeping the thoughts of breaking her self-harm sobriety at bay, instead adding to weight of the emotional balls she was currently juggling. Today her emotional exhaustion was translating into physical exhaustion. She was 10 hours into her 12-hour shift, and she was struggling to keep her eyes open and her feet moving. The shift itself had been progressing in a way where every hour was somehow worst then the last. They had received a numerous amount of traumas, had lost almost the same number of patients and all this culminating in chairs being more behind than usual which always resulted in the patients being more rude than they commonly are. All this had been piling on top of Trinity’s exhaustion so to say she was desperate for this shift to end would be an understatement.
In her desperation to get out of the E.D. and not add to her exhaustion, Trinity was doing the opposite of what she usually those. Instead of racing to traumas, she was avoiding them at all costs. Meaning that when she saw Dana pick up the red phone Trinity immediately went to check up on her patients, deciding that checking on her patient with food poisoning in West 12 sounded more appealing than having to deal with whatever trauma was heading their way. She didn’t miss the side eye Dana gave her, but she kept walking away towards West 12, hearing Al-Hashimi assign Dennis, McKay, Mel, Victoria, Joy, Ogilvie, and Langdon between Trauma 1 and 2. She was reaching West 12 when she saw Nurse Kim come out West 14; “Hey Dr. Santos could you help restrain this patient. Dr. Mohan told me to keep an eye on her and restrain her if she became agitated again when she woke up.” That is the last thing Trinity wanted to do, but she wasn’t telling sweet Kim that let alone leave her to deal with an unruly patient on her own. “Sure, let’s go in."
The woman in West 14 was tiny and was very clearly intoxicated. She was agitated, aggressive, and clearly did not want to be in the hospital. The woman was yelling the moment she entered the room, “If you touch me, I will kick all of your asses,” and demanding to leave the hospital. Trinity began to put on gloves. As she did this, the woman leapt and was suddenly at the foot of the gurney where she started kicking Kim, who had been standing nearby trying to talk to her. Trinity ran towards the patient and used her forearm against the woman’s chest to push her back onto the gurney, just as Kim fell backwards and hit the wall from the woman's kicks. The woman then opened her arms and started scratching Trinity’s face and neck, the patient soon grabbed Trinity’s stethoscope and started to tighten it around her neck. Trinity didn’t want to move too much because she knew that would tighten the grip the woman had on the stethoscope even more. This, however, did not help the situation at all as the tiny woman surprisingly had a lot more strength than expected. The woman hankered her hand in the stethoscope’s bell and tried to wrap it around Trinity’s neck. In her panic Trinity did not try to attack the woman, instead focusing on trying to get the stethoscope off her neck and regaining her breath. Trinity knew that it would be useless to try to call out for help right now but even if she tried to, she couldn’t as she felt the last of air leave her. Her vision soon started to swim and her thoughts became fuzzy.
Right around this time Kim was able to regain her bearings and focus on what was happening. Once she realized the danger Trinity was in, she sprang into action, she opened the door to West 14 and yelled out the safety word “Hula Hoop”. She then ran back and try to get the woman’s hand of the stethoscope, but she had a death grip on it. Thankfully the stethoscope’s bell was soon ripped out which made the woman’s hand slip and the stethoscope to momentarily tighten around Trinity’s neck before releasing. In the push and pull, however, Trinity’s head whipped forward into the woman’s face before she fell backwards driven by dizziness into a cart stationed beside the patient’s bed. As soon as her head hit the cart in the bedside the black dots in her vision expanded and her world went completely black.