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When Trinity starts the first shift of her residency, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and only mildly hungover, her soulmate is perhaps the furthest person from her mind.
Sure, everyone always says that the best place to meet your soulmate, past college and school of course, is at a new job. Hands can be shaken, new faces are seen, yadda yadda yadda, you get the picture. It seems like all her life, people have just been waiting to see that burst of color launch across their skin, the tattoo that will forever mark them as belonging to someone, somewhere.
Who would want that?
Okay, so maybe it's crossed her mind. Once or twice. But Trinity's twenty-six now, and she's decided that maybe it wouldn't be so bad if she never found her soulmate. She doesn't exactly have a good track record with the people closest to her, after all.
And working in a hospital does come with its fair share of horror stories. Doctors and nurses cheating on their soulmates with each other. Seeing soulmates die with or without each other, blood covering the colors of their soul marks. And maybe worst of all: the people who find their soulmates as they work on them, giving them CPR or feeling desperately for a pulse. The first skin to skin contact being the only one they ever get as they feel their soulmate's heartbeat peter out below their fingertips.
So there's a reason that Trinity is thinking about it this fine Labor Day Weekend. Maybe she'll meet her soulmate today.
Thankfully, though, she doesn't have time to dwell on this. Even if the hospital she's committed four years of her life to working in seems to have an unfairly high number of beautiful women working today. Or maybe every day? Like, she's been here for fifteen minutes and already she's met Dr. Collins (gorgeous, in a scary way), Dr. Mohan (could make better money as a supermodel than as a doctor), and Nurse Kim (super pretty, even if she does seem to be making eyes at Whitaker. There's no accounting for taste). Even when she gets pulled into her first trauma as a proper doctor (score, a degloved foot!), she's almost stunned into silence by how beautiful the trauma surgeon on call is. What is in the water in this city?
Anyway, she's been trying to put this out of her mind. The worst reason to kill a patient surely would be being too distracted by the hot women around her. It isn't until she's stuck in a trauma room again, and the beautiful surgeon—Dr. Garcia, she now knows—is hovering over their patient while Mel attempts an crike that it really does cross her mind again.
Dr. Garcia has been ribbing Langdon, which feels deserved. The guy is an ass and already seems to have it out for her. But Trinity is able to multitask—she's actually rather good at it—and so the majority of her attention is on her patient as they wait for Mel to finish her cuts. Trinity has the balloon in her hands, ready to bag him as soon as she's done. It's exhilarating being here, and she finally feels like maybe she made the right decision in going into EM instead of surgery. Where else is she going to see a Le Fort III fracture at eight in the morning?
Mel gets the tube in with a satisfied noise, and Trinity steps around to smoothly attach the bag. Or at least, that's what she's going for. Instead she steps into Dr. Garcia's space, not expecting her to be quite as close as she is, and almost hits her with her elbow before Trinity jerks it out of the way just in time.
"Sorry. Excuse me," she mutters, flashing her eyes apologetically at the older woman before she turns back to the patient and slots in the bag.
"No worries," the surgeon replies as Trinity determinately stares at the patient.
The CO2 monitor reads yellow, and Trinity relays it to the room with a relieved deep breath. He'll make it to surgery at least.
"Yellow is yes, nicely done. Sew it in," Robby instructs, as Trinity feels someone's gaze heavy on the back of her head. "Okay, I will be next door."
Trinity focuses on manually ventilating the patient as she hears a snarky remark from behind her. "Does your resident know how go suture, or do I need to teach?"
"You're all class, Yoyo," Langdon replies with a beatific grin. Okay, maybe he doesn't suck as much as Trinity thought if he gets along with her new favorite surgeon.
"I know, thanks. That means a lot of nothing coming from you," said surgeon fires back, stepping back from Trinity as she takes off her gloves. Trinity tries to hide her smile at the words, but from the look that Langdon shoots her it might not have been successful. Oops—well, at least his opinion of her can only go up from here, right?
Langdon shakes his head at the joke, then seems to focus his attention on Trinity's fellow resident. "Mel, you okay?"
"If you're done fighting," the blonde answers.
"We're not fighting, this is playing," Garcia corrects. "Langdon's too soft to fight."
"Oh, yeah. I have nothing but respect for Dr. Garcia. In fact I think she would make a wonderful hostess at Applebees!"
Trinity doesn't think he's as funny as Garcia is, but she appreciates the effort. What she appreciates more though, is the smile that the surgeon sends her as she pushes out of the door. It lights up her face in a way that's unfairly attractive even under the ugly fluorescent lighting of the ED. Without meaning to, Trinity's mind flashes back to how they almost touched minutes ago. She almost wished they had.
*****
It's not like people avoid physical touch at all costs. That would be impossible. Just this morning, for example, someone fell into Trinity on the bus. She's had her hands on at least five patients after not even two hours of work. Her hands brushed Dr. McKay's earlier when she took her coffee cup. But it's seen as polite to avoid skin to skin contact where it's possible in modern society. There are enough people who have decided they never want to find their soulmate that the old customary handshake upon making a new acquaintance has fallen out of fashion among the younger generation. This of course means that people have their soulmarks—big splotches of color spread across their skin left from where they first make contact with their soulmate—in increasingly odd places.
Like the air evac patient in front of Trinity right now as she stands in the elevator with Dr. Robby and Dr. Collins. His skin is burned and the tips of his fingers are blackened, but the soulmark on his bicep has been obvious since she first got a look at him.
Like most people's, it doesn't look like a hand. It's kind of an oval, like maybe he pressed up into someone, and a beautiful deep blue that Trinity imagines would usually compliment his coloring well. Most people's do, after all. They say that your soulmark represents the color of your soulmate's spirit, and that by extension it suits you well. Trinity wonders what color her spirit is. Maybe a sick, envious yellow-green. Or a dark gray that would pollute her twin flame's skin.
Neither of the doctors she's with right now seem to have a mark on display. Maybe theirs, like Trinity's youngest brother's, is somewhere rarely on display. Gabriel's mark runs the length of his chest, developing after he accidentally got pushed into the girl next to him in a queue for school photos on the first day of ninth grade.
Which brings another interesting point to the front of Trinity's mind; some clothes block soulmarks from forming, where others don't. Cotton and linen do, but silk doesn't. Polyester doesn't either. Leather does, and wool does, and rubber soles of shoes block it too, but satin and chiffon allow for marks to come through. She even had a short lecture in med school about how the specialized fabrics they use in medicine tend to allow for soulmarks to permeate. Something to do with patient-focused design, and the oddly high chances of people finding their soulmates in their last moments. Trinity thinks it was developed during one of the world wars after it was properly documented how people tended to die in more peace once they had found their soulmate than if they never did, but she's not sure. Either way, she wonders if anyone here's mark has ever developed through their scrubs, through their trauma gown, through the gauze dressings on a patient.
She gets pulled out of her thoughts as the elevator doors ding and they enter the trauma room in front of them, and she's immediately tasked with cutting off their patient's clothes.
She hears Dr. Garcia before she sees her.
"Guy fell off a telephone pole?" The surgeon's voice breaks through the tense air as Trinity raises her head on instinct to look at her. She commands the room in a way that's stupidly attractive, somehow making putting on ugly bright blue gloves look hot. It would be annoying if Trinity didn't find that she likes watching her so much.
"No, he was on the platform," Collins corrects.
"Boring."
Collins shakes her head in disagreement. "Cutting into a live wire."
Trinity leans down next to the fourth-year resident to palpate the burned arm, frowning at what she feels.
"Tense ventral compartment," she says to Collins, who nods in agreement.
Garcia looks her up and down before turning to one of the nurses to bark an order. "Set up the stick pressure monitor."
But before she can assess whether Trinity's worry of a too-high pressure in one of the poor idiot's arm is correct, someone calls out that he's going into V-fib. Of course he is.
She hears Robby and Collins shout out to charge the pads to three hundred at the same time, before they start and stare at each other. There must be a history there, even if they aren't soulmates, Trinity thinks. They have the vibes of two people who feel more for each other than they want to admit. Her eyes find the side of Garcia's head without thinking, but looks away just as Garcia turns her gaze to her.
"Am I running this? Or are you?" Collins asks frostily.
"Sorry, reflex response."
The two of them shock the patient and get him back to a normal rhythm, and then someone finally thrusts the stick pressure monitor into Trinity's hand. That's fine, she works well under pressure. Thank you fifteen years of gymnastics competitions for that.
She takes a deep breath in, flexing her hands slightly around the monitor, and then breathes out as she looks at the monitor. "Anterior compartment pressure is… forty-nine."
From her position to Trinity's side, Collins sighs and nods like it's what she expected to hear. "Burn caused massive swelling."
"What does he need, Dr. Santos?" Robby asks.
Trinity could answer that in her sleep. "A fasciotomy. But he still has a radial pulse."
"Pressure would have to be over one hundred to lose the pulse and at that point he'd lose the arm," Collins says in a firm, teaching tone.
Robby nods along. "Forty-nine's enough to destroy all the nerves and muscles in a matter of hours."
Oh, duh. Trinity knows that. Maybe if she weren't so aware of Garcia's presence in the room she could have answered her own question. But, no—she's an intern. She isn't expected to know everything, as much as she would love to already.
This is evidenced by how Robby is breathing over Collins' shoulder. And further by how apparently even Dr. Garcia needs her attending to agree on things sometimes, if Trinity's guessing the identity of the purple scrub-wearing man who just walked in correctly.
"Compartment pressure is forty-nine?" He echoes, looking straight past Robby to the other surgeon in the room.
"Yeah, gonna make the initial incision down here," Garcia says, Trinity moving out of the way of one of the nurses as she listens intently. "Ortho can finish up in the OR."
The attending nods. "I'll let them know. Hey Robby," he finally says to Trinity's attending.
"Always good to see you, Fred."
"How do you like my rockstar?" The man says, ducking his head towards Garcia. Trinity watches as a small smirk appears on her lips. She clearly knows she's good, something that sends a thrill through Trinity's body. Competency is hot, okay?
"Yeah, she's pretty good," Robby indulges.
"She—"
"Has a great teacher," Robby singsongs, completing Miller's sentence as he ducks back out of the room with a laugh.
Trinity takes another deep breath, her hands suddenly feeling a little shaky with anticipation as she thinks about the procedure she's going to get to watch. Or maybe even assist with, if Dr. Collins is feeling generous.
But it isn't Collins who she feels look at her. She lifts her head to find Garcia's eyes already on her, deep brown meeting her own green. The surgeon holds her gaze for a long moment before pulling away to look her up and down. She must see something that she likes, because she tilts her head and a satisfied expression comes onto her face as she turns away to speak to one of the nurses.
"Sterile gloves for Dr. Santos," she asks in the same commanding tone as earlier, and Trinity feels her eyebrows raise in surprise. Both at the unexpected generosity and the way that she pronounces Trinity's surname. It's almost the same as how she says it herself, but with a slightly… flirtatious tone?
No, surely not. Trinity must be hearing what she wants to hear. There's no way that this hot, insanely talented woman isn't already off the market. She probably has her own soulmate out there somewhere, equally gorgeous and talented as Garcia herself. There's no point in wondering whether this means something, even if she was picking up on a bit of a vibe earlier.
It's clear that Collins, too, is confused. Trinity feels a slight tug at the worry that she didn't even know she was feeling, easing the concern that maybe this is a thing Garcia does with every new intern.
"Oh, we don't teach forearm fasciotomies to our residents," the resident says. Which, not cool, Collins! Let Trinity do the cool procedure!
Garcia doesn't even hesitate, simply shrugging in response. "What if she's all alone somewhere, someday, with no backup?"
Trinity feels frozen between the two of them. But after a second of looking between her and Garcia, Collins gives a nod of approval. Trinity takes this as her sign and she reaches across the gurney to take the offered pair of nitrile gloves, snapping them on eagerly.
Garcia moves around the gurney to Trinity, leaning down over the patient's arm as she uncaps a pen she's gotten from somewhere. She looks back up at Trinity, smiling in a pleased way when she realizes that Trinity's attention is already on her, and begins to draw a snakelike line down the burned skin.
"This is the path to avoid the median nerve and all major vessels," she explains, and Trinity leans in so far that she's sure she can feel Garcia's body heat rolling off of her in the cold room. Surely she isn't suggesting that Trinity make the cut herself? But Garcia seems so confident, like she believes in Trinity for some reason, and Trinity starts to feel some of that confidence imbue into her own mindset. She can do it.
"Maybe just watch the first time?" Robby suggests, speaking up once again instead of Collins.
"She'll hold the blade, I'll cut," Garcia says, shaking her head.
Trinity feels herself blanch; oh, shit. Garcia wants to touch her? No, not want. She must be fine making contact with people because she already knows who her soulmate is, duh. That's why she didn't move out of Trinity's way earlier either. Yeah, that must be it. Trinity ignores the mild spike of disappointment she feels at this realization.
Garcia continues to speak, oblivious to the rollercoaster of emotions that Trinity just went though. "Ten blade to Dr. Santos."
Trinity accepts the scalpel that the nurse offers her, giving her a small smile in thanks, and then takes another deep breath. She can do this.
"We'll start proximal," the surgeon says, moving quickly behind her before bringing her right hand up to rest on Trinity's own, guiding it into position.
Trinity feels herself stiffen without even meaning to. It's probably psychosomatic, from all her thinking about the possibility of her meeting her soulmate today combined with the heavy gazes that the surgeon has been sending her. That's what must be causing the weird feeling spreading across the top of her hand where Garcia is touching her through the thin, synthetic nitrile—one of the soulmark-permeable materials she remembers from that lecture.
Sure, it feels like a cross between heat and pins and needles, and that's exactly how she's always heard a developing soulmark described. And yes, she does feel Garcia pause for a moment and hear her breath hitch in her ear, surprised and pretty in a way that Trinity would give anything to hear over and over. But it also might have just been a trick that her mind is playing on her. Because the moment passes and nobody around them reacts, and then Garcia is moving again.
She curls her thumb slightly into Trinity's, and this change in sensation is enough to snap Trinity out of her bizarro fugue. Trinity lets out a breath, annoyed at how shaky it is, and wets her lips with her tongue. "How much pressure?"
"Just about this much," Garcia says as she presses down lightly. Trinity follows the line drawn on the skin, the ease with which the blade moves through the burned flesh scarily easy. "Mhm. Through the skin and sub-q."
Trinity withdraws the blade when it gets to the end of the line, looking up at her attending.
"Good", Robby says, before sending her a knowing look. Oh, fuck. Maybe he noticed how flustered she got at the contact between her and Garcia's hands, the feeling of her breath puffing on her neck. Trinity steps away, her hand still burning even as Garcia's own falls off of it, and doesn't look back at the surgeon.
"OR time," she hears Collins say.
"Yep," the surgeon agrees, moving towards the door. Trinity hears the noise of the trash can opening, and then someone gasp.
Her head snaps up in response, and it moves from Garcia's face—eyes wide, mouth slightly parted—to where she's staring. And oh, fuck was right.
Across the bottom of Garcia's hand is a bloom of color. Light green, a more lush, jewel-toned version of the shade that Trinity sees staring back at her in the mirror every morning, paints the paler skin along the underside of her fingers and part of her palm.
Trinity doesn't even realize that she's taken off her own gloves, dropping them onto the floor to be dealt with later, until she's staring at the previously almost white skin of her right hand. Now there are tendrils of crimson, deeper than the red blood of the patient who is still, somehow, in front of her, making their way over the lines of her hand. She twitches, not believing what she sees until the angle changes and she sees that it continues around the crook of her thumb where Garcia's own tucked in.
"Well, you don't see that every day," she hears Robby comment from somewhere in front of her. Trinity doesn't know what's going on anymore, but somehow manages to lift her head up to blink at him. The whole room is staring at the two of them, and Trinity ticks her eyes over to the woman who is apparently, inexplicably, her soulmate to gauge what she could possibly be feeling.
Garcia is already staring at her. Not at the mark on her hand, but into her eyes. Scratch that, into her soul. Trinity doesn't want to be the one to break the eye contact, feeling seen in some way that's simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating. She wonders if Garcia feels the same way. She wonders if Garcia believes in the importance of soulmates like Trinity did when she was little. She wonders what Garcia's first name is.
That wondering will have to wait. Garcia tilts her head in a way that Trinity somehow understands—I see you.
"No, you don't," she says in a quiet voice, agreeing with Robby's sentiment. "I have to get this guy upstairs, but I'll see you later, Dr. Santos."
Trinity nods mutely, letting her eyes follow Garcia as she backs out of the door. She flexes her newly marked hand where it's lying down by her side, and a thrill goes down her spine from her head to her toes when she sees how Garcia's own, resting on the gurney, twitches too.