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There’s a twisted sense of relief that settles in the space between Trinity’s ribs when the two cross the threshold and into her— their? —apartment, the hallway light flickering alive to illuminate the space. She’s sure that part of it comes from finally escaping that certified first shift sent from hell, but a small, hesitant part of her is thinking that it comes from the lack of sheer, void-like emptiness that her apartment usually presents itself with. It’s with a surprising sort of realization that she admits that with the addition of Whitaker—who is still insisting that she call him Dennis, to which Trinity just rolls her eyes goodnaturedly and amends with a “Sure, Huckleberry”—her two-bedroom apartment feels a little less cold.
The untouched space of the spare bedroom and bathroom have belonged to Trinity’s ghosts since she moved in, and while she had been so adamant that that would remain true for at least a few more years, she couldn’t imagine a universe where she looked at Dennis with his little sad little rain-soaked kitten eyes and not offer him her perfectly fine spare room. Sure, Trinity is made of jagged edges and poorly concealed desperation, but she’s not cruel. And besides, Dennis reminds her too much of being an older sister, of wrangling her little brothers and getting them to their extracurriculars, of making sure that there was always enough food in the fridge, of being the first line of defense against their mother’s shrieking remarks.
Trinity tries not to think about her ghosts as she shows Dennis around, vaguely gesturing to his new room and the embarrassingly bare kitchen and living room. And she definitely tries not to think about how, in another faraway universe, her ghosts wouldn’t be ghosts but just a girl who got her chance to grow up instead.
She dumps new sheets and a pillow onto Dennis’ bed and watches, head and hip leaning against the doorframe with her arms crossed across her chest, as he makes the bed. After, he looks up to her with those wide, perpetually perplexed eyes of his while wringing his hands. Trinity hopes that he’s not about to ask her how she’s able to afford a fully furnished two-bedroom apartment in this economy as an intern, because she really doesn’t want to think about how the money came from people that she never wants to imagine ever again in her life and how they ruined her ruined her ruined her—
“Trinity?”
Trinity screws her eyes shut, scrunching her eyebrows together to make sure she doesn’t snap at him. She really just wants to go to sleep.
“What,” she spits out.
“I—” Dennis starts, still wringing out his hands, “I just really want to thank you again. I promise you that as soon as I’m able to pay my portion of the rent I will, but for now, I’ll help with anything around the house. I’m handy and I’m good at cleaning—”
She holds her hand out, letting out a soft snort by the way Dennis immediately stops talking. She’s still laughing slightly as she says, “Jesus, slow down Huckleberry, this isn’t a job interview. Honestly, all I want to do right now is to just go the fuck to sleep and forget about today.” Trinity knows better than anyone that the things you wish to forget are the most stubborn, hooking into your skin and digging into your flesh until it’s latched onto you permanently. But whatever. “You can panic over this again in the morning, but all I need from you right now is to go to sleep too. Or not, who the fuck am I to care.”
A corner of Dennis’ lip twitches up into a smile. “Goodnight, Trinity.”
Trinity doesn’t want to think about her younger brothers. But how can she not, with that half-smile she’s seen on their faces a million times over?
“Night, Huckleberry.”
Trinity’s favorite holiday as a kid was Halloween. She loved the act of dressing up and being able to pretend to be someone she wasn’t for an entire day, loved that it was the one day her coaches permitted the girls to be silly and attempt to perform their skills in their ridiculous blow-up costumes. The carefree giggling that ensued during Halloween practice was enough for her to overlook how her coaches and mother berated her about eating too much candy and gaining too much weight before regionals.
She had always been partial to Christmas because it meant being stuck with her family. Not just her parents and her brothers—Christmas was a true family affair, everyone piling into the Santos household with containers of adobo and lumpia tucked behind their arms and snide comments of “Ah, you’re getting fat” or judgy remarks of “Why’d you cut your hair, hmm? You look like a boy now” teeming from behind their lips. She spent Christmas dinners with her hands politely folded in her lap, her fingers itching to grab a second helping like the rest of her cousins while her mother lectured about meal plans and cutting weight and calories.
Christmas as a teenager always ended in frustrated tears for Trinity. She would stare at the new dress her parents bought her and try to scrape together an ounce of gratitude just to escape their scrutiny and then cry about it in the corner of the bathroom, leaving the tap running so none of her family could hear her hiccups. The one time Trinity mentioned offhandedly that she would much rather prefer a gift card than a dress she would never wear, she had earned a slap on the cheek. Christmas was always a reminder that no matter how hard Trinity tried, she wouldn’t be understood. That no matter how many times she spoke up, people would talk over her, claim her to be someone she wasn’t and would never be.
No one had ever cared enough about her to try to listen.
It’s expected that a farm boy from the middle of Nebraska is virtually a stranger to Asian grocery stores, but it still shocks Trinity, whose grocery store escapades were a part of her sacred weekly rituals back in her high school and undergrad days. There had been one a few blocks away from her gymnastics gym, and when she and her teammates were old enough not to be picked up after training, they would take the journey to the HMart and stock their backpacks full of Pocky and ChocoPie and drinks that were always much too sugary.
“I always forget that you’re so,” Trinity uses a hand to gesture in the air, as if that would help her find a better descriptor, “white.”
The rice cooker is still a marvel to Dennis, apparently.
Dennis rambles on about the lack of diversity out in rural Nebraska as Trinity pulls into the last empty parking spot. Let it be known that she would still be surviving off a diet of protein bars, stale cereal, ramen, and Princess and Perlah’s endless supply of lumpia and pancit if she was still living alone. It just feels wrong to subject Huckleberry to her terrible diet as well—it comes from what she can only call her sisterly obligations. Even when she was on a strict diet because of her gymnastics career, she would spend hours in the kitchen, cooking her brothers’ favorite adobo and kare-kare.
Teaching Trinity how to cook was the one thing her mother did without screaming at her or berating her for being not good enough or being too selfish for her own good— a moment of reprieve from their otherwise exhausting relationship. For Trinity, eating is purely for survival; the comfort of food really comes from the act of cooking. When she actually chooses to be a responsible adult and use her stove, she relishes in the sound of sizzling oil and the swirling phantoms of her mother’s didactic Tagalog in the air.
She’s kind of glad that Dennis’ startling lack of exposure to Filipino food—or any other type of cuisine, for that matter—has finally given her reason to actually cook.
The two fall into an easy rhythm of walking down the aisles, stopping every few steps as Trinity points out something on her list and Dennis reaches onto the shelves to grab it. Trinity makes him grab a bag of Buldak just so that they can try it later for the fun of it. If Dennis is mildly concerned by the illustration of the angry chicken with fire coming out of its beak, he doesn’t show it.
Trinity likes that she has become an inadvertent team with Princess and Perlah. During slower shifts that come once in a blue moon, she’ll hang around their stations, gossiping animatedly in Tagalog about this or that. They include her in their bets on workplace relationships and wordlessly offer her tupperwares of food at the end of her shifts just when she’s running out of food at home. She’s convinced that they’re somehow in her walls or that they knew her as a child. It’s impossible, she knows, but it’s also a little unnerving that Princess makes her pancit identically as Trinity’s lola used to and that Perlah knows that Trinity has a soft spot for dinuguan. They’ve definitely softened her edges, wormed into her heart with the familiar lilt of Tagalog and her favorite foods.
She likes it.
Being part of a team. Knowing that some people care enough to find out what she actually likes.
Trinity tries not to outright cackle when Princess slides over a carabiner at her station with a conspiratory look after Dr. Ellis pats her on the shoulder and compliments her on her work with a trauma a few hours earlier. She’s pretty sure it’s hers anyways, left on the floor after a long shift. They know they know they know but for once it’s not horrifying that they do.
Harper would’ve thought the interaction was hilarious. She would’ve thrown her head back and laughed until both of their ribs were tough and they were gasping for breath. She would’ve told Trinity to just go for it, to go for both Garcia and Ellis like the chaotic lesbian mess she was.
Dennis spills milk all over himself the first time he tries Buldak. He lets out an impressive string of curses after he’s done chugging it straight out of the carton, milk dribbling off his chin and onto the hardwood floor even as the edges of his lips are still burning a bright red. Trinity can’t stop laughing even as Dennis admonishes her for making him eat it with all of the flavoring packet put in.
“You’re so weak, Huckleberry!” she wheezes in between her laughter. “You barely even took a bite.”
“Are you okay?” Dennis asks seriously, now searching for a glass of water. “I can’t believe you eat this stuff for fun.”
She leans forward, elbows planted onto the dinner table, a smirk playing at the edge of her lips. “What can I say, Huckleberry? People do say that I’m spicy .”
Dennis groans. She and Garcia are back to their weird flirting ritual after smoothing things out over one too many cocktails and a few nights over at Garcia’s apartment, with the words You’re trouble being less of a reminder of that horrific end to a first shift and just becoming a thing . Their thing. No one really questions them, judging by the fact that HR hasn’t pulled them aside for a conversation, but Trinity is heavily tempted sometimes to yell out that, yes, she can see the diabolical side eyes people give each other whenever they’re in a room together.
“Please don’t say that to me ever again,” Dennis says after chugging another glass of water, sounding as miserable as he does when he gets yet another mystery fluid all over his scrubs. Just last week, a gym bro friend of a patient had fully rammed into Whitaker, spilling a poorly mixed protein shake over him.
Trinity shrugs. “Maybe if you wipe the milk off your face first.”
She knows that some people would love to say otherwise, but it should be known that Trinity rarely gets what she wants.
A lifetime ago, she dreamed of going D1, of standing atop Olympic podiums, of having skills named after her. It seemed reasonable. Trinity had been a damn good gymnast. Primarily because she liked being good at things off of principle, but partly because she didn’t want her mother harping about her expensive training fees going to waste. She was good because she had no other choice. Because being anything other than short of perfect was a failure on Trinity’s part.
Her teenage years had been built off of becoming the perfect athlete. She didn’t know how many friendships and potential relationships she had sacrificed to her path to becoming an elite athlete. Her other teammates always seemed to have time for vacations and boyfriends and extracurriculars, but Trinity felt like doing anything other than gymnastics was a sign of her failing. She trained through holidays and birthdays and school dances and days she should’ve been studying and potentially career-ending injuries, all because Trinity was nothing if not a gymnast.
And then, the rug was pulled out from under her. No one had believed them and the next thing she knew, Trinity was receiving calls from Harper’s parents in the middle of the night. Almost a decade later and Trinity still wakes up to phantasms of her phone screen lighting up with notification after notification, and her sleep-addled brain still convinces her that she’ll hear those words again.
“Trinity. Harper is dead.”
She withdrew from the sport entirely because even being in the general vicinity of a leotard made her sick to her stomach. None of it mattered in the end. She was supposed to go D1 with Harper; to stand next to the mats at the Olympics with Harper at her side, both their leotards glittering with red, white, and blue sequins; to have skills named after the both of them. None of it was worth it without her friend. Not even her mother’s screaming of how she was so goddamn ungrateful and how she was better than this and how she should’ve just waited until things got better instead of causing a problem like she always does made her consider going back to the gym.
“Is this what you wanted? For all my money to go to waste?”
If Trinity had truly gotten what she had wanted, their coach wouldn’t have been a creep from the start. Harper wouldn’t have chosen suicide as a way out, and Trinity wouldn’t have thought of it as a possibility as well. All she had wanted was to make a name for herself in a sport she had actually loved for a while.
And on Match Day, she matched to Emergency Medicine instead of her first choice of General Surgery. She still hates when people say that things always happen for a reason—because there was no reason Trinity should’ve gone through the absolute shit show that was her childhood—but this was the one instance where Trinity could understand the sentiment.
Her first day in the Pitt had been brutal, but the shifts that came after were substantially better. Sometimes they come close to being great shifts. She has mentors that are eager to teach, her coworkers are actually bearable, and she thoroughly enjoys the thrill of the job. What other job would let her say that she had saved a life by putting in a chest tube? She’s not mad about getting her second choice. She really isn’t.
What she is mad about, though, is that she’s scheduled to work the night shift on the day Harper died. She’s also mad that it’s no one’s fault and mad at herself for being mean when no one deserves it. Everything—from Dennis stealing her last Chocolate Sea Salt RXBar she was saving for this shift, to the crying infant in South 7, to Ellis flagging her down to press a granola bar in her hands with a stern reminder to eat during her shift when she can—just annoys the fuck out of her and makes her bite back with unkind words she really doesn’t mean.
The charge nurse for night shift doesn’t know her as well so she just gets reprimanded once to focus on her patients; Trinity is sure that Dana would’ve just pinned her down with a disappointed yet knowing stare, looking through glasses perched on the tip of her nose, until Trinity collected herself and just locked the fuck in like everyone else.
Instead, Trinity tries to focus on her infinite gratefulness for the fact that Mel is here on her rare night shift. She would much rather deal with the complaining assholes in the waiting room a hundred times over than be mean to Mel, so she sticks next to the other resident, dutifully ignoring all the ghosts swimming in her periphery and trying her goddamn hardest not to lose her temper.
It’s fucking hard, though. She assesses the screaming baby in South 7—a panicked first-time mom and a baby with a fever; nothing a little infant Tylenol can’t fix—and can’t stop thinking about how Harper always harped on about wanting to be a mom. She already feels a little sick when the paramedics wheel in a teenager who overdosed on pills, and Samira drags her aside, asking her if she’s okay. She freezes when she hears anxious, rapid-fire Korean being exchanged between a teenager and her mom from behind a curtain, thinking for a second that it could be Harper and her mom. She helps with a trauma right after, getting far too much blood on her shoes after she sidesteps the wrong way and fully bodychecks Perlah. She fails to hide a sneer in front of a middle-aged man who keeps complaining about being treated by “females,” which earns her a “Oh, so you think you’re better than me, you cunt?”
Surprisingly, the crude remark isn’t what makes her snap.
The man tries (and fails) to charge at her when Trinity shoots back with a heated, “The fuck did you just call me?” Before Trinity can swing, Mel expertly drags her away with surprising strength and calls security. Abbot takes her off the case, tells her to take a quick break, and stares at her until she takes an unceremonious bite out of the granola bar he knew she hadn’t eaten yet. And then McKay, who’s also on the night shift on account of it being spring break and Harrison being away on some sleepaway camp, finds her in the ambulance bay and asks her for some help with a patient from chairs.
She rarely works directly with McKay, but Trinity regards her with a sense of respect that was born after she drilled a hole straight through her ankle monitor during the PittFest MCI. And Trinity still remembers their awkward conversation in front of the broken coffee machine in the staff lounge a few days after that.
It was the conversation where Trinity learned about McKay’s time in rehab, her experience in NA meetings, and how med school had been her fresh start. How she had done it all for Harrison, because her son deserved nothing but the best.
“For what it’s worth, I think you did the right thing, Santos.”
It’s weird, but Trinity also holds some envy when it comes to McKay. When things got hard, Trinity’s mother became cruel like her, lashing out and pushing her away until it was Trinity taking care of her brothers and cooking for them and driving them to soccer games and Judo tournaments. It’s often that she wonders if her life could’ve turned out differently if her own mother had been like McKay, caring more fiercely for her kid in spite and as a result of all the hardships. McKay is a great doctor and an even better mom. That is something that Trinity will never look past.
It’s why Trinity nods and follows her back into the Pitt from the ambulance bay even as dread is searing through her body in the form of a cold sweat. And because she famously never gets what she wants, Trinity comes face to face with the chart for an 18-year-old named Harper. She decides the world is playing one big fucking cruel joke on her and before she can even internalize what she’s saying, she’s handed the chart back to McKay and is walking away, trying her hardest not to break down into sobs in the middle of the Pitt.
She’s sure that she hears McKay or Ellis or even Abbot calling after her as she pushes herself away from the chaos of the Pitt and into an empty, cold stairwell that smells strongly of antiseptic. Before she can catch her breath or be caught off guard by her thoughts, she plants her feet against the first step. She climbs. By the time she’s on the rooftop, her lungs burn and there’s a fire starting in the hard muscle of her thighs.
She’s sure that this Harper is here for something minimal. Anything more, and she would’ve come in through the ambulance bay instead of waiting for hours on end in that stuffy ass waiting room. She knows that this girl is not her Harper, but on a day like today, when all of Trinity’s scars are stretched out and torn open so that people can see all of her hurt, all it takes are those six letters for all rationality to mean nothing in her mind. A chart is all it takes for her mind to reel back to that night, the words replaying in her head like a broken tape that can’t even be ejected.
The rooftop is far from silent. The phone call persists. Ringing ringing ringing through her brain.
It doesn’t stop even when an ambulance roars over the city, sharp and abrupt and loud.
Trinity. Harper is dead.
Trinity. Harper is dead.
Trinity. Harper is dead.
Trinity. Harper is dead.
Harper is dead.
Harper
is
dead.
Trinity doesn’t offer up a lot of herself to her colleagues. They know that she’s from Seattle and that she has two younger brothers who are both doing their undergrad at UW—one of them wanting to go to med school like she did, with the other one majoring in philosophy like the nerd he is. They know that she’s a cat person and is a fiend for iced chai lattes and that she could’ve been a Broadway actress if she really wanted to be. They know that she’s roommates with Dennis and that she’s not actually as mean as she comes off as and that all of her snark shouldn’t be taken seriously. They know that her dark comedy and sarcasm is a shield she’s developed throughout the years. They know that she doesn’t talk to her mother unless it’s about one of her brothers. They know that she was a gymnast. It’s all surface level shit, information that she can easily dole out in lieu of opening up and letting people into her life.
The only two people that know more than that are Dennis and Yolanda.
Dennis, because being roommates means accidentally saying too much over ice cream and shitty medical dramas and never bringing it up ever again.
And Yolanda, because Trinity will allow herself to explain some of her tattoos and scars as she becomes pliant under her steady hands. When soft fingers glide against her skin, lingering around the thin lines of ink, she’ll let out a content sigh and let Yolanda continue, letting her hands roam across her skin until she’s thumbing at the edges of Trinity’s boxers, looking up at her until Trinity nods.
The last time they woke up in the same bed, Yolanda’s fingers swiped across the tattoo above the crook of her left elbow. A bunny playing the harp.
“This one have a story, too?” Yolanda asked quietly, shifting in bed so that she was pushing herself up on one elbow, the mattress creaking beneath their weights. “Never pegged you as a bunny person.”
Now laying on her back, Trinity raised her arm up to the ceiling and stared long and hard at the tattoo. She had gotten it on Harper’s birthday a few years ago, back in Seattle with an artist that the two had promised to get their Olympic rings tattooed from. “My friend Harper had a bunny that she raised like a child. Felt fitting to get a tattoo of one playing a harp.”
“A friendship tattoo then?” Yolanda smirked, “I can imagine that this Harper has one of a hedgehog singing karaoke at a bar.”
Trinity smiled at the thought. “God, she would’ve loved getting something like that tattooed.”
“Didn’t end up happening?” Yolanda’s voice was softer now, like she knew that they were breaching a topic that Trinity usually kept hidden away.
“Nah.”
And then Trinity told her about Harper. She told Yolanda about meeting her on the first day of their preschool gymnastics class and how they had stuck together up until senior year of high school. She told her about how Harper’s parents always invited Trinity over for dinner and made her bring back a bag’s worth of Korean food neatly packed into color-coordinated containers for her and her brothers—allergens listed out and all. Trinity and Harper had been best friends before they could even spell their own names, and even when the harsh jagged lines of competition were drawn in between them by their coach, their bond had remained steadfast. She didn’t tell her about that night where Harper’s parents had called from the ER, though.
That was a story for a different morning.
“I’m sure Harper is proud of you for getting to where you are today,” Yolanda whispered, pressing a kiss to her temple.
Despite the hot tears that were trailing down Trinity’s cheeks, it felt good to talk. Because at the end of the day, Harper isn’t just some part of Trinity’s traumatic past—she was a real person. A great gymnast, and an even greater friend.
“She’s definitely cheering me on somewhere for getting into bed with a hot senior resident, that’s for sure.”
Yolanda snorted, smiling that smile of hers that Trinity liked to think was reserved just for moments like these. For her. “Oh my god, you really are trouble, Trinity Santos.”
McKay eventually finds her on the roof, not quite on the ledge but leaning far enough forward with her arms against the railing that she can see the pavement below.
“Hey, kid,” McKay rasps, stopping a few steps behind Trinity. “Thought I would find you up here.”
There’s never a hint of judgment in McKay’s voice, not while she’s talking to patients or while she’s listening in on some dumb things the junior residents and med students clamor about getting into on their off days. With Trinity though, there’s always a lilt of concern to the edge of her voice, and she can’t decide if that makes her want to cry or scream.
Probably both.
Even an ounce of the concern McKay seems to keep aside for her could’ve gone such a long way all those years ago, back when Trinity started getting angrier and Harper just closed in on herself as a result of everything. Trinity wants to cry because she sees patients like herself in the emergency room almost daily: scared girls who were never taught how to ask for help or even told that it was okay to ask for it. Sometimes, she cries for them in the shower after a shift, but she also cries for herself—the patient that never got saved, that got shoved aside and ignored and shut away. And then she’s angry all over again because it should’ve been easy to catch by the adults in her life.
But the thing about grief and anger is that doubt is a constant companion, a stubborn bitch in Trinity’s trauma cocktail from hell. She doubts herself so much to the point that her mind screams at her that maybe it really was all her fault all along. Her mind screams that maybe if Trinity had been kinder and softer in her pain, more people would’ve tried to help her. Maybe if she hadn’t built all those walls around her in the face of her trauma, she wouldn’t have just been waved off as a good for nothing asshole.
The thousands of what-ifs claw through her throat and the next thing she knows, strangled cries are spilling out from her mouth, as if half of her body is telling her to expel all of her pain while half of her mind is telling her to shut the fuck up and suck it up like an adult. But she has shattered completely, every breath scattered on this stupid concrete rooftop like miniscule glass fragments that she can’t collect.
“Trinity,” McKay’s voice coaxes, “you gotta breathe.”
She wants to act like a petulant child and storm off, but there’s something so grounding about McKay’s voice that she ends up staying put, knuckles turning white by how hard she’s gripping the guard railing. She breathes in, breathes out. Her entire body shudders under the strain of it, but she manages. If gymnastics taught her anything, it’s the ability to piece herself back together even when she knows that she’s past her breaking point.
When Trinity can finally breathe in without it making herself shudder, she turns to face McKay, wedging the small of her back onto the cold railing. McKay doesn’t say anything, just stares at her with that probing gaze that works so well on patients who are more resistant to sharing. Trinity looks down at her shoes, acting like the blood-speckled laces are the most interesting things she’s ever laid her eyes upon.
Trinity looks back up again, steels herself against the tears that threaten to spill over again. “I’m sorry for running off like that. Is the”—her voice catches—“is the girl from chairs okay?”
McKay shakes her head, more strands of her hair flying out of her loosely secured ponytail. “Nothing to apologize for. We all have those moments.” She pauses before proceeding carefully, still keeping a watchful gaze on Trinity, “Harper, our girl from chairs, just had a black eye and a concussion from playing a little too rough at a rugby game earlier tonight. But she’ll be up and running soon, no doubt.”
It’s weird to hear Harper’s name and realize that for anyone other than Trinity, it’s just another name—another patient that will be wiped clean from their memories by the time their shift is over. Compartmentalization. It’s what Dana preaches about when one of the med students is having a rough shift. They need to learn how to keep personal and home lives separate from the lives that come into the ER if they want to survive in this specialty. They can’t leave too much of themselves with a patient if they plan on finishing a shift without needing to have a mental breakdown on the rooftop. Trinity isn’t doing a great job at that right now. She’s letting her Harper bleed into the patients she’s supposed to be helping right now, and no matter how hard she tries, she can’t stop the flow.
“You don’t have to talk or tell me if you don’t want to, but I am going to ask once for good measure,” McKay starts saying, her voice a gentle lull over the nighttime humming of the city below them. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay for the rest of the shift?”
It feels like both of them expect Trinity to say that she’s fine, which is why they’re both cut off in surprise when Trinity opens her mouth. “I’m not— I don’t—”
She feels herself shatter again, and before she knows it, she’s talking in short bursts of air. Apologizing for being snappy all night. Apologizing for running off again. Talking about grief and anniversaries and haunting phone calls that her brain refuses to forget. When her thoughts and breath realign, she realizes that she has let McKay take her in for a hug, her head tucked into the crook of her neck, a hand patting at her back.
“I’m sorry that happened to you, Trinity.” She doesn’t know when McKay started using her first name, but she decides that she’s not against it. “And I’m sorry that no one was there to help you when you needed it.”
A breeze flits through the air. The sound of an ambulance’s sirens echoes up to the rooftop. Trinity is here. Alive. Breathing. Not okay, but still standing.
McKay takes a step back, a hand still resting on her shoulder. “But you have to know that you’re not stuck there anymore, kid. You have so many people that can and will help you, but they can only do that if you ask them for it. We both know you’re strong, maybe stronger than most of us here, but that doesn’t mean you have to shoulder all of this weight alone.” Something in her face crumples. A flicker of familiarity, of shared experience. “You’re allowed to feel shitty. And you’re more than allowed to ask for help because of that.”
“I don’t know how,” Trinity says truthfully. It’s only half a lie, really. The more accurate statement would be that she’s too scared to. She spent half of her life getting shut down when she asked for help, being overlooked until she ended up at Harper’s funeral.
“And that’s okay,” McKay says, a soft smile tugging at her tired face. “You’re a quick learner. I’m sure you’ll pick it up in no time.”
She hopes so.
God, Trinity truly hopes so.
No one asks her about her disappearance when she’s back. If they notice her red eyes and her hoarse voice, they pretend not to. Well, other than Mel, who kindly approaches her with a note of hesitancy hanging at the end of her question.
“Are you okay? Should I get you some water from the staff fridge? Last time I checked someone even stocked the Celsius drinks you like so much.”
Trinity takes her up on the Celsius. When Trinity comes back to her station after checking up on her patients, she finds that Mel has placed the energy drink next to her computer, a sticky note attached.
Written in Mel’s tidy script are the words:
Hope you feel better. Always here if you need a friend,
Mel.
It’s signed off with a smiley face.
She takes the sticky note and places it in her pocket for safekeeping.
After what seems like an eternity of dragging herself through the shift with nothing but a few granola bars and a Celsius in her system, the clock reads 6:30, and the morning cavalry slowly trickles in. The rhythm of the night shift has settled into her bones, but her circadian rhythm still craves the familiarity of the day shift. And something about going through the entire PittFest ordeal during her first ever day shift in the EM makes her hold a sense of loyalty for the 12-hour stretch between 7am and 7pm and the people that come with it.
She spots Victoria and Mateo walk in together, their hands doing that weird thing where it looks like they’re debating on whether a brush of the finger or two will result in their immediate combustion—when she locks eyes with Victoria, she makes a kissy face and the student doctor just rolls her eyes playfully before looking up to Mateo like he’s hung the damn sun in the sky as he makes some joke. It’s sickening. And sweet. It makes her smile.
Princess and Perlah pop up out of thin air just as Victoria and Mateo disappear into the locker room, Victoria’s light giggling still flitting through the emergency department. They wager on the probability of one of them confessing before the summer and Trinity finds her lips wrapping around hushed Tagalog, naturally claiming her place in their little gossiping circle. Princess slaps her hands against the counter at the nursing station in excitement when Trinity tells them that she saw them leaving together from the ambulance bay a few shifts ago. Trinity’s throat still hurts and she’s still a little cold from crying up on the rooftop but she finds that her laughter comes easily.
Ellis pats her shoulder as she’s rummaging through her locker for her car keys and tosses a protein bar in her hands when she turns around. Trinity is convinced that Ellis’ locker is just a meticulously organized protein and granola bar storage unit at this point. “Heard from Farm Boy that these are your favorite. For the ride home.”
Trinity takes several seconds to collect herself under Ellis’ gaze. “Thanks.”
“Great job tonight, Trin,” Ellis says with an easy smile, her motorcycle keys hanging idly from her hands. “Go get some rest.”
If HR wants Trinity to stop falling a little in love with all of her female superiors then maybe they should seriously consider not hiring these many hot doctors that seem to take a liking in flirting with her. Even Dr. Walsh started to come down for consults with a candy bar or two hidden in her scrub pockets for Trinity a few weeks ago. She’s convinced that Ellis, Garcia, and Walsh bond over flirting with her.
She watches Ellis stalk out of the ED and is about to leave as well when she hears Abbot’s stern voice from over her shoulder. “You leaving, Santos?”
Trinity turns on her heel. Abbot is fixing her with that half-concerned and half-knowing glance he shoots her from time to time. She’s half-expecting a motivational halftime-esque speech about asking for help when she needs it and the emergency department being a tough place to be in and how she can talk to any of them if need be; what Abbot actually says is much simpler—it sticks, though.
“We’re lucky to have you here, kid.”
He’s gone as quickly as he came. Maybe it has something to do with Samira’s voice coming from the nurse’s station. Maybe not. Who is she to know?
As she scrolls through her phone one last time for good measure, a message notification from Yolanda pops up on the screen.
yoyo: I heard about the rough shift from Abbot
yoyo: i'll order from that thai place u like if u want to come over tmw
yoyo: that sound okay?
trinity: that sounds really fucking good actually
trinity: thank you you’re the best
yoyo: i know ;)
When she leaves the Pitt, she feels lighter than how she felt coming in.
The second she unlocks the front door to her apartment, she sheds herself of her backpack and her zip-up hoodie and immediately falls onto the couch. She hears shuffling coming from Dennis’ room, but by the time he pokes his head out of the doorway to ask her how her shift went, she’s out cold.
She wakes up a few hours later, entirely disoriented and sweaty in the way a nap of the couch always makes you. The blanket that Dennis tossed over is tangled up in her legs and her phone that Dennis plugged in for her is vibrating wildly on the coffee table. Trinity rubs at her groggy eyes to catch the caller ID.
Harper’s parents.
She picks up.
Mrs. Lee’s voice is soft as morning birdsong, just as how Trinity remembers it to be. “How are you doing, Trinity? Sorry that we couldn’t call you yesterday, we were with family.”
Harper’s parents always make it a point to call or visit Trinity on the anniversary of her death, remaining understanding and endlessly gracious even when Trinity screens their calls and responds a few days later, voice shaky and full with unshed tears. The calls were her tether for a long time and persisted through her undergrad, her rotations during med school, that turbulent Match Day and even a few weeks after PittFest.
Trinity clicks her tongue, trying to find the words. “It’s been … tough. Was going to take time off but I had a night shift and— Yea, it’s been a little hard,” she admits. There’s a clatter from the kitchen. “I miss her a lot.”
Harper’s mom hums gently in acknowledgment. “ You have people around you, right? People to lean on? We would hate it for you to have to bear all this grief alone, Trinity.”
The clattering from the kitchen stops and Trinity looks up to see Dennis standing a few feet away from her, looking like a scared lab rat. He’s holding two bowls of noodles like they’re peace offerings, the telltale aroma of Buldak wafting into the living room. She can’t stop herself from smiling.
She hopes that Harper’s parents can hear the dopey smile tugging at the corner of her lips as Dennis places the two bowls on the coffee table. “Yea. I have lots of people around me. Good people.”
“Okay, that’s good, Trinity. Really good. I’m glad. We’re really happy for you, honey. And Harper would be too.”
She knows, Trinity tells them. Harper would be glad that she’s still here.
Despite it all, Trinity is still here. And for the first time in a while, she’s really, truly content with that fact.