Chapter Text
Trinity swung the door to her apartment, finally home after a very long shift. A teen came in, suicide attempt, successful. Sixteen. She hadn’t even gotten her drivers license yet, the learners permit in her glovebox becoming forever inert as soon as they called time of death. Trinity sat on the couch, thinking of all the things she could've done differently, thinking about what would've happened if the girl came in just a few minutes sooner. She was doing every single thing you're not supposed to do when you lose a patient. Trinity normally wasn't one to let herself spiral, but it was happening anyway. Whitaker wasn't home. He was with Amy playing step-daddy like he usually was, and Trinity was alone. She felt it too.
Trinity normally liked her space. In fact, she encouraged Whitaker to leave the house as much as possible, but right now? Sitting on the couch, heart pounding in her chest, water filling her eyes? She began wishing he was here, wishing someone was here.
Someone to tell her that she did everything she could, that it's not her fault those parents lost their daughter. It wouldn't make her feel better though. Robby already told her all of that before her shift ended, he saw the shift in her demeanor, it was pretty damn obvious.
Mel was on the case with her. It had affected her too but for different reasons, the girl had a sister. Trinity tried telling Mel that it wasn't her on that table and it wasn't Becca breaking down in the lobby. But Trinity could always see right through Mel, and she knew that this case would stick with her maybe more than it would with Trinity.
Trinity stared up at the ceiling, watching the rain pour outside, watching it pelt against her window like the tears rolling down her cheeks.
She could feel the scars on her thighs, burning her skin like hot knives. They were healed, but she could feel them. She could always feel them. A reminder of the scared teenage girl she used to be and maybe still is in some ways.
She wanted to scream. She wanted to scream so loud the entire apartment building would hear. But she didn't do that. Instead, she closed her eyes and gripped into her skin harder, allowing her nails to dig into either side of her thigh until she winced in pain, not pulling her hand away or loosening her grip until she felt a trickle of something warm down the back of her thigh.
Trinity cried some more, maybe out of shame or anger or some unnamed sense of catharsis. She wasn't really sad anymore, she couldn't remember when she had last been truly sad. She replaced that feeling with anger and bitterness a long time ago, but here she was, with streaming tears, hot and sticky against her skin.
She tried to catch her breath and couldn't, tried to calm her ever-beating heart, but that failed as well. Like everything else she’d sunk her nails into and begged to just pan-out for once. Trinity had always been broken. She had tried piecing herself back together lots of times, and when she made it to her internship, she thought she had finally done it. That she had finally put all of this behind her, but now she wasn't so sure anymore.
Mel was laying in bed, trying to fall asleep. Becca had already gone off to her room for bed, they had watched a few episodes of love on the spectrum together which Mel did not really enjoy. Okay, she hated it. But Becca enjoyed it and that was all that mattered. Mel had grown quite accustomed to enjoying the things that Becca enjoyed and watching the movies Becca preferred and singing the songs that made Becca smile.
She was okay with that, she loved her sister, loved taking care of her and she didn't wish or want it to be any different. Despite that, she just wanted to know what to say when people asked her about herself. Because the truth was Mel didn't really know herself any more than the person asking did.
Today was a hard day, a hard case. She knew there would be more hard days and more hard cases so she tried not to think about it, tried not to think about the younger sister's cries, or the grieving mother and fathers repeated “no’s” when Mel had delivered the news with Santos. She tried so hard not to think about it. She failed. She felt the tears burning her eyes as the waterworks started. Mel cried a lot these days, it's not that she was depressed or even sad, she just cared. That was her fatal flaw after all; empathy.
She thought about what Becca would do if she died. Mel had so much pressure on her to live. She felt it weighing on her shoulders every now and then, cracking down on her spine until she felt like she was suffocating. But then, Becca would turn to her with the biggest smile and say: “You're my best friend Mel.” and it all felt worth it again. Mel did not need to be anything but Becca's big sister.
Trinity had migrated to her bathroom by this point, she was sitting on the floor looking up at the light that hung down from the ceiling, the tears slipping down her neck. She thought of her sister, Cecilia. Cecilia, who Trinity had found hanging in their garage a little over twelve years ago now this upcoming December. Trinity had just turned sixteen and Cecilia was eighteen. Now, Trinity was twenty-eight as of last month and Cecilia was still eighteen. Still placed in an untouched urn on the mantle of her parents house, dust collected on the lip of the lid. Trinity's pants were hugging around her knees, thighs exposed to the cold air of the bathroom.
a taken apart Venus razor blade gripped tight between her fingers, the blade slid into her skin with ease like muscle memory, the blood dripping down the side of her thigh. Trying not to think about the four months of progress, the four months of therapy and coping mechanisms, the building of a support system gone to waste over one shitty day where she decided to just not listen to the objective reality of what Trinity knows she should do. Her hands were shaky and uneven, some cuts much deeper than others. It did not calm her in the way she had hoped it would, did not stop the tightening in her chest. At some point she reached for her phone, clicking on Whitaker's contact, and pressed call.
Mel was lying in her bed staring up at the ceiling, trying to calm the burning in her throat when a sharp ringing startled her out of her dissociation. She grabbed her phone, not bothering to read the contact before answering. A choked and garbled voice comes through the line.
“Dennis… I know you're–fuck, I know you're busy fucking around with Amy right now, but I think you…” a few choked sobs later she breathes out, “You need to come home. I’m thinking about Cece again and I can’t fucking stop.Y-you already know how I get about that stuff. Den, can you please just tell your fucking girlfriend that you have to go do something? I really don't think it’s safe for me to be here alone if I keep spiraling like this, I already relapsed and I just… fuck, man.”
The person, who Mel has now discovered is Santos, paused…a beat then two. “Den, why aren't you saying anything? Are you there?” Santos sniffled. By now, Mel had gathered that this call obviously was not meant for her. “Uhm… this is Mel, not Whitaker. I-I’m sorry.” Mel said softly, her voice barely above a whisper. “Oh… oh Jesus fucking Christ–” she heard accompanied by a series of panicked sobs and a quick cut to the line.
Mel held the phone tightly in her hands, Trinity's words replaying in her mind. “I already relapsed.” Mel sat with the horrible thoughts of the state Trinity could be in right now before remembering she still had Trinity's address from the Halloween party Trinity and Garcia threw a few months ago. The one that Mel absolutely did not want to go to but went anyway to be kind to her friends. Mel was up and walking to her car before she even realized she was on her feet. The car stalling slightly only made Mel more anxious, if that were even possible.
When Mel got to the apartment, it was quiet. Much more quiet than she would've liked, the low hum of a TV and no other sounds. The door was unlocked, thank God she thought, grateful she didn't have to break it down. “Trinity, it's Mel, are you okay?” Mel said her voice breaking off towards the end. With each empty room she found, her heart sank a little. When she finally got to the bathroom, the door was slightly cracked with the light on. Mel would never have in a million years been prepared for what she'd find on the other side of that door.
Trinity. The same Trinity who always gave her a high-five when everyone else looked the other way. The same Trinity who had snuck Mel a protein bar a couple of shifts ago when she noticed Mel turning a ghostly shade of white after not eating all day. The same Trinity who now looked about that same color. There was blood, so much of it that it took Mel a few moments to even gather where it was coming from. Eventually finding the source, she looked down at her arms, taking in the sight of the two deep cuts from the start of her wrists to the middle of her forearm that were decorating the pale skin.
Mel stood in the doorway of the small bathroom for a few seconds longer than she should have before reaching down, pressing 2 fingers to the side of Trinity's neck. A pulse, barely, but there. “Okay okay okay–” Mel said, repetition helped her focus. Mel grabbed 2 hand towels hanging next to Trinity's sink, wrapping one around each wrist, holding pressure. “Okay Trinity, I’m gonna call 911, but I’m going to tell them to take you to Presby." Mel was unsure if Trinity could even hear her but she told her anyway before she grabbed her phone from her pocket, blood stained her hands a disgusting red. She tried not to look.
“Hi yes, uhm my friend…” it started to hit her now, who she was helping, who was lying next to her unconscious. Trinity. “I just need someone to come right away, my friend tried to-” she couldn't get the words out so instead she gave the address and told the dispatcher to hurry and that her friend had been hurt because that was all she could bear to say.
When Trinity awoke, the first thing she noticed was the bright white fluorescent beating down on her, not the shitty yellow flickering bulbs in her apartment. Had Dennis gotten new bulbs? With what money? It wasn’t until she tried to rub the crust from the corners of her puffy eyes that she realized that her limbs felt as if they were made of lead. Lead that burned her veins, a dull ache spread throughout her forearms and made her hands numb. Fuck.
Panic surged through her, ice cold in the veins that were supposed to be sliced open. Supposed to be bleeding out and sparing her from this embarrassment. Was this how the girl she had tried to save would’ve felt, had she had taken one pill less? Had Trinity gathered that the girl had taken benodryl a minute sooner and not wasted time on labs and cultures? Is this how Cecelia would’ve felt if Trinity and her parents had decided to come home early from dinner, being able to cut her limp body down with seconds to spare?
The embarrassment only grew when her eyes flew open and saw a tuft of blonde hair draped atop a pale arm, the hair greasy and messy. Clearly whoever it was had not been taking very good care of themselves recently. The blonde woman was sleeping, her arm-turned-pillow resting on the side of Trinity’s uncomfortable bed. Trinity looked around, grateful to find that no one else was there, her brain trying to come back online and think of every blonde woman she could remember.
A very short list, not like Trinity had many friends. The hair was too long to be Dana’s, Amy’s hair was lighter than the slight brownish tint to this woman's hair, so Mel it was. Which was the option that would most definitely make Trinity feel the guiltiest. Mel didn’t deserve to see anyone in this state, not after… How long was Trinity asleep for? Long enough for Mel to be wearing a baggy light-green shirt that Trinity had never seen her wear, the tag still on the side and a size too big for the slender woman, and Mel’s favorite pink T-shirt and sports bra covered in blood, crumpled up next to her right foot.
Mel woke up slowly and groggy, turns out sleeping in a hospital is much less fun than working in one. She had decided to stay with Trinity, a decision that did not require much thought, Trinity was her friend, she wasn't going to leave her. She remembered the blaring lights of the ambulance, Trinity being wheeled away to an OR, she remembered the deathly quiet hours in the waiting room that followed and then she remembered hearing “Your friend is stable, you can see her.” and Mel who had been on the verge of passing out due to exhaustion was suddenly more awake than ever rushing to her friends bedside and once she knew Trinity would be okay, she allowed herself to drift off to sleep.
Mel's hair was greasy and unkempt from hours of sweating and crying and sleeping uncomfortably. She heard noises from the bed and looked up to find a very disoriented-looking Trinity whose eyes were open. Her eyes were open, the thought made Mel feel like she could breathe again. “Trinity, you're okay, it's just me.” Mel said, and Trinity looked away in something Mel could see was shame. “You have nothing to be ashamed of Trinity, I promise. This is just a piece of your story, not the whole puzzle...” Mel was not the best at comforting people, but she did try.
She stayed at Trinity's bedside that whole day, feeding her shitty hospital jello and holding her hand when Trinity would allow it. Trinity was placed on an involuntary psych hold, which she had made the entire hospital aware she was not happy with. The situation had ended in restraints and sedation, and Mel had been promptly told to leave shortly after, no visitors allowed due to aggression.
Trinity was not aggressive with Mel though, she lowered her voice when she spoke to her, tone shifted, body language open. She trusted Mel. “I’ll be back, Trinity.” Mel told her, giving her hand a quick squeeze before heading to her car.
When she stepped outside, it was dark outside again. It had been at least twenty-four hours, did Mel have work? She couldn't remember. She decided she would think about that later as she drove home, as soon as Mel's body met her sheets, she was out not thinking much about how tomorrow would go.