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She took a breath in. It started with Garcia. Trinity could subconsciously tell that she was distancing. What she couldn’t tell was whether it was because of her asking if they were still okay or if she was being too…clingy. She’s leaving you. Her chest tightens at the stifling thought.
Snapping back into reality when Dana sets a chart that needed filling out in front of her. Her eyes flit upwards to catch Dana’s. The nurse is eyeing her like she knew. Straightening and releasing the clasp her hands have on her arms, crescent-shaped nail marks imprinted on pale skin.
She throws Dana a tight-lipped smile, the curves of it stretching her skin into something she wasn’t.
“Doing okay, Dr. Santos?”
The older woman pipes up, voice dropping an octave. Eyes narrowed as if trying to read her whole life story in one glance.
Trinity could only nod for fear that it all might spill out. She has a nasty habit of snarking back when she’s particularly moody.
Dana stares for a moment longer before sighing and stepping away. Knowing she’s withholding something, but choosing to let her come to her at her own pace.
Trinity drags her hands down her face, feeling the heat of her palms on her flushed cheeks. It’s the Fourth of July, hot as hell, and she just wants to spend this time locked in her bedroom and disassociating from everything deemed important.
The brief thoughts of her apartment has the memories of Whitaker explaining, so happily, to her that he was going to be staying at Robby’s. He wanted to housesit instead of living with her. Was she really that much of a burden? Her only friend couldn’t stand being in the same vicinity as her. Her stubbornness prevented her from stopping him.
The conversation flashes through her mind like leeches latching onto skin. Sucking and draining the life out of her until she was a husk. She’s been on edge all day, past memories flitting to the surface and screaming in her face like they demanded her to be sad while she was finally feeling alive.
This edge has caused her to misdiagnose two little girls today for abuse. She saw herself in them. It made her skin prickle and the urge to bare her teeth and cover herself from others surfaced.
She brushes her hand against her clothed right thigh like people could see right through it. She pinches the space between her eyes, breathing out a sigh to regulate her system. Reminding herself that x-ray vision is not, in fact, real.
Trinity just— couldn’t stand the thought of letting the chance to get those poor girls help slip by just as it had done for her until she was old enough to take control and leave. She feels the imprint of the packaged scalpel in her pocket. She could still put it back inconspicuously. She should. Glancing briefly to the sutures cart where she had stashed it while Whitaker had talked softly, too softly, to her.
She closes her eyes, leaning her forehead against her cupped hands for a minute before coming back to herself and lifting it all up once more.
Trinity walks around, checking in on her patients wearily. Things have calmed significantly and she’s about to clock out.
Yet, her ears perk up at the familiar voice of Garcia who was previously working on the last patient, needing quick stitches before being sent off to the OR for proper surgery and care. Head turning to follow the noise. She needed to check to see if Garcia was still coming over tonight despite the little spat they had about Langdon. She pushes that wriggling thought down to focus on the present.
Approaching Garcia as she steps out of the room she was performing surgery in, the last critical patient of the day. Now everything is transferring over to nightshift as the new doctors and nurses filter in.
Garcia is tugging the plastic apron off. She trashes the disposable apron and walks off, leaving Trinity to catch up with her. Santos swiftly steps in to take her opportunity. Heart beating out of her chest. Calling to her,
“Yola—Garcia!”
She manages to huff out, loud enough for her to hear Trinity. She turns briefly to eye her, giving her a look that prompts Trinity to continue with what she needed as they now walk side-by-side. Trinity is swift to fill in that silence,
“You still coming over tonight?”
Her voice pushes out into a confident tune. Her fingers fidgeted with the stethoscope hanging loosely around her neck. Garcia seems to hum for a minute before,
“I might have to rain check.”
Trinity's heart plummets. A little wound morphing in her currently fragile heart, the heart that; seemingly to everyone else, is normally guarded and strong. She blinks,
“..okay, cool.”
She rushes out. Nodding slightly, Garcia continues off of that,
“I’ll try hitting you up tomorrow?”
A slight question rings in her voice, showing her that it’s on the table. Trinity's heart soars and before she could respond, Garcia is stepping into the elevator and crushes her heart with just a few words,
“We’re just keeping it casual, right?”
Her tone implies it’s a rhetorical question. It’s already been stated over and over. It's a fact for her, but a blurred line for Trinity. She’s reminding her. She knows she’s slipping, falling into the pool of could this be something?
What a way to remind her. She stares at the elevator as it closes. She almost snorts at the irony of how the elevator could symbolize her love life crumpling right in front of her. She shouldn’t have even entertained the idea. She just…fell for the first person to show that she wanted her, and now she’s saying she doesn’t want to get too close to Trinity.
Is it because of her scars? It has to be. It’s because of the fat building in her gut. It’s everything about her, the ugly, the mean, the dirty— The rope holding her to reality is steadily fraying with each step as she stalks to the bathroom as swift as she could be without catching anyone’s eye.
Bile burns her throat at the anticipation she feels, the burning ache that would transfer from her chest to her skin feels like a spark about to burst her into flames. She opens the stall door, a child creeping into their parent’s room after they’ve puked. Little chest sobbing and heaving while having to admit to something that would be met with the tenderness of a fist. The mind of a child couldn’t comprehend whether that tenderness was gentle comfort or rough brutality. It blended.
She swallows it all down. The click of the lock sliding into place was like the feeling of an anvil slamming onto her or was it the gentleness of an angel's wings brushing against her skin, the promise of relief.
Trinity's hand finds the crinkly package hidden in her pocket, pulling it out and ripping the flimsy material to reveal her angel.
She held her breath, it was accompanied by that sensation of drowning. Like holding in all of the bad could stop people from seeing it. Like it wouldn’t spew out.
The hate is carved into her skin instead, leaving behind traces that couldn’t be erased. She couldn’t stop. There’s something seriously fucked with her.
She promised she’d quit, to who? but it all came flooding back with everyone’s words and her own feelings and wants like the highest tide of the season.
Slamming into her and pushing up into her nostrils and entering her lungs and closing up her airways and she couldn’t breathe— a sharp breath punches from her as she huffs out the air in her lungs instinctually.
Her hands are trembling like a leaf in the wind, fingers gripping at the scalpel and the other pressing on her thigh to stretch the skin. To get deeper to get the bad out and to get the good to rise to the surface that comes in the form of her hot blood that now drips from the meat of her thigh.
The stinging ache felt like kisses, an image of dark brown hair pulled back into buns between her thighs. The moonlight filtering through the shades of her apartment window made Garcia glow. A savior, in her naive mind. you feel too much. You are too much.
The hands of a surgeon smoothing a thumb along the raised skin had once made her feel seen and loved. Now it made her feel idiotic. She’s just an easy mess. She shakily, desperately wipes at the mess. Like the new..ones could disappear. It had to be a trick of her mind.
The sting makes itself known as she hisses. A sick part of her warms at the feeling, the familiarity; this..this would at least stay with her and be a constant in her life. She shakes her head.
Fuck, two months down the drain, and for what? A little bubble of laughter begins to creep out before it’s smothered by a hiccuping, disgusting noise of a sob.
Jesus Christ, she needed to increase her Lexapro dose. She’s not a child. Grow up. She tugs her scrubs up from where they had gathered at her ankles.
Trinity notices the death-grip she still has on the scalpel. Eyes catching on the edges of it, smeared in unnoticeable dots of red. It certainly hurt a lot more than her eyebrow razor does.
Should she take it home—she shoves the tool of her demise into the trashcan, making sure to bury it under the tissues and pieces of trash inside. Wiping her clammy hands on her scrubs. She checks her phone—fuck shes been gone for too long.
She flushes the toilet, pretending that it was of use before creeping out of the stall. It made her feel..lighter. Taking a few steps to the sinks, feeling the pain that now sits gruesomely on her thighs.
It made her feel like she could focus. Her problems felt a tiny bit easier to hold on her shoulders now that her skin bears the weight of her disgust and hate. She holds it all in as she walks through the main entrance of the lobby, shouldering her bag.
She takes a deep breath in when she steps outside. Huffing down the air like she was an addict. She needs to clear her mind desperately. She shakes it all off with a little flick of her arms and pop of her neck.
She manages to make it to their—her apartment before the realization that Whitaker won’t be there to distract her, to keep her company comes reeling back with unsteady breaths.
She stumbles through apartment unsteadily. Finding the alcohol cabinet, usually its purpose was for celebrations; with Dennis. She uses it to celebrate her life falling apart. She chokes out a little chuckle. Ripping the cabinet open, her intakes of breaths evening out at the prospect of a different kind of distraction.
With a bottle of tequila in hand, the strongest drink they have so far, she uncaps it and tosses it back. A few good gulps in her system and the burning setting in, a different kind of ache this time is present, she makes her way to her bedroom.
Peeling her sticky scrubs off and her undershirt. Trinity finds herself, almost halfway down the bottle, standing in front of the mirror.
She usually has it turned around. She stares and she shouldn’t. The multitude of cuts are raised, beads of blood dried and clamping the wound together. Jesus, she went ham on herself.
Her jaw tightens, eyes slowly traveling up to the chub in her belly. She imagines taking a knife and just cutting through—she knocks back another mouthful of tequila. Her head all fuzzy and everything in her room is just spinning.
She zeroes in on her dresser, eyes on the bottom drawer, the one that holds her eyebrow razor. The urge. She already did it today, why does she need to do it more? Hot, wet trails of tears on her cheeks make itself known.
She swipes at them, but it’s all already bubbling out. She sniffs, loud and obnoxious. Her eyes drag back to the mirror like a magnet demanding her attention. Her body is so—disgusting.
Her nose crinkles as the makings of a sob filters out. She paws at her thighs, trying to shape her body to her standards, hissing as she rips open a healing cut. Why couldn’t she be like..like clay? Malleable, easy. Not complicated or damaged. A harder, louder noise rips from her.
Ugly crying never looked good on her. She needs to grab that razor and— Her hands reach out blindly for her phone. Slipping onto the floor next to her bed with a soft thud, she shakily opens up her phone to press on Dennis’s contact.
The tears blurring it all together and dripping onto her phone. Snot dribbling from her nose. She hiccups softly, trying to take in deep breaths. She knows it’s a panic attack. Knows as a doctor. But, as a person doing the panicking it’s a lot more easier to say calm down than to actually do it. She types up a message, clicking send,
gettinh badagain
Is the most coherent she could make her message. She tries to calm herself, really, she does try. But, it’s all just building. And her chest is so tight and a weight is anchored on her chest so heavily that no amount of sharp breaths and sobs can lift it.
After a nauseating amount of time, a knock cuts through the noise in her berating mind. Trinity perks up, it should be Dennis. Concluded by her hysterical text and clouded mind. She stumbles to a stand, using the bed to push herself upwards. Grabbing a t-shirt when she briefly gains back some senses. Shucking it on, her head woozy from the swift motions.
Leaning on the wall of the hallway, she manages to make it to the door with only a few trips. She fumbles with the lock, snapping it open and practically throwing the door open.
She launches herself at the person on her doorstep. Crying and sobbing pathetically onto what she believes to be Dennis’s shirt. Her fingers wrapped into tight fists in a—sweater. Dennis isn’t this short? Nor does he smell like strawberries.
“Woah! Holy moly!”
The voice pauses, before adding on tentatively,
“Trinity?…You okay? What’s going on?”
Trinity's throat practically closes up and her mind blanks out when she hears the soft voice of Victoria Javadi. Crash.
She flings herself off of the younger woman; bad decision when she trips over her wobbly feet and lands on her ass. She doesn’t need help she doesn’t need help she doesn’t need.
Victoria is soon crouching in front of her and feeling at her forehead with the back of her hand. Always so clinical. Her eyes flick over to the, still-opened, alcohol cabinet. Her eyebrows furrow, doe eyes presenting themselves as she stares into Trinity's soul.
Trinity's mind is hazy with how close she is and how…gentle it feels. It’s not pity or worry. Just..care. Warmth and hate spiral into one. She forgets how she’s only wearing underwear and a T-shirt. Then, Victoria's eyes drag down to her thigh. Her already large eyes widened further. Like a deer in headlights. Everything bad about herself is bare for her to see. She feels like she’s going to throw—
“Heyhey…it’s okay—! You texted me earlier, Trin. Do..you like want me to stay with you for—“
Victoria tripping over her words is cut off when Trinity turns to the side violently. Curling into herself when the breakfast she’s been holding in all day; now is in a puddle on her floor. Her retching slows down and she comes back to her body at the feeling of a gentle hand rubbing her back soothingly and another holding back her cropped hair.
Shs trembles under the softness. Glancing up dizzily to Victoria when a handkerchief dabs around her mouth, the hand in her hair gone. She mourns its loss, yet still leans slightly into the feel of her hand lingering on her back.
Victoria folds the cloth to run it over Trinity's lip, cleaning up the mess that's gathered. Trinity's fuzzy gaze focuses in on Victoria's focused expression, lips parted and eyebrows drawn together. She couldn't tell if it was the alcohol or the impulsivity of it all, but she looks like a painting.
If she could take a snapshot of the moment, the soft glow of the moon and the stars reflected in soft, brown eyes; she'd surely tuck it away in her wallet to remember it forever. It'd be the type of photo you'd show to everyone, the dead wife in the movies that lingered beautifully and dramatically in everyone's memories. Something you'd keep in a locket, or in your pocket while off at war.
She's pulled out of her reverie of this newfound crush at the feel of a cool water bottle pressed to her cheek. All hands having left her body and handkerchief now lying on a table. Trinity gives a soft grunt, heaving still, peeking up at the offered object. She sniffles and grasps it, avoiding any and all eye contact and scoots away from her throw up pathetically. Shit. This is so embarrassing.
Her legs curl up to her chest, hiding the scars; old and new. Victoria lowers herself hesitantly next to Trinity in silence. It’s not…an awkward silence. Just something they’re not used to, it comes with working in an Emergency Department. Everything is chaotic.
Trinity doesn’t shout or throw her quips at Victoria. She settles into the silence. It didn’t feel pressuring or intimidating, just there. Everything still felt off-kilter from the alcohol, then throwing it all up, and now Victoria Javadi in her apartment.
“‘m sorry.”
God she’s slurring, the tequila making itself known. Victoria gives a soft snort, reaching out to pat her bare knee. She’s an awkward girl, not the best at comfort. But, she’s trying.
“You’re okay. Everyone has their bad days and rough patches. Lives in general, too. You don’t have to talk about it.”
Trinity’s chest loosens. The blooming fire reaches a dull ache. She blinks up at Victoria. The warmth of her hand soaking into her cold skin. When had she gotten so cold?..
She wants to lean into this new warmth. Victoria gives her the thing she wants most, to be acknowledged for herself. Not to make her ugly parts everything about her. To just be there for her. To stay. The tears start right back up again. But…it’s a gentle sort of sobbing this time. Victoria doesn’t look at her with a judging eye, only leans in closer to ground her.
Trinity reels in a shaky, unsteady breath before holding it. It no longer felt like suffocating in silence, nor holding it all in, but that it’d be carried with her alongside someone who cares and would want to stay. Wants to be by her, even in her worst moment.
It felt like she was keeping all of the good in this time, not the nasty, hard parts of herself that scrape and tear at people who try to love her. Javadi seemed to weave through it all, or maybe she wasn’t at all as prickly as she thought she was. Just scared.