Chapter Text
Chapter One
Trinity
It had been five weeks since Robby left on his sabbatical, and things were not any better at PTMC, at least not where Trinity was concerned.
She and Garcia were back to whatever “casual” on-again-off-again bullshit they had going on before, and despite his better promises, Whitaker was mostly splitting his time between Amy’s and Robby’s instead of their apartment.
Worst of all, Langdon had been all but absorbed back into the push and pull of the daily grind. While there were still a few people who treated him with the caution he deserved—and Trinity suspected those few people were at least partially aware of what actually happened before his “non-mandated” mandated rehab—most of the team had shaken off their icy fronts and moved on, leaving Trinity the sole island standing against him.
It seemed like their overlapping shifts weren’t as frequent as she expected them to be, and she did her absolute best not to get stuck on cases with him, but he was still there. She found herself yearning for Robby’s return, not in the same way that Whitaker seemed to, but in the way that his own petty shit against Langdon gave her at least one dog in her corner.
And of all the dogs to have in your corner, Robby was a big one. He was always on her side, at least when it really mattered.
Unlike Dr. Al-Hashimi, who seemed to take a personal interest in making sure that Trinity couldn’t so much as leave a pen uncapped without hearing about it from the interim attending. She hadn’t stopped riding her case about her charting since her first day there, and it felt like every time they got placed on a case together, which seemed to be most cases, Trinity was the only one whose work Al-Hashimi was constantly testing. She constantly stuck her with the interns and made Trinity walk them through easy procedures in mind-numbingly slow and meticulous detail, making sure that she knew how, why, and when to do each procedure and that she could teach it to them just as easily.
It was excruciating. She felt as though the little patience she had was getting stretched a million ways every single time she stepped on the floor, and by the end of each shift overseen by Dr. Al-Hashimi, her jaw was tight from gritting her teeth so often, and her shoulders ached with the weight of the chip that lived there permanently, growing like a weed.
Trinity felt like she was so close to reaching a serious breaking point.
This was only exaggerated by the fact that she was on her sixth day straight of shifts, and Dr. Al-Hashimi seemed exceptionally dedicated to making sure that it was her worst yet.
Earlier in the morning, Trinity had gotten stuck on a particularly sticky case with Langdon, and after overhearing him talking to McKay about how his wife had officially filed for divorce (finally, Trinity thought. Good for her.), he was in a piss-poor mood and, as always, she was his favorite punching bag.
He had questioned everything she did. Every question she asked the patient, every solution she came up with, every new angle she tried to examine the case from—he had a nasty retort for it all.
At first, she just rolled her eyes through it, but eventually, it got to be too much, her patience worn too thin. She began snapping back, not caring how everyone else in the room—patient and staff included—was looking between them like they were watching a professional tennis match.
“Dr. Santos,” Al-Hashimi had said, a hard look in her eye as she gestured to the doors. “Outside now.”
Santos had shot Langdon one last glare, ignoring the smug look on his face at getting his least favorite R2 in trouble, before following Dr. Al-Hashimi outside the trauma room.
The attending grabbed Trinity’s forearm and pulled her around the corner.“I don’t know what is going on in there, but it needs to stop.” Trinity opened her mouth to respond, but Al-Hashimi put her hand up. “Stop, now.”
Trinity closed her mouth, chest heaving in frustration but unwilling, unable, to challenge Dr. Al-Hashimi. Her tone was serious, sharper than Trinity had ever heard her be.
“I’m taking you off this case, effective immediately. Go find Dr. King and see if she needs help in Trauma 1.”
Trinity, angry as she was, felt the sting of rejection more deeply. She scurried off in search of Mel and her kind eyes and gentle voice that always made Trinity feel better.
The rest of the shift went similarly, the first interaction having set the tone for the day. If Dr. Al-Hashimi had been following Trinity around in the weeks before, now it was like she might as well have been Trinity’s shadow.
After her fifth straight case being overseen by Dr. Al-Hashimi, Trinity was gritting her teeth again, desperate to get some space from the woman. The only thing that Trinity hated more than being underestimated was being under constant surveillance, and she was beginning to feel like the two were a package deal when it came to Al-Hashimi.
“It looks like you’re all set in here, so, if you’ll excuse me,” Trinity said to the patient, a young delivery man whose bike wheel had gotten stuck in a pothole, launching him over his handlebars onto the ground, breaking his arm in three places. They had gotten him set up with pain meds and trauma surgery—read, Garcia—was on their way down to assess, so Trinity considered herself good as done for the moment. Besides, she really needed to pee.
“Dr. Santos-” Dr. Al-Hashimi followed her out of the room.
“Be right back,” she said without turning around, speedwalking to the bathroom before the attending would be able to stop her and draw her into another oral examination disguised as a case.
In the bathroom, she collapsed onto the toilet seat, letting out a massive sigh. This was her first chance to sit down in hours, and her body was exhausted, damp with the exertion of the day.
She was about to stand up when she heard the bathroom door swing open. “Fuck,” she mouthed, freezing in place.
“Trinity?”
Trinity exhaled, the coast clear. She pulled up her scrubs and flushed, opening the stall door to see none other than Victoria Javadi. “What’s up, Crash?”
Victoria scrunched her nose at the nickname, though Trinity knew that she found it endearing, which is why she still used it. “A few of us are going to the park after the shift, you wanna come?”
On one hand, all she wanted to do was collapse into her bed and sleep until her next shift. On the other hand, after the week she had, the chance to blow off steam and have a beer or two sounded fantastic. “Sure, why not.”
Victoria smiled. “Amazing, I’ll tell everyone else that you’re in.”
Trinity patted her on the back and left the bathroom, knowing Victoria well enough to know that she would accept the gesture as a response without requiring a verbal one.
She pulled open the bathroom door, just to find herself face to face with Dr. Al-Hashimi, who looked like she was about to push it open herself. “Oh, sorry,” Trinity said, moving out of the attending’s way.
“Actually, Dr. Santos, I was hoping to catch you.” She flashed Trinity one of her frustratingly unreadable smiles. “Walk with me?”
Trinity nodded, pressing her lips into a thin line. She turned to fall in step with Dr. Al-Hashimi. Whitaker, across the room at the nurse’s station, shot her a curious look. She raised her shoulders slightly in response.
“I wanted to talk to you about what happened earlier,” Dr. Al-Hashimi said, facing forward as they walked, only turning her head to add, in a lower voice, “with Dr. Langdon.” At this, she turned and focused the entirety of that intense stare Trinity had grown to despise right on Trinity’s face.
Rolling her shoulders back, Trinity sighed. She hoped that Dr. Al-Hashimi would continue, but she just sat there, seemingly content to continue their staring contest indefinitely. Trinity, wanting to be done with this interaction, begrudgingly backed down. “Sure, what about it?”
Al-Hashimi turned and, ever so casually, looked over her shoulder to make sure that no one was looking their way. Trinity saw her catch Dana’s eye and watched as Al-Hashimi offered her a warm smile, one that the charge nurse happily returned. She turned back to Trinity, smile not disappearing, per say, but changing shape. “I know that things between the two of you are…tense, but I really need you to keep your emotions in check when you are working on a case together. What happened in the room this morning was completely unacceptable, and I would hate for you to taint your professional authority over something so easily avoidable.”
Trinity bristled at the words, an angry red searing itself across her cheeks. Was she serious? Trinity needed to keep her emotions in check? What about the grown man child who was taking out his bad day on his inferior? “I didn’t even start that argument. He shouldn’t be questioning my ability to treat the patient, especially not in front of their family,” Trinity replied quickly.
“Dr. Santos, I am sorry,” she began. Finally, Trinity thought, waiting for the admission of fault that Dr. Al-Hashimi never seemed to be able to offer Trinity. “If I made you believe that this was up for debate, that is my fault. This isn’t a suggestion. I am telling you, you need to find a way to play nice when you are on a shared case.”
“Play nice?” Trinity repeated, blinking. “And I’m assuming that you’re sharing this wisdom with Dr. Langdon as well?”
“This is about your behavior, Dr. Santos, not Dr. Langdon’s.”
“Right, got it.” She sucked in a breath, trying to stop herself from snapping and getting herself into further trouble.
“INCOMING TRAUMA,” the speaker announced. Saved by the fucking bell.
“Sorry, Dr. Al-Hashimi, I have to run and deal with this. Wouldn’t want my professional authority to be tainted any more than it already is.” With that, Trinity left Dr. Al-Hashimi standing behind, arms crossed over her chest, still smiling that odd smile, as she jogged to catch up with the incoming gurney.
Trinity could not be happier than when one of the night shift R2s finally relieved her during handoff. She finished her charting in record speed, desperate to get out of the godforsaken hospital to enjoy her precious time off.
She had spent the rest of her shift avoiding being alone with Dr. Al-Hashimi, not wanting to deal with another lecture about how much she sucked.
She had been successful, but she wasn’t sure that the attending was actually looking to continue their conversation from earlier. Either way, she didn’t have the capacity to find out.
After clocking out, she found Whitaker waiting by the lockers, a big, worn cooler—that she recognized immediately to be Robby’s—resting at his feet.
“Where the fuck did you get that, Huckleberry?” He looked up from his phone at her arrival.
“Victoria asked me if I could bring it in. I figured Robby wouldn’t mind.”
“Oh, I’m sure he wouldn’t.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing, Huckleberry, nothing.”
“Are you guys ready?” Victoria asked, looking between the two of them with a raised eyebrow.
“Yeah, we’re good. Trin, can you help me with this?” Whitaker gestured to the cooler with his foot. She nodded, grabbing the handle closest to her.
“Who else is coming?” Trinity asked as they walked through the sliding doors into the humidity, nodding at the night-shift security guard as they passed.
“Uhh, Emma is going to meet up with us, and then I think Princess and Perlah are bringing a bottle of something, too,” Victoria replied. “Oh, and I asked McKay if she wanted to come by too, but she said she wasn’t sure if she’d stop by.”
“Mmm,” she hummed. Trinity and Whitaker shared a look. They had a sneaking suspicion that Victoria had a bit of a crush on Cassie, but Victoria had never talked about being into women, so Trinity didn’t joke about it. At least not with Victoria.
“Is Mel coming?” Whitaker asked.
"No, she promised Becca that they could have a movie night,” Victoria responded.
“You mean, she made Becca promise her that she would stop banging her boyfriend and spend some quality time with her big sister,” Trinity chimed in, smirking.
“Trinity!” Victoria exclaimed, but she had a shit-eating grin on her face.
“You know I’m right,” Trinity said. “And what about, uh, Langdon?”
Victoria looked at Whitaker then Trinity, eyes wide. “I didn’t ask him.”
Trinity nodded, then sighed. “What a fucking day.”
“I don’t know, it wasn’t that bad of a shift for me,” Whitaker replied, setting down the cooler they were carrying between the two of them and wiping the August sweat off his brow.
“It never is, Huckleberry,” Trinity quipped. Whitaker rolled his eyes at her, but didn’t say anything else as he leaned down and reached for a can of beer. Trinity recognized the label, a local brew that Robby had brought when they’d hung out in the park before. It wasn’t the best, but it didn’t suck. Thank god for that.
Emma arrived first with a cute little Bluetooth speaker and a couple of the other day-shift nurses and techs.
Princess and Perlah arrived shortly after. Princess held up a bottle of tequila in each fist as she approached, eliciting a cheer from the group of them huddled around a couple of benches.
Trinity promptly grabbed a bottle from Princess. “Long day?” Princess asked Trinity in Tagalog.
“You don’t know the half of it.”
She nodded, watching as Trinity pulled out the cork stopper and took a long, hard swig before passing it back. She, for one, was looking to forget all about her day and her run-ins with Dr. Al-Hashimi.
The group—minus Perlah, of course—passed the bottle around, but it was mostly Princess and Trinity who were matching each other sip for sip. Princess was a heavy-weight, but Trinity was looking for an escape.
She tried to ignore Whitaker’s watchful eye while she played along with everyone, chugging when they chanted for her, pretending that she didn’t notice the burn.
It wasn’t until they had finished the first bottle that Whitaker put his hand on Trinity’s arm. Instead of jumping at the contact, like she usually would, she just leaned into him, her stomach full and her head heavy. Or her head full and her stomach heavy. She couldn’t figure it out.
She understood without him saying it, so she declined the second bottle when Princess passed it back. She did grab a beer, though. When on Robby’s dime…
The rest of the group had settled into a lively conversation that Trinity didn’t have the social battery to follow, so she let Whitaker take her hand and drag her to one of the benches across the sidewalk from the rest of the group. She sat on it sideways, facing him. When the world stopped spinning, she brought up her knees to rest against the anti-homeless architecture disguised as an arm rest. She hated those fucking things.
“So, what happened between you and Dr. Al-Hashimi earlier?” Whitaker asked, mirroring her on the other side of the bench. “It looked pretty tense.”
Trinity groaned loudly, having momentarily forgotten the drama of her day. “The same thing as always. She was just on my fucking ass all shift.”
“I heard one of the nurses telling Princess that they had just watched a sparring match between you and Langdon.”
She burst out laughing. “Yeah, I fucking ate his ass up.”
Whitaker looked at her, unamused.
“Fine, whatever! You know how he is. He was in a bad fucking mood about his nonexistent love life, so he was taking it out on me, like usual. There was only so much that I could take before I snapped.”
“Trin-”
“I know, I know. I ‘shouldn’t let him get to me’,” she quoted one of Whitaker’s favorite pieces of advice to give her on the Langdon front. “But you didn’t hear the way he was talking to me!”
She took a big sip of beer, then burped. “And then Dr Al-Hashimi snapped at me in front of the entire team and pulled me off the stupid fucking case.”
“It sounds like she was doing you a favor getting you out of there, though.”
“Yeah, sure, but why am I always the one that has to get called out for it, you know? I’d love to see her correct Langdon the way that she corrects me.”
“Have you considered that she’s correcting you because she wants you to get better?”
“No, Huckleberry, she’s just got it out for me. She always has, since the day that she started. She’s actively trying to ruin my life.”
“Trinity, I think she’s-”
“No, no, I think she’s just trying to prove herself as a worthy attending and using me as an example to do it.” She paused to chuckle, a desperate sound. “I swear to god one of these days I am just going to punch a hole in the fucking wall, if I don’t punch someone first.”
Whitaker looked past her, then looked back and widened his big bug eyes at her. Sometimes he got like this when gossiping about an attending when other doctors were around to hear, but she didn’t care if they heard. They should know who their attending is.
“Like I don’t know who the fuck she thinks she is, talking about my ‘professional authority.’ Like how about the professional authority of the fucking junkie? I don’t even know why he’s still fucking practicing, let alone being rewarded cases while I’m being yelled at and pulled out into the hallway like I’m getting scolded by the fucking principal. She’s such a fucking joke.”
“Dr. Santos.”
Trinity went still, stomach sinking. There was no way that Dr. Al-Hashimi was there, in the park with them. She hadn’t heard what Trinity had just said.
Whitaker gave her a tight-lipped smile, confirming her fear.
She whipped her head around to see Dr. Al-Hashimi standing there next to an extremely awkward Cassie, who offered her a sympathetic grimace. The rest of the group fell silent, looking over as they sensed the tension.
“I understand that our conversation earlier did not go well, Dr. Santos, and I understand your anger, but I would appreciate the respect of a conversation with me before one with your peers. Which, if you might recall, is what I was attempting before you ran away.” There were no traces of her amused smile anymore.
In fact, Trinity swore she recognized the look of a woman fighting against her mask of professionalism while a deep rage boiled right below the surface.
Trinity opened her mouth, willing herself to come up with an excuse, a quick retort, anything she could say to get her out of this, especially under the searing eyes of her peers, but she found herself coming up short. The only thing her traitorous body was able to produce was a loud, drunken hiccup.
Cassie, the angel she was, cleared her throat and walked over to greet the rest of the group. Whitaker followed, but his gaze stayed locked on his best friend and their attending.
“I’m surprised to see you so speechless,” Dr. Al-Hashimi said when they were alone. She tilted her head ever-so-slightly, her eyes darker than Trinity had ever seen them. “Especially when you had so much to say before.”
Trinity, who had never seen this side of her, was still stunned into silence, her cheeks burning with shame.
“I was going to stay and socialize, but I no longer think that’s wise. I’ll leave you with your,” she paused, looking from the beer can in Trinity’s hand to her slightly hiccuping chest. “...thoughts. I do hope you consider what I’ve said.” With that, she turned on her heel and headed back towards the PTMC, leaving Trinity staring at her retreating figure, mouth slightly agape.
What the fuck?