Work Text:
Yolanda was not staring. She surveyed the room, the way you do in any unfamiliar environment. Exits. Obstacles. The bachelorette party at two o'clock would most likely become a problem by eleven. If the survey kept returning to the same data point at the far end of the bar, that was a flaw in the room, not the methodology.
The data point had a jaw like a dare and a beer she wasn't drinking. Sleeves pushed up. She sat the way some people stood in doorways, like the furniture should be grateful.
She'd caught Yolanda looking twice now. The first time, Yolanda had executed a flawless pivot to the jukebox, an instrument she could not have operated at gunpoint. The second time she'd been slower.
"You're staring," Ellis said, into a glass of something the exact color of arterial blood.
"I'm surveying."
"You've surveyed her three times."
"It's a thorough survey."
“Right.”
Ellis set the glass down with the patience of a woman who had been Yolanda's friend for the last three years and had regretted approximately none of it out loud. "Intake is at six thirty. Tomorrow you go back to being married to a trauma bay. Tonight you are a free woman with excellent posture and a full drink, and you're spending it doing inventory."
"Every night counts. That's what a career is."
"That's what a warning label is." Ellis pointed at her. "When's the last time you talked to a woman you weren't consenting for?"
"I talk to women constantly."
"Name one who wasn't sedated within the hour."
"You," Yolanda said, "regrettably," and drank instead of elaborating. It wasn't that Ellis was wrong. It was that Ellis was wrong in a way that would take too long to explain, and the explanation lived somewhere Yolanda didn't go. Inked into her skin, technically, though she'd gotten very good at not thinking about it, the way you don't think about the ocean while you're standing in it.
She checked the far end of the bar again.
Purely for completeness.
***
By round two she had relocated to a seat with better sightlines and was prepared to defend the move on ergonomic grounds.
Ellis settled in beside her. "Incident report. Three documented counts of staring. One jukebox felony. And now you've moved us to the tactical corner."
"This corner has back support."
"I could go say hi for you. As your proxy. I'd be very professional about it. 'Hello. My colleague finds you structurally sound. She has a good job, a crippling personality, and a car with functioning airbags.'"
"I will end you in a way that looks like an accident."
"She also makes threats," Ellis smirked. "Which her friends have chosen to find charming."
"Former friends."
"See, that's the woman I dragged out tonight." Ellis toasted her with the arterial drink, and Yolanda laughed before she could file an objection to it, short and real, and hated how good it felt.
"One conversation," Ellis said. "That's the whole ask. You walk over, you say hi, and if it goes badly you never see her again, because tomorrow you disappear into a hospital for the rest of your natural life."
"I'm not walking over."
"Why not?"
Because Yolanda did not say… Because of the thing she didn't think about, which she was now thinking about: being nine years old in the bathtub, and her mother's face going through five distinct expressions before landing on we don't need to tell your father. Twenty-two years of one-piece swimsuits. Twenty-two years of a sentence sitting on her hip in that script soulmarks came in, not handwriting, not print, nothing a font had ever been named for, and the private dread underneath all of it, the one she had never said to Ellis or her mother or God: those are the first words my soulmate will ever say to me. What kind of person says that to a stranger?
And what did it mean that the universe had read Yolanda Garcia's entire file and assigned her that person?
Across the room, the stranger was at the karaoke table now, signing the sheet, arguing the host into something. Winning, obviously, whatever it was. Laughing with her whole torso at her own negotiation. She never got called up. It didn't seem to matter. Some people put their name on the list just so the night knew they were in it.
Yolanda had never once put her name on a list like that.
"Hey." Ellis, quieter. One beat, no garnish. "Whatever the thing is that's stopping you. Is it good enough for both of you?"
Yolanda looked at her.
"Don't thank me," Ellis said, already flagging the bartender. "It'll ruin my range."
And that would have been the whole night—two drinks, one felony, home by midnight, professional by dawn—except that when Yolanda ran the survey again, the data point was looking back.
Watching. Sustained, deliberate, both elbows on the bar, with the open interest of someone reading a menu she already knew she could afford.
People-watching, as a cover story, does not survive being watched back.
Yolanda developed a sudden professional interest in the ice at the bottom of her glass.
***
She retreated to the jukebox.
It was a mistake for several reasons. First, it was her third documented pivot, and Ellis was going to enter it into evidence. Second, the jukebox was already occupied.
The stranger was leaning against it, one shoulder set, a quarter balanced on her knuckles. She'd been there long enough to develop a bit. Up close she was worse. Up close there was a scar through one eyebrow and a chain at her throat and the kind of grin that got people to sign things.
She looked at Yolanda the way Yolanda had been trying not to look at her all night. Then she looked at her a little longer, like she was checking the light.
Then she said, "You look like the reason God invented scissoring."
The bar kept happening around them. Somewhere behind Yolanda, a bachelorette shrieked at nothing. The jukebox hummed under the stranger's shoulder, patient, holding its hundred songs.
Twenty-two years arrived all at once, in order.
"What the fuck," Yolanda said. Flat. Not even a question. The exact shape her mouth had been making around that sentence since she was nine years old.
The stranger's whole face changed. Not the grin—the grin stayed—but something behind it went very still and very awake, like a dog hearing a car in the driveway.
"Say that again."
"What?"
"No, the other thing. The first thing. Say it exactly like that."
"I'm not going to—" Yolanda stopped. Restarted. "Do you do this? Is this a thing you do?"
"Every day of my life," the stranger said, and set the quarter down on the jukebox glass with the care of someone laying down a weapon. Then she took the hem of her own shirt and lifted it, matter-of-fact about it. Ribs, the long line of them, and along the fourth and fifth, left side, in script that was not handwriting and not print and had never been named for a font:
What the fuck.
Three words. Yolanda's three words. Sitting on a stranger's ribs like they'd been waiting there for her to show up and say them.
"Seventeen years," the stranger said, dropping the hem. "And you're going to want to sit down, and I want to watch you decide not to."
Yolanda did not sit down. Yolanda recalibrated, visibly, and hated that it was visible. "That's—people must say that to you constantly."
"Constantly. It's the most common sentence in English. I've had false alarms since middle school. A woman at the DMV in 2019, I nearly proposed." She tipped her head. "So. You tell me. Do I have a reason to be nervous right now, or am I about to be really embarrassed at a jukebox?"
Yolanda opened her mouth. Closed it. Her hand, entirely without authorization, went to her own hip and pressed flat against the denim there, the way you'd hold pressure on something.
The stranger watched the hand. Her eyes came back up slowly.
"Oh," she said. Quiet. Then, not quiet at all, head back, whole torso, delighted, nothing performed in it: "Oh, thank God. It's you."
"You don't know that."
"You just put your hand on it. You've got surgeon hands. You don't do anything by accident." She was practically bouncing. "Hip? It's on your hip? Come on. I've been surrounded by girls in leotards since 2009. You can show me a hip."
"I am not lifting my shirt in a bar."
"Fine. Just tell me. Word for word."
Yolanda looked at the ceiling, which had nothing for her. "'You look like the reason God invented scissoring.'"
"Yes." The stranger pumped one fist, small and vicious, like she'd landed something. "Trinity Santos. Hi. I've been trying to meet you for eleven years."
"Trying."
"You think that sentence happened by accident?" Trinity spread her hands. "I've got 'what the fuck' on my ribs. Since I was nine. I know exactly what my person's going to say to me, first thing, before hello. So I had to build a sentence that gets that. Not 'excuse me.' Not 'wow.' Not a drink in my face. What the fuck, every time, clean."
"You engineered it."
"I iterated. Kitchen trials. My sister held the clipboard. Early versions were getting a lot of 'I'm sorry?' and one 'okay,' which was a whole separate problem." She ticked it off on her fingers. "Current build's running about sixty percent. Rest is walkaways, one slap, and a woman in Cleveland who said 'that's fair.'"
"You A/B tested a pickup line."
"On women I liked. I'm not a monster." Trinity leaned back into the jukebox. "Sister charged me a dollar a session for the kitchen work. She has actual money on tonight."
"On tonight," Yolanda repeated.
"On any night. All of them." Trinity shrugged. "Where'd you get 'scissoring' at nine? Who told you?"
"Nobody told me. There was a dictionary."
Trinity went very still again, a different kind of still. "You looked it up."
"I was nine. There was a word I didn't know. The dictionary was confiscated."
Trinity put a hand over her heart. "Oh, that's the best thing that's ever happened to me. I'm going to need the whole story, chronologically, with your mother's face described in detail."
"And who knows about yours?"
"Everybody at every meet from '09 to '14. You want to know what it's like being ten years old at regionals with what the fuck across your ribs? Five years of competitive gymnastics. Judges. Coaches. My tita brought a camera." She said it with a grin, the way she clearly always said it, and then the grin went somewhere else for a second, somewhere with less audience in it. "People see it, and they laugh. It's a funny mark on a little kid. What they don't think about is that's the first thing my person's ever going to say to me. That's my opening review. My whole life I've known I was going to walk up to the love of my life and she was going to look at me and go… What the fuck."
Yolanda didn't say anything.
"So I figured, fine. If that's the line, I'm gonna earn it. I'm gonna say something so stupid she has to." Trinity looked back up. "And you did. You said it like a diagnosis."
"It was a diagnosis."
"It was perfect." Reverent. "Do you know how long I've wondered what you'd sound like? I used to run bits about it. 'What if she's British.' 'What if she screams it.' I never once got to 'what if she's the hottest woman in the bar and she's been staring at me since nine forty.'"
"I was conducting a survey."
"Okay, Survey," Trinity said it like she was filing it somewhere permanent, then let the silence get warm. Yolanda noticed her own hand had come up without authorization again. Hovering, not touching, near the hem Trinity had dropped, the way you held your hands over a sterile field. Asking.
Trinity watched her do it and didn't move, which was an answer.
"It's real," Trinity said, quieter. "Been real my whole life. You can look again if you need to."
"I don't need to." She did not lower the hand right away. Something was expanding under Yolanda's sternum that she could have named if asked—she was a physician, she knew exactly what hope presented like—and she declined to treat it, on the grounds that it was the first symptom she'd ever wanted to keep.
"So," Trinity said. "Yolanda Garcia.... Your friend gave you up your name to me two drinks ago, by the way. She's been mouthing it at me like a hostage. What do you do, Yolanda Garcia, when you're not casing gay bars?"
"I'm a trauma surgeon. Fellow. At PTMC." And then, because the night had made her generous and stupid in equal measure: "What do you do?"
Trinity's grin came back at full wattage. "Funny story. I’m an emergency medicine intern. Start tomorrow." She picked the quarter back up and flipped it, caught it, easy. "... At Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center.”
Yolanda's face did something. She felt it do the something and could not stop it, which was becoming the theme of the evening.
"What the fuck," said Yolanda Garcia, for the second time in the night, meaning it completely.
Trinity pointed at her own ribs. "See, now you're just showing off."
***
At 06:28 the next morning, the emergency department was running like it always ran. Monitors. The intercom paging someone who was already there. A floor that smelled like citrus over bleach. Dana Evans stood in front of the new intern class with a clipboard and the expression of a woman who had seen forty intakes and been impressed by none of them.
Yolanda was there on legitimate business. Trauma took on a resident from the incoming group every year. Someone to help bridge the gap between surgery and the cowboy antics of EM. She was scanning the cluster of new badges and pressed scrubs on reflex, professionally sanctioned this time, and she had, of course, already found her.
"Trinity Santos," Dana read off the clipboard. "Dr. Santo. You're with trauma. That's Dr. Garcia. Don't make her come get you."
Trinity turned. Recognition landed in full view of absolutely nobody; the room went on being a Tuesday.
She crossed over with her hands in her pockets, brand-new badge already crooked, and stopped at exactly the professional distance, one degree too warm.
"Dr. Garcia." The half-second in front of it was doing a lot of work.
"Dr. Santos." Yolanda kept her voice in its work register, dry and institutional, and watched Trinity clock it for the costume it now was. "Nice to meet you."
"We already met," Trinity said with an all-knowing smirk.
"I recall."
And then they went. Trinity fell in half a step behind her, silent for the length of one whole hallway, which Yolanda suspected was a personal record.
The scrub top fit her like it fit everyone, which is to say badly. There was nothing to see. That was the thing. There was nothing to see. Fourth and fifth ribs, left side, standard-issue blue over it, and Yolanda was the only person in the entire building who knew, word for word, exactly what her intern's ribs said.
Three words. Hers.