Chapter Text
Trinity Santos had seen a lot of things in the ER. Blood, chaos, people making genuinely terrible decisions at two in the morning. She thought she was unshockable.
She was wrong.
It was the second half of a double, the stretch of shift where the floor gets quieter and stranger and the fluorescent lights start to feel personal. She was pulling it because someone had to, and because she'd said yes before she'd thought about it, which was a habit she was working on.
The usual crew was gone. Dennis had left at seven with the specific guilty expression of someone who knew he was abandoning you and felt bad about it but was also very tired. Joy was on days this week. Perlah had a thing. The break room was quiet in the way it only got past eleven, the night shift nurses moving through it like ghosts, nobody she knew well enough to sit with.
She'd been in here alone for twenty minutes with a coffee she'd stopped tasting and the specific particular feeling of a long shift with no one to complain to.
Her phone buzzed on the break room table, unknown number, which she almost ignored. She got spam texts sometimes. Insurance offers. A guy named Brad who kept insisting she was his cousin Melissa.
She picked it up anyway.
The photo loaded slowly, the way photos do when you desperately need them not to. Red fabric. An ornate mirror, the kind you only find in old apartments or very specific Pinterest boards. Dark hair cascading down a bare back, the dress open almost to the waist—
unknown 🚨:
Trinity put the phone face down on the table.
She picked it up again.
She put it down again.
Okay, she thought, very calmly, that is a person. That is a real human person who exists somewhere in this city.
She picked the phone up a third time, because she was a professional and professionals dealt with situations head-on, and typed:
Trinity: I don't think I was supposed to receive that.
The three dots appeared almost instantly. Then disappeared. Then appeared again. Trinity could practically feel the panic radiating through the screen.
unknown 🚨: oh my god
unknown 🚨: oh my GOD
unknown 🚨: I am so incredibly sorry, I was trying to send that to someone else and I must have… my contacts are a mess I've been meaning to reorganize them for months I am so sorry
unknown 🚨: please delete that
unknown 🚨: actually please don't look at it first and THEN delete it
unknown 🚨: I mean, you probably already looked at it. of course you looked at it. I would have looked at it.
unknown 🚨: I'm going to put my phone in a drawer and never come out
Trinity read through the spiral twice. A smile pulled at the corner of her mouth before she could stop it.
Trinity: hey. breathe.
Trinity: it's fine. I've already deleted it.
Trinity: these things happen. no harm done.
A pause. Longer this time. Then:
unknown 🚨: ...you're being very nice about this
unknown 🚨: I do hope you're not some weird man who's going to keep that picture for himself
Trinity actually laughed out loud, alone in the break room, at eleven forty-three on a Tuesday night.
Trinity: first of all, rude.
Trinity: second of all: woman. very gay woman. your photo is safe.
The response came fast this time. No spiraling, no ellipsis panic.
unknown 🚨: oh thank god
unknown 🚨: not that it would have been okay if you were a man! it still wouldn't have been okay! I'm just…
unknown 🚨: okay that's a little bit of a relief
Yeah, Trinity thought, setting her phone down as her pager went off. Me too.
She did not examine that thought further.
do not disturb (we will disturb) 😤
trin 🪶: okay so something just happened to me
trin 🪶: a stranger just sent me a very sexy photo by accident
crash 💥: WHAT
crash 💥: FORWARD IT
trin 🪶: javadi I will not be doing that
crash 💥: TRINITY SANTOS
huckleberry 🥺: wait was it a man or a woman
trin 🪶: ...
trin 🪶: woman
huckleberry 🥺: lmaooooo your gay ass
Joy 🔥: THE UNIVERSE IS TRYING TO HELP YOU TRINITY
Joy 🔥: THIS IS A SIGN
trin 🪶: it's a wrong number
Joy 🔥: IT'S FATE
crash 💥: did you respond
trin 🪶: I told her it was fine and that I deleted it
huckleberry 🥺: did you delete it
trin 🪶: I’m going back to work
crash 💥: SHE DIDN'T DELETE IT
Joy 🔥: ICONIC
Joy 🔥: MARRY HER
Trinity was halfway through a lukewarm coffee, at the nurse’s station, when the buzz came again.
unknown 🚨: also, for what it's worth, I am deeply normal and not weird at all
unknown 🚨: very normal person. sends accidental thirst traps to strangers all the time. completely standard behavior
She set down her coffee.
Trinity: you're too quick to trust me though. I could be a very weird woman.
unknown 🚨: ...okay that's fair
unknown 🚨: are you
unknown 🚨: a very weird woman
Trinity: undecided. ask my coworkers.
unknown 🚨: I'm going to choose to believe you're completely normal and this is just a normal tuesday
Trinity: It's wednesday
unknown 🚨: it's wednesday?
Trinity: has been for about 40mins yeah
unknown 🚨: I've lost track of time entirely. that explains a lot actually.
unknown 🚨: okay. normal wednesday. stranger has seen my back. moving on.
Trinity leaned back in her chair. There was something oddly easy about this, texting someone who had no idea who she was, no context, no history. Just words on a screen and a woman on the other end who was, against all odds, kind of funny.
unknown 🚨: for the record I really am sorry. that was meant for someone who definitely would have wanted to receive it
Trinity: noted. lucky one.
unknown 🚨: she doesn't know yet. I was working up to it
unknown 🚨: sending the photo was maybe... a preemptive confidence boost that went very wrong
Oh. Trinity hadn't expected that. She knows that moment, when you’re psyching yourself up and fear the misfire.
Trinity: for what it's worth, the photo would have worked on me
She sent it before she could think too hard about it.
The dots appeared immediately.
unknown 🚨: ...you said you forgot it
Trinity: I said I deleted it. very different statement.
unknown 🚨: you're trouble aren't you
Trinity: my coworkers would say yes
Trinity: I maintain I'm just honest
unknown 🚨: the most dangerous kind of person
unknown 🚨: okay. I feel slightly less like crawling into the ocean now. thank you, stranger.
Trinity: anytime. good luck with your girl.
unknown 🚨: we're not…
unknown 🚨: thank you
Trinity smiled at her phone. Flustered again. It was very easy to fluster this woman, apparently, and Trinity was only now noticing how much she was enjoying it.
She was about to type something, she wasn't sure what, something light, something that kept the thread alive just a little longer, when her pager went off.
She stared at it.
Then at her phone.
Of course.
Trinity: I have to go. work.
unknown 🚨: oh, of course. sorry for keeping you
Trinity: don't be
She grabbed her coffee, already moving toward another room.
unknown 🚨: goodnight, weird woman
Trinity read it walking down the corridor, cold coffee, pager still buzzing at her hip, and felt something she absolutely refused to name settle warm and quiet in her chest.
She typed back one-handed without breaking stride.
Trinity: goodnight, red dress
She did not look at the photo again.