Chapter Text
JULY 4 & 5
Her phone buzzed on the countertop beside her elbow, facedown, tiny pinpricks of light peeking from the edge of her phone case. Her eyes flicked down to it momentarily, but she continued on with the dictation microphone. It went silent again.
“...pushed 100 of morphine--” the night shift was moving around her, head pressed nearly to the pc screen. She was on his third iced dunkin’. He'd dropped one off for her somewhere around 10pm, smiling down at her with a concerned grin, she drank it until her heartbeat was fluttering and her eyesight sharpened to an uncomfortable degree.
The charts were endless.
They kept coming. She started with 20 behind and by the end of the night she was staring down the barrel of almost 40, her hands on so many firework mishaps and grill burned palms, pushing morphine and saline and opening chests and calling deaths.
Four deaths under her hands.
One geriatric. One heartattack. One car crash. One baby.
Robby said there wasn't anything they could do, not really. Not when an unweighted lighting fixture falls into a kiddy pool, people with their feet cooling, beer glasses in hand. But it was a kiddy pool, and there was a five month old, leaned against their Dad's legs. The shock, people falling out, people jumping, running - 3 adults, 1 baby, too many drinks, too many people yelling, not enough sense, not enough care.
Trinity kept compressions going longer than she should have, the baby's long lashes brushing fat cheeks turning paler by the second. The mother was screaming down the hall, howling, and the rocket's red flares kept booming.
They pulled her off, Robby a phantom above her shoulder, Dr. Al-Hashimi a gentle whisper, laying two fingers against her wrist, and Trinity stepped back, sweat dripping down her spine. She wasn't crying, but Mel was, staring at her across the table, the silence of the monitors deafening. Al-Hashimi was talking to her, low and slow, her fingers still resting over her wrist. It burned, and Trinity felt the gasping urge to bury her face in her new attending's jacket. To close her eyes and forget the tiny body under her palm.
Trinity hadn't been to mass in years, but she remembered the prayers and the holy water on her forehead, the press of ashes, the tart blood on her lips, the incense that clung to her school skirt every Friday. The mother had a pendant of St. Anne around her neck - the mother of the Mother. Trinity left the room, then took a deep breath. Robby tried to stop her, but she was the one who did it, who slipped into the family room, whose hands had felt the last moments of life leave a child who hadn't even lived long enough to speak.
The Mother struck Trinity across the face, leaving a welt on her cheek, the Father pulling her away. Apologies between sobs. Trinity felt separate from her body, and ducked out of the room as curses followed her. Dana had tried to check in on her, but Trinity rushed to the next trauma, hands steady but head swimming with the feeling of the last beats of a heart too young to die under her fingertips.
Forgiveness was not hardwired into her bones, but guilt was - it stained her hands and her spine. It weighed in her chest and lungs like a cancer threatening to spread.
The phone buzzed again.
“You should go home,” Abbott was behind her shoulder, “you've done all you can, it's nearly midnight, you were here at 5am.”
Almost 24 hours - not quite. She'd done worse to herself.
Trinity was used to this - coming in early, staying late, chained to the desk or the mat, staring down the barrel of another sleepless night. A ghost on her shoulder, a whisper in her ear.
Mea culpa.
Trinity ruined things - people, situations, lives. The only thing she was good at was working to make herself useful.
Trinity picks up her phone. Just for a second. To check the time she told herself.
There are 7 missed calls, a dozen text messages, and more Instagram tags than she'd ever like to see.
She couldn't delete her profile. There would be questions, calls, wellness checks. But when anniversaries rolled around, when milestones hit, they came rolling in, the posts and photographs and apologies. Platitudes. Empty things that people said when they realized the distance was too wide, people were too broken and they needed to justify their own sadness.
They always tagged her, the living half of a pair, one dead the other nearly collapsed. There was blood on her shoes, and underneath her finger nails and the blade was heavy in her pocket.
“...kid?” Abbott stood in front of her, and held his hands up. She liked Abbott, liked how he was always clear with his intention, his movement, his expectations. There was comfort in men telegraphing exactly what they were. Even if most turned out to be liars. “If you like nights so much you ought to switch.”
He'd said it before, during their night rotations. Trinity liked the quiet darkness, just the work and silence above their heads. Just the ED and the darkness enveloping them, like a beacon in the night, a lighthouse for the infinite pain outside their doors and then mitigating and curing it until daybreak.
It was tempting, each time he said it, over the course of the last 10 months. The isolation in the ED was growing more obvious. Only Mel and Whittaker and occasionally Crash took lunch with her, Samirs always off too focused on her day to eat properly almost ever, but she mostly stayed apart and alone. Separate as the others around her gave Trinity a wary berth. Perhaps Perlah or Princess would sit and eat with her, but it was different, the sting of the rest of the ED'S eyes on her back, judging her, judging the situation made her feel small.
It was confidential but somehow everyone knew that Santos had whistleblown. Had called Langdon to the floor on her very first day. His return made it obvious, the icy coolness, the tension.
Trinity would never feel guilt over that, it was the right thing, the just thing. But it fell on her shoulders, even Garcia couldn't help but settle blame on her despite the months of skin and sweat. Garcia and her casual comments. Garcia and her inability to stay over unless it was stupidly late or snowed or hailed or caused her to otherwise curl up beside Trinity. Garcia hated cuddling, hated how Trinity would find a spot against her neck, but she put up with it, a distinct furrow in her brow until she finally relaxed. Trinity often tried to move but Garcia would sigh, and mutter things about being nice and to just enjoy it while she could.
Pity. Guilt. Yet Trinity couldn't stay away, couldn't stop the pattern from repeating - she was useful to someone, as distant as it seemed.
Trinity had rarely moved to touch Garcia these days in bed after the deed was done, after Garcia put her through her paces on her knees, had set Trinity into a specific pace with the strap around her waist. She had more stamina, Yola often commented, all that athleticism ought to translate. The times Yola had settled the strap between her own legs the build up was fast, and pace brutal. Trinity often sobbed, the comedown was heady and heavy, and Garcia was gentle and quiet afterwards as if stunned and enamored with the visceral reaction Trinity could produce for her.
Robby called her butcher. Trinity lost herself in the sheets, in the gnashing way Garcia tore her to pieces, emptied out her brain and pushed it to pieces. Garcia loved picking her apart, playing her like a fiddle against sheets and against walls. Trinity couldn't say no.
Trinity twisted her wrists, the soft ache growing into flames rushing up her forearms, connecting to the soft tissues in her shoulders then flared that old injury too. Like dominoes, Trinity knew her body was apt to follow the lines of pain that radiated outward from one poorly healed spot to another.
So many trips to the ER, so many doctors, too many sports medicine office trips to count or even record. Trinity couldn't calculate how many rolls of athletic tape had held her together as she shook apart. UCLA pre-med with national gymnastic standings, competitions spent with Trinity's head buried into her Kinesiology texts. Had buried herself in the off season in sheets, dragging hands and lips where demanded, pressuring herself into the role expected of her from the girls who wanted the girlfriend experience in bed but not the girl herself.
Not many people wanted the girl.
Abbott touched her shoulder, and Trinity tried not to spit poison at the growing concern on his weathered face.
“Go home.”
She couldn't.
Trinity Santos was someone to be left alone but she couldn't be alone. The coaches were gentle, despite senior gymnasts getting their own hotel rooms Trinity always had to share. With junior team members, with a female assistant coach. With eyes on her.
She'd lost the privilege and pride of being trusted to be alone.
It's why she'd chosen Pittsburgh, far away from California, legions from her social circle, years away from a gravesite that had an open spot beside it - tempting her, mocking her.
Whittaker and Garcia were blips, anomalies in the pursuit of solidarity that Trinity was attempting to pursue. Poorly, considering how King and Samira were burying themselves deep in her bones now.
Her phone buzzed.
“Popular tonight Santos?”
The contact glared up at her. They hadn't even gone to the same school, they ran in the same competitor circuit until Trinity's body began its slow breakdown. But long enough to exchange phone numbers and fanfic recommendations and a semblance of a friendship. Not that Trinity could call it that now, this was mostly a friendly checkin, a thinking of you, cursory, worried in a distant “I should do the polite thing” text. The community was small, and everyone knew what had forced a girl to an early grave and another to nearly follow.
They all knew.
Yet, has anything occurred? Had he been stopped, or was he allowed to fade into obscurity and pay for his sins in the forms of dollar bills sitting in a dead girl's bank account, to pay for the education of another. Slaps on the wrist. Hearsay. Rumors. Late reporting. Statues of Limitations. Character witnesses.
Everyone knew, and Trinity had nearly drowned under the weight of that knowledge.
Trinity shrugged. “Guess I'll go call them all back.” Her lock screen was unremarkable, a field, some flowers, a girl with bright blue eyes and fine blonde curls. It looked like a stock photo Trinity never bothered to replace. They didn't see the bruises or the spit slicked against their cheeks, the out of frame violence that speared and gutted them until one broke and the other kept on existing.
Abbott let her go, into the darkness, a scalpel in her pocket. To walk, Whittaker borrowed her car to get to Robby's fancy bachelor townhouse. She walked. Past the daytime nurses and their kumbaya beers in the park. She walked. Past the drunks on the streets. She walked. Under the fireworks booming well into the night as midnight came closer and closer.
Trinity kept moving, like a shark, the moment she stopped she knew it would be the end of the line. So she followed the line up through the streets, ignoring the passing buses, the burn in her long-time injured knee, the weight of steel in her pocket. Up the three flights of stairs, ignoring the elevator in favor of the burn in her thighs. It would do her good, the pain kept her mind clear, her fingers from straying. She just needed to focus --
“Crash?” Trinity raised an eyebrow, and crossed her arms across her chest. “Don't tell me you're crashing?”
The scalpel momentarily weightless at Victoria seated on a suitcase, still in scrubs.
“Hopefully? I didn't know where else... Whittaker always said it's safe here -- ” that Trinity was kind, that she was nice. He had left her, but sent her a new stray to adopt. It made Trinity want to throw up in his shoes.
Fucking Huckleberry.
Trinity patted Victoria’s tense shoulder and pushed her way into the apartment, snagging the young woman's purple duffle with her free hand. “Your mom know?” Trinity barrelled through, not even bothering to invite the nepo baby in, the open door was enough of an invitation.
“Uhh-” Crash stumbled through neatly piling her shoes by the door, the suitcase knocking against the cracked wall and its shitty paint job. Trinity could see a growing dent where “patches” had been made, Landlords Extra Special Sauce, only 200$ more a month for such wonderful work.
Trinity raised an eyebrow.
“Does she know you're someplace safe?”
“I said I was going to a friend's.”
Victoria didn't have many of those, at least not her age. Just the ER. She had never connected to the other rotations the way she did to the Pitt. Trauma-bonding perhaps from PittFest, Trinity could relate considering how often she let their fellow lower Rs inside her house. Either way, Dr. Shamsi was going to put out a warrant, or maybe a hit on Trinity once she figured it out.
Well, there goes the surgery specialization. Between Garcia and Shamsi it was best Trinity just avoided the fourth floor all together. Maybe she should look at Ortho instead.
“Okay, you can take Fuckleberry's room, he's at Robby's until his Zen Motor Trip is fulfilled, food in the fridge, alcohol in the right cabinet above the microwave. Do not touch my sake.”
Victoria was wide eyed, all doe brown and terrified. Trinity tried to soften herself, her tone, but she still felt rather much like a flayed prey animal.
“I’m gonna go get changed, get comfy on the couch” and she fled to her room, sharply closing the door, her scrub pants hitting the ground with a clink that echoed into her skull.
Crash was here. The kid was here looking for someplace safe. Trinity trembled. Letting the day overwhelm her senses before dulling them and glaring at the clock - 12:14am. How long had the kid been outside her door? How long since Victoria left the Pit? Gone home? Come here. Long enough to work up an appetite likely, she was young, growing and still somehow starving Trinity knew. She remembered having an endless stomach. With a sigh, and a low groan she pulled on some soft sweats, and an old tee. She took a deep breath and forgot the clean sharp edge of her own pain and focused.
Crash was perched on the couch, fists on her knees, she looked ready to cry.
Trinity never did well when other people cried.
“You hungry?”
Crash was staring at her in the low yellow light of the living room as Trinity got into the kitchen. She had made a massive pot of chicken adobo for her and Whittaker to eat through the week. Rice in the fridge was an easy fry up with eggs.
Trinity pulled the eggs and green onion, and threw tupperware into the microwave. She focused on the plates, the forks, on tossing the rice in the oil and separating the egg from the shell. Crash crept into the kitchen, a mouse pressed against the chipping linoleum countertop. Trinity snagged two canned vodka mixes from the fridge and tossed one at Victoria who fumbled then held it to her collarbone.
Trinity set down the plate, the fork, the steam wafting between them.
“Sit and eat, everything is better when you've eaten.”
That's what her Lola would say, petting her hair, saying it right up until she died. Trinity was happy it had been before the news broke, until the headlines and the lawsuit and the way she broke down during Nationals in her senior year. Happy it had been before the injury. Happy her grandmother hadn't seen how far her beloved grandchild had fallen from grace. Trinity had both desperately wished her grandmother had been there for her graduation (delayed - injury, mental health, doctor's orders) but thankful she missed the second attempt (pills, a night alone, a dozen missed calls).
It was a constant tug and pull, ebb and flow. Regret and thankfulness webbing and knotting together under Trinity's skin.
Victoria folded herself into the corner of the couch, eating the steaming food with a kind of distant concentration. Trinity took the floor, hands up on the coffee table where the young woman could see her movements. She ate quietly, taking slow sips of her canned drink, waiting until Victoria's movements were slow but not disjointed.
“Did she kick you out?” Trinity kept her voice steady.
The shaky breath said a thousand things until the younger woman shook her head.
“Did she hurt you? Physically?” Dr. Shamsi didn't seem the type, but neither was Coach 1 or Coach 2, both were both violent in their own sharp ways. Both cut her to ribbons before she had a chance to form properly. It happened to prodigies when they weren't handled with enough care - supernova.
“She wouldn't do that,” Victoria 's voice trembled, “she didn't she just...”
“Berated you?”
Trinity felt a distant sort of worry for the young woman, the kind of worry one felt when a car hit a speed bump too hard or a kid took a tumble off their bike, that something bad was happening and it wasn't devastating but it could be. Trinity never knew if anyone felt that looking at her bruised wrists and thighs, if they chalked up her exhaustion to the sport and the heavy college-pressure and the death of it all. That something was breaking, and who knew if the outcome was a simple scrape or freshly turned dirt.
Victoria shuddered.
“Is school paid for?” A stupid question Trinity knew, it had to be, the expectation Victoria would finish was there. No way would Jeep driving Victoria not have school paid for in full. There were no loans piling up under the covers, weighing on her back like Whittaker, the machete threatening to slice him to ribbons, the nickles and dollars he counted for bus fare and milk and protein bars. Trinity's schooling paid for in chalk, and gold, and blood money and bruises alongside sliced of her inner thigh and a penchant for women with sharp teeth and bright eyes. Everyone paid. One way or another.
Maybe for Crash there was a different sort of payment, of a life moving too fast and too slow.
She nodded, slow, scraping the bottom of the bowl.
“Okay,” Trinity stretched her arms, flipping them over her head then down the back of her spine and Victoria stared as if seeing her for the first time, eyes focused on the faded stamped logo on her shirt.
“You went to UCLA?”
“Seven years, until I came here.” Trinity pressed her hands into the ground behind her ass, shoulders rotated to an almost painful degree - well for most people it would have been painful. Once upon a time this was an easy playground trick. Her flexibility was something used for childish glee and horror. Then later for points and scholarships and ribbons. Now it was a focus, grounding, the pain of the stretch clearing her fizzing skull.
“How are you doing that?”
“Gymnast, three national title wins, then I went splat. But I held onto the scholarship, it was nice of them, even if I wasn't exactly helpful at Meets anymore.” Olympic-level they said. Gold medal ability. She wasn't Simone, the kind of generarional prodigy that Trinity had spent years staring up at, but there were 4 other girls on the team. She could have done it, but she was pre-med. She could have done it but she broke down. She could have done it but she swallowed a whole bottle of antidepressants then laid down in a locked gymnasium bathroom for a stray janitor to find.
She could have been gold.
Now people check on her, worried to lose someone who was better off left to their guilt and trying to build better lives, better outcomes for others. Nervous about the outcome of a girl they left to her shadows and depression, convincing themselves they cared, that they tried. They hadn't really. It's why they kept their distant check-ins and their Instagram tags and left the occasional voicemail on the saddest days of Trinity's life.
“Woah,” Trinity smiled, chest cracking with the joy of another person's praise, then pressed her hands under her ass and lifted, her body clearing the floor, biceps flexing as she untangled her legs until they sat perfectly parallel to the floor - not a single quaver. Victoria watched, mouth gaping as Trinity rolled sideways, onto her belly then up into a handstand, then fell backwards onto her feet.
Mel would have applauded. Whittaker would have stuttered. Garcia would have been raking her eyes over the clean lines of Trinity's body. Samira would have goaded her into doing a backflip. Victoria just stared as if trying to reconstruct an image in her mind.
“I’m not very good anymore,” Trinity tossed out, partially lying, she wasn't good like she used to be, but a normla person couldn't hop on a balance beam and do a proper tucked dismount either, stansinf ollecting both their dishes. “You can stay as long as you want, you're over 18 and I don't exactly charge rent. Just help with groceries when you can. Don't bring any men home, and don't go into my room.” Victoria stuttered, turning red over the implication of a man.
Trinity set them in the sink, they could be done in the morning or next night, or next time Trinity could feel things other than dread and a siren blaring that she needed to ensure Victoria had all 10 fingers and toes and no bruising and head on straight. That she wouldn't push up her jacket and find half moon fingernail imprints or find spots in her scalp where hair had been yanked by the root.
She turned around to Victoria right behind her, slim and pretty and dark and the girl pressed into her space.
For a second terrible second Trinity thought the prodigy was going to kiss her, and her entire body tensed, hands already moving to push her away, to lecture her about unsafe adults and age gaps and sad nights. Not that Trinity would have ever taken her own advice at Crash's age, but neither would she drag anyone into a similar darkness. She knew her sins well, and chose to pursue a different sort of harm. Her throat closed, she wasn't like that, Victoria was a kid, Trinity didn't mess with kids --
But instead Victoria shoved her face into her neck, curling in and forward, hands fisting the back of her UCLA shirt. She wasn't quite crying, but she was shuddering.
“You're okay,” Trinity's mouth moving faster than her brain could keep up, a single (open palm, between the shoulders, fingers curled back) stroked gently, the other carding through the girl's hair, snarling on small knots to pick apart with gentle fingers. The younger girls always crowded around Trinity at the gym, they liked how she took them seriously, their issues, their lives - she never babied them, never sugar coated a single word. Gymnastic was serious. School was serious. Trinity knew what was important and what wasn't and the girls at the gym liked that she treated them as if they had merit. “You're safe, you're okay.”
Trinity rocked Victoria in the cool apartment until the young woman could feel enough shame to break their embrace. Victoria was staring at her, like Trinity had been replaced, like a new person had formed in the moments between the end of their shift and their spot in the kitchen. Victoria closed her eyes and Trinity reached up, fingers soft and brushed through the loose mussed curls, letting the young woman lower her head against Trinity's shoulder.
“Go shower, you can use my nice bodywash in the purple jar. There is a towel warmer,” courtesy of her mother, “then Whittaker's bed. Don't worry, he doesn't have some boring navy sheet set, he's not allowed to be a boring white boy in this house." Trinity smoothed down Victoria's flyaways, "I'll put out a silk pillow case for you,” because Trinity bought two for Garcia which she rarely used.
Victoria nodded, breaking from their embrace, Trinity felt suddenly cold, and shuffled into the hallway before stopping and turning.
“You're kind of a cinnamon roll aren't you?”
Trinity genuinely evaluated the pros and cons of knife throwing when Victoria slipped into the bathroom. Then, she felt the weight of the apartment lift.
She wasn't alone. The itch under her skin was subsiding. There was a little creature to take care of again, a zygote showering after a mind-breaking argument with her mother that sought Trinity for safety. Trinity put the scalpel into her private bathroom, tucking it under some lesser used items, and shut the cabinet door.
Trinity waited until she heard Victoria getting into bed, until the clear rhythmic breathing started. She pattered to the door, and pushed it open with a toe, looking at the figure in the bed, fast asleep, coiled up tight, probably aching from the cold. Then slowly, Trinity shut the door and shot off a single text into the group chat.
“Brunch at mine, tomorrow, 11am. Be there.”
Trinity felt instant concern when Mel responded with a gif of a clapping anime cat, that woman had a sleep schedule Trinity could plan her life around, and filed away that worry for when she could figure out what to do with a TikTok famous GenZ medical prodigy who had used her hair oil currently sleeping in her stray-cat second bedroom.
Problems for tomorrow, Trinity set an alarm and let exhaustion cradle her to sleep.
***
Trinity snapped into wakefulness, alert and ready as Fiona Apple blared into her ear. It was just 10 minutes past 7am, and the sun was peeking through her bedroom curtains. Both Trinity and Huckleberry were early risers, their idea of sleeping in was meeting in the hallway at 830am for their day-off run.
But Trinity knew she'd need more than a little run to settle herself down to face the day.
Victoria yelped when Trinity slapped her door open, “Up and at it Crash, gym time, you won't be 20 and have the metabolism of a greyhound forever. Let's go!” Then off to the kitchen to mix some protein shakes.
The gym was her constant - even when injured Trinity arrived for light cardio and easy laps in a pool. Her body needed to move or she'd fall to pieces. Keep her mind clear.
“This is evil,” Victoria whines, her nose tucked under the comforter, eyes still closed. So stubborn.
“Nu-uh, up up,” Trinity strode over, smacking Victoria on the butt a few times, palm open, fingers up, not hard just teasing, “I got us a gym time for 8pm so we can snag a light breakfast. You can take a nap after the gym when I go to the market.”
“I didn't know you were so productive,” Victoria sits up, rubbing her eyes, possibly coming to the realization that Trinity was worse outside the ED, “I thought you'd be all lazy day off vibes.”
Trinity laughed, "Only in the morning, I waste away the afternoons.” With a book or medical text coiled up on the couch with takeout on the table. Always after getting things done, laundry being the only task in the afternoon she was willing to do. It was easy, wash, dry fold repeat. Putting it away was a whole other task.
Victoria hauled herself up, “I didn't bring gym shoes.”
“That's okay, we can be barefoot.”
Crash's frown gave way to surprise at the Pittsburgh Gymnastics Emporium and when Trinity came to the front desk she flashed a card. Victoria caught a glimpse - gold card, thick, frankly official looking.
“What's that?”
“USAG national level coach - so coaches pass. Well,” she offered a sideways grin, “assistant coach, I teach short courses here sometimes.”
The gym was brightly lit, it was early Saturday morning and there seemed to be a tween level class going, back handsprings and the bounce of mats in the background as Santos led them to a smaller corner. There were a few basic weight machines, a few rolled up mats and some bars and beams.
“Okay, let's stretch.” Trinity smiled, and a widget felt as if it had been lifted from her shoulders, a special ache disappearing in the face of a new more productive kind.
Victoria ran sometimes, did her little post-shift walks listening to audible romance books. Occasionally her friends would reach out to go to pilates or hot yoga.
Trinity led them through an “easy” run through the gym, the elder doctor keeping a striding even pace as they hit a few stairwells. Her body loosened, the itch under her thigh subsiding for the clean burn of muscle exhertion. Meanwhile Victoria slumped onto the mat as Trinity watched with a raised brow, chest heaving, thighs burning, groaning.
“How in the world are you not crashing everyday in the Pitt Crash?” Trinity squated beside Victoria , nudging her with a toe. The younger woman shoved at her foot, attempting to kick her, and hardly making Trinity sway who snickered at Victoria's devested face.
“It's not this intensive! Besides, I don't spend as many shifts there as you, I’m still M4.” Graduation down the pipe, there were still lectures to attend, lab days, and the constant rotation between ED and the other various specialities. None of which held her attention quite like ED, leaving her to volunteer for more rounds in the Pitt than anyone else in her cohort.
“Not for long Crash,” Trinity gently goaded, “gonna be in your residency soon, making pennies on the dollar trying to decide a specialty.”
Victoria snorted, “Or avoiding to declare one or two,” she leveled a glare at Trinity.
“Well considering I'm harboring Shamsi's fugitive daughter I think I ended up declaring for Emergency by pure chance.”
The younger doctor rolled her eyes, “Oh please, you were never going to go the surgeon route and you know it. You're arrogant but you don't think you're god.”
“No but I'm a saint for keeping all you strays in my house, whose next Mel?”
Probably, actually, all things considering with her sister and everything.
“Samira probably since she isn't moving to New Jersey--”
“-- and thank fuck for that, I need someone who can hold their liquor and go to the bar with me.”
Victoria snorted, the nights Samira and Trinity went out on the town were the nights she and Dennis watched movies and went over medical flashcards, ordering pizza and video taping the other two stumble into the apartment hanging off each other whining about their lack of ‘play’ not that Santos was trying all that hard being on Garcia's constant rotation. They had their group nights, but Javadi always liked the nights where they all ended up back together, sprawled on the floor until the excessive calls from her mother had Dennis driving her home.
“Hey maybe-” The younger doctor's half-formed thought was ruined by a dozen high pitched screeches. Trinity winced, face growing tight then turned bright and open, in a way Javadi had only seen with their pedes cases. Only without the hidden rage in the corner of her mouth when she suspected something reportable.
Leotards and kid shorts, high ponytails and overly chalked hands surrounded Trinity.
“Coach T is here!”
“Coach T look at my tuck!”
“Coach T do a double back handspring!”
“Coach T she is so pretty, is she a coach too?”
Trinity patted heads and shoulders, open palmed and sighing in the way Javadi saw actresses play older sisters on TV - exasperated, a little annoyed, but overall between the eyerolls and scrunched noses happy to be there. Happy to be around them, these cloying little things staring up at Trinity like she had every answer in the world. Trinity grinned down at them, and said their names with an easy familiarity, idly tightening ponytails and smoothing down twisting straps on their shoulders.
“That is Miss Vic, can we all say hello in our inside voices to Miss Vic?” Trinity prodded them, winking at Victoria who tried not to huff, but then again she wasn't a doctor or a gymnastic coach, even if Miss felt entirely too young.
The chorus of children yelling hello at Victoria made her feel suddenly very alien. She'd never been around so many children, at least outside her Pedes rounds. She waved nervously, wondering for a second if children could smell fear. Trinity was crouching down now, fixing a small child's form as the little girl showed her a front tucking rolling, nearly knocking over her friends like bowling pins.
Trinity shot Javadi a grin, and focused back onto the kid, ignoring the stares across the room. She could feel their eyes on her back, roving and searching, trying to dissect the woman currently trying to stop an eight year old from trying to barrel her way into a front flip.
“Coach Trinity!” A woman was striding over, short with dark curls cropped short around her head, shot through with silver, wiry and musculed, clad in loose shorts and a skin tight top. Trinity straightened, and shot her a smile, one girl hung from her wrist, yapping endlessly, chalk dusting her pants and arms.
“Coach Olga,” the kids turned to chorus a polite hello, “I didn't mean to steal the kids, they came running over here.”
“I don't doubt that, you are a favorite.”
Trinity flushed, just lightly enough for Javadi to notice and raise an eyebrow.
“Since you are here, do you mind demonstrating to the Level 6's a Yurchenko timer properly, I tweaked my back with the level 10s this morning and Coach Hayley won't be in until noon. Please, if you're warmed up,” the girls began to ohh and ahh, whispering among themselves.
“Yeah no problem, easy enough move. Do you want me to throw a proper Yurchenko first then demonstrate the timer?”
“Only if you're trying to show off.” Coach Olga quipped, leading the ground to the mats by the wall where a group of young teens were stretching and drinking water, most of them peeking up immediately when they caught sight of Santos.
“I don't show off, I keep my skills polished.” She trained twice a week, she'd never be elite level again, but Trinity longed to feel the weightlessness of the vault, the precision of the beam under her toes. The height of the bars kept her mind clear, and her throat from tightening. A different escape.
“Hit the mat,” Javadi wondered if Coach Olga had ever met Dana, then quickly hoped they hadn't.
“Hey guys!” Javadi had never heard Santos so perky in her life, and the doctor began to strip from the sweats she'd worn into the gym, leaving her in knee length compression shorts, then pulled off her athletic jacket she'd run in, bearing Victoria arms she had no idea were so sculpted. “Some of you may know me from Bars Course Lvl. 5 from last autumn, but I'm Coach Trinity, I'm a volunteer assistant coach, certified through USAG. I was a gymnast out of UCLA until I graduated and my best events were Bars, Vault and Beam, ” Victoria realized this speed through of Trinity's (frankly impressive) gymnastic resume wasn't for the teens, it was for the parents lined up on the far side of the wall, eyeing Trinity up, “currently I'm an Emergency Doctor for PTMC, and I hope to see not a single one of you there. Now, Coach Olga said we are practicing Yurchenko's today, a standard lvl. 6 skillset.” Trinity fell into the easy cadence of teacher, her mind quieting the worry of Javadi's existence in her apartment and the surge of need to draw red rivers across her skin.
Coach Olga gently touched her arm, “Do you mind standing with the parents?”
“Oh yes of course, yeah lemme just,” Victoria scuttled away as Trinity spoke to the class about form and stance and velocity, all the same tone and focus that she taught sutures and procedures. It was as if Doctor Santos had been supplanted into a new body outlined with chalk and fitness wear. The teens looked at her with all the focus of med students hearing a lecture.
“Now,” Trinity took herself to the end of the run, her shoes toed off, socks rolled up and off to the side, hands chalked and somewhere she had procured some kind of gloves, "I'm going to do a full Yurchenko run twice, then I'll demonstrate the proper timer.”
Victoria had been glued to Team USA like everyone else had been the past three Olympic summer cycles, Simone Biles had been one of the few idols her mother approved of her watching. But witnessing Trinity Santos sprint down the mats, the round off into the back-handspring, hands onto the table then sticking it firmly with her back arched, hands pointed and jaw neatly raised. Well, it kickstarted Victoria's heart.
The parents were in a tizzy as Trinity started asking the teens what they noticed about the move.
“Can you imagine, still being able to throw a Yurchenko at 27?”
“Plus she's an ER doc,” one Father grunted, “she's one bad bitch.”
“Stop calling women bitches Carl!”
“It was a compliment! Coach Santos is bad fuckin' ass!”
“Wasn't Santos up for the Olympics--” one mother whispered, and Victoria nearly spun around. She had never heard that rumor in the Pitt.
The oldest Mother spoke up, “I remember, my eldest was in Lvl 3s when Coach Santos missed Worlds in 2015 for the ACL and couldn't get together for 2016. Lots of chatter, especially with the... death,” she was louder than the rest of them, "then Covid plus the injury...” she lowered her voice, and the other parents tuned in, “and the situation.”
Several stopped, then nodded and looked back to Trinity who was gearing up for a second run. One parent caught Victoria's eye and she nudged the talkative older mother and whispered in her ear, the woman reddened. They all stopped talking as Trinity threw another perfect Yurchenko - all signs of injury gone, and instead sweat slicked back her hair as she moved them to stacked mats and did slower loops of the timer.
By the time Trinity had wandered back over to Victoria she was panting, and holding her shoulder.
“I overdid it a bit, not exactly in the best shape to throw a dozen Vaults, I don't know if we can get a real gym session in now.” Victoria was horrified to see that Santos looked rather sad about that. As if she'd been looking forward to bullying her over weights and dumbells. Knowing Trinity, she probably was.
“That's okay, it was really cool seeing you do those tricks.”
“Used to be easy for me--”
“Until your ACL? Or maybe you fractured your shoulder, or rotator cuff? Considering your current pain.”
Trinity froze then turned, “How?”
“The parents gossip and they seem to know a lot about you - Olympian huh?”
Trinity snorted, “Almost,” they made their way out of the gym, but not before waving enthusiastically at the kids calling her name, “I missed the qualifying Worlds in 2015, not that it would have made a difference, Simone is beauty on the damn mats. She would have locked down all of my events before I would have thrown them. But we all knew it was a battle for second and third place.”
“Then Covid?”
“Yep, I was getting old by then, I would have been 18 at Rio. Sure Madison was also 18, but she was healthier than me, and frankly better. Don't tell her I said that,” Victoria wondered how Trinity expected her to know a fucking gold medalist, “Then Covid and I would have been 23 for Tokyo and it just seemed silly,” Trinity shrugged, “Bad timing, I had just started medical school, covid, all my injuries stacking up like a fucking Jenga tower - it just wasn't meant to be you know? Life is like that.”
They walked in relative silence back to Trinity's apartment.
“They also uhhh, mentioned a situation,” she ventured, lightly, carefully and Trinity froze, hand on the front door, key in the other hand, “I didn't really--”
“Don't mention that to me,” Trinity ground out, her entire back tense, shoulders to nearly her ears, “please, Crash.”
Javadi wasn't sure if Trinity had ever said please to anyone, at least as far as she knew. So she mumbled an apology and followed Trinity inside. Dennis was on the couch, avocado spilling onto his shirt.
“You stupid fuckleberry I said to stop fucking stealing those! Go eat Robby's sad freezer food!”
“It was gonna go bad! Its weird there Trin,” Whittake whined, “it smells like old man cologne and fucking dust.”
“Yeah well you said you'd stay there.”
“You said to come for brunch!”
“You are literally eating on my goddamn couch--”
“Sue me I didn't want to eat the bran cereal he stocks up on like we're headed for nuclear war!”
“I'm gonna go shower,” Victoria motioned, and Trinity grunted as she and Whittaker continued to argue.
***
By the time Victoria exited Whittaker's room there was a spread on the countertop, the previous nights she'd been here it was a mess of Chinese and pizza, beers and energy drinks, sprawled out med students and low level R's going over medical texts and flashcards.
Mel was already there, talking fast to Trinity who was cutting up strawberries and laying blueberries around some mini bagels and cream cheese.
“Do you think Whittaker would mind wearing tights, since its historically accurate and all --”
“Woah, who said anything about putting me in tights.”
“Don't worry Huckleberry, I'll defend your honor from the crazed maidens. With my cool dragonbone sword,” Trinity snorted as the doorbell rang, “For fucks sake you know the door is open Samira!”
Javadi gaped, “When did you have time to do a spread?”
“Well considering you just caused my water bill to skyrocket 20 dollars and probably spent more time on your hair than I do in a month, I had a fuckton of time. You used all the hot water too,” Dennis laughed.
“I can't believe you didn't hear her whining about it!”
Javadi stammered through an apology as Samira nudged her, “Don't let Santos get you wound up kid, she's just being an asshole.”
"What did you bring?”
“Stopped by the farmers market for apple cider cause I know it's Mel's favorite.” The blonde's smile was infectious, “Plus orange juice and prosecco, considering how the day went yesterday and the on-call staff is in today for us. Could use a little sober break.”
“Amen to that!” Santos whistled, pulling out glasses for the drinks. “Thank you on-call rotation,” Trinity plucked the jars from the basket, pushing the cider to Mel's grabby hands, “pop me some too King.”
“Rightie-o!”
Javadi slumped next to Whittaker who was munching on lox and toast, he offered her a pillow for her back.
“How are you still hungry?”
“He's a blackhole,” Trinity muttered, shoving a glass into Victoria's hand, “Huckleberry can eat a pound of pancit then ask me for seconds.”
The fizzing bubbles and alcohol made Victoria cough as Samira settled down gracefully onto a stray plush chair, balancing a paper plate on her knees.
"So why are we here today?”
“Easy, we gotta figure out how Javadi is gonna get out of her parents' plate without Dr. Shamsi throwing me off a rooftop for harboring her.”
Victoria groaned and threw back her drink, head swimming as the older doctors began a great debate that she quickly tuned out of, as long as they got her out of her parents then she'd be happy. But Javadi continued staring at Trinity, lazy in overlarge joggers and a crew neck with the neck so stretched out it fell over her collarbone.
Victoria looked away, sipping at the topped off glass Samira handed to her.
No, she thought, absolutely not.
But there it was, the sunshine hitting Trinity's cheek and Victoria felt the earth coming out from her ass. The way her body had soared into the air. Her smile with the kids. The way she'd held her last night. No fucking --
Trinity winked at her, flicking a blueberry at Whittaker's eye, and Victoria tensed.
Shit.