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Trinity Santos needed a break.
Well, she needed a nap but a break would be great too.
Ten months into her first official year as a doctor and she felt like the last fifteen hours had taken more from her than her years of medical school. She powered through the day as if it were any other, blocking out the noise in a way that she figured to be her signature move.
Just count to five seconds.
We can do five seconds.
That’s what she told herself for those fifteen goddamn hours as her first day into this three-rivered hellscape came back to her in flashes. It was like she was doing it all over again, coating herself in a sheer protective glass and hoping someone doesn’t see how easy it would be to shatter.
She remembered walking into those doors with assumptions of who she’d be, the type of doctor she’d become. The possibilities seemed endless in a way that was - to put it mildly - exhilarating.
Her whole career played before her eyes as she felt those scrubs sway with every step into the Emergency Department. She saw herself fully formed, grown and tested through trials and tribulations that was a shock to the system for a twenty-five year old student.
That first day dunked her into the deep end and while she rode the adrenaline as far as it could take her, it fizzled out and she was left in the exact place she’d been since she graduated high school: on the couch with her phone in hand trying not to pass out from sheer boredom.
It didn’t matter that she witnessed dozens of gruesome deaths, pushed herself to the brink of exhaustion to save who she could. The memories of the blood and gore would come back to her mind, the broken open bodies and bullet wounds that covered the entire floor almost blending into one another.
The faces were unclear, but she could see their injuries as clear as the day she worked on them. Every single procedure, every single movement was recorded and logged in a place where she could pull it apart inch by inch if she needed to. She wanted to be prepared in the off chance she got a lawsuit sent her way.
Not that she’d worry about it.
She could handle whatever they threw at her and stand her ground to prove what she did was not only clinically above board, but the best way to do it.
She didn’t second guess her choices.
At least she tried not to.
She trusted her feelings.
If something was wrong, if something felt wrong, there had to be a reason and that’d kept her out of the woods so far. Her faith in her craft, in the technical quality of her skill was all she needed to get ahead in where she wanted to be.
A thrown out deposition or two wouldn’t shake her.
Not like it did today to Mel.
Fucking Mel.
Melodrama. Melancholy.
She was the weirdest little woman she’d ever had the pleasure of working with, but she’d become a steady place to vent when the day started to throw its worst at them. They dodged the daily firebombs and somehow worked within the trenches of the American healthcare system with some semblance of a sense of humor.
The whole day, a holiday weekend risen from the pits of hell itself, was specifically designed to break the two of them. If it wasn’t Mel’s deposition haunting the halls, it was the return of Pittsburgh’s prodigal prince: Frank fucking Langdon.
The quintessential high school athlete who ran himself into the ground because of a back injury found his way into the magic of medicine, giving someone with already a little too much privilege a monster-sized god complex.
He’d worked in the department for years, almost fully graduated from the program and threw everything into the shredder for an addiction to benzos.
If she were really being honest with herself, it wasn’t even the addiction part that drove her insane.
That would make her a bit of an asshole.
And she wasn’t an asshole, at least not completely.
She was a doctor.
She knew that sometimes, especially with painkillers and prescription drugs, it’s a devastating downward spiral that happens before you can catch it. She’d seen countless people come through the doors struggling with something that they’ve lost the ability to control and she couldn’t judge someone for wanting to get better.
It’s that crimes - literal felonies - have consequences and for some reason, this motherfucker skated by without so much as a hair out of place.
For ten months, she cursed herself for never going to the medical board about what she caught him doing. She could’ve told them about the tampered vials, the stolen pills and rightfully taken that man’s career away from him.
He should’ve gone to prison.
He could’ve got someone killed.
For fuck’s sake, she didn’t really care about Louie like everyone else seemed to, but that man was directly impacted by Langdon’s care. The meds that should’ve gone to him were shortened and it didn’t matter that he survived.
It mattered that someone else might not have.
It mattered that he went against the code he swore by, that he dedicated years of study and practice into. Even if it were true that this job wasn’t his first pick or even his second, he still had to answer to the same regulations that she did.
So she did the responsible thing and turned him in.
To Robby.
To Dr. Michael Robinavich.
She thought he’d do something, that he’d see this happening and get him out of the ED. It almost seemed like it went that way too, with a caught Langdon storming out into the city and not coming back until there were literal piles of patients that needed saving.
He came back to help during that carnage and to an outside point of view, it could’ve been perceived as noble. To someone who didn’t know what he did, they’d have no idea that there was a non-zero chance that this man was currently high.
He was cutting into people.
One wrong move and there would’ve been another casualty.
All because he couldn’t realize the reality of his mistakes and reconcile with what had to happen because of that. She hoped that Robby turning him in would force him into treatment, out of a field that fed into his problem and be a responsible adult.
But no.
He didn’t get turned in for anything other than the addiction.
His crimes, the lives he could’ve torn apart, were just shoved in a drawer with the idea that one day, everyone who remembered would just let it die.
The three people that knew would just let him come back into the fold, handle the care of those in their hardest moments and allow it to happen again.
That wasn’t just impossible for her.
It was unthinkable.
This was someone that was supposed to be a mentor to the newbies, someone that they could rely on to keep their shit together long enough for them to learn. It was hard enough being a doctor fresh out of the educational womb without worrying about whether or not your supervising resident was in the middle of a quick fix.
And to top it all off, he was the most condescending prick she’d ever met.
Okay, maybe top five.
…Or more likely top ten.
She had to account for her parents.
And both of her sisters, one older and one younger.
Oh, and her brother in law.
The handsy gymnastics instructor she had into her teen years.
There were a few more, but Frank Langdon had made the list.
He had no problem swinging his proverbial dick around the ED throughout her first day, questioning every one of her decisions and treating her as if she hadn’t worked her way into this program just as he did.
It even extended into his glamorous return to grace, his passive-aggressive approach surrounding her from the start of their shift together. It was as if he’d never left and none of the last ten months had any staying power.
She was once again convinced she was nothing, that her skills meant nothing.
It overtook her in ways that she hadn’t expected, the wave of depression coming for her in constant succession. She capsized shortly thereafter and she found herself gripping onto anyone that would help her stay afloat.
Robby was her metaphorical soul sister in this fight, the one other person that truly understood what happened and he was barely on planet Earth. From what she’d gathered throughout the hours that passed, his approaching sabbatical was leaving him with one foot already out the door.
He was ready to be done and she couldn’t blame him.
She heard Perlah and Princess gossiping about him, overhearing that he might not be coming back. They debated over if the bright and shiny Dr. Al-Hashimi would replace him with her hoard of AI-motivated updates, bringing on what could only be described as the end of their profession as they knew it.
If she lost Robby, that would be yet another figure gone in smoke when she needed them most. The same could be said for the brief, hot whatever-it-was that she was doing with Dr. Garcia.
Yolanda.
Yo-Yo.
It was nice to have someone to text in the middle of the night for a fun time, but they were the definition of casual. She’d suggested it at the start and Garcia was happy to oblige, creating this rift between them that was only ever stitched together with soft fingertips and bergamot body lotion.
She was this heavy fog in front of Trinity’s eyes, a magnificent smokescreen that covered any chance of vulnerability. There wasn’t a future there and no matter how much she’d pushed to make it happen, it was only ever going to be about convenience.
Convenient for who, she wondered.
Tonight was going to be yet again another night of hyped up excitement that inevitably falls apart into nothingness. That’s why when she found her plants jammed into the shredder and lit on fire, she tried to run to her safety net.
But once again, due to Robby’s intervention or lack-there-of, that was taken from her.
She was already losing Huckleberry to his little ‘Farmer’s Only’ situationship that was doomed to end in disaster. The poor woman was using him to get over the death of her husband and he was playing house to avoid the concept of actually meeting someone out in the wild.
Or maybe he was really falling in love and actually meant everything that he told her about wanting to be on the farm, the late night drunk conversations in front of their TV turned into spilling sessions where he couldn’t stop going on about that woman and her damn kid.
He said he still wanted to live with her, but that didn’t stop her mind from running to the possibility of being completely alone all over again. The thought of having that tiny two bedroom apartment to herself was almost worse than being stuck half-asleep in front of the charts that kept coming in front of her eyes.
It all boiled over and for a moment, she felt herself going back nearly a decade to her years in gymnastics. She could practically feel her weight steadying as she balanced on the brown leather beam, her legs outstretched and tumbling as she took her dismount.
She could hear familiar voices, laughs and jokes being thrown from the other girls as if they weren’t mere feet away. They taunted her, sipped their drinks with their tight ponytails and toothy grins, and Trinity couldn’t help herself but want to scream.
She felt her hands in her face, fingers rubbing against her eyes until the tears that started to form crumbled into tiny speckles of sand. The flicked pieces fell to the scene below and began to compound around her, hardening into stone and wrapping around her form.
She could hear the granulations as they dropped down and collided with the growing pile of dirt that seemed to want to envelop her. It wrapped around her legs and brought her down by her hips, stabbing into her back and clawing its way up until it gripped her by her shoulders.
There was the sound of footsteps growing closer, a menacing chuckle and she suddenly lost the ability to speak. The sand was around her throat and curling into her mouth, the hardening sediment almost a scratchy sludge coating her teeth and encroaching on her tongue.
It almost caused her to give in, to let it consume her.
She almost leaned into the drowning feeling, almost allowing it to take the remaining life left inside of her, but the sound of latex snapping was enough to break through and force her eyes open.
She looked back and forth, turning to see Robby behind her with a smug expression on his face.
“Hello…” he said, the smugness crinkling in what could be a smirk.
If she was being honest with herself, she was starting to care less about this charting and more about finding a pillow to scream into.
Maybe she could walk into one of the rooms and just let it out.
Go outside and let the open air hear her outpour the anguish that was becoming a constant today. It appeared to be the case that no matter what she did, no matter how hard she tried, she was never going to get ahead of her work and actually leave this building.
She watched the screen, trying to use the recorder and get some voice-to-text working as if that had worked at any point throughout the day. It was a frivolous attempt at speeding up what was already going to take her the rest of her working years.
It wasn’t long before she wasn’t alone anymore, the usually bright and happy disposition of Dr. Mel King stumbling over and plopping into the chair.
Today had kicked both of their asses and judging by the sight of the strange blonde woman, the deposition that she’d be dreading like the plague had gone exactly as she feared.
“What’s wrong with you,” Trinity joked, her barely-awake brain trying to pull one of her many nicknames from the ether. “Malfeasence?”
“I have to do another deposition.”
“Oh that sucks,” she replied with a chuckle. “You must’ve really messed up.”
She turned to see the younger woman’s face drop even further, if that was even possible. It was weird to see Mel in any other face than simply delighted to be there, even the worst of days so far refusing to tear that optimism away from her.
“Dude,” she offered. “I’m joking… You gotta lighten up. It’s all just bullshit.”
She turned back to her charting in frustration.
Not at Mel, even if it felt that way.
It was always like this.
Every time she joked with someone, tried to level with them in the way that she was used to, it always came off like she was trying to attack them. Multiple therapists had tried to break it down for her, to find the actual root of why she can’t just make friends like a normal person.
Maybe it was her baggage.
Maybe she just didn’t like people.
But that wasn’t true, not really.
She wanted to have friends that wanted to spend time with her just as much as she wanted to with them. There’d recently been this assumption with everyone in her life that their connections were conditional, that they were only around for as long as they felt like they could stand her and then they were gone.
Fuck, she just wanted to have real friends.
She had Huckleberry, but that thought kept bouncing around her head like a ping-pong ball in a constant back and forth. It was a force that was almost ingrained in her from birth, this susceptibility to repel everyone and anyone who started to show her some kind of love.
It was infuriating, living with a mind that told her that she was never wanted.
She wanted to scream so bad that in her timid frustration, the only thing that could come out was a pained groan. This prompted Mel to turn to her, the horrified-but-disassociative expression on her face turning into one of genuine worry and compassion for her coworker.
Trinity looked up from her desk, debating the outcome of going home by herself and spending the night looking up at the brush strokes on her painted ceiling. Her eyes wandered for a second, thinking over the lack of food in their fridge and the plentiful bottles of whiskey.
They then darted upward and she remembered the scalpel that was sheathed in the pocket of her scrubs. A rushed and stupid decision in the moment that gave her the first sign that she was in a dangerous place.
If she went home with that in her grasp, there were only a few ways that it could end and none of them would bode well for her. Her Huckleberry would come home and find her devastatingly drunk, barely holding it together with newly carved tally marks in her thighs that only brandished her weakness.
It was as if the entire world was caving in and weighing the options before her, she chose the option that was least likely to end in her death.
“God,” she said, turning to Mel. “You know what? Fuck all this.”
She took a deep breath and followed it with a leap of faith.
“Do you want to go get a drink?”
“Me?”
“Yes,” she replied, trying her best not to sound like an asshole. “You.”
Mel’s blank, yet somehow also surprised expression caused a thought to enter her mind. The poor woman didn’t really have any friends around the hospital either, other than her weird sister-kisser friendship with Langdon.
It always rubbed her the wrong way, but hey… who was she to judge?
The reality of that meant that maybe she didn’t have people to party with, even fake friends that pretended to like having fun with you to score free drinks.
Even those bitches could be a good time.
“You,” she started. “You do go out, don’t you?”
“Well,” she replied. “I’m usually with Becca.”
Becca.
That was right.
She had a sister. Even better.
“Well,” Trinity said. “Bring her along.”
She had a moment of contemplating a night of drunken stupor and imagined the cost of multiple Ubers home, prompting a clarifying question.
“Can she drive?”
“No,” Mel responded. “And she’s with her boyfriend.”
“Okay Becca,” she laughed. “So, it’s just you and me. Do you like karaoke?”
That surprised face etched into Mel’s features deepened as she took in the concept of Trinity Santos, the physical manifestation of fury herself, belting it out to classic pop hits under a set of bright lights.
“You do karaoke?”
“Well,” she said, dragging it out for a moment before letting out another exhausted chuckle. “What I do is more like primal scream therapy.”
She set the charting recorder down and resolved herself to putting this day to bed.
“There’s nothing like getting wasted and just absolutely wailing to shake off a shit show like today.”
There was a moment of silence as Mel considered the options for herself, the mental machine behind those two eyes working in overdrive to decide what was best after the day she had.
The day they both had.
“I could use a fun night.” she said, a smile beaming from her cheeks.
Trinity let herself smile back, the first bit of levity she’d had since she arrived this morning.
“You and me both, sister.”
With that, the two young doctors made their way to the lockers and got their stuff together before heading out of the doors and into the bustling streets of Pittsburgh.
It wasn’t tough to find a bar open on the fourth of July, but what took a minute was finding one that wasn’t going to be absolutely slammed. They skimmed through options on the South Side of the city, famous for its clubs and night culture but it was overrun with drunken morons trying to find their way to the next party.
That was hopefully going to be them, but Trinity had to remember who she was with.
She wasn’t going out to the gay clubs with Garcia and dragging her little Huckleberry along. This wasn’t going to be as easy as filling her roommate with alcohol and trying her hardest to get him to admit that he was just a little gay.
She couldn’t send Mel into the pits of a drag performance and be squished in between sweaty, horny twenty-somethings with the full intention of getting her laid.
It worked in the past for Huckleberry, but he was different.
That boy was from the farm, but he could handle it.
She was still figuring her way around her new friend.
They found a cafe in the heart of the city, a tiny place called Cappy’s and as they walked into the dimly lit space, they both realized they made the right choice.
People were getting up and belting the lyrics to songs that everyone knew, even those strictly observing in the audience singing along. It was calm, quiet and quaint in a way that perfectly fit the vibe that they were looking for.
They could still go a little ridiculous with the performance, but it would be a nice spot to just relax afterward and enjoy the atmosphere.
Mel sat down in one of the chairs and doing her best to be the model night out host, Trinity took the initiative to order a round of shots and two Long Island Iced Teas from the bar.
It didn’t take long for the drinks to be ready and she brought them over to the table with a giant grin on her face.
“What’d you-”
“Long Island Iced Tea,” she replied, proud of her choices. “And some tres agaves.”
“Tres agaves?”
“Tequila,” she answered. “The cheap stuff, but it does the job.”
She held up the tiny shot glass and swirled the liquid courage around for a second before taking it to her lips. Mel followed suit, the burning flowing down her throat like an explosion of fire.
Immediately rushing to her second drink, she took the straw and started to chug what Trinity would routinely call ‘The Silent Killer’.
“Woahwoahwoah,” she said, pulling back the drink from her friend for a moment. “Let’s pace ourselves there, Melifferous.”
“Melifferous,” Mel asked, her head cocked to the side. “That’s a new one.”
“Webster’s dictionary,” she replied, a hearty laugh bubbling between the both of them. “Gotta keep you on your toes, but you should definitely slow down on that tea.”
“But-”
“The last thing we want is you throwing up on the street,” she cut her off. “At least not until after a couple songs.”
“A couple?!”
“Yeah,” she said. “You and I are gonna burn this place down, Melodrama.”
They both took a hold of their drinks and took smaller sips, Trinity having a little more to catch up to her friend. The two of them were getting along easier than she thought they would, her coarse nature guiding what appeared to be a deer in headlights looking over at the stage.
This was gonna be fun.
Another round of shots hit the table and half of their teas have been wasted away, inviting them into the first moments of their inebriation. The smoothness of their limbs, the way that the drinks brought on such ease after an impossible day felt almost like touching freedom for the first time.
The thought of that made Trinity chuckle, checking her phone for a moment and remembering it was still the fourth. She wouldn’t say it out loud, but she had a sneaking hope that her Huckleberry would at least text her and say that he was coming home for the night.
She was having a great time with Mel, but she was still going to end up home alone. The thought of it was heavy, hard and pushed her into the arms of the remaining half of her drink.
Mel’s eyes widened, looking down at her glass as if she thought she had to chug down the rest of it right now. She gripped the straw and took about a quarter more of it into her stomach, but she was more than feeling the buzz.
“I thought we were slowing down.” she asked.
“Today was a shit day,” Trinity replied. “Between the whole cyber attack thing, swimming in charts and fucking Langdon, I-”
“It was a hard day for him too.”
“Oh,” she scoffed. “I bet it was. It should’ve been worse if you ask me.”
Mel shifted in her seat, unsure of how to handle this.
“He told me why he was gone,” she broached, her fading smile dropping to a bit of a frown. “I didn’t know about any of it before and it sounds like he went through a lot to get to where he is now, so I’m proud of him.”
If Trinity didn’t know any better, her little theory about the two of them being a thing might’ve started to seem truer than she thought. She watched as Mel’s position changed as she brought him up, how she seemed deep in thought and almost muddying through the different feelings that she didn’t know how to explain.
So she took out her metaphorical fishing pole and threw it out into the open, hoping she’d be lucky enough to catch some juicy gossip.
“Do you like him?”
“Yeah,” Mel replied, almost instantly in a matter of fact tone. “He’s my friend.”
“No,” she laughed. “I mean, do you like him?”
A moment passed as a flood of embarrassment flooded over the young woman, instinctively reaching for her drink yet again. She’d just been told to slow down, but there was something about bringing this man up that turned her inside out.
Immediately filing her reaction under ‘saved for later’, Trinity pushed a little further.
“How about this,” she said. “I’ll tell you something if you tell me something.”
Mel nodded.
“Are you guys like… a thing?”
“He’s married.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“W-we-we’re only coworkers,” she stammered, trying her hardest to power through the alcoholic fog and make her point. “I mean, sure he’s nice and everything-”
“Nice?”
“Yeah,” she said. “He’s really nice.”
“To you.”
Mel laughed to herself, tucking one of her blonde locks behind her glasses.
“He’s nice to lots of people.”
“He hates me.”
“Are you sure-”
“Trust me,” she joked. “I think we screamed at each other enough today to say that for a fact.”
Mel got to the end of her iced tea, taking in the last drops at the bottom until it was bone dry. She looked down at the glass with a disappointed expression and then back up to her new friend.
“We’re gonna need more.”
“Yes,” she replied. “Definitely more.”
The next hour that went by came and went with a quickness that was almost baffling to see. The two coworkers who’d desperately sought freedom after an oppressive day at the hospital were swapping stories, bonding over a surprisingly shared love of old school anime and Disney movies from their childhood.
Trinity overshared about her escapades with Huckleberry, joking around about the time that she and Garcia almost convinced him to ask Robby out on a date. It was a dare that he ultimately refused after twenty minutes of verbal waterboarding, gushing over how cute they’d be together.
“But he’s our boss?”
“No shit,” she laughed. “I didn’t actually expect him to do it, but it was so obvious that he has a little crush and I just wanted to see what would happen.”
“Does Whitaker like it when you do that?”
“He’s always down for a good time,” she answered. “That’s our whole thing. We make fun of each other until someone caves and then we watch bad TV together.”
“And he’s dating Amy,” Mel asked. “The burn victim who lost her husband, right?”
“I think so,” she replied. “They’ve been doing this whole ‘Farmer’s Only’ thing for a few months and I just get scared she’s using him to help out with the chickens and shit.”
“Well,” Mel said, contemplating her next words before drunkenly slurring them out. “It seems like he’s happy… And if he’s happy and she makes him happy, shouldn’t that make you happy since you’re his friend?”
She looked at her new friend, slumping over her finished drink and felt a smile come onto her lips.
“You know,” she said. “You might be onto something, Melampyrum.”
“Wait,” she replied, too drunk to even try to figure out what that means. “Melanip-”
“Melampyrum,” Trinity explained slowly, the syllables bouncing off of her tongue like a trampoline. “It’s a type of grass that cows eat.”
“How…”
There was a moment of silence before the two friends looked at each other and said the answer at the same time.
“Huckleberry.”
It brought a heavy laugh from the both of them and as they were contemplating getting another drink, the stage was finally empty and ready for the taking. It seemed almost too perfect, the right time for these hopelessly tipsy doctors to finally let out that rage they’d been holding in all day.
She grabbed a hold of Mel’s hand, prompting the tiniest blush to rise onto her cheeks as she was dragged over to the microphone stands. Testing them out with a taptaptap, the soon-to-be-singers selected a song and let the music come to life around them.
The lights began to swirl just a bit, enough that everything was turning into a smeared together blur. They wanted to take things slow, ease into the night and let it explode into a musical war cry like no other, but that explosion was gearing up to happen any moment.
She hoped to whoever was listening that neither of them threw up on anyone and as the lyrics came up on the screen, Trinity’s mind was filled with thoughts of Garcia and the night they could’ve had together.
She wondered who she was with, what plans were already made that were so important that she couldn’t at least try to hang out for part of the evening. The thought of the woman she shared a cup of hot ramen with in bed kissing another woman, loving on someone that wasn’t her pushed her even further into the music.
I want you to know that I'm happy for you
I wish nothing but the best for you both
An older version of me, is she perverted like me?
Would she go down on you in a theatre?
Does she speak eloquently? And would she have your baby?
I'm sure she'd make a really excellent mother
She thought back to the day, of how every step made her feel so inadequate in so many ways. The minutes flashed back in quick succession, a supercut of her biggest failures of the day bleeding into each other and meshing into one image in front of her eyes.
She let the blinding light of the stage envelop her feeling, taking over as she messily crunched the lyrics together with her teeth. Beside her, the blonde who’d never ingested this much alcohol was rocking along to the beat and embraced her lack of inhibitions.
'Cause the love that you gave that we made
Wasn't able to make it enough for you to be open wide, no
And every time you speak her name
Does she know how you told me
You'd hold me until you died? 'Til you died
But you're still alive
The two of them threw their anger into that prechorus, every word coming out like poison and spat out into the audience where every single person was probably advising the bartender to cut them off.
That would’ve been the rational thing, but Mel hoped she could have another iced tea. She seemed to be having fun for the first time in a long time and dancing together with someone she probably thought was an unapproachable monster forced her to see herself in a new light.
This was what they both needed.
A release.
A cry.
A fucking scream at the top of their lungs.
And they got it as the chorus rolled in, all of their effort going into belting the notes in a way that hopefully didn’t crack any mirrors.
And I'm here to remind you
Of the mess you left when you went away
Trinity felt a sense of comfortability, stability and freedom that she’d never felt before. She racked her brain as to why it took this long to ask Mel to hang out, why it took this long to try and make actual friends who wanted to have fun.
She looked at her new friend and watched as she exhaled every note like it was the last that she was ever going to sing. This was a person who needed companionship just as much as she did and she wrapped her arm around her for a moment, taking a hold of her ponytail and taking her long locks down with a pull of the black hair tie.
She was fully in this with her.
It wasn’t just the song.
It transcended karaoke in that moment, the rise and crash of the instruments working like impossible tidal waves rocking them around the stage. They sang to each other, for each other and their eyes locked together as they brought it home.
It's not fair to deny me
Of the cross I bear that you gave to me
You, you, you oughta know
The song ended shortly after and the audience gave a solid amount of applause, definitely more than was expected for two incredibly drunk women without a care in the world.
Mel wrapped her new friend in a tight, almost crushing bear hug and the two of them stepped down from their post. It was getting late and while neither of them had to be back into the hospital the next day, they were both going to need the rest that was going to come when they hit their pillows.
“Thanks,” Trinity said, interlocking her fingers with Mel’s as they walked out of the cafe and into the busy midnight streets of Shadyside. “Thanks for coming out with me tonight.”
She turned to look at her with a smile and simply said, “Thanks for inviting me.”
“But next time,” she said, leaning against her for a bit as they stumbled down the sidewalk. “We’re bringing Huckleberry with us.”
“And Becca!”
“But not Garcia,” she replied, kicking her feet like a child. “She can stay with whoever-the-fuck.”
“It’s okay,” Mel replied, squeezing her friend’s hand. “You’ve got me.”
“You know what,” she laughed, almost tripping on her own feet. “You’re damn right, Melatonin. You’re damn right.”