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Cassie was an observant person. Not in the normal 'is-that-a-new-necklace, I-haven't-seen-that-tree-before, I-don't-dissociate-my-way-through-life' way but in the 'something-is-really-fucking-wrong-and-I-can-feel-it-in-my-bones' way. It had become a coping mechanism of sorts; the only way to survive an environment of self-destruction.
Recently, Cassie had been observing Trinity Santos.
Trinity Santos, the whirlwind Doctor, the master of quick quips and snarky comments, the girl who had stayed overnight with a suicidal patient, the woman who was fast to bear her teeth at the men Cassie herself would be ready to snarl at.
Trinity Santos with her too-long bathroom breaks, paling skin and frequent winces.
Cassie didn't like the mirror Santos seemed to be becoming, didn't like the uncomfortable twist in her stomach when she looked at the younger doctor for too long and saw an all too familiar absence behind her eyes.
The fear, the stress, the quiet - Cassie felt like she was watching her twenty-something-year-old self falling back down the rabbit hole she had just clawed herself out of, watching a year of sobriety be washed away by the burn of vodka.
Maybe she was overthinking it, projecting.
Or maybe she was right.
So she kept watching, started working with Santos more, offering quiet compliments and someone to lean on. Not that Santos took her up on the latter, preferring to diligently ignore Cassie's subtle offers of an open ear.
'You're handling your R2 year exceptionally well, Doctor Santos. If I had been your age when I did mine, well, let's just say it wouldn't have been pretty.' She had said one day, hopeful the admission of her own messy past might prompt some sort of conversation. 'If it ever gets too much, though-'
'Thanks, Mckay, I appreciate it.'
Santos' tone had been a knife's edge away from mean and Cassie was starting to not only think she was right, but that she should be more worried.
So when Santos disappeared into the bathroom and Cassie hadn't seen her return after twenty minutes of careful observation, a sickness settled in her gut.
It could easily be nothing more than a heavy period and a bad day, but it could just as easily be something much worse.
The 'better safe than sorry' mindset had saved Cassie's own life more times than she could count - her friend taking away her liquor bottle, not confident her body could handle it on top of whatever pills she had taken, her dad calling her randomly one night being the only reason she didn't overdose - so she knew she would much rather be wrong and embarrassed than be wrong and grieving a coworker she could have saved.
As subtly as possible, Cassie grabbed one of the street team medical kits and slipped into the bathroom, barring it shut best she could.
Only one stall was occupied.
'Doctor Santos?'
No reply.
'Trinity?'
There's a quiet whimper, barely audible, filled with pain.
Cassie crouched in front of the locked cubicle, swallowing a cry when she noticed blood on the bathroom floor. Not enough to scream for help, but enough to worry.
'Trinity, sweetheart, can you open the door for me?' Her voice was steady as ever, though the effort it took to keep it so was significant, to say the least.
There was a grunt, a shuffle of clothing and a click of the lock coming undone.
Cassie took a steadying breath, preparing herself for the worst and began to maneuver herself into the cubicle, Trinity's body resting against the wall making it harder than expected.
As soon as she was inside, she locked the door again and placed the medical bag on the closed lid of the toilet seat.
She forced herself to take a final deep breath before taking a proper look at the girl on the floor.
Her scrub pants were sitting on her shins, bunched up around her ankles, and her knees were bent. She was slumped over slightly, her head resting on the toilet paper dispenser, all colour in her face gone.
Her eyes were open, at least, even if they were drooping and cloudy with absence.
Cassie dropped to her knees to take a closer look at her.
It took her half a second to track the flow of blood to Trinity's thighs. Amongst white and purple markings were fresh gashes, not alarmingly deep, but plentiful enough for blood loss to factor in to Santos' state. Maybe.
'Okay, hun, can you look at me, please?'
Trinity rolled her head to face Mckay, eyes open, but far from alert. Cassie had a feeling this was far more than a response to her injuries.
Taking a closer look at the cuts and stains on the floor only confirmed her theory.
'I'm going to clean you up now, okay? Unless I can convince you to let me get you a bed out there.'
It was a long shot, and Cassie was well aware of that, but it was worth suggesting on the off chance Santos was out of it enough to agree.
'No,' the resident mumbled, enunciation leaving much to be desired, 'here.'
'Okay, I figured as much.' Cassie opened the medical bag, picking out some antiseptic wipes, steri-strips, and bottled water. 'Can you drink this for me, kid?' She asked, opening the bottle and guiding Trinity's hands around it, diligently ignoring the scalpel that fell to the ground in the process. She'd deal with that later.
She only got a murmur in response, but it sounded affirmative, so she let the younger woman hold the bottle herself and opened the first of the wipes.
At one point, someone tried to walk in but Cassie yelled 'Fuck off' and 'We're dealing with something in here', feeling satisfied they'd be left alone when she heard Victoria's voice call out a quick 'Sorry'.
It didn't take Cassie long to sort out Trinity's injuries and wipe up the floor around her, but the sting of the antiseptic combined with gentle sips of the water had clearly started to ground her, making her squirmy and angsty.
'You okay there, hun?' Cassie asked, wrapping some gauze around Santos' legs to prevent chaffing against the wounds.
'Yeah, yeah, just wanna get back to work.'
'Santos...'
'No, look, I get it okay, this looks bad-' Cassie watched as she awkwardly pulled her scrubs back up her still-bent legs and tried to slip the scalpel back into her pocket. It fell out of her grip. 'Fuck.'
Cassie had to fight the urge to flush the fucking thing down the toilet.
Not that doing so would actually fix anything, she knew that. Trinity could just take another scalpel, or something worse, less sterile, like the pills Cassie sole from a random guy after her parents found the prescription pills she had managed to wrangle.
She was a doctor, she was an addict, she understood harm reduction.
She also understood her parents and their bone-deep fear of outliving their eldest child.
'Trinity,' Cassie placed her hand over the younger woman's, their fingers intertwining over the cold metal blade, 'I will put you on a psych hold, if that's what you need, but I'm also going to trust you to be honest with me, to be a doctor about this, and I am going to give you the choice.'
Trinity avoided her gaze.
'No one was supposed to notice. No one was supposed to find out. I'm sorry you had to see this.'
Cassie's heart ached in her chest.
'There is a point in any addiction when you stop being careful, when a part of you starts screaming for help. You can say it's because you get too narrow minded to see consequences, or to cover your tracks,but it's really because you want out and you don't know how to ask for it anymore,' Cassie paused, forcing her voice to steady, 'you reached that point, Trinity. And you're not selfish, or attention seeking, or whatever the fuck you think you are. You're hurting.'
'All addictions are the same, at their core,' she added, 'You need to get clean before it kills you.'
It was silent for a second, aside from the two women's uneven breathing.
'I keep trying,' Trinity said, voice barely a whisper, 'but it feels more like dying than staying like this.'
Cassie understood immediately; she had spent most of her addiction trying to get sober. In fact, she would rarely go longer than a week without trying to get clean, even if the attempts rarely lasted more than a day or two.
'It will, at first. And you can't stop without a support system, Trinity. You need people to lean on when the urges get strong, you need people who want you to get clean as much as you want to get clean.' She paused, watching the shimmer of tears in the young girls eyes. 'Scratch that, actually, you need people who want you to get clean more than you want it for yourself.'
'I can't, there isn't anyone I can tell without it being-' the tears that had been gathering in her eyes finally fell, and a sob tore its way out her chest. 'No one gets it, they look at me funny, treat me like I'm a fuckin', I don't know, like they're gonna find me with a gun to my head whenever they see me. I don't need suicide watch, I don't need a fuckin' psych hold, I need-' she took a shuddering breath, the first full inhale Cassie had seen her take so far '-I need someone who won't treat me like a freak.'
'You have me.'
Trinity looked at her in disbelief.
'I get it, okay. I' m almost ten years clean and sober. I don't think you're a freak.' Cassie dug her teeth into her bottom lip, deciding how much she was going to trust Santos' self-examination. 'You're going to finish that water, then I'm taking you to the break room and we're getting something to eat. After that, if you say you're good to work the rest of the shift, then you can, but, you're not going home after.' She knew Trinity lived with Whitaker, but she also knew he was house sitting for Robby. 'You're coming home with me, and you can stay as long as you want. We'll get a proper meal and we can stay up all night watching shitty films if that's what you need, or we can go straight to bed. No judgement.'
Santos just blinked at her, the tears seemingly being shocked to a halt.
'What's the catch?'
'That you let me sit with you through urges. And you don't lie to me. You self-harm? Okay, we'll deal with it.'
'Okay.' Trinity nodded.
'Okay, good. Let's get you up.'