Chapter Text
Trinity Santos is halfway through lying to herself about not looking for Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi when Dana catches her doing exactly that.
The charge desk sits in its usual state of controlled disaster, all phones and blinking lights and Dana’s chipped nail polish tapping against the keyboard like she can bully the entire hospital into functioning with enough attitude. Trinity stands beside it with a tablet tucked against her chest, black scrub top wrinkled from the way she keeps pulling at the hem, eyes cutting across Central toward the north nurses’ station for the fourth time in under a minute.
Dana doesn’t even look up.
“Baby doc,” she rasps, Pittsburgh vowels thick as smoke and old coffee, “you either got a clinical question or you’re starin’ holes through my department for the fun of it.”
Trinity blinks. “I’m not staring.”
“Mhm.”
“I’m assessing the flow.”
Dana snorts, finally glancing over the tops of her readers. “The flow ain’t got dark hair, a murder face, and an attending badge.”
Trinity’s mouth shuts so fast her teeth click.
Dana’s eyebrows lift like she has just watched the world’s dumbest lie trip over its own shoelaces. She reaches for a pen, points it at Trinity, then at the tablet. “Room eighteen needs that discharge summary done, room nine’s family wants an update, and your chart from ten-thirty still says ‘pending reassessment’ like you didn’t reassess that man before lunch.”
“I’m doing it.”
“You’re thinkin’ about doing it.”
“I’m emotionally preparing to do it.”
“Jesus Christ.” Dana leans back in her chair with a groan. “I don’t know what they’re feedin’ you residents, but it needs more shame.”
Trinity gives her a tight smile and lifts the tablet. “I’ll update nine first.”
“You’ll update nine after you finish eighteen, because if that man’s daughter asks me one more time when they can leave, I’m gonna tell her your full legal name, your schedule, and what you look like cryin’ over Epic.”
“I don’t cry over Epic.”
Dana stares.
Trinity shifts her weight. “Not where anyone can see.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Across Central, Baran appears near the curve of the north nurses’ station with a stack of printouts in one hand and a pen clipped to the V of her black scrub top. She isn’t doing anything dramatic. She isn’t even looking in Trinity’s direction. She is listening to Mohan explain something with two fingers pressed to the bridge of her nose, expression steady and unreadable, honeyed curls half clipped back so severely it makes her cheekbones look sharper than usual.
Trinity’s chest gives one stupid, embarrassing kick.
Two weeks. Fourteen days. Enough time, apparently, for an entire person to rewire the department around not being alone with her.
Before the gala, Baran would have caught Trinity looking and arched one eyebrow. Before the gala, she would have asked whether Trinity plans to practice medicine today or simply haunt the unit. Before the gala, Trinity could count on at least one dry comment, one quiet correction, one rare little upward tug of Baran’s mouth when Trinity says something stupid enough to amuse her.
Now Baran moves through Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, famously known as the Pitt, like Trinity is a puddle on the floor she knows how to step around without glancing down.
It’s not cruel, exactly. That makes it worse. Cruel would give Trinity something to be angry about. This is clean, professional and precise. Baran hands her patients through Samira. Baran asks for updates in groups. Baran disappears into the break room when Trinity rounds the corner. Baran suddenly has reasons to be in Trauma, Psych rooms, near the ambulance bay, literally anywhere except inside the same pocket of air with Trinity for more than twelve seconds.
Trinity hates that she knows the number is twelve.
Huckleberry slides up beside her with a granola bar clenched between his teeth and an expression like he has never experienced a consequence in his life. His curls are smushed on one side, his black scrubs are somehow already dusty at 11:42 a.m., and his badge is flipped backward.
“Fuckleberry,” Trinity mutters without looking at him.
Dennis pulls the granola bar from his mouth and presses a hand to his chest. “Good morning to you too, roomie. I bring emotional support oats and this is the reception I get?”
“You bring crumbs and bad timing.”
“I bring joy.”
“Joy is over there,” Trinity replies, tipping her chin toward the med student hunched by a computer outside room seven, chewing gum with dead-eyed patience.
Dennis follows her gaze. “Joy brings Joy. I bring whimsy.”
“You bring vibes from an abandoned urgent care.”
He smiles around another bite. “And yet you love me.”
“I tolerate you because we split the rent.”
“Because you love me,” he insists, then leans in, dropping his voice. “You’re doing the thing again.”
Trinity stiffens. “What thing?”
“The kicked-puppy thing.”
“I am not.”
“You’re doing it with your whole spine.”
“My spine is neutral.”
“Your spine is yearning.”
Trinity turns on him slowly. “I will intubate you with a Yankauer.”
Dennis considers that. “Wrong tool.”
“I’ll make it work.”
He grins, then his face softens in a way that pisses her off more than the teasing. Dennis has a terrible habit of becoming kind when she needs him to stay annoying. He glances toward the north side where Baran is now signing something against the counter, her posture immaculate, her profile calm enough to pass for indifferent.
“Still nothing?” Dennis murmurs.
Trinity’s fingers tighten around the tablet. “Don’t.”
“I’m not saying anything.”
“You’re saying everything with your tragic little intern eyes.”
“My eyes are small and medically normal.”
“They’re loud.”
Dennis lets out a breath. For once, he doesn’t push. He nudges her shoulder with his. “Come home after shift. I’ll make those frozen dumplings you pretend not to like.”
“You literally burn them.”
“I literally char them with intention.”
“You set off the smoke alarm last time.”
“And you laughed for six minutes.”
Trinity looks down at her tablet because if she looks at Baran again, she might start doing something truly pathetic, like walking over there and asking for a crumb of attention in front of God, Dana, and half the department.
“I’m fine,” she tells Dennis.
He makes a noise.
Trinity flicks her eyes to him. “What?”
“Nothing. That was my supportive roommate noise.”
“It sounded judgmental.”
“That’s because my support contains layers.”
Before Trinity can answer, Javadi swings around from the direction of South with two coffees balanced in one hand and a stack of discharge papers in the other. Her badge sits crooked on her chest, and her eyeliner is too perfect for someone who has already been yelled at by a consultant before noon.
“Crash,” Trinity calls.
Victoria’s eyes narrow immediately. “I hate that name.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I absolutely do.”
“You cried when I didn’t use it for a day.”
“That’s a HIPAA violation.”
Dennis tilts his head. “Not even close.”
Victoria shoves one coffee into Trinity’s hand and points at Dennis with the papers. “Nobody asked you, Huckleberry.”
Dennis brightens. “See? Respectful workplace.”
Trinity wraps her fingers around the coffee, warmth biting into her palm. “Why are you giving me caffeine?”
“Because you look like a ghost with student loans.” Victoria studies her for a second, then flicks a quick glance past her. “Also because Dr. Al-Hashimi asked me to remind you to finish the lac repair note from room twenty-two.”
The floor drops out of Trinity’s stomach so cleanly that for a second she doesn’t hear anything else.
“She asked you?”
Victoria’s expression turns careful. “Yeah.”
“Not me.”
“She was with Samira.”
“Right…”
Dennis closes his eyes in the manner of a man watching a car roll downhill toward a lake.
Victoria shifts the coffees under one arm. “Trin.”
“I’m fine,” Trinity clips.
“That’s the least convincing sentence in the English language,” Joy calls from her computer without turning around.
“Can you chart quietly?” Trinity snaps.
Joy keeps typing. “No. I’m a learner.”
Dana barks a laugh from behind the desk.
Trinity inhales through her nose. The coffee smells burnt and sweet because Victoria knows she drinks it like dessert when she’s losing her mind. It makes her want to cry, which makes her want to throw it into the wall.
Room nine. Room eighteen. Room twenty-two. She has things to do. People need her to be a doctor, or at least a convincing approximation of one. She doesn’t get to stand here because Baran Al-Hashimi sends messages through medical students now, as if Trinity is contagious.
“Fine,” Trinity relents, softer, and hates herself for it. “I’ll do it.”
Victoria’s face twists with sympathy. “I can update nine’s family if you want.”
“No. I’ve got it.”
“You sure?”
Trinity takes a sip of coffee and burns her tongue. Good. Something direct. Something honest. “Yeah.”
She turns before anyone can keep looking at her like that.
The patient in room eighteen gives her an excuse to move through South, past the curve of the central rooms and the bank of computers where Mel is sitting cross-legged on a rolling stool, rocking subtly while reading lab values out loud under their breath. Mel’s badge reel has a tiny glittery brain on it.
“Trinity,” Mel calls without looking away from the screen, “quick question. Is it weird if someone’s potassium is hemolyzed twice and normal once or is the tube haunted?”
“No haunted tubes before noon,” Trinity answers automatically.
Mel nods. “That’s what I thought, but Cassie says the lab is a place of science.”
“Cassie lies to children.”
McKay appears from behind room fifteen with a urine cup sealed in a bag and her face in its usual state of calm exhaustion. “I don’t lie to children. I lie to consultants.”
“Patriotic,” Trinity returns.
Cassie points the specimen bag at her. “You okay?”
Trinity nearly laughs. Apparently, everyone has gotten together and agreed to make her day unbearable with concern. “Why does everyone keep asking me that?”
Cassie’s gaze travels over Trinity’s face with the clinical patience of a woman scorned who can smell bullshit from across the unit. “Because you look like someone stole your lunch and your favorite coping mechanism.”
“My coping mechanism is caffeine.”
“No, your coping mechanism is flirting with authority figures and then pretending it’s professional development.”
Trinity chokes on absolutely nothing.
Mel’s rocking stops.
Cassie’s eyebrows rise. “Interesting.”
“I hate this department,” Trinity mutters.
“No, you don’t,” Cassie retorts, already walking away. “You’re obsessed with this department. That’s why it’s ruining your life.”
Trinity stares after her. “I need all of you to become less perceptive.”
“Impossible,” Mel replies, returning to the potassium situation. “Pattern recognition is most of the job.”
Room eighteen is blessedly straightforward. Trinity reviews discharge instructions, answers questions, repeats the return precautions twice, and keeps her voice leveled. Her hand knows where to tap on the tablet. Her mouth knows what to explain. She can do this part. She is good at this part. She is good at reassuring someone else while quietly coming apart in small, private places.
When she steps back into the hall, Princess and Perlah are at the supply alcove just off the main hallway, both in grey scrubs, heads bent together as Princess restocks gauze with exaggerated innocence.
“Girl,” Princess murmurs in Tagalog, “she looks like she hasn’t slept.”
Perlah hums. “Because she keeps staring at the attending like a teleserye widow.”
Trinity stops.
Princess turns, sees her, and freezes with one hand inside the gauze box.
Perlah’s mouth opens.
Trinity lifts her brows. “Teleserye widow?”
Princess winces. “Ay, shit.”
Perlah presses her lips together, clearly fighting for her life. “You understand now?”
“I understand enough.”
Princess recovers first, smiling too brightly. “We say it with love.”
“You say everything with love when you don’t want to get reported to Dana.”
Perlah waves a hand. “Dana knows. Dana always knows.”
“I do not stare like a widow,” Trinity grumbles.
Princess and Perlah exchange a look so synchronized it feels rehearsed.
“You kind of do,” Perlah offers.
“Like a pretty widow,” Princess adds quickly.
“That doesn’t help.”
“Sexy widow?”
Trinity points at them. “Stop helping.”
Perlah tucks a stack of flushes into a bin. “You want advice?”
“No.”
“Then I won’t tell you to stop looking at her and make her look at you.”
Trinity’s throat tightens.
Princess slaps Perlah’s arm. “Stop.”
“What?” Perlah shrugs. “She says she doesn’t want advice. I’m respecting boundaries.”
“Badly,” Trinity mutters.
But the words stick. Stop looking at her and make her look at you.
It sounds childish. It sounds impossible. It sounds like something that would get Trinity professionally murdered by a woman who probably alphabetizes her regrets.
Still, it follows her all the way back toward Central.
Baran is no longer at the north nurses’ station. Of course she isn’t. Samira is there now, speaking to Dana with her arms crossed and her expression stern enough to make a monitor apologize.
Trinity tries not to search for Baran. She fails immediately.
She finds her near Behavioral Health, half-turned toward the narrow hall by dispatch, speaking with Garcia. Yolanda wears the dangerous look of a trauma surgery fellow who has already decided she is right. Baran has her arms folded, chin slightly lifted, eyes fixed on Yolanda’s face.
Something in Trinity goes sour and hot before she can name it.
This is stupid. Yolanda is here for a consult. Baran talks to surgeons. Baran talks to everyone. Baran can stand near a beautiful senior fellow with a low voice and excellent posture because this is a hospital and not Trinity’s personal punishment chamber.
Still, Trinity’s fingers tighten on the tablet.
Dennis appears again, because apparently he has a pager for her emotional instability. “Nope.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You got the murder-sad face.”
“That’s not a face.”
“It’s absolutely your face.”
“I have work.”
“You have jealousy.”
Trinity turns to him. “Say that louder and I’ll tell Dana you keep hiding protein bars in the pediatric cabinet.”
Dennis gasps. “You wouldn’t.”
“I know where the bodies are, Huckleberry.”
His expression goes wounded. “Full government nickname. Wow. We’re fighting.”
Before Trinity can fire back, the radio near Dana crackles hard enough to shift the air. Dana’s head snaps toward it. Samira uncrosses her arms. Baran turns from Behavioral Health at the same time, body already moving before the words finish coming through.
The department changes shape around the sound. Not chaos or panic. Something sharper and familiar. Everyone finding a line.
Dana’s voice cuts through the unit. “Trauma team to T1. Five minutes out.”
Trinity’s skin prickles.
Samira points. “Mckay, T1. King, you’re with me. Santos—”
“I’ve got T1,” Baran interrupts.
She isn’t loud about it. She doesn’t need to be.
Trinity looks over before she can stop herself. Baran’s gaze lands on her for the first time all morning. Direct, dark and clinical.
It wasn’t warm, soft, or the look from the hotel when Baran’s hand closed around Trinity’s wrist on the dance floor and her voice lowered to ask, “Do you want to leave?” Or the look from the elevator when neither of them could pretend they didn’t know exactly where this was going. Or the look from the morning after, when Baran sat on the edge of the bed with her curls messy and loose down her back and asked Trinity, very carefully, not to tell anyone.
This look is attending to resident.
It still knocks the breath out of Trinity.
“Dr. Santos,” Baran continues, sharp enough to cut. “You’re on airway backup and primary survey documentation.”
Trinity nods once. “Understood.”
A beat stretches.
Baran’s eyes flick over Trinity’s face for less than a second. Something moves there and disappears so quickly Trinity almost thinks she invented it.
Then Baran turns away. “Let’s move.”
The next several minutes give Trinity something better than longing. They give her tasks.
She pulls gloves from the box outside Trauma 1, snaps them on, and falls into position near the head of the bed without crowding Baran. Garcia appears at the trauma doors with a surgical resident Trinity doesn’t know, voice already asking clean questions. Dana is at the threshold, directing bodies with one hand and threatening someone over the phone with the other. Princess wheels in supplies. Perlah checks lines. Samira’s voice stays steady beside the monitor.
Baran is all focus.
This is where Trinity hates herself most, because she can understand exactly why she wants her.
Baran in the middle of a trauma is almost unfair. She doesn’t waste a movement. She doesn’t raise her voice unless the room gives her no choice. She names what she needs before people have to ask. Her hands are decisive. Her eyes take in everything. She makes the room smaller, not because she takes up space, but because she gives everyone inside it one clear center.
Trinity documents. She repeats vitals. She answers when Baran asks for timing. She reaches for the airway cart before anyone tells her to, positions herself, listens. The patient needs attention. The work needs attention. For once, Trinity’s brain locks onto something that isn’t the absence of Baran’s voice in her day.
“Dr. Santos,” Baran calls.
Trinity looks up. “Yes?”
Baran’s hand is out, palm open, eyes still on the patient. “Laryngoscope.”
Trinity places it into her hand. Their gloves brush. It’s nothing. Latex against latex for half a second, maybe less, but Trinity feels it anyway.
Baran does too. Trinity knows because Baran’s jaw tightens. Not by much. Not enough for anyone else to catch it. But Trinity is embarrassingly fluent in the tiny language of Baran Al-Hashimi’s restraint now. The shift of a finger, the pause before an inhale, the way her eyes stay fixed ahead when looking away costs effort.
The procedure continues. The room moves. The patient stabilizes enough for transfer upstairs, and the whole ED exhales without making a production of it.
When the doors clear and the noise thins, Trinity stands by the counter in T1 with sweat cooling under the back of her scrub top, tablet balanced against her forearm. Her hands shake only a little. Less from fear, more from adrenaline and proximity and the cruel little mercy of being useful beside Baran again.
Garcia peels off her gloves and drops them into the bin. “Good work, baby butchers.”
Dana, passing by the doors, grunts. “Don’t compliment ’em too much. They get weird.”
Yolanda smiles. “You say that like they aren’t already weird.”
Trinity huffs a laugh before she can stop herself. Baran turns at the sound and the laugh dies in Trinity’s throat. For one suspended second, they are alone in the middle of people.
Baran’s expression flickers an inch. There’s something there that isn’t indifference, and Trinity’s heart grabs it like a starving thing.
Then Samira steps in with a question about orders, and Baran looks away. Of course she fucking does.
By 6:48 p.m., Trinity’s brain is soup, her coffee is long gone, and her charting list looks like a war crime.
The department has settled into that strange pre-shift-change tension where everyone can see the finish line and nobody trusts it. Night shift starts filtering in near the ambulance bay and central workstations, black scrubs and tired greetings, the air shifting as day people begin bargaining with their unfinished notes. Parker arrives with a backpack slung over one shoulder.
Ellis clocks Trinity’s face and whistles low. “Damn, Santos.”
Trinity doesn’t look up from the computer. “Hello to you too.”
“You look like your soul got audited.”
“It failed.”
Ellis pulls up beside her, scanning the board. “You staying late?”
“I’m charting.”
“So yes.”
“I’m making responsible choices.”
“You’re at six unsigned notes.”
Trinity turns her head slowly. “Why would you say that out loud?”
“Because I believe in truth and violence.”
Abbot passes behind them with a paper cup of coffee, already wearing the deadened expression of a night attending who has accepted that sleep is a rumor. Shen follows, quiet and neat, nodding to Dana as Lena takes over charge with a clipped efficiency that somehow makes Dana look relaxed.
Near the hub, Mateo laughs at something Perlah tells him. Walsh sweeps through from the surgical side in dark blue, speaking into a phone, hair perfect in a way that feels very offensive at the end of a day shift. Garcia is gone. Victoria is somewhere giving her last presentation. Dennis is… where is the farm boy? He promised her dumplings.
And Baran is nowhere. Trinity hates how quickly she notices.
She signs one note. Opens another. Stares at the screen until the words blur and her temple throbs.
A message pops up from Dennis.
fuckleberry: dumplings secured don’t let the chart demons take you
Trinity’s mouth twitches despite herself.
She types back.
trin: tell my story
His reply comes instantly.
fuckleberry: she was hot, behind on notes, and emotionally constipated
Trinity nearly laughs.
“Dr. Santos.”
The voice lands behind her, low and precise. Trinity’s fingers freeze on the keyboard.
Ellis, traitor and coward, immediately slides away with her backpack. “Night, Santos.”
Trinity wants to grab the back of Ellis’ scrub top and drag her back. Instead, she turns.
Baran stands a few feet away, tablet in hand, badge clipped perfectly, face composed. There are shadows under her eyes. Trinity notices because she notices everything, because her brain has no dignity when it comes to this woman.
“Yes, Dr. Al-Hashimi?” Trinity manages.
Baran’s gaze dips briefly to the workstation. “Your T1 note is incomplete.”
“I’m working through them.”
“It needs to be finished before you leave.”
“I know.”
Baran’s mouth tightens. “Do you?”
The words hit harder than they should. Maybe because they are normal. Maybe because this is the first real reprimand Trinity has gotten from her in two weeks, and instead of feeling embarrassed, some awful part of her wants to lean closer.
Trinity turns fully in the chair. “Yes. I do.”
Baran holds her gaze.
There’s that edge. The thing that used to exist between them before it had a name and a hotel room and Baran’s lips wrapped around Trinity’s cl—. It’s not soft, or safe and it’s definitely not even kind. But it is contact.
Baran looks away first.
“I’ll review it once it’s signed,” she replies.
Trinity swallows. “You don’t have to stay for that.”
“I’m aware.”
“So why are you?”
The question slips out too quiet for anyone else to hear. Still too loud for what it is.
Baran goes still before brown expressive eyes return to Trinity’s face. “Because it’s my patient.”
Trinity nods. “Right.”
A pause opens.
Baran’s fingers shift against the tablet. “Dr. Santos.”
“Don’t,” Trinity whispers.
Baran inhales once, sharply enough that Trinity sees it. “This is not the place.”
Trinity laughs under her breath, but there’s no humor in it. “There isn’t a place. You made sure of that.”
Baran’s face tightens. “Lower your voice.”
“My voice is low.”
“It’s not controlled.”
That gets Trinity out of the chair fast enough that Baran’s shoulders tense.
“I have been controlled,” Trinity murmurs, stepping close enough that Baran has to look at her and far enough that nobody watching would see anything but a resident getting corrected by an attending. “I have been so fucking controlled, Dr. Al-Hashimi. I don’t ask you questions. I don’t follow you. I don’t corner you. I don’t say a word when you send messages through Dr. Javadi like I’m a problem you’re delegating.”
Baran’s eyes flash, her jaw working once. The anger there is real, but it isn’t clean. It’s tangled with something else. Guilt, maybe. Want, possibly. Trinity doesn’t trust herself enough to name it.
“You’re tired,” Baran says.
Trinity’s smile feels awful. “That’s what you’re going with?”
“You’re behind on charts and you’re upset.”
“I’m upset because you touched me like I mattered and then came to work and acted like I don’t exist.”
Baran’s expression changes. It’s small, but Trinity sees the words land. She sees Baran absorb them and flinch without moving. For one heartbeat, the attending disappears and the woman from the hotel stands there instead, eyes dark and wounded, mouth parted like she has forgotten which rule saves her.
Then Baran looks over Trinity’s shoulder and Trinity follows her gaze.
Princess and Perlah are carefully not looking from the supply area. Dana is too far away to hear, but not too far to notice body language. Ellis is at the far workstation, pretending to review the board with the subtlety of a crime scene photographer.
Baran’s professional mask comes back down.
“Meet me in the viewing room,” she orders softly.
Trinity’s pulse jumps. “Why?”
“Dr. Santos.”
Trinity should say no. She should sit back down, finish her notes, go home to Dennis and burnt dumplings, and stop letting one night become the organizing principle of her entire nervous system.
Instead, she grabs her tablet.
Baran turns without waiting.
The viewing room near the north side is small and quiet enough to make Trinity suddenly aware of every stupid inch of herself. Baran steps in first, flicks on the light, and leaves the door open halfway. Of course she does. Rules. Optics. Distance. Always a controlled exit.
Trinity stops just inside. “Door open. Very subtle.”
Baran turns on her. “Do you understand the position you put us in when you speak like that in the middle of the department?”
“The position I put us in?”
“Yes.”
Trinity stares at her, incredulous. “Wow.”
Baran closes her eyes for half a second. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Then say what you mean.”
Baran opens her eyes. “I mean that I am your attending.”
“I know.”
“I evaluate your work.”
“I know.”
“I have authority over you.”
“I know.”
“And that night should have never happened.”
Trinity’s throat goes tight.
Fuck. The sentence she has been waiting for and dreading and rehearsing against in the shower like a lunatic.
She nods once, because if she speaks too quickly, her voice will crack. “Okay.”
Baran’s brows draw in. “Okay?”
“What do you want me to say?” Trinity asks, quiet now. “You win? You’re right? Congratulations, you’re the responsible adult and I’m the second-year resident who apparently ruined the vibe so bad you can’t even tell me to fix a chart without looking like you want to leave the state?”
Baran takes one step closer, then seems to realize she has done it and stops. “You didn’t ruin anything.”
Trinity lets out a bitter breath. “No?”
“No.”
“Then why have you been avoiding me?”
Baran looks toward the open door. Her profile is sharp under the fluorescent light, but her voice, when it comes, is lower.
“Because I don’t trust myself around you.”
Trinity’s anger falters so quickly it leaves her dizzy.
Baran’s hand tightens around the tablet. “And because I should have known better. I do know better. You’re a resident in my emergency department. You’re brilliant and impulsive and already too hard on yourself, and I–” She cuts herself off, swallowing the rest like it burns. “I crossed a line I had no right to cross.”
Trinity’s fingers ache around the edge of her tablet. “I was there too.”
“You don’t carry the same responsibility.”
“I’m twenty-eight years old, not a baby deer.”
Baran’s mouth flickers despite herself. It almost becomes a smile. Trinity sees it and hates how badly she wants to keep it.
Baran looks down. “I know.”
“No, I don’t think you do.” Trinity takes a breath, forcing herself to stay steady. “I know the hierarchy. I know it’s messy. I know it can’t just be whatever we want because we want it. But you don’t get to decide I’m some passive thing that happened to you. I wanted you. I knew who you were. I still–”
She stops. Baran’s eyes lift as the room goes too quiet.
Trinity’s voice drops. “I still do.”
Baran’s expression cracks a little, but enough.
“Trinity,” she whispers, and it’s the first time she has used her first name in two weeks.
It hurts so much Trinity almost laughs.
“Don’t say it like that,” Trinity tells her.
Baran’s eyes shine with something restrained and furious and sad. “Like what?”
“Like you miss me.”
Baran doesn’t answer and that is an answer within itself.
From the hall, Dana’s voice rips through the fragile quiet. “Santos! If you’re hidin’ from your charts, I swear to God!”
Trinity closes her eyes.
Baran turns her face away, but not before Trinity catches the smallest breath of laughter. It’s nearly silent and it’s gone immediately. It’s also the first real thing Trinity has gotten from her in fourteen days.
Trinity opens her eyes again. “I should go.”
“Yes,” Baran replies, too quickly. Then, softer, “You should finish your notes.”
“Right.”
Neither of them moves. Baran’s gaze drops to Trinity’s mouth for one careless second and Trinity’s entire body reacts.
Baran steps back like the floor shocked her. “We will discuss this later.”
Trinity’s laugh comes out thin. “Will we?”
Baran looks at her then, fully. “Yes.”
It’s not a promise wrapped in romance, or an apology big enough to fix the damage. It’s barely anything at all, but it’s not nothing.
Trinity nods once. “Okay.”
She turns to leave, then pauses at the doorway. Behind her, Baran remains in the little viewing room with her tablet hugged to her chest like a shield.
“Dr. Al-Hashimi?”
“Yes?”
Trinity looks back. “For what it’s worth, I’m not sorry it happened.”
Baran’s face goes still. Trinity holds her gaze long enough to be brave and not long enough to fall apart.
Then she walks back into the ED, past Princess and Perlah pretending very badly to rearrange supplies, past Ellis giving her a look that promises questions later, past Dana pointing two fingers at the nearest open computer like she’s directing aircraft.
“Chart,” Dana orders.
Trinity drops into the chair. “Yes, ma’am.”
Dana squints. “You look less dead.”
“I’m still dead.”
“Yeah, but now you’re annoyin’ about it.”
Trinity opens the T1 note. Her hands are steadier than they have been all day.