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“Hey, Santos, do you have a second?”
Trinity glances up briefly from her paper chart—the ridiculousness of her still being stuck charting when the fucking computer system is down is not lost on her—and finds Whitaker standing in front of her station. Before looking up, she’d been prepared to send him away with a snarky comment, but the tightness of his mouth and intensity in his eyes make her bite back her instinctive response.
“Sure,” she says slowly. “Just let me—” She finishes the sentence she’d been in the middle of writing, lays her pen down atop the paper, and looks back up expectantly. “What’s up?”
Whitaker nods toward the staff lounge. Trinity looks between the lounge and Whitaker a couple times but eventually gives in, nodding exaggeratedly as she clicks her tongue.
“Okay, a private second, I see.” She slides off her seat to move toward the lounge, Whitaker following behind. The way he doesn’t immediately crowd her personal space sets off alarms in her head. The fuck is up with him now? He seemed better about Louie after the memorial in the viewing room. Maybe something else happened since? The thought of sitting through another feelings monologue makes her burgeoning headache pulse harder. She doesn’t mind listening to him when they’re home—as long as she gets to make fun of him for it later, of course—but they’re on the clock right now. Not to mention that she’s already fucking exhausted, her situationship bailed on her for their tentative firework plans, and the new attending she’s gonna be stuck with for the next three months already thinks she’s slacking off.
The staff lounge is empty when they reach it. Trinity walks a few paces to the center of the room and spins around to face Whitaker, only to furrow her brow as he shuts the door behind them.
“You didn’t even want privacy to cry on me earlier, so this must really be something.” She yawns suddenly, her lack of sleep catching up with her. She covers her mouth with one hand and gestures dismissively with the other. “You aren’t going to confess some heinous crime or something are you? Because I’m not your fucking priest, Huckleb—”
“What did you tell Dr. Robby about Amy?”
Trinity’s mouth shuts and she blinks. “What?”
A muscle in Whitaker’s jaw pokes out as he clenches it. “I’m serious, Santos. What did you say to him?”
Trinity balks a little, too tired to figure out what Whitaker’s getting at, or what’s made him so upset. “Nothing, Jesus. He just asked how it was going, us living together, and I told him you’re never really there, ‘cause you’re always off playing house on the farm.”
Whitaker’s tongue pokes out between his lips. Not in the endearing dumb way he sometimes does while fixing up her shitty kitchen appliances, but in a tense way, like he’s restraining himself from saying something. “Why,” he asks, “did you tell him that?”
Trinity shrugs. “I don’t know, he asked.”
The brief conversation with Robby comes back to her vaguely through her exhaustion. How she went on about Whitaker at the farm and with the street team, how he’s always “just trying to help.” She didn’t say anything terrible, just enough to get Robby off her ass about her emotions and onto Whitaker’s instead. It didn’t seem important at the time. From the intense way Whitaker’s staring at her, she thinks maybe she didn’t assess properly. She straightens up.
“Look, I’ve already had a fucking day and it’s not even over yet.” She gestures at him and his uncharacteristically tense body language. “I don’t need you being weird at me on top of it.”
“And I don’t need you making it seem like I’m overstepping with patients to our Goddamn attending.”
Trinity blinks. In the almost-year they’ve been living together, she’s never seen Whitaker even slightly angry. Uncomfortable or tense, sure, but never angry. She also doesn’t think she’s ever heard him take God’s name in vain, or whatever the good Christians call it. Usually it’s “shit,” sometimes a “fuck” if the situation warrants it. She doesn’t know when she noticed that, or tucked it away as important, but seeing him now, his eyes flashing as he says, “Goddamn,” she remembers it clearly.
“I didn’t tell him you were overstepping,” Trinity says carefully.
Whitaker’s face ripples briefly into disbelief, almost amused if not for the anger. “You told him that I’m playing house with a dead patient’s widow and child.” His expression resettles into tense neutrality and somehow that’s worse. That he can cover up his anger so easily that Trinity can’t tell how truly upset he is.
“You are, though,” she points out with a touch of humor, but steels herself as Whitaker’s eyes flare. “That’s exactly what you’re doing.”
“I am not—” Whitaker’s voice doesn’t even raise, but he cuts himself off, takes a quick breath through his nose, and continues in a somehow more level tone, “I admit that I’m maybe letting her lean on me more than I should with the farm and everything, but I’m not playing house.” He says it sharply, with none of the mocking humor Trinity usually puts in the words. “I’m not sleeping with her, or playing father to her kid. I’m helping her out.”
If she weren’t so exhausted, she wouldn’t say it—she’s spent ten months not saying it—but as things are, it just comes out. “That’s kind of the fucking problem.”
Whitaker squints. “What?”
Trinity balls her hands into fists at her side. “If you were fucking her, at least the rest of it would make sense, but you’re not. You’re spending all your time taking care of her for no reason.”
He recoils. “She needs help,” he says, like it’s the beginning and end of the argument.
“It doesn’t need to be from you!” Trinity swallows roughly and continues in a more flippant tone, “You spend all your free time at the farm, or out with the street team, and you already work 70-hour weeks.”
It’s Whitaker’s turn to shake his head in confusion. “So?”
“So,” Trinity says with a jerky gesture. “You could get away with it as a med student, but you can’t keep this shit up now that you’re an R1.”
Whitaker’s jaw clenches again. “Says who?”
“Says basic fucking biology, Whitaker, Jesus fucking Christ!” Trinity throws her hands up like her mom used to when Trinity was being “unreasonable.” She hates it, hates acting like her fucking mother, but she feels a little insane right now, so maybe it’s fitting. “You can’t spend all your time helping other people without leaving any time to take care of yourself.”
Whitaker gets that expression on his face that makes Trinity wish she had a shell she could hide in, like a hermit crab or a turtle. The expression where he’s looking at her like he understands. Like he can see through all the bullshit and bluster to the tender inside bits she’s never managed to fully snuff out despite her best efforts.
“I’m fine,” he says, almost gently, like all the anger has left him now that he understands why she did what she did. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
“I’m not,” Trinity spits out. She suddenly, fiercely hates him. Hates him for understanding, hates how that understanding is seemingly enough for him to let go of his anger and forgive. Hates how pathetic it makes her feel. “What do I care if you burn yourself out with your dumbass choices?” She waves dismissively. “It wasn’t even really about you anyway. I just said it to get Robby off my case.”
Whitaker’s understanding ebbs, annoyance reappearing in the tight corners of his mouth at the reminder of Robby. “Look, I get that you’re exhausted, and worried about me even if you don’t want to admit it—or hey, maybe you really were just throwing me under the bus for your own sake.” The sarcastic way he says it makes it clear how wholly he doesn’t believe her and that only pisses her off further. “But none of that is a good enough reason to tell our boss everything about my personal life.”
“I didn’t tell him everything,” Trinity sneers, her heart thumping loudly in her chest. “Or did you forget why you’re squatting in my guestroom in the first place?”
A wince ripples across Whitaker’s face. He may be able to conceal his anger well, but he doesn’t have the same kind of control over his hurt. It’s what Trinity wanted, but it doesn’t feel like the triumph she thought it would. Her mouth floods with the bitter taste of regret. She keeps her teeth clenched tight.
Whitaker’s eyes burn. “You wouldn’t.”
Trinity wouldn’t, but she also won’t back down now. She shrugs like a flinch.
He inhales sharply through his nose. “Santos, I swear to God—”
“Ooh, scary,” she mocks.
His voice gets louder. “You have no right—you had no right telling Robby anything. He’s our boss—our fucking boss, remember? No matter how badly you might want to pretend that he’s your friend or your father.” Trinity glares harder instead of flinching. “I don’t need you telling him that I’m not up to the job.”
“That’s not what I fucking said,” Trinity says, defensive like the teenager she hasn’t been in years.
“It’s what you implied.”
Trinity briefly, uselessly, wishes she could go back to thirty seconds ago when Whitaker understood her without her having to explain. She’s too tired for this shit. “Don’t be an idiot. You know that’s not what I meant.” It comes out more pleading than dismissive. She swallows and tries again, “You know I was just worried, and I thought that Robby could—”
“Thought that he could what?” Whitaker cuts her off. He never cuts her off. “Worry about me, too?” He gestures sharply toward the ED through the walls of the staff lounge. “Dr. Robby has enough to worry about already without adding me on top of it. He’s leaving because he’s so stressed, you know that.” Whitaker points at his own chest. “Dr. Robby needs to know that he can rely on me.” His hand drops. “He does not need another intern that he has to coddle.”
Trinity stares for a long moment. Dangerously quiet, she says, “Another?”
Whitaker’s outrage falters. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Isn’t it?” Trinity steps forward and Whitaker steps back. Good, she thinks furiously. You should be the one that’s afraid. “Own your fucking words, Whitaker. You think Robby’s ditching us because I stressed him out with all my problems?”
“No, obviously I—” Trinity takes another step forward and Whitaker’s back hits the door. It seems to shock him out of his stammering because he clenches his jaw for a second and says, “No, I don’t think Robby’s stressed out from worrying about you. But maybe he should be.”
“The fuck is that supposed to mean?”
Whitaker rights himself, his back no longer against the door. “What you told Robby about me, all that shit, you only know about it because I live with you. But you live with me, too, Santos.” He doesn’t step forward, but his tone makes Trinity want to put more space between them. “If we’re telling our attending all of our secrets, then don’t you think he’d want to know about how you’re not sleeping? Or how you’re trying to double board when you already can’t handle keeping up with the charts for one specialty? Or how your screwed-up relationship with a surgery fellow makes all of that worse?”
Trinity glares. “Shut your fucking mouth.”
“That’s not even the worst of it, and you know it.”
“Oh, yeah?” she taunts, and he darts his eyes pointedly down at her left thigh. Trinity stills. “You fucking wouldn’t.”
Whitaker shrugs, just like she shrugged two minutes ago. “I thought you wouldn’t tell Robby about my stuff. Apparently we don’t know each other as well as we thought.”
Exhaustion has blurred the edges of Trinity’s vision for most of the day. Suddenly, those edges come into focus, but it’s not the staff lounge she sees—it’s coach’s office. Locked door, illusion of privacy. Hot breath in her ear. If you tell anyone about our secret, it will ruin everything. A heavy hand on her thigh. She wants to carve the feeling out of her skin. I couldn’t coach you anymore, and then what would you be? Nothing. It would all be for nothing.
The worst part isn’t the memory—it’s that he was right.
If Robby finds out about Trinity’s stupid, juvenile little coping mechanism, he’d bench her. Make her go through her own rehab like she’s fucking Langdon or something. Trinity would have to repeat her R2 year. Just like Al-Hashimi threatened.
Something crueler than Trinity likes to think herself capable of possesses her body. It laughs through her nose, a mean sound that hollows out her chest. “If you even think about telling Robby,” her mouth says, “you can fucking find yourself another place to live.”
Again, the ripple of hurt in Whitaker’s expression doesn’t satisfy her nearly half as much as she thought it would. “Fine,” he says, but he doesn’t sound fine. “Robby asked me to house-sit for him, anyway. Three months should be enough time to save for a security deposit.” He swallows, his throat bobbing. “No reason to keep leeching off of you now that I’m making a paycheck, right?”
A hundred different responses sit heavy on her tongue. She wants to double down, say something cruel about how she should’ve left him on the eighth floor ten months ago, how he wasn’t worth the trouble. She wants to remind him of all the times he fixed her dishwasher and vacuumed and made her food when her feet hurt too much to stand in the kitchen long enough to feed herself. She wants to ask, does that sound like a leech? She wants to sneer and say that’s an insult to leeches, because at least they still have some medical uses. She wants to stop this whole thing and ask for a do-over when she’s not so exhausted. She wants to say, Can we talk about this at home? but the word “home” throws her.
“Fine,” she says instead of any of that. “You can get your parasitic ass out of my apartment, then.”
The door behind Whitaker opens. Princess appears, a clipboard in hand. “We’re getting an influx of traumas from a water park disaster.” She looks between Whitaker and Trinity, her eyebrows slightly raised, as if to ask, is there drama?
Trinity looks away.
“Thanks for coming to tell us,” Whitaker says, his tone so normal and calm it makes Trinity laugh uncomfortably. Always so fucking polite. In her periphery, she watches him duck his chin and leave the room through the other door.
Princess lingers, staring at Trinity. “Everything alright?”
Trinity shuts her eyes tightly, counts to three, sniffs, and opens them again. “Fucking peachy,” she says and storms out through the door Whitaker just left through.
*
The traumas don’t stop coming for an hour. For every patient they stabilize, another two come through the ambulance bay doors. If Trinity hadn’t been here for the PittFest mass casualty, it would probably be the worst traumatic incident she’d ever worked, but alas it comes in a distant second.
A part of her likes it, having something to focus on. She doesn’t have time to pay any mind to Langdon flitting around in her periphery, or Garcia coming in and out of the ED as often as the runners do.
Whitaker is slightly harder to ignore—or the lack of him, to put it more accurately. Usually, when they work a trauma together, she can’t get him off her back. Like he forgot they’re at work and not in the kitchen back at the apartment, navigating around each other as they cook. It wasn’t really like that in the Pitt when he was a med student, and he’s only been a resident for a few days, but it’s already become enough of a habit that Trinity notices its absence. Whitaker doesn’t invade her personal space at all as they handle the dozens of water park patients.
In fact, for the whole hour, even with everyone running back and forth between trauma rooms as needed, she and Whitaker never end up on the same patient once.
When the last patient heads up to the OR, Trinity rips off her gloves, drops them in the nearest pile, and beelines to the staff lounge. Her five-hour energy drink ran out in the middle of the rush and she’s been nursing a caffeine come-down headache ever since. She rummages through the first-aid cabinet until she finds some pain meds and shakes out two pills, swallowing them dry.
After she puts the bottle back, Trinity braces her hands on the wall next to the cabinet, shuts her eyes, and lets her head fall forward. One more hour, she tells herself. One more hour and then I can spend my lonely night charting. She lets her forehead thunk against the wall. Fuck.
“Everything alright?”
Trinity turns her head without lifting it from the wall and glowers at Robby. “Pass.”
Robby’s mouth quirks up in the corners. “That’s not how check-ins work. If you pass, you fail.”
“I don’t have any deep-seated water park trauma that’s suddenly been reawakened,” Trinity says, tossing her arm dismissively. “I’ve just got a bitch of a headache.”
Robby leans against the wall on the other side of the doorway, facing Trinity, and crosses his arms under his chest. “You sure that’s it?”
Trinity’s pulse picks up despite herself as Whitaker’s threat echoes in her head. “Yeah, pretty sure.”
Robby nods a little, rolling his lips against his teeth. “You and Whitaker seemed…different than usual during the incident.”
“Different?” Trinity questions, trying to sound unimpressed.
Robby shrugs. “Distant.”
“I’m not his fucking keeper,” Trinity says with more bite than she’d usually use with her boss.
Robby’s eyebrows lift slightly. “I didn’t say you were.” He leans forward. “I only asked you ‘cause I talked to Whitaker first.”
Blood rushes loudly in Trinity’s ears. “Whatever he told you—”
“That’s the thing,” Robby says, a wry twist to his mouth. “He didn’t. I’ve never known Whitaker to dodge a question, but he was unusually close-lipped.”
Fucking Huckleberry. Always so open with his feelings. An annoying fondness flutters inside Trinity’s rib cage as her stomach turns over with guilt. She looks away. “Like I said, I’m not his keeper. If he’s not telling you, why would I know what’s wrong with him?”
“You’re a very observant person and you know him better than I do.”
Apparently not, Trinity thinks and grits her teeth. She didn’t think he’d be so pissed about Robby knowing about Amy. He’d probably be just as pissed about how worried Robby is about him right now. He’s leaving because he’s so stressed, Whitaker said like an accusation.
Trinity forces herself to meet Robby’s eye. “Why do you care anyway? You’re leaving tonight. This isn’t gonna be your problem.”
The wrinkles in the corners of Robby’s eyes deepen as he squints with a small, sad smile. “Maybe I wanna leave with the peace of mind of knowing that my residents are gonna be okay without me.”
Trinity huffs. “You already gave him your fucking house, what more do you wanna do for him? Jesus.” It comes out more bitter than she intended.
Robby notices. “I thought you’d appreciate having the apartment to yourself.”
“I told you, he’s never around anyway.” She frowns back at him harder. “And I thought you were gonna talk to him about setting boundaries, and how it’s okay to say no sometimes, and instead you asked him to house-sit for you?” She shakes her head. “Last time I ask you to talk some sense into anyone.”
Robby’s expression pinches briefly. “Ah. Maybe that wasn’t my best move.”
“You think?”
Robby seems more genuinely troubled by her words than the amusement she would’ve expected. Trinity adjusts her shoulders awkwardly and, with how she’s leaning against the wall, it moves her whole body.
“You did talk some sense into him,” she qualifies, crossing her arms over her chest. “He admitted that he’s been letting Amy lean on him more than he should.” Robby nods wordlessly, his gaze unfocused. Trinity straightens up a little. “Also, if I made it seem like he’s taking advantage of her—he’s not. They’re just friends. Probably toxic, unhealthily-dependent friends, but yeah. Just friends.”
Robby continues to nod almost absently. “That’s good,” he says. He blinks a few times and refocuses on her. “Yeah, that’s great. Glad to hear it.”
Trinity frowns. “Are you okay?”
Robby straightens out of his lean and nods more intentionally. “Yeah. Yeah, just thinking about my trip.” His mouth quirks briefly into a smile. “Counting down the minutes.”
Trinity also stands up properly. She tries for a joke, “That eager to be rid of us?”
Robby huffs a laugh and ducks his chin, shaking his head at the floor. “No, no, just looking forward to getting some space.”
Something prickles at the back of Trinity’s neck. She squints slightly. “You know, we’ll be alright while you’re gone.” She gestures through the open doorway between them, back out at the floor. “Al-Hashimi seems to run a tight ship, or whatever.” Robby nods again at the floor, still quiet. “But it’s also gonna fucking suck.”
Robby’s face tilts up slightly and maybe it’s the angle, but his eyes seem redder than usual.
“Obviously I want you to take the time that you need, but I’m—” She presses her lips briefly, then forces the words out, “I’m gonna miss having you here.” Her expression pinches. God earnestness fucking blows, how does Whitaker do it all the time? Still, she makes herself continue, “I know you’re just my boss or whatever, but you’re kind of, like—” She huffs a frustrated breath. “Historically, I’m not great with authority, but I like having you as my teacher. You’re probably—” She shrugs jerkily, glancing away. “—one of the best mentors I’ve ever had.” The sincerity comes out fast and choked, like bile. She swallows. “Not that the bar is extremely high,” she adds dryly to get out the aftertaste. “But you raised it, so.”
When she forces herself to look back at Robby, she knows it’s not the angle making his eyes look that red. His mouth parts but nothing comes out and the longer he stares at her in silence, the deeper the pit in her stomach grows. It’s an unfortunately familiar feeling.
“Robby!” Dana calls from the floor. Robby turns to look at her through the doorway. “Firecracker trauma coming in, ETA two minutes.”
Robby nods. “I’ll be right there.” He glances back at Trinity and nods again, his expression almost blank. “Duty calls,” he says simply, and walks away with his hands shoved in his jacket pockets.
Trinity watches him go. She has the pervasive sensation that she’s played this part before. Surely not, her mind insists, but that’s what she thought the first time, too. Convinced herself she was seeing things that weren’t there.
Trinity knows the price of being wrong, and it’s nothing compared to the cost of being right.
*
Trinity corners Whitaker as he leaves a patient’s room. He blinks his giant, kicked-dog eyes at her and then his expression steels. She doesn’t acknowledge it, just grabs him by the wrist and drags him out to the stairwell.
“I have patients,” he says in a harsher tone than he ever uses with her. She continues to ignore him and pulls him through the doors so they’re standing on the first floor landing of the stairwell. “I don’t have time for—”
“What did Robby say to you when he asked you to house-sit for him?”
Whitaker’s eyebrows pull together. “What?”
She squeezes his wrist hard. “Answer me.” He blinks a few times and, with each one, his stubborn opposition slowly gives way to concern. He looks at the space between them instead of at her.
“He said…” Whitaker’s lips press briefly. “He asked if I would do him a favor and house-sit for him while he was gone. He said that he was going to ask Dr. Abbott, but he does nude yoga or something, and Robby thought that would freak out his neighbors. Then he said…” He trails off.
“Tell me,” Trinity insists.
Whitaker meets her eye. “He said that I would have a great bachelor pad if he didn’t come back.”
Trinity stares for a long moment. “Fuck.” She drops Whitaker’s wrist and turns away, rubbing at her mouth. She repeats with more intensity, “Fuck.”
“I didn’t want to think…” Whitaker trails off. “I mean, he’s—surely, he’s not…” He doesn’t finish the sentence.
Trinity turns back around sharply. “You said Robby has enough to worry about already. What did you mean by that?” She looks between his eyes. “Do you know something I don’t?”
“I—” Whitaker’s mouth hangs open dumbly for a few seconds and he shakes his head. “I can’t.”
Trinity’s hands clench into fists at her side. “Whitaker, it’s not gossiping, it’s his fucking life we’re talking about here. What do you know?”
Whitaker digs his teeth into his bottom lip so hard that, when he releases it, there are pale white indents left behind. “I can’t tell you,” he says, and as Trinity starts to curse him out, he hurries to add, “But I can say that—what I know would suggest that Dr. Robby isn’t dealing with everything as well as he might make it seem.”
Her mouth tugs into a deep frown as heat gathers behind her eyes. “Fuck.”
Trinity has never cried at work and she won’t start now, but fuck, she’s close. It’s all the worst parts of being a doctor in one moment with the added devastation of it being someone she cares about. Helplessness, frustration, shame that she didn’t catch it earlier. Of anyone, Trinity should’ve noticed.
But she’s never had to worry about Robby. When the rest of the Pitt was talking about how Trinity dethroned their golden boy, when people were whispering where they thought she couldn’t hear, speculating on whether she planted the drugs herself to get back at the senior resident who’d humiliated her—Robby didn’t gossip. Robby believed her.
She’d been so high off of having a boss that she liked—and one that seemed to like her, too—that she didn’t see anything else in his smiles except pride. Maybe she’d just been seeing what she wanted to see this whole time. I failed him, she thinks hopelessly. I failed him like I failed—
“What do we do?”
Trinity blinks out of her head and finds Whitaker staring at her with big, round eyes. His voice comes out so quiet. He reminds her of all the younger girls in her gym, who looked up at Trinity like she was magic. Like she could do anything.
Trinity hated the way they looked at her, because she knew her inaction would damn them someday. That she would age out and they would age in and the cycle would never end. Then someone else ended it for her and Trinity learned what she should’ve learned earlier.
Fuck helplessness. Trinity is magic.
“We tell Dana,” Trinity says, because if someone needs help, Dana’s the best one to call.
*
“If I had a nickel for every time a resident followed me into the staff lounge,” Dana says as Trinity and Whitaker come into the room behind her. She turns around, a mug of coffee in hand, and lifts her eyebrows expectantly at the both of them. “Oh good, a two-for-one special.”
Her easy smile disappears as they tell her their combined story. Her coffee goes untouched. When they finish, she puts the mug down on the counter and holds onto it herself, her knuckles white.
“We don’t want to get him in trouble,” Whitaker says after a beat of silence.
“From the sound of things, he already is,” Dana says. She takes a deep breath. “You kids did the right thing, telling me. I’ll handle it.”
Trinity glances at Whitaker at the same time he looks at her. “We want to help,” Trinity says. “We’re not trying to pass it off to you.”
“I appreciate that, but this isn’t the kind of thing—” Dana purses her lips. “I’ve worked with Robby a long time, and if he feels trapped, he’s gonna lash out. It’s better for you and him if you’re not in the blast radius.”
“We can take it,” Whitaker says without hesitation. Trinity nods in agreement.
Dana considers them for a long time. It’s hard to tell from her face whether she’s leaning toward letting them help or telling them to leave it alone. The only thing Trinity can glean is that Dana is exhausted, and scared, and probably tired of being both.
Eventually, Dana sighs. “I’ll call Abbott back in. We’ll need all the help we can get.”
*
Abbott doesn’t need any convincing, which unfortunately confirms their suspicions further. He comes up with a plan to get Robby in the family room before the end of shift so they can all talk to him without him making an excuse to run off.
“That sounds kind of like we’re trapping him,” Whitaker says worriedly.
“We are,” Abbott says with a grave expression that brooks no arguments.
Dana was right about the lashing out.
(“You told them?” Robby says coldly, blatant betrayal cutting through his expression as he turns on Whitaker.
Whitaker stammers until Trinity cuts him off. “He didn’t tell us what happened, just that you might be hiding how badly you’re doing.”
Robby turns on her next. “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says, louder than he needs to. Trinity forces herself not to flinch. “You’re making assumptions based on your own shit, just like you did with that ITP girl.” Trinity fails to hold back her wince this time.
“Santos isn’t the only one that’s worried,” Whitaker says, stepping forward until he stands slightly in front of Trinity, between her and Robby. “And even if it’s not as bad as we think, we still have reason to be concerned.”)
They switch out after a while, always keeping one of them in the room with Robby while the others check on their patients. The rest of the day shift start to notice Robby’s absence, and the rotating disappearance of Trinity, Whitaker, and Dana. McKay volunteers first, sees Dana going for the family room and offers to take her place. Princess steps up next, then Mohan, then Perlah, then and then and then—
The whole day shift ends up staying two hours late. Trinity goes in three times after the initial talk. Robby’s still shouting during the first two. He says nothing on the third.
Eventually, Abbott tells them all to go home. “He’s not leaving for his trip tonight,” he tells them of Robby, a hard-fought concession. “Dana’s gonna take him home and I’ll be by in the morning after my shift.” He looks them all over and gives them a firm nod. “Thank you,” he says. His eyes land on Whitaker, then Trinity. “Thank you.”
They disperse without the usual end-of-day chatter. Trinity has one more chart to finish before she’s gonna call it for the night, so she hurries through it, grabs her bag, and heads straight for the exit to start her walk home.
The heat of the day has simmered into a sluggish warmth that makes her painfully aware of how her undershirt sticks in between her shoulder blades. In the distance, she hears the crackle of fireworks. She rubs at her eyes, rolls her neck, and comes to a stop at the corner a block away from the hospital.
The corner’s empty. Trinity blinks.
For the weeks that Whitaker worked in the Pitt during his rotation, they left separately to avoid people finding out about their living situation. They would meet at this spot to walk home together. Once Whitaker moved on to another rotation, they didn’t need to go to all the trouble, but it became a habit. Meet here, walk home, talk about their days if they weren’t too exhausted. They picked up the habit again wordlessly four days ago, when Whitaker started his residency.
Trinity realizes that she expected him to be here, and that if he’s not here, and he’s not at Robby’s place—
She turns around and starts walking back to the hospital. As she bullies her way through the waiting room, people quirk confused eyebrows at her quick return and she offers them tight smiles in response. She spills out into the stairwell with relief and begins to climb.
The eighth floor hasn’t been touched. Nothing in the budget for that, apparently. In fairness to the hospital, she would’ve been pissed if they’d spent money renovating a vacant wing when they still weren’t paying their nurses enough to staff the already-furnished ones. Trinity listens for Whitaker’s reedy singing as she walks down the hall, but there’s nothing. She doubts herself—he probably went to Amy’s, she thinks with a huff—but as she reaches the final room, she finds him.
Whitaker sits on a bare hospital bed, his backpack and his brand new doctor’s badge beside him. He looks up as she stops in the doorway. He doesn’t look surprised. He just looks exhausted.
Trinity jerks her head at the hallway. “Come on.” She turns to start walking away, but stops as he speaks.
“Nothing’s changed,” he says quietly. “Everything we said…”
Trinity shuts her eyes. “Huckleberry, this day has been fucked from the start.”
“That doesn’t make what we said any less true.”
Trinity exhales deeply through her nose. “If we’re going to do this, can we at least do it at home?”
“But it’s not my home.” A shifting sound comes from the bed as Whitaker presumably stands up. “I appreciate you letting me stay in your apartment all these months, but it’s not mine. I’m not your roommate. I’m just someone who lives in your guestroom.”
Trinity clenches her teeth. “If you want to move out, you can move out, but you’re not doing it tonight, and you’re not fucking sleeping here.”
“I don’t want to move out,” Whitaker says like a confession. Trinity opens her eyes and he’s staring at the floor, his hands held in front of his waist, his fingers interlocked.
“Then don’t,” she says, trying for flippant. Instead, it comes out like what it is—a plea.
Whitaker looks up. His eyes, as always, remind her of those shivering dogs from ASPCA commercials. Sometimes Trinity thinks that’s why she took him home—a consolation after years of begging her mother for a puppy to no avail. Sometimes she thinks she’s just a bleeding heart.
Other times, she thinks that the lonely thing inside her recognized itself in him and forced her hand to save them both.
“I’m sorry for how I said the things I said.” Whitaker wets his lips. “But I’m not sorry that I said them. I’m worried about you.”
Trinity works her jaw and looks away. “I’m not trying to kill myself with the—” She gestures at her leg. “It’s just a—I know it’s dumb, and unhealthy or whatever, but it’s just—” She grits her teeth and shakes her head. “I did it as a kid and sometimes it’s just the only way I know how to cope with shit.”
“There are better ways.”
“I know that,” she snaps, then swallows. “I know that,” she repeats quieter.
“I’m not going to tell anyone,” he says.
She looks down. “I know that, too.” They stand in silence for a minute. Belatedly, she says, “I wouldn’t tell anyone, either. About—” She gestures at the room. “—you know.”
“I appreciate you saying that.”
Trinity huffs. “God, you’re so fucking earnest.”
Whitaker shrugs. “Can’t help it.”
Trinity fights a smile. “I’m worried about you, too, you know.”
“I know.” He inclines his head. “I should probably set some more boundaries with Amy. Honestly, I think I let it go on so long ‘cause I was being selfish.”
Trinity scoffs. “How do you figure that?”
“It’s nice to be needed,” he says with a helpless sort of smile. “It’s nice to be good at something with lower stakes than life or death.”
Trinity doesn’t think she knows what that’s like. Gymnastics was always more important than her life, until it wasn’t. Medicine still is. “Maybe I need a hobby,” she says aloud.
Whitaker laughs a little in surprise. “Yeah, maybe.” His smile softens. “If you’re looking for suggestions, I think you’d make a good knitter.”
Something swells in her chest, pressing up against her sternum. She opens her mouth and it flies out.
“I don’t want you to move out.” His eyebrows lift in the middle, as if in surprise, and that—hurts. “I like having someone to do chores with, and someone to walk with me to work, and I like—I like that someone being you, because you’re stupidly kind while still secretly being a bitch, and you get me, even when I’m a bitch back.”
The corners of his mouth twitch upward. “To be fair, I think I only understand you like 70% of the time at most.”
“That’s more than anyone else has in—” She shakes her head. “—a really long time.”
One side of his mouth tugs up in a half-grin, like he can’t help it. “Alright,” he says. “I won’t move out.”
The relief that fills Trinity’s chest is honestly kind of embarrassing. “Good,” she says. “I wouldn’t’ve let you anyway, so.”
He briefly looks up, a mini-eyeroll, but let’s her have it without argument. “I do want to start paying rent, though. And helping with the groceries.” The idea of taking anything from Whitaker’s first-year resident paycheck feels a bit like stealing a kid’s allowance.
Trinity wrinkles her nose, but says, “Sure, we can talk about that.” She nods down the hall. “Can we go home now?”
“Alright,” he says. “Let’s go home.”
Trinity waits in the hall as he shoulders his bag and shoves his badge into his pocket. As he joins her, she nods at his pocket and asks, “Did they retake the photo?” He pulls his badge back out and hands it over instead of answering. Trinity snorts at the Amish-boy haircut and his expression frozen in wide-eyed surprise, like they didn’t warn him they were taking the picture before the flash went off and it spooked him. “You’re gonna have this for the next four years.”
Whitaker sighs as he takes it back. “Here’s hoping that, in a year, I’ll look so different from that malnourished Victorian orphan that they’ll be forced to take a new picture.”
Trinity barks a laugh. “Maybe if we gave you a drastic enough makeover. Like a scene haircut or a face tattoo.”
Whitaker recoils in disgust as he opens the door to the stairwell, holding it open for Trinity to go through first. “Yeah, that’s a hard no.”
“What about a piercing?” At Whitaker’s considering hum, she looks back at him, eyebrows raised. “Really?”
“I liked Joy’s little—” He brings his thumb and pointer finger to his septum, miming Joy’s nose piercing.
“Well, you’d have to wait until a few weeks after her rotation ends or everyone will know you’re copying her, but other than that, I support it.” They start down the steps. “Maybe I’ll get another piercing, too. I was thinking of a helix.”
“Isn’t that the kind Garcia has?”
“Nah, she has a conch.” They go another few steps. “Do you really think my whole thing with her is fucked up?”
“Oh, for sure,” Whitaker says with a little nod and exaggerated frown. It’s the exact kind of expression Trinity makes all the time. “But I think we’ve done enough emotional honesty for one day.” He glances at her sideways as they reach the next landing. “Maybe we’ll leave that one for tomorrow?”
Trinity bumps their shoulders together hard. “Shut up, Huckleberry.”