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I.
There is something so laughable about standing within the walls of the Crisis Response Centre surrounded by people who are all in some kind of mental health calamity and then incongruously being handed a pack of mini eggs as a welcome gift.
“You know I don’t like chocolate,” Trinity provides, but takes the pack of sweets anyway without looking up.
“I know, but it’s the only thing we have right now, and I don’t want you to feel left out.”
Emma hands out what available snacks they have to every patient that comes in, a ritual of normalcy that doesn’t quite fit the fluorescent hum of the room. Trinity turns the small purple packet over in her hands, thinks about giving it to Dennis later who is a sucker for anything diabetic.
“Thanks,” she says finally, because that’s what you say.
Emma gives her a look, soft and knowing, but not pushing. “You’re a little early today.”
“There wasn’t much traffic,” Trinity brings her shoulders up to a mere shrug.
It’s a lie, she left early because staying in her apartment felt like suffocating in slow motion, the silence stretching into an infinite equation no math can ever solve and if she sits in it too long, she starts thinking in unbreakable loops.
Emma nods easily. “Dr. McKay should be with you soon.”
“Cool,” Trinity mutters.
She sinks into one of the molded plastic chairs, legs bouncing before she even realizes it’s happening. Across from her, a woman is crying into her sleeves. To her right, a man flips through a magazine without turning a single page, and the TV mounted in the corner plays something silly and loud and Trinity wants to laugh out loud at the sheer irony of it all.
Instead of watching 22 Jump Street, Trinity opts for staring at the floor. Counts the tiles. Gets distracted by Channing Tatum’s wheezing laugh and starts over again.
“Trinity?”
Her head snaps up fast, a thread of dizziness pulling at the edges of her vision. It’s not Emma this time, but one of the receptionists with a clipboard tucked against his chest.
“Yeah.”
He waves, “Come on, we’re ready for you.”
Trinity pushes herself up, shoving the unopened mini eggs into the pocket of her jacket. The hallway feels longer than usual, or maybe she’s just slower walking down it, or they’ve just turned the wrong corner. The receptionist stops them just short of an unfamiliar door and pushes it open, motioning for Trinity to enter.
The first thing she notices is that it’s not Cassie. Not the worn zip-up jacket that has seen better days, not the slouched and easy posture. Definitely not the face Trinity has memorized in fragments over months of sessions.
There’s someone else sitting in front of her. Older, maybe? Sharper lines, just a different energy altogether - less softened and more contained when she looks up at Trinity, a brief flicker of recognition that doesn’t exist (of course it doesn’t) and then it smooths into something professional.
“Trinity,” she starts and gestures briefly between herself and the couch in front of her. “Have a seat.”
Behind Trinity, the door closes with a click. In front of her, she’s wrapped in an office where it feels wrong, familiar in layout but stripped of anything that makes it feel safe. Even the air smells different. And the woman in front of her - composed and unreadable - doesn’t fit into any version of this space that Trinity knows how to exist in.
The thought comes quick and sharp: Cassie left.
Not just away, or temporary, but gone in the way people go when they get tired of Trinity and her problems. It makes her feel insignificant as the idea settles in, because maybe Cassie finally decided Trinity wasn’t worth the time, and Trinity just kept talking past it, spilling too much, needing too much, and ultimately pretending like she still has some salvageable elements within her.
A goodbye would’ve been something.
Shit.
“I’m Dr. Al-Hashimi,” the woman says. “I’ll be filling in for Dr. McKay while she’s away.”
Oh.
Something hot and immediate sparks under Trinity’s ribs. She shoves her bubbling thoughts down to her diaphragm and offers a flat, “Oh.”
Because - just, oh.
Dr. Al-Hashimi’s gaze lingers for half a second longer, taking in the slightly disheveled edges Trinity doesn’t bother smoothing out. She nods once, unruffled. “She had a family emergency. I understand this might feel abrupt.”
“That’s one word for it,” Trinity says, then there’s a beat.
Nobody fills it, so Trinity exhales sharply through her nose and drops into the couch, leaning back like she owns the space. It’s really just anxiety disguised as confidence as if she isn’t already calculating exactly how fast she could bolt out of this place if she needed to.
“So,” she crosses her arms, gaze fixed somewhere just past Al-Hashimi’s shoulder. “You read my file and now you’re all caught up on my entire personality?”
A corner of her expression shifts, not quite a smile, not quite anything dismissive either. Whatever it is, Al-Hashimi is everything Cassie is not, and Trinity doesn’t like that. Doesn’t like having to adapt to something new when everything in her life already feels like they’re slipping through her fingertips.
“I’ve reviewed some background,” Al-Hashimi says evenly. “But I’d rather hear from you.”
Trinity lets out a short, humourless laugh, “Good luck with that.”
Silence settles again, and it’s noticeably thicker. Dr. Al-Hashimi doesn’t break it or push it, just waits like she’s gifted with the patience of God itself. And Trinity - who knows this game, who’s played it before, who knows exactly how long she can hold out - finds herself suddenly, irrationally irritated that her substitute doctor isn’t trying harder.
Her knee starts bouncing again. She hates that Al-Hashimi can probably see it.
“Cassie usually starts with-” she cuts herself off, jaw tightening. “Whatever, doesn’t matter.”
“If it helps,” Al-Hashimi says, voice steady. “We can start however you’re most comfortable with.”
“Yeah?” Trinity huffs. “I’d probably just walk out, then.”
“You can, I’m sure you know patients are not obligated to stay, unless there are reasons that warrant an intervention,” The last part, Al-Hashimi says with a suggestive tone, the statement landing like a question and when Trinity looks up to meet her eyes, they’re piercing, assessing, nothing like Cassie’s soft ones.
Her tongue drags over her lower lips. “Not today.”
“Okay,” Al-Hashimi nods as she starts jotting down something in her notebook. Trinity watches the movement, irritation flaring because she doesn’t think she’s said anything worth writing down in the last thirty seconds. When Al-Hashimi looks back up, there’s a neutral smile in place. “Why don’t we start with talking about your day?”
“My day? Riveting,” Trinity stares at the pen in Al-Hashimi’s hand. “I woke up, I stared at a crack in my ceiling that looks vaguely like the state of Florida, and then I came here to get pity chocolate from Emma. Do you want the minute-by-minute on the ceiling crack, or should we skip to the part where I pretend everything isn’t falling apart?”
“The ceiling crack sounds like a symptom of avoiding the room,” Al-Hashimi says calmly, not at all taking the bait of Trinity’s sarcasm. “But let’s look at the second part. Why do you feel you have to pretend?”
“Because it’s a performance,” Trinity gestures at the office. “I say the right things, you check the box that says I’m not a high-velocity flight risk today. Then we all go home and have dinner.”
“Is that what you did with Dr. McKay?”
“Cassie’s different,” Trinity flinches, a quick, microscopic twitch of her eyelid. “She doesn’t look at me like I’m a specimen under a slide. She just lets me be.”
“And you feel I am dissecting you?”
“I feel like you’re waiting for me to trip up,” Trinity snaps. She reaches into her pocket, her fingers brushing the crinkly plastic of the mini eggs. The sugar-coating clicks together. “You’re looking for ‘the reasons that warrant an intervention’. That was a nice way of saying hospitalization, by the way. You guys are all the same.”
“I’m looking for the truth, Trinity. Whether that leads to an intervention or just a conversation depends entirely on what you’re willing to carry alone,” Al-Hashimi leans forward slightly, just enough to bridge the professional distance without invading Trinity’s space. “Can you tell me what you do for work?”
Trinity knows this play, it’s the grounding phase - shifting from the abstract topics of her mind back to the concrete reality of her identity. It almost makes her snort.
“I’m an ER doctor at PTMC,” she says, her voice clipped.
While she fights the internal regret of waking up today, she waits for the shift in Al-Hashimi’s expression. Because usually, when people find out, there’s a flicker of surprise or a subtle physician, heal thyself judgment. But Al-Hashimi merely nods, her pen still hovering.
“A high-pressure environment,” she echoes. “That explains why you’re so comfortable with the performance of stability. You’re trained to triage yourself.”
“I’m trained to keep people from bleeding out on my floor,” Trinity corrects sharply. God, this is getting exhausting. “The performance is part of the job, you of all people should know that. You went through the same residency hell I did, even if you traded the adrenaline for a comfortable couch and a notebook.”
The jab is intentional, which Trinity doesn’t know why, only that it feels necessary. Self-protection, perhaps? Or just an unmitigated habit of hers to drive people away, especially those who are paid to stick around. It’s a test to see if Al-Hashimi’s professional veneer will crack, just like how Cassie had snapped her notebook shut and told Trinity she could do this all day.
“The adrenaline is just a different frequency here,” Al-Hashimi replies, completely unbothered. “But I imagine it’s harder to be the one on the couch when you’re used to being the one holding the clipboard. It’s a loss of authority, yes?”
“I don’t care about authority,” Trinity sighs, her knee starting to bounce again. “I care about efficiency. And this? Talking about my day and my feelings with a stranger? It’s the least efficient use of my time.”
“Then let’s be efficient,” Al-Hashimi says, closing her notebook slightly. This part of the session is familiar, and there’s only two outcomes: one where a different approach is introduced (the same one where things went from Dr. McKay to just Cassie, “Now we’re friends, Trinity.”), and one where Trinity is simply told to get the fuck out. “As one doctor to another: your file says you’re on leave, but you aren’t here because of burnout. You’re here because you’ve stopped believing that the triage works on you. Am I close?”
It’s a clinical strike, delivered with the precision of a scalpel, and Trinity dislikes how easily Al-Hashimi used their shared professional language to cut through her supposedly steel-like defenses.
“I’m here because I have to be,” Trinity mutters, her eyes fixed the cold, tiled floor. “HR won’t let me back into the trauma bay until someone signs off on my mental fitness. So, if we could just skip to the part where you tell me I’m depressed as fuck and give me a new script, that’d be great.”
“I’m not interested in your HR department’s requirements,” Al-Hashimi says, her voice dropping an octave, becoming more grounded. “And I’m not Dr. McKay. I don’t offer comfort as a first resort, I offer clarity. You can spend the next fifteen minutes attacking my choice of specialty, or you can tell me why a doctor who saves lives every day thinks her own isn’t worth the effort.”
The silence that follows isn't the patience of God silence from earlier, it’s more like a dispute. Trinity looks up to meet Al-Hashimi’s gaze, and fraction of a second, she doesn't see a substitute - she sees an opponent who knows exactly how her mind works.
“You think you’re very clever, don’t you?” Trinity whispers.
“I think you’re very tired,” Al-Hashimi counters. “And I think you’re trying to calculate a way out that doesn’t involve asking for help.”
It’s only normal to feel insulted when your doctor all but calls you out, but Trinity also feels a heavier undertone to it, too heavy for her frail shoulders to bear.
“You don’t know me,” is all she says. There’s less bite in her words than she’d like.
“No,” Al-Hashimi agrees. “Not yet.”
“People always say that,” Trinity huffs out a breath, shaking her head. “That they get it, that they see something, and then-”
A beat.
“What happens then?” Al-Hashimi asks.
“Then they stop trying.”
The admission slips out before Trinity can dress it up. She presses her lips together immediately after, as though she can snatch the words right back.
There’s a moment where all Dr. Al-Hashimi does is blink at her, unmoving, just letting the air between them exist, then she leans back on the chair with crossed legs and something akin to a deadpan in her eyebrows.
“And you expect the same from me,” she says, not as a question.
“It’s not exactly a wild assumption,” Trinity shrugs. “You’re temporary.”
Al-Hashimi nods again, accepting the premise without agreeing to it. “I am here for a limited time, that part is true.”
“Right,” Trinity narrows her eyes. “So what’s the point?”
“The point-” Al-Hashimi says carefully. “-is what happens while I am here.”
Trinity makes a noise at the back of her throat. “And what, you’re going to fix it in a few sessions?”
“I don’t fix people, Trinity. You aren’t a broken piece of equipment in the trauma bay,” Al-Hashimi sighs, her voice dry and devoid of the saccharine sympathy Trinity usually expects. “You’re much too smart to be fixed by someone you don’t even like anyway.”
Trinity looks at the clock on the wall - ten minutes left. “Then this is just a supervised waiting room for me.”
“Is that what it feels like?” Al-Hashimi tilts her head. “Waiting? Because looking at you, it feels like you’re counting down.”
The air in the room suddenly feels very thin. Trinity’s hand, still inside her jacket pocket, tightens around the mini eggs. One of the sugar shells snaps - a tiny, muffled sound like a bone breaking. She doesn't answer, because she doesn’t trust herself to not accidentally admit that the infinite equation in her head has a solution now, and that the solution is a zero.
Al-Hashimi doesn't push for the answer. Instead, she looks down on her pen, then back at Trinity.
“You mentioned that people stop trying,” the doctor says quietly. “I suspect that’s because you make it very hard for them to stay. You create a desert and then wonder why no one brings you water. Even Dr. McKay - you call her Cassie, you’ve built a rapport, but you’re still sitting here with your jacket on, ready to run. You don’t trust her any more than you trust me. You just find her easier to ignore.”
“I don’t ignore her,” Trinity bites out, though it feels like a weak defense.
“You ignore her advice, and you ignore the safety plans. McKay has that part circled in red,” Al-Hashimi stands up, signaling the end of the hour. It’s abrupt, and a little jarring if Trinity is honest. “I’m not going to try to save you today, Trinity. That would be a waste of both our expertise.”
Trinity stands up too, her legs feeling like lead. “Yeah, don’t bother.”
“However,” Dr. Al-Hashimi continues, stepping around her desk. She doesn’t reach out, but she stands firm. “I am a psychiatrist, and you are a doctor. We both know what red flags look like, and we both know why you’re staring at the floor tiles instead of the exit. You get what I’m trying to say, right?”
Yes, she gets it. She gets the lecture, the call 911 if you feel unsafe, and the forced commitment.
Al-Hashimi hands her a small, professional card.
“I’ll see you next Thursday at the same time,” she says. “Before then, I want you to start the hourglass anew. Or at least, try.”
Trinity takes the card, her fingers trembling just enough for it to be visible. She doesn’t say goodbye, or respond to Al-Hashimi’s request, just turns and walks out. Because it’s easier this way, despite the hallway feeling even longer than before.
As she passes the trash can by the exit, she looks at the crushed packet of mini eggs in her hand, thinks about throwing them away and subsequently thinks about Dennis’ big, sad eyes.
She puts them back in her pocket instead.
II.
Trinity is twenty minutes early. It’s not like she wants to be, but loud isn’t quite enough to describe the confines of her apartment anymore, and her couch is starting to feel like quick sand. Hence, she sits in the same plastic chair in the waiting room, watching a different daytime talk show on the mounted TV, her hands shoved deep into her pockets.
This time, there’s no chocolate handed to her.
When she’s finally called in, Al-Hashimi doesn’t look surprised to see her.
“Trinity, come in.”
The office is exactly the same - same lack of Cassie-warmth, lack of the cup of french roast she usually brews for Trinity before their session begins. Trinity sits, but doesn’t lean back this time. She stays perched on the edge of the cushion, like she’s bracing for some kind of impact that won't come.
“How has the week been without the hospital to distract you?” Al-Hashimi offers a direct hit.
Fuck small talks.
“It’s been thrilling,” Trinity says, her voice dripping with a dry, bitter irony. “I’ve discovered that I’m exceptionally good at rotting in bed, and also arguing with Dennis over literally everything. I might add them to my CV.”
“It must be difficult, going from the pace of an ER to this,” Al-Hashimi gestures to the quiet room. “When you aren’t saving lives, who are you, Trinity?”
That’s a question Trinity has been wondering for as long as her recollections go. The definition of self is no less complicated than the thousands of clinical procedures she’s performed over the years, but she thinks it goes a little something along the lines of: Langdon telling her she doesn’t have what it takes to be an ER doctor, Robby implying that she’s becoming a good doctor - that almost is better than a definitive no, her soundless fallout with Garcia some time ago with no closure in sight. All points to the fact that Trinity is nothing but a hollow skeleton chasing after the idea of being whole.
In conclusion, the answer to Al-Hashimi’s question is simply: not enough.
Out loud, she says, “I’m a person who needs a signature so she can go back to work.”
“You’re an adrenaline junkie who doesn’t know what to do with herself when the shock wears off,” Al-Hashimi says matter-of-factly, opening her notebook but doesn’t make to write anything down. “You mentioned a Dennis earlier? Tell me more about him.”
“Dennis,” Trinity repeats, the name feeling like a soft bruise in her throat. She shifts on the couch, tries her hardest to not feel offended by Al-Hashimi’s earlier comment, fails and chalks it up to fatigue. “He’s my roommate. He’s also an ER doctor, we did our residency together. He’s the kind of person who sees through certain things that aren’t immediately obvious to others, even though he’s not exactly the best with words.”
“He sounds like a stabilizing force,” Al-Hashimi observes.
“He’s a fucking nuisance,” Trinity argues while she runs her fingers through her greasy locks. “He leaves his dirty clothes everywhere, he eats all my avocados as soon as they ripen, and he pauses the TV to ask a bajillion questions as if I was the one who directed Ozark.”
Trinity pauses to take a deep breath.
“I don’t like that he notices when I’m off. He leaves those stupid protein bars on my desk because he knows I forget to eat when the board is full,” she licks her chapped lips wet, and continues, “He’s a good guy, too good for a place that breaks people as fast as the ER.”
Al-Hashimi watches her, her expression unreadable. “And does this good guy know why you’re sitting in this office instead of standing next to him in the trauma bay?”
Trinity’s gaze drops to the loose threads on her sleeves. “He knows I’m on leave for stress. He thinks it’s burnout, and he thinks I just need a few weeks of sunlight and a hobby,” Then she lets out a short, jagged breath. “I let him think that. It’s easier than explaining to him how the sunlight doesn’t reach where I am.”
“And why is that?”
Because Dennis Whitaker possesses one of the saddest, most genuine pairs of eyes Trinity’s ever met, and they don’t need more fuel for the negative energy she carries with her. With a personality so kind, Dennis deserves someone who knows how to smile through gloomy days, the kind of smile that isn’t rehearsed behind four walls. Trinity doesn’t fit in any of those criteria.
“Because it would ruin him,” Trinity admits. “Dennis looks at the world like it’s something that can be fixed if you just apply enough pressure to the wound, which is ironic considering he’s had so many people die on his watch, but he never lost hope. I don’t want him to carry the burden of my exhaustion, and he doesn’t need to be my amateur therapist just because HR decided I’m a liability.”
“Is that what you think you are? A liability?”
“In my line of work, you’re either an asset or a liability. There isn't much room for a middle ground.”
“What I hear is you’re very protective of Dennis’ energy,” Al-Hashimi notes, leaning back. “I find it interesting. You treat him like fragile glass, yet you treat yourself like a disposable tool. I wonder where that hierarchy started? You said last week that you don’t care about authority, but you seem to live by a very strict set of internal laws about what you’re allowed to need.”
The conversation pivots, the lens widening from the ER to the architecture of Trinity's life.
“Everyone has rules,” Trinity confirms.
“Most people allow a bit of leeway in their rules,” Al-Hashimi tells her. Trinity already knows that, and she wrestles with the urge to roll her eyes. “Was there a Dennis in your life when you were a child? Someone who checked if you had eaten? Someone who cared if you had slept?”
Her mind flashes to a hallway. A long, pristine stretch of hardwood where her footsteps had to be silent. She remembers her father’s office door, always closed. She briefly recalls her mother’s voice, always raised and sharp enough to draw blood. Why are you crying? Stop crying, Trinity, go wash your face.
“I had a tutor,” she says, keeping her voice flat to prevent those memories from resurfacing like spring. “And a gymnastics coach. I had a schedule that was managed down to the fifteen-minute increment. I didn’t need a Dennis, I needed to get into med school.”
Al-Hashimi has her eyebrows raised. “Where did that motivation come from?”
If Trinity thinks back to the speckled fragments of her youth, she doesn’t find monsters. She finds a nicely renovated house and parents who were always there - physically, at least. They were the ones who paid for the best coaches, who sat in the front row of every practice with perfect posture, who set the bar too high for a girl who was then only four-foot tall and couldn't reach the picket fences without a stool.
“To be something,” Trinity says, turning her attention on a small, insignificant scuff on the leg of Al-Hashimi’s desk. “My parents loved me, I know they did. Their love is just twisted. If I wasn’t being the perfect kid, the wall started to crumble. It’s kind of hard to explain loving someone who makes you feel like you only exist when you’re performing.”
“It’s not hard to explain,” Al-Hashimi says, and for the first time, her voice loses that clinical edge. It’s still firm, but it sounds softer, landing around them with a muted thud. “It’s called conditional belonging. It’s a very sophisticated type of starvation.”
Trinity looks up. The word starvation rings in the room like a bell.
“I wouldn’t call it starving,” she scoffs, a hollow, broken sound. “I have a career, I have an apartment. I have Dennis, Mel, Samira-”
“You have a life built on the same hardwood hallway you grew up in,” Al-Hashimi interrupts, and it’s a little rude, really, but she seems to always know what to say to graze on Trinity’s buttons, seems to know exactly what the road ahead looks like. Maybe Trinity should’ve gone into emergency psychiatry instead. “You love your parents because they gave you the tools to be a doctor, but you hate them because they never gave you the permission to be a child.”
Trinity bites the inside of her cheek. When she’d mention her parents to Cassie, Cassie would offer a sympathetic tilt of the head and talk about setting boundaries or self-care. It felt like a warm blanket, but it didn’t stop the shivering.
Al-Hashimi doesn’t feel like a blanket, no. Instead, she feels like the truth untold.
“I don’t know,” Trinity whispers, shaking her head. “I don’t know how to love them and hate them at the same time.”
“That’s okay,” Al-Hashimi says simply. “The human brain is capable of holding both. It’s the part where you wake up and pretend you’ve had a good sleep that’s killing you. Not the hate, not the love, but the mask you’re putting on.”
It’s a strange sensation to have the words laid out for you, like a hairline crack forming in a dam she’s spent decades reinforcing. She expects Al-Hashimi to push further, to demand a breakthrough, but the woman just sits there steady as a lighthouse.
“I don’t know how to stop,” Trinity admits, her voice so quiet it barely carries across the air.
“You don’t have to stop today,” Al-Hashimi reaffirms softly, and she finally writes something down, her movements fluid and calm. “You just have to sit here. The hardwood ends at the door, Trinity. In here, you’re not Dr. Santos.”
In this silence, Trinity comes to a terrifying realization. Cassie was a friend, and friends can be disappointed, friends can be burdened. But Al-Hashimi is a clinician who has seen the worst of the human psyche and hasn’t blinked once. She’s not a friend - she’s a fortress.
And for a split second, the room doesn’t feel like an interrogation chamber. It feels like the only place in the city where Trinity doesn’t have to keep her shoulders squared.
“In here, you’re allowed to be flawed.”
III.
Today, Trinity wakes up feeling like her heart is tethered somewhere far away. The coffee she made tastes horrifyingly like soap, and she can’t find the energy in her to be pissed at Dennis for using up all her avocados last night to make guacamole for his farm girlfriend.
She isn’t wearing the black scrubs of her authority or the performance clothes of a functioning human. She is in an oversized grey sweatshirt she picked out from the pile of dirty laundry that has laid stagnant for weeks, months, god knows. Her hair is pulled back in a way that looks like a ten-year-old tried to put them together rather than styled.
Hollowed out, that’s how she would describe her current appearance. There is a specific kind of stillness that comes over a person when they stop fighting the current and just let it take them.
“You’re very quiet today, Trinity,” Al-Hashimi notes. Her voice is a low hum, steady and grounding, but her eyes are sharp, scanning Trinity for probably the red flags they both know by heart.
“I’ve been thinking about the hospital,” Trinity says, her voice lacking the jagged irony that usually protects her. “I used to think of it as a ledger. I thought, if I can’t save myself, maybe I can make it up by saving other people. If I could just pull enough people back from the edge, the universe would owe me a seat at the table.”
Al-Hashimi doesn’t say anything. She waits.
“But being at home, and having all this time to just think, I realized it’s a zero-sum game,” Trinity finally looks at her, and she attempts to muster a smile, but the light in her eyes is gone. “I spent ten years thinking I was a savior, but I was just a sieve. I’d hold onto the water for a few minutes, maybe an hour, and then it would all just run through my fingers eventually. They all die, Dr. Al-Hashimi. Maybe not on my table, maybe not that day, but they all go. So what is the point, then?”
“The point is the time in between,” Al-Hashimi says firmly.
“No,” Trinity shakes her head slowly. “The point is that I’m exhausted. I thought I was building a wall between me and the silence, but I was just piling up bodies. I once had a kid come in with a ruptured spleen and we lost him before we could even get the drape on. There was a mother who died from a heart attack right in front of her daughters. Right in front of me, who was supposed to save her. I couldn’t save everyone, couldn’t save myself, so what’s the fucking point?”
The admission lands in the air, heavy and thick like molasses. It’s the most dangerous thing Trinity has ever said because it isn’t a cry for help - it’s a conclusion she’s decided to draw for herself the moment she opened her eyes this morning.
Al-Hashimi stands up, but not the clinical session is over kind of movement. Trinity’s eyes follow her as she walks around her desk, breaking that professional barrier, and sits in the chair directly across from Trinity. Close enough that Trinity can see the genuine, unblinking concern in the doctor’s dark eyes.
“Trinity, look at me.”
Trinity slowly brings her gaze up.
“You’re doing that thing again,” Al-Hashimi says, her tone dropping to a register that is both fierce and protective. “You are calculating your worth based on your utility, and you are looking at your life like a medical chart you’ve already decided is non-viable. But you’re not a patient on a gurney, and I’m not going to let you triage yourself out of existence.”
“You’re a substitute,” Trinity’s lip trembles, just a fraction. “You’re supposed to sign the papers and let me go.”
“I’m a doctor just as much as you are,” Al-Hashimi retorts, her gaze iron-clad. “And I’m telling you that the math you’re doing is wrong because you’re forgetting the most important variable.”
“Which is?”
“That fact that I’m still sitting here. The fact that Dennis is probably really lonely without his best friend at the hospital with him, and the fact that Cassie would never forgive herself if she doesn’t get to see you before she comes back.”
Al-Hashimi reaches into her pocket. She doesn’t pull out the namecard from the first session. Instead, she takes a scrap of paper from her notebook and writes a string of numbers on it, then presses it into Trinity’s hand, her fingers warm against Trinity’s death-cold skin. It’s the warmest hand she’s ever touched.
“This is my personal number,” Al-Hashimi tells her. “Not the clinic’s. Mine.”
Trinity stares at the paper and blinks twice. “You’re not supposed to do that. It’s a boundary violation. Cassie never-”
“I don’t care what Cassie did,” Al-Hashimi cuts her off, her grip tightening around Trinity’s hands, and Trinity finds that she doesn’t want Al-Hashimi to let go. Ever. “I am the one in the room with you right now, and I’m telling you that if the silence in that apartment gets too loud, if you feel like it’s hard to breathe through your thoughts - you call me. You don’t ask for permission, and you don’t worry about the rules, you call me. Do you understand?”
Trinity looks at the number, then back at the woman who has become something of a backbone she never asked for. Al-Hashimi, who took one look at Trinity’s dull, bleak self and decided she was worth the time. Al-Hashimi, who right now is looking at Trinity through deep, sincere eyes, yet Trinity is unable to fathom the soul behind them.
“Why?” Trinity asks.
“Because,” Al-Hashimi says, standing her ground. “I don’t stop trying until the heart stops beating. And yours is still going.”
“But you know the protocol,” Trinity stares and stares at the personal number in her hand, drinks in the digits and etches them into the back of her brain for reasons she can’t unpack at the moment. “I just told you the world is a zero-sum game and I’m the remainder. By every metric in the DSM-5, you should be calling the orderlies.”
Al-Hashimi doesn’t move toward the phone, doesn’t even spare the door a second glance. Her attention is on Trinity and Trinity only, undivided and scorching hot.
“I could,” Al-Hashimi admits. “I could put you in a room with no laces in your shoes and a paper gown. And you would sit there, and you would hate me, and you would spend every second of those 72 hours perfecting the lie you’d tell me to get out. Am I wrong?”
Trinity swallows hard, curls her fingers around the lines of Al-Hashimi’s palm. “No, I’d be the best patient you’ve ever seen. I’d pass every evaluation with flying colors just to get back to my apartment so I could drown in eerie silence.”
“Yeah,” Al-Hashimi leans forward, her eyes pinning Trinity to the chair. “An involuntary hold works for people who are impulsive. It doesn’t work for doctors who know how to cheat the system. If I lock you up, I lose you. The second that door clicks shut, you’ll never tell me the truth again.”
“So you’re just, letting me go?” Trinity asks, the disbelief finally breaking through the numbness. It’s so ridiculous that she lets out a sound between a laugh and a snort. “That’s malpractice.”
“It’s a calculated risk,” Al-Hashimi shrugs. “I am betting on the fact that you still have enough of a ‘doctor’ left in you to respect an agreement. I am giving you a choice: we can do the 72-hour hold, or you can give me your word that you will use that number before you use a blade or a bottle. One is a cage, the other is a contract.”
Trinity glances down at the scrap of paper. It feels heavier than any medical textbook she’s ever carried.
“Why on earth would you trust me?” Trinity whispers. “I don’t even trust myself.”
“Because you’re still sitting here,” Al-Hashimi tells her. “You could have walked out the moment I mentioned home. You could have stopped talking. But you stayed, and that tells me there is a part of you - however small - that is still fighting for a purpose.”
The fortress isn't just protecting her, it's challenging her, mocking her, insulting her, everything in between, and Trinity’s never been keen on losing. Al-Hashimi is treating her like an equal, not a liability, and that respect is the first thing that has actually made Trinity feel like some semblance of a human being in weeks.
“I can’t promise anything, Dr. Al-Hashimi,” Trinity says, the words feeling like they’re being pulled from her lungs. “You’re putting your medical license on the line just to keep me out of a ward. I think that’s incredibly stupid of you.”
“Well, I’m only human. And like I said: in here, we’re all a bit flawed,” At this, Al-Hashimi smiles - it’s not the superficial ones she puts on when Trinity says something painfully unfunny, but one of those smiles that reminisces an orb of gold. The sun, Trinity thinks, and the back of her eyelids burn hot white. “Look, I’m not doing this as a psychiatrist, but as a regular civilian who currently holds the other end of your anchor. Plus, you’re not technically my patient.”
And Trinity laughs, really laughs, managing to find comical absurdity despite the situation and tells Al-Hashimi exactly that. “Aren’t you slick.”
“You can learn a lot from me,” Al-Hashimi stands up slowly, still maintaining the gravity of the moment. The movement forces their hands to separate, and the abrupt loss of contact renders Trinity a little disappointed. How silly of her. “Now go home, Trinity. Order takeout, watch something with a happy ending, and I will see you Thursday.”
Trinity stands, her legs feeling wobbly and numb, but the air in the room feels slightly more breathable. She walks to the door, but stops with her hand on the knob.
“What happens if I don’t call?”
Al-Hashimi looks at her, her face indecipherable, always the unmoving enigma. “Then I’ll be at your door with the orderlies and the laces-free shoes. Please don’t make me do that, I’d much rather just hear your voice.”
Trinity nods once, a short, sharp movement, and slips out into the hallway. She doesn't throw the paper away. She tucks it into the innermost pocket of her sweatshirt, right against her ribs.
***
If the quarter-life realizations won’t kill her, then the guilt will.
The apartment is pitch black, save for the rhythmic, mocking blink of the digital clock by the counter. To Trinity, it looks like a heart monitor flatlining in slow motion.
She is sitting on the cold tiles of the bathroom floor, the only place that feels honest anymore. Her back is against the tub, and the snap-off blade feels light in her hand - insignificant for something that carries so much finality - as she stares at her wrist, tracing the blue veins with a clinical eye and identifying the anatomy as if she’s prepping a patient for an arterial line.
Not enough.
The phrase repeats in real time with her beating pulse. Trinity wasn’t a good enough daughter to earn a love that didn't feel like a business contract. She wasn't a good enough friend to let Dennis in without feeling like a thief, leeching off of his kindness with nothing valuable to give in return. She wasn't a good enough doctor to stop the sieve from leaking.
Distantly, her mind brings her back to a patient who got shot in the neck and bled out before she could get him to the OR. As his doctor, Trinity wishes she had the words for this guy’s wife, his kids, the desperate cry that she should’ve been the one to die that day, not him. The world seems to have a knack for taking the people who are loved, ripping holes in the fabric of their souls, while someone like Trinity is allowed to skate by unscathed.
More consciously, she thinks of Dennis’ face, the way he’d look if he was the one to find her. He’d blame himself - he’d go through their messages, wondering if there was an important text he missed, or a protein bar he forgot to leave. She is a burden to him now, but she’d be a ghost to him forever. A ghost is lighter than a burden.
The blade clicks - one notch. A tiny, plastic sound that feels like a gunshot in the silence. Her breath hitches shallow from the jarring loudness in her ears, the infinite equation beating relentlessly on her eardrums and the numbers finally aligning into a single, perfect zero. She presses the edge of the metal against her skin, just enough to feel the cold bite, just enough to realize how easy it would be to finally end it all.
But then, her sweatshirt shifts. The same one she’d worn to the clinic, and has been wearing for the past five days. It reeks of body odour and food, but at this moment, hygiene is the least of her concern.
The scrap of paper against her ribs crinkles.
I don't stop trying until the heart stops beating. And yours is still going.
Trinity’s hand trembles so violently the blade skips. She drops it, and it clatters onto the tile with a hollow, pathetic sound. All she can do is reach into her pocket with fumbling, numb fingers and pull out the crumpled note. The ink is slightly smeared from the heat of her body, but the numbers are clear.
What is there to lose? The math is already at zero. If Al-Hashimi is wrong, Trinity can always come back to the bathroom floor. But if she’s right, then.
She picks up her phone. Her vision is blurred by tears she was never allowed to cry, her chest heaving with the weight of thirty years of suppressed noise. She dials the number, her thumb hovering over the call button for an eternity.
Fuck it. The phone rings once, twice.
“Trinity?”
Al-Hashimi’s voice isn't the professional, measured tone from the office. It’s alert, raw, and immediate, as if she’s been sitting in the dark waiting for the signal. As if she’s been waiting for Trinity all along.
“I can't do it,” Trinity sobs, the sound finally breaking out of her, primal and ugly. She’s doubled over on the floor now, clutching her knees to her chest in her most pathetic form. “I want to do it, but the silence is too loud. I’m too much, Dr. Al-Hashimi. I’m just too much and not enough at the same time.”
“Stay with me,” Al-Hashimi’s voice comes through the speaker, a little shaky yet unbreakable - the fortress across the wire. “Breathe, just breathe into the phone so I can hear you. The hardwood ends at the door, remember? I’m right here."
“I’m a mess,” Trinity gasps, her forehead pressed against the cold porcelain of the tub. “I’m a disaster. You shouldn’t have given me your number, you should have just let me go.”
“I don’t make mistakes in triage, Trinity. I told you - you’re the most important variable. Now, tell me what’s in your hand.”
Trinity looks at the blade on the floor, three inches away. “Nothing. It’s- it’s on the floor.”
“Good, leave it there. Keep talking to me. Tell me about the silence, and don’t stop until I tell you to.”
Trinity closes her eyes, and for the first time in her life, she lets the performance die. She talks. She bleeds words instead of secrets, her voice shaking as she tells her anchor everything she was never allowed to say. And on the other side, Al-Hashimi listens, refusing to let the line go slack.
“I’m tired,” Trinity sighs, feeling her body go limp as a surrender to the exhaustion eating away her bones for years and years. “I’m tired, but you know I’m trying, right? I’ve been trying so hard.”
On the other end of the line, there’s some movements and rustling, some ringing of keys, too, and Trinity can’t really tell if Al-Hashimi is there to listen anymore. Her suspicion is shut down when Al-Hashimi’s voice comes through, “I know, Trinity, I know.”
It becomes increasingly harder to breathe in this tiny space, and Trinity’s sobs start coming in jagged gasps that feel like glass in her lungs, the phone clutched to her ear so hard she’s sure her knuckles are crystal white. No, she can’t stay here, the room is too small and the night is too loud and her heart is in three places-
“I can’t stay,” Her voice rises, hitting a pitch of hysteria she doesn’t recognize. “The walls are too clean, Dr. Al-Hashimi, they’re too quiet. It’s like my mother is standing in the corner waiting for me to fix my face, but my face won’t fucking fix. I need her to understand that it’ll never be fixed.”
“Trinity, listen to my voice,” Al-Hashimi’s tone is like a physical hand on her shoulder, steadying and stern. “You are having a panic response. It’s a storm, and storms pass. I need you to do something for me right now.”
“I can’t do anything,” Trinity huffs out, scratching at her crusty knees. She looks at the snap-off blade, then away, then back again. The magnetic pull of the exit intensifies by the second. “I can’t do anything right.”
“You can. Text me your address, Trinity. Right now.”
“What? No, you- you can’t. That’s not how this works. It’s 8pm, it’s afterhours, you can’t-”
“I am the person on the other end of the line, and I am telling you to send it. Now. Or I call 911 and they’ll take you in a siren, and we both know you don’t want that. Text me, Trinity.”
Trinity’s fingers are trembling, fumbling with the screen, but she sends it. The next twenty minutes are a blur of static. Al-Hashimi stays on the line, her voice a constant, rhythmic tether, talking Trinity through the rising tide of her heart rate. When the knock finally comes at the door, Trinity doesn't even have the strength to walk. She drags her feet to the doorway, her sweatshirt disgustingly damp with salt and sweat, and fumbles with the lock.
The door swings open.
Dr. Al-Hashimi doesn't look like a doctor. She’s wearing a coat over casual clothes, her hair wind-blown, her face etched with a focused, fierce concern. She doesn't wait for an invitation, either, just steps right in, closes the door, and follows Trinity back to the only place that feels small enough to survive in: the bathroom, a safe space Trinity can curl into herself where the judgemental eyes of the world can’t reach her.
Al-Hashimi doesn't try to pull Trinity up. Instead, she sinks onto the cold, hard tiles right next to Trinity.
“The hardwood ends here,” Al-Hashimi says softly, echoing the sanctuary they built in the office.
Trinity collapses. It’s not a graceful fall, it’s a total structural failure. She leans into Al-Hashimi’s side, her head hitting the doctor's shoulder, and the first episode hits her like a physical blow. She starts to shake - violent, rhythmic tremors that have nothing to do with the cold, but has everything to do with what she’s been holding back since she was merely a child, a sound that says I’m not enough, I’m not enough, please see me.
Al-Hashimi doesn't flinch. She wraps an arm around Trinity’s trembling shoulders, pulling her into a firm, grounding hold, soothing her through the touches of someone who is there to understand, to stay.
“Let it out,” Al-Hashimi murmurs against her hair. “Give the noise to me, I can hold it.”
For hours, the cycle repeats. Trinity spirals into an exhausted numbness, only to be jerked back into a panic by the ghost of a patient she couldn't save or the memory of her father’s closed door. Al-Hashimi holds her through it, her presence a silent, stubborn refusal to let Trinity drift away.
She holds Trinity’s hands when they try to claw at her own skin, wipes the hair from Trinity’s damp forehead and sits on the cold floor, her own back surely aching, but she doesn't move an inch.
Slowly, the tremors begin to subside. The shallow breaths turn into long, shuddering sighs. The equation finally stops looping, replaced by the steady, human sound of Al-Hashimi’s breathing.
Trinity’s eyelids are a heavy weight. The bathroom light is harsh, but feels like a vigil now that all that’s left in her is the lulling sense of sleep, hoping that her dreams are kinder to her than reality.
“You’re still here,” Trinity whispers, her voice completely wrecked.
“Yeah,” Al-Hashimi says, her vibration a soft reassurance in the dark. “I’m not going anywhere, okay? Sleep, Trinity, I’ve got the watch.”
As the grey light of pre-dawn starts to creep under the bathroom door, Trinity finally stops fighting and allows herself to be surrounded by the scent of Al-Hashimi’s coat and the solid reality of someone who didn't stop trying.
“I want you to live,” she hears Al-Hashimi’s whispered voice in the final fragments of consciousness. “Live. If not for yourself, then for me.”
Tonight, Trinity falls into the first dreamless, honest sleep she’s had in years.
IV.
Trinity melts into the soft fabric of the cushion, her body feeling heavy, drained of the frantic energy that had nearly consumed her two days ago. She’s wearing an old, soft sweater, and her face is scrubbed clean - thankfully not the fixed face of her mother’s demands, but the honest, pale skin of a woman who has survived a wreck.
Al-Hashimi sits in the chair opposite Trinity, a cup of tea in her hands, steam curling into the space between them. When she looks at Trinity, it is unlike the clinical scan for symptoms. It’s more like a look of recognition.
“You look like you actually slept,” Al-Hashimi says. Her voice is lower today, softer, stripped of the sharp edges she used to keep Trinity in line.
“I did,” Trinity admits, her voice still a little raspy. She looks at Al-Hashimi’s hands - the same hands that had held her steady when she was falling apart. “I didn’t think I knew how to do that anymore.”
Trinity looks out the window at the grey Pittsburgh skyline. The silence in the room isn't awkward but comfortable, a bit like a shared secret between two children.
“I keep thinking about the floor. I keep thinking that I should be embarrassed. I should be worried about my career, or what you think of me, or the fact that I let my substitute doctor see me at my absolute worst.”
She turns her gaze back to Al-Hashimi.
“You know,” Al-Hashimi starts, setting the tea down to learn forward, resting her elbows on her knees. The movement feels informal, human. “I really don’t care about the doctor I saw on the floor, I care about the person. The doctor is a role you play, but the person who reached out in the dark? That’s the one I wanted to meet.”
“You stayed,” Trinity licks her lips. “The whole night. You didn't have to.”
“I wanted to,” Al-Hashimi replies. The statement is simple, but it carries a weight that shifts the entire foundation of their relationship, and Trinity is made aware that what Al-Hashimi did for her that night wasn’t a medical necessity. It was a choice.
A silent, inexplicable pull settles between them. Because doctors aren’t supposed to show up at their patient’s door late at night to negotiate the conditions to live, or rock the patient to dreamland in hopes that they would wake up with a slightly less pessimistic outlook in life. It’s in the way Al-Hashimi’s gaze lingers on Trinity’s face a second too long, and the way Trinity doesn't look away that she knows they’ve crossed the professional barrier, and now they’re both walking on thin ice.
“I’m not sure I know how to go back to being Dr. Santos anymore,” Trinity says, her voice small.
The gaze from Al-Hashimi is careful, like she’s finalizing in her brain as to what is appropriate to say and what isn’t. Eventually, she settles on this:
“Tell you what,” she says, letting out a tense breath. “I was in Kabul in 2020. I worked in the maternity ward at Dasht-e-Barchi when the gunmen came. I spent hours hiding in a safe room with mothers and newborns while the world outside turned into a bloodbath.”
Trinity feels her mouth go dry. She knows that name - Dasht-e-Barchi. It’s a footnote in medical journals about trauma, but to hear it spoken aloud, to see the way Al-Hashimi’s jaw tightens at the memory, makes it terrifyingly real.
“When it was over,” Al-Hashimi continues. “I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a doctor anymore. It was like all the fight in me got drained away, because when I looked at my hands, I saw the blood I couldn't stop. I felt like a sieve, too.”
Trinity leans forward, her own pain momentarily eclipsed by the weight of Al-Hashimi’s confession. "How did you- how did you stay? How did you keep going?"
“I didn't, for a long time,” Al-Hashimi admits, finally meeting Trinity's eyes. “I had to be on escitalopram and propranolol after I came back from Kabul because I’d forgotten how to take a full breath without feeling guilty, without feeling like I’m breathing on behalf of all the mothers that lost their lives that day. I’m still on the meds, actually, and I’m not scared to admit that there are times where my chest still gets tight and dreams get too real.”
She reaches out without touching Trinity, instead just resting her hand on the table between them, palm up. An invitation
“But dreams - nightmare or not, you always wake up from it, yeah?”
Trinity knows, from the cadence of Al-Hashimi’s words, that this is a question she asks not because she wants an answer, but because it simply sounds better this way.
“I recognized the look in your eyes on that first day, Trinity. It wasn't just burnout, it was the look of someone who has seen the sun go down and isn't sure they want to see it rise again. I stayed on your floor the other night because I know what it’s like to be the only person in the room who can’t find the door. So if you don’t want to be Dr. Santos anymore, that’s totally okay. Be Trinity for a while, be you.”
There’s a strange, magnetic tug in her chest that tells her she’s no longer in a frantic need for a savior anymore. It’s a deep, quiet yearning to relearn the simplicity of life, even if some of her days still draw trickles of blood. But she doesn’t know how to do it herself, doesn’t know how to want that for herself without bridging the few inches of air between her and Al-Hashimi.
She risks a glance at Al-Hashimi’s open hand and comes to the painful realization that the woman sitting before her is a survivor of something that should’ve broken her. Yet she stands bright and tall.
“I can hear your thoughts from here,” Al-Hashimi pulls her right out of her little trance. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking-” Trinity swallows as she fights the urge to remind herself of the warmth in Al-Hashimi’s hands. “-about how I’ve spent my whole life trying to be the person who holds the door open for everyone else. And not once have I ever actually looked at the person standing on the other side.”
She pauses, her heart hammering a low, heavy rhythm against her ribs.
“I’m thinking that you’re the first person to walk through that door and sat down in the dark with me, so I guess I’m wondering-” she forces herself to look away from Al-Hashimi’s hands to her own, intertwining her fingers in a messy tangle. “-I’m wondering if you’re as tired as I am.”
“I’m very tired,” Al-Hashimi confesses, and flips her hand palm down, long fingers tapping on the wooden surface. “But I’m not too tired to stay.”
“That’s a bold thing to say to your patient,” The words are a small, jagged thing. “Especially after seeing the worst of it. Most people would’ve called the paramedics and washed their hands, but you’re here, telling me your life story and looking at me like I’m not a lost cause.”
“I would’ve thought I made it pretty clear that you’re not just a patient anymore,” Al-Hashimi presses her lips into a thin line, and her voice is low, dangerously honest. “You’re a human being who is trying to remember how to breathe. And it turns out, I’d quite like to be there when you finally do.”
They’ve had many silences and pauses between their conversations, but this one is the lightest of them all. Trinity feels a sudden, irrational urge to close the gap, but it’s not to say she wants to fix her trauma or ask for a prescription, she really just wants to feel the warmth of another person who understands the weight of being a sieve.
As an alternative, she moves her hand, and it’s a slow, tentative inching across the wood of the table. Her hand doesn’t touch Al-Hashimi’s, stopping when her pinky finger is just a hair’s breadth away from the doctor’s palm.
“I don’t know how to just be Trinity, either,” Trinity admits, her gaze fixed on their near-touch. “From adolescence to adulthood it feels like I’m being flayed alive.”
“It’s supposed to hurt,” Al-Hashimi murmurs. “But you don’t have to do it at the hospital, and you certainly don’t have to do it in that apartment alone.”
“Then where?”
It is this question that makes Al-Hashimi look at her - really look at her, with an expression that Trinity has finally learned how to translate. Something like a promise.
“Here,” Al-Hashimi says. “For as long as you need, I’ll be here.”
The dam breaks loose. Trinity lets her finger drift that last fraction of an inch, her skin brushing against Al-Hashimi’s, and it’s the faintest of contacts, but it feels like a revelation. In all honesty, Trinity can’t remember the last time she reached for someone without it being a plea for survival, and Al-Hashimi is the closest, tangible thing to a neutrality that doesn’t hurt.
“You’re crazy,” Trinity tells her. “You should diagnose yourself as clinically insane.”
Al-Hashimi snorts at her, then pulls the corner of her lips up into the tiniest crescent. “The diagnosis was made a long time ago.”
Before Trinity leaves for the day, Al-Hashimi calls out from her desk.
“Trinity?” She says. “You can call me Baran.”
V.
The office is so bright today it threatens to burn Trinity’s retina, though it doesn’t feel like the weather has changed much. Trinity sits in her usual spot, but she isn’t clutching her jacket shut or counting the floor tiles. She finds the golden plate with Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi written in cursive ten times more interesting.
Across from her sits Baran, her notebook closed and resting on her lap as if the evaluation period of their time together has reached its natural conclusion. Which, Trinity will learn in a few minutes, that it has.
“You’re not bouncing your knee,” Baran observes.
Trinity looks down at her legs, then back up. “I think I ran out of things to run away from, or maybe I’m just tired of the cardio.”
“I hope it’s the good kind of tired?” Baran says softly, and Trinity doesn’t really have an answer for that. The only thing at the forefront of her mind is she’s exhausted beyond comprehension, so maybe it’s high time she takes a temporary, much needed break.
Her shoulders come up to a shrug. Then, Baran’s expression shifts, a subtle tightening of her professional mask that Trinity now knows how to spot from a mile away.
“Cassie called this morning,” Baran informs.
The name should feel like a cold splash of water, but Trinity finds that she can breathe through it quite easy. “She’s back?”
“She’ll be in the office on Monday, and your primary care will revert back to her,” Baran pauses, her gaze dropping to her own hands for a split second before meeting Trinity’s again. “I’ve already briefed her on your progress, so you shouldn’t have to spend the whole hour reciting what happened in the past four weeks.”
What hits her chest is a sharp, palpable pang of loss. It’s the subtle implication that the substitute is no longer needed, and the sanctuary is being handed back to its original owner, But Trinity doesn’t want the original owner - she wants the woman who sat on the bathroom floor with her.
She wants Baran.
“So that’s it, then?” Trinity tries to keep her voice steady, but she can hear a vulnerability in it that she doesn’t attempt to mask. “I go back to Cassie, I get the okay for the ER, and we go back to being two doctors who happen to work in the same city?”
Baran looks at her, the distance between them feeling short yet far too large. “Legally? Professionally? Yes.”
Trinity swallows. “And personally?”
The hands resting on her sides get pulled back to Baran’s chest into a cross as she looks to the window, at the city they both serve in different ways. “I told you once that I don’t make mistakes in triage, I also don’t walk away from people who have finally learned how to breathe.”
Underneath the best poker face Trinity can muster, she’s a heap of reckless nervousness that she should know how to regulate. She’s done an unsupervised REBOA before during an MCI, stuck her hands into a person’s chest cavity without flinching. But in front of Baran, she wants to throw up all over herself, her knees too weak to reach the bathroom sink to call anything competitive.
“Our professional relationship ends the moment you walk out that door today. And as Dr. Al-Hashimi, I should tell you that it’s healthy to have closure,” Baran takes a slow breath. “But as Baran, I’d like to think the bridge we built wasn’t just temporary.”
Trinity shifts herself closer to the front edge of the cushion, anything to bring herself closer to the woman before her.
“I don’t want closure,” she says. “Hell, I’ve had enough endings to last a lifetime. I just- I want to stay, the same way you did for me.”
It is Baran who decides she’s had enough of whatever boundaries they set for each other, evident in the way her hand hovers in the air between them before finally, gently, tucking a stray lock of hair behind Trinity’s ear. The touch is brief, electric, and entirely outside the rules of the room. Trinity finds that she does not care.
“Then call the number,” Baran’s voice is low. “Not because you’re in a crisis, but because you want to get coffee with someone who wants to learn how you take it.”
Trinity lets out a breath she feels like she’s been holding since the first day she walked into this room and was handed a pack of chocolate she didn’t want. All she wants now is to find out how sweet the chocolate tastes, and learn to map the essence of Baran’s being into the center of her chest.
“Okay,” she says, a promise. “I’ll call, just because.”
“Just because,” Baran agrees, a small, pretty smile breaking through.
She turns to leave, but as she reaches the door, she looks back one last time. Baran is by the chair, the sunlight filtering the window catching the sharp, delicate lines of her face. The substitute is gone, the doctor is away. There is just Baran, and there is just Trinity.
The math adds up perfectly.
VI. (Bonus)
The molded plastic chairs in the Crisis Response Centre are just as uncomfortable as Trinity remembers. The TV in the corner is still playing something loud and inconsequential, and Emma is still at the front desk, offering smiles and sNacks to the weary souls coming through the front door.
When she gets called in, she sees Cassie wearing her familiar, worn zip-up jacket, her posture slouched and easy, and there is a cup of coffee sitting on the table, made exactly the way Trinity likes it. Cassie looks exactly the same, but to Trinity, the sight is almost jarring, like a reminder of old wounds - the version of herself that existed in fragments.
“Hey, Cassie,” Trinity greets. Her legs feel a little light as she crosses the minimal space between them to sit down.
Cassie is still that warm and kind figure, her soft eyes crinkling as she listens to Trinity talk. They go through the official hand-over of the files, and the discussion of Trinity’s impending return to the ER.
“Dr. Al-Hashimi’s notes were thorough,” Cassie says with a small, knowing smile as she closes the folder. “She spoke very highly of your resilience, too. Did she drug you, or you just didn’t like me enough to want to get better? Be honest.”
“It’s good to have you back, Dr. McKay,” Trinity rolls her eyes and lets out a snort as she looks out the window, the same one Baran used to look out of. “She didn’t do anything, really, just stayed when I needed her most. You’re still my favourite shrink, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
At that, Cassie laughs out loud, a genuine sound underneath fluorescent lights. When the hour is up, Trinity stands and welcomes an unexpected hug from Cassie, patting her back in an awkward manner that says missed you too, you can let go now.
She walks down the long hallway, and at the end of it, there is a door. Trinity steps out into the parking lot. The Pittsburgh air is crisp, biting at her cheeks, but she doesn’t pull her shoulders up to her ears and checks the time on her phone instead.
4:43 PM.
A few minutes later, the heavy glass doors of the centre swing open again.
Baran emerges from it in her long charcoal coat, her bag slung over her shoulder. She’s moving with that same contained, sharp energy, but when her eyes scan the lot and land on Trinity, the sharpness melts instantly.
Trinity doesn’t wait for her to bridge the distance, choosing to meet her halfway herself, the asphalt under her feet feeling like the most solid ground she’s ever walked on.
“You’re late,” Trinity says, her voice teasing but soft.
“I had a patient who didn’t want to leave,” Baran says, stopping just inches away, her dark eyes reflecting the fading afternoon sun. “And how was Dr. McKay?”
“She’s great,” Trinity looks at Baran, the magnetic pull in her chest stronger than ever. “Though, she doesn’t think I liked her as much as I liked you.”
“Yeah?” Baran reaches out, uncomplicated and with no hesitation when she takes Trinity’s hand, her fingers interlacing with the spaces of Trinity's palm in the open air. Her skin is warm, a living anchor.
Trinity nods, pretends like her skin isn’t tingling from the mere simplicity of Baran’s touch. “Yeah, you’ll probably hear from her soon. She doesn’t like competition.”
“I’m not too worried, since I already won,” Baran flashes a cocky, shameless grin and Trinity thinks, she could get used to this. “Where are we going?”
Trinity thinks about the bathroom floor, the hardwood hallways, and the dark. Then she looks at the road leading away from the clinic, stretching out toward the city lights and the unknown.
“You like birria tacos?” She asks.
Baran blows out a whistle from her lips, a small, melodic sound that makes Trinity’s heart swell. “Who doesn’t?”