Chapter Text
Trinity stares at the beam in front of her, blocking out the supportive cheers from her teammates and the crowd. She knows what she’s going to do, has run it through her mind several times over at this point. If she does this right, her life will change for the better.
She shrugs her shoulders, salutes, and mounts the beam with grace, opening her routine. She lets muscle memory take over as she begins her routine. Moving through her leaps effortlessly, each landing steady.
The routine flows toward her acro series, where her strength lies.
A back handspring into a layout step-out. Solid. Confident. The kind of series that earns nods from judges and smug satisfaction from her coach. The difficulty is high for her level—coach's idea, not hers—but the hours in the gym have carved it into her bones.
She finishes the series upright and still.
For a fraction of a second too long, she stares at the beam.
It’s barely noticeable. A hesitation no one else would clock. But she feels it. The pause before her next skill, the moment where she could step down, reset, pretend nothing’s wrong.
She can’t back out now.
Trinity sets for her aerial. The takeoff is clean, automatic. In the air, her eyes lock onto the spot where she’s supposed to land.
She shifts her left leg.
Trinity hears the crowd gasp as she hits the mat below her.
The pain is immediate, sharp enough to steal the air from her lungs, but she doesn’t move. She stares up at the gym ceiling, the lights swimming as voices rush in around her. Someone says her name. Someone’s hands are on her leg. She feels it all, distantly, like it’s happening to someone else.
Tears slip down her temples, but no sound comes out.
Later, they’ll say it was shock. That’s why she didn’t react. They’ll call it a freak accident—bad luck on a difficult skill. The doctors will exchange careful looks when she asks how soon she can get back on the mat.
She’ll nod along. She’ll play her part.
But she’ll know the truth.
It wasn’t shock. It wasn’t an accident. She had prepared for the pain. She had made the choice.
And when the doctors tell her they can’t be sure if—or when—she’ll return to gymnastics, the breath she lets out isn’t from disappointment.
It’s from relief.
Trinity wakes from her dream. To anyone else, it would seem peaceful. She stares at the ceiling and experimentally rolls her left ankle under the covers and winces at the tightness.
Trinity closes her eyes again and takes a deep breath. It’s July 4th. Langdon is back in the Pitt. She has no time for past injuries making a comeback.
She rolls her ankle again and presses her palm to her sternum, grounding herself. Five seconds in, five out. It’s just the dream—memory. Whatever.
It doesn’t matter. She rolls her ankle again.
It’s phantom, she thinks to herself, willing her body to believe it. She focuses on the sound of her ceiling fan, Dennis's snoring in the other room, which he denies doing, and the sirens outside.
Trinity swings her legs over the side of the bed, feet hitting the worn carpet of her shitty apartment. She stands, the weight of her body sending another sharp pain into her left shin.
It’s phantom, she reminds herself.
She takes a small step forward, allowing the limp in the privacy of her room. She yanks her dresser drawer open and quickly shuffles into a pair of scrubs, leaving her pajamas on the floor.
Bathroom, meds, then Red Bull.
The routine is practiced. She moves towards the shared bathroom just outside her room, and the pain follows.
The bathroom light stutters before it turns on. One bulb’s gone, Dennis said he would replace it last week, another way for him to pay rent without paying money. Trinity knows if she reminds him, he’ll collapse into a ball of guilt. She stares at the missing bulb for a moment. She won’t be reminding him.
Trinity looks into the mirror above the sink. Her eyes are puffy, jaw clenched, and if you look close enough, her left shoulder is slightly higher than the right. She quickly washes her face, and by the time she looks back into the mirror, her shoulders are even. Her feet flat on the floor.
She opens the mirrored cabinet and scans the shelves. She moves the carefully placed bottle of mouthwash and locates the orange pill bottle. She grabs it sullenly, the noise of the pills hitting each other inside of the bottle a harsh reminder of her deficit.
She opens the bottle and stares at the white oval pills. Suzetrigine, non-opioid, newly FDA-approved. Her doctor switched her diazepam to suzetrigine after much begging.
She hadn’t meant to make the connection then. But once she said his name to Dr. Robby, once it was in motion, she couldn’t go back to taking the same thing he’d been pocketing from the med room.
He hadn’t even been subtle. And she still hadn’t wanted to see it.
Her prescription had been real. Physical injury, documented spasms, four years of imaging to back it up. It just wasn’t worth the risk.
She empties one pill into her hand and stares at it. The side effects are less with these than the benzos, non-sedative, but they still make her feel off. She skipped the benzos for the same reason.
She drops the pill back into the bottle. Puts the bottle back in the cabinet. Slides the mouthwash carefully in front of it and closes the door.
Her eyes lock onto her reflection, her hands gripping the sink, and she stares at herself as she takes a deep breath.
Five in, five out.
Her body snaps itself into place as best it can. Like every competition where she was forced to perform injured, she walks out of the bathroom with a barely noticeable limp.
As she moves to the kitchen, she bangs on Dennis’ door, “Get up, Huckleberry. You’re going to be late because I’m sure as fuck not waiting for you!” she yells, hearing a thump in his room and a body scrambling around. She snickers to herself as she enters the kitchen.
The fridge is essentially bare, but that’s fine. Trinity is used to running on empty. She grabs a Red Bull and moves to the cabinets, the apartment too small for a real pantry, and grabs four protein bars, tearing one open and shoving it in her mouth before dumping the other three into her work bag.
She leans against the kitchen counter, waiting for Dennis to get out of his room so they can go. They both know she won’t actually leave without him.
Her ankle is burning.
She should take her meds.
She cracks open the Red Bull and takes a sip.
Dennis rushes out of his room, shoving random food into his own bag.
“Maybe I should’ve nicknamed you Squirrel,” Trinity remarks, watching him scramble to leave on time. Dennis just rolls his eyes at her and doesn’t respond, walking to the door with Trinity following behind him. She snatches her keys from the hook near the door, “Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed,” She mumbles under her breath.
They head down the stairs to where Trinity parked her car on the street. She’s half a step slower today, and she prays her roommate doesn’t notice. As oblivious and downright odd as Dennis can be, he’s unsettlingly perceptive when it’s just the two of them.
Luckily, it seems Dennis is too busy mumbling something under his breath and jabbing at his phone to notice Trinity’s slow pace. They both get into Trinity’s car, and the drive to the Pitt begins.
It’s quiet, which is normal. Most mornings, they don’t talk. Preparing for whatever nightmare awaits them in the emergency department. Even when Dennis was still completing his medical rotations in other specialties at PTMC, he respected the quiet Trinity required before a shift. After his Match Day, the tradition continued.
Trinity drove, Dennis pretended not to exist.
Today was looking to be just another drive.
“You think it’ll be bad?” Dennis speaks up, breaking the unspoken rule about not speaking.
Trinity knows what he’s trying to talk about. She keeps her eyes on the road. “What.”
“Langdon being back?”
Trinity takes a deep breath, eyes darting over to him, then back to the road. She never told him what really happened that shift; she suspects he has an idea that she was more involved than she lets on. Until now, he’s never even attempted to broach the issue. “He’ll be fine. He’s fine. That’s what being cleared means.”
Dennis gives her a suspicious look, “Sure, sure. You’re acting totally normal about it, so.”
She whips her head to glare at him for a moment and then glares at the road, “I am being normal about it.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him raise both eyebrows, mocking, “Absolutely. Can’t even tell you’re vibrating.”
Trinity keeps her eyes forward and grabs the Red Bull from the cup holder, taking a sip, “I miss when you were scared that talking to me like that would mean you were homeless again,” she mutters.
“Kiara says we should say houseless,” Dennis corrects smugly, earning an eye roll from Trinity.
“Shut up.”
She can’t see it, but she senses Dennis is smirking, which makes her scowl.
At least he’s quiet again.
It had been the end of a shift in June.
She was signing out, charting half a note in a dental trauma who’d left AMA, leisurely gossiping with Princess and Perlah in Tagalog, when Dr. Robby approached her.
Hands in his hoodie pockets, leaning back against his heels, “Got a second?” He nods to an empty trauma bay.
Rhetorical question, but Trinity nods anyway, walking to the trauma bay and giving a half-hearted wave to the nurses.
Dr. Robby looks at Trinity, then back out into the emergency department. Trinity always thought the way he moved was a little shifty, not from hiding something, from anxiety, maybe.
Or having the weight of an underfunded ED with more secrets than it should have on his shoulders.
Dr. Robby takes a breath and then holds eye contact with Trinity, “Langdon’s return has been cleared,” he states simply, his mouth twisting a bit to the side.
Trinity raises her eyebrows, trying to give off “what the fuck does this have to do with me” vibes, but she’s sure Dr. Robby can see her inner panic written plainly on her face. “When?”
“July Fourth. He’s back on the senior trauma rotation. The hospital agreed he would need to redo his R4 year.”
Trinity sucks in a breath, refusing to feel guilty for reporting Langdon, refusing to take blame for him repeating a resident year, “Cool,” she hums, hoping it comes off nonchalant.
Dr. Robby just raises an eyebrow at her, “I need to know if I have to worry about you with him.”
Trinity straightens her posture at this question, trying not to take offense at the wording.
Worry about her with him? He was the one diverting drugs. He was the one who screamed at her in front of everyone.
Trinity looks at Dr. Robby head-on, “What’s there to worry about?” she replies. Trinity knows she didn’t do enough to hide the underlying sarcasm, but she can’t bring herself to care about that right now.
Dr. Robby hangs his head down and shakes it slightly before looking back up at her, “Just be smart about this, Dr. Santos,” and with that he steps out of the trauma bay and back into the fray.
Trinity watches him go for a moment before leaving herself.
Trinity watches PTMC come to view, the faded lettering on the building glittering in the morning sun. She pulls into a parking spot and gets out with Dennis, walking to the ED entrance, which has been decorated with red and white streamers and a single sad-looking helium balloon.
It’s obscene, Trinity thinks.
They move together to the locker area, dropping their bags. Trinity finishes her Red Bull and tosses it in the trash, grabbing another from her locker, cracking it open, and ignoring Dennis’ scoff next to her.
She grabs his shoulder and directs him to walk with her to the nursing station, where Dr. Robby will do his morning meeting. She hopes he can't tell that she’s putting extra weight on him to ease her ankle.
They arrive at the nursing station, where Dr. Robby is already there. She sits in one of the rolling chairs in the station that Princess determined only she could have. She looks around as Langdon approaches the group.
Mel yells his name and seemingly attempts to hug him, but he does not respond. Standing with his arms crossed, a slight smirk on his face.
Trinity rolls her eyes slightly and glances around before pushing her chair away from the nurse's desk; her ankle throbs.
It’s phantom, she hisses in her brain.
It sounds sarcastic even to her.