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The Fourth of July had started on a shitty note, and Trinity was more than certain it would end on one too. It felt like a fucking marathon of a day – peds cases that tested her every instinct, Dr. Al-Hashimi breathing down her neck at every turn about her piled up charting, the hospital going analog like it was the dark ages, Langdon being… well, Langdon.
And the cherry on top: Yolanda throwing her words back in her face that they were just casual. It had been downhill from the start, but everything was starting to really test her patience, even as the day approached its end and the ED hit a very bizarre sort of quiet lull. She wouldn’t dare voice that and jinx them, but things became suspiciously calm after they’d spent three hours working through the mirage of patients from the waterpark. The other hospitals had reopened post-cyber-attack and were able to take back their share of patients, allowing the Pitt to finally catch its breath. It also helped that the computers were back up and running.
By hour eleven, the Pitt was still humming but softer than before. Walk-in traumas only popped up every so often, and they were mostly hand and facial burns that could be treated and sent on their merry way. Trinity’s nose burned from the constant stench of antiseptic and smoke, the latter drifting in from patients who had arrived coated in backyard disasters, but she could endure it a while longer.
She finally – finally – had her window of opportunity to sit at a computer and chart. She was still in deep and had a long way to go to catch up, but Yolanda did ask for a raincheck, which left her evening wide open. In an hour, she’d be off shift, and then she could truly hunker down and tackle her charts. If she had to stay past midnight, so be it – she didn’t have anywhere better to be, and at this point… she didn’t care. The real trick was avoiding any more patients until the shift change happened–
“Trauma incoming. ETA thirty seconds. Penetrating chest wound,” the automatic emergency alert system reported through the ED, pinging twice before going quiet – it effectively cut off Trinity’s train of thought.
She made a point not to look at the ceiling where the message emanated from. Instead, she stayed focused on the screen, the cursor blinking patiently in the half-finished note she’d been trying to close for the past ten minutes. Charting was going to be a lot harder with all the auditory interruptions, but she had to suck it up and get on with it. If Yolanda hadn’t royally pissed her off, maybe she would’ve asked for access to her office to work somewhere quietly. After retracking her last sentence three times, she started to type again–
Somewhere across the department, someone swore. A monitor alarm chimed. The charge desk phone rang with a violent rattle.
Trinity clenched her hands, tried to breathe through the very distinct urge to swipe her monitor off the desk like a child having a tantrum, then thought better of it and dragged her hands down her exhausted face. Maybe if she hid from the world long enough, everything would stop bothering her.
“Santos! Wake up–” Robby’s voice cut through her reprieve behind her hands, making her head snap up and locate him as he hustled toward the ambulance bay doors that hissed open while snapping on gloves. “We need hands!”
Of course he did.
Trinity sighed under her breath and shoved her stool back with more force than necessary, abandoning her incomplete chart as she shoved her stethoscope into the back pocket of her scrubs and went to join the commotion that was a stretcher being hustled toward Trauma 2. A paramedic loudly provided the patient’s info as they hurried through the ED, “Twenty-eight-year-old male, penetrating wound to the left chest. Found conscious at the scene. Minimal external bleeding. Pressure dressing placed in the field. Hypotensive en route but responsive.”
Trinity strode into Trauma 2 just steps behind the team, finding Langdon, Mohan, and Whitaker all pulling on their PPE. A small fleet of nurses led by Perlah hustled in and began to aid in the transfer of the patient from the stretcher to the bed.
Trinity reached to dress herself as well and made to join Robby where he was waiting to inspect the wound as Perlah finished hooking the man up to the vitals monitors.
“Whitaker, what do we need?” Robby asked as he took to the head of the patient and began to perform the neuro exam.
“Large-bore IVs. CBC. And a CT for the chest wound.”
“Good. Perlah?”
“On it.”
“Sir, can you look at me? What’s your name?”
As Whitaker searched for other information, Trinity took to peeling away the pressure dressing, revealing the disaster that was hidden under it. The wound was ugly – wide and deep, crater-like as it tore through muscle and rib. But the edges were dark – as if whatever hit him had cauterized the wound in its path. It was strange, seeing a wound so big with so little blood trying to escape it.
“Santos–oo-hoo-hoo,” Robby interrupted himself with a nervous laugh, stepping in closer to Trinity’s side to observe the wound.
“Is it bad?” The patient suddenly spoke, snapping Trinity from her very detailed analysis of his chest. “Am I going to die?”
“Not today,” Robby calmly said, though his expression begged to differ. “Name?” he asked Whitaker softly.
“Caleb.”
“Heart rate one-thirty. BP ninety over sixty,” Mohan supplied.
“Belly’s clear. Responsive to stimuli and no apparent spinal injuries,” Langdon followed with.
“Caleb, I’m Dr. Robby. And you have a very large chest wound, but we’re going to send you up to surgery in a bit here so they can close it up.”
Trinity allowed the rest of the team to focus on Caleb directly as she leant in closer to study the interior of the wound. It was dry. Too dry.
She frowned.
The cardiac monitor beside them started chirping faster, eliciting a frantic beepbeepbeepbeep through the room.
“Heart rate climbing,” Mohan said.
Caleb’s chest heaved beneath the oxygen mask Whitaker was setting on him.
“Surgery? I can’t afford surgery! Fuck–" he shook his head, jostling his chest in the process. Whitaker tried to calm him, but he persisted, “This is bad! Oh fuck, I’m so fucked!”
“Caleb, let’s take a deep breath.” Mohan joined Whitaker at the head of the bed, doing the heavy lifting in the bedside manner department that a lot of them in that room sometimes lacked in high-stress situations.
Caleb’s heart rate pitched faster on the monitor; upticking that bordered dangerous.
“Let’s prepare to sedate him,” Robby ordered.
And just like that – suddenly the wound filled. Blood surged upward like someone had opened a faucet.
“Bleeder!” Langdon snapped.
Trinity didn’t hesitate, being the closest one to it. Her right hand went straight into the chest cavity. The heat hit her palm instantly; slick muscle, torn fascia, the violent pulse of a vessel rupturing somewhere deep. Her fingers searched blindly through the narrow channel as blood flooded over her wrist. Something firm – almost like metal – brushed against her palm as her fingers searched.
“Got it–” she muttered. “Found the artery. Clamping manually.” Her fingers closed around the source. She pinched hard. The bleeding stopped almost immediately.
The room went quiet for half a second as everyone recalibrated.
“Jesus. Good catch, Santos,” Langdon breathed.
Fuck you. Trinity couldn’t help but think – even if that was sort of misplaced and definitely wouldn’t fly if she said it aloud. She kept it to herself and didn’t meet his gaze as she focused intently on trying to figure out what was touching her palm. She frowned slightly, adjusting her grip around the vessel. “Uh,” she said, not entirely sure how to verbalize what she was feeling.
Robby glanced up. “What?”
“There’s… something in here.” Her fingers probed the object again. Definitely metal; not bone. Not shrapnel shaped like anything she recognized, either. Just… solid. “Feels like metal,” Trinity said.
Caleb’s eyes widened as he registered the words.
“Oh my God–oh my God!” He gasped, panic surging. “Why is your hand in me?!” He practically screamed.
They could really get to sedating him now–
“Because you’re bleeding,” Trinity said flatly, not looking up.
“Caleb, before we put you to sleep for surgery, I need you to tell me how this happened,” Robby said, blocking Caleb’s view of his lower half as he tried to keep the man from panicking further.
“My friend–” Caleb sucked in a ragged breath. “We were setting off fireworks. He had this stupid World War II gun. He said it was empty–” His words dissolved into a scream as pain ripped through him.
Whitaker pushed the sedative.
“Any prior surgeries?” Robby pressed just before the drugs could kick in. “Any medical implants in your chest?”
Caleb shook his head frantically. “No – no! Nothing–”
The drugs hit. His body slackened.
Mohan moved efficiently, sliding the tube into place as Caleb lost consciousness. The ventilator took over with a steady mechanical rhythm. For a moment, the only sound in the room was the soft hiss of oxygen and the steady beep of the monitor.
Trinity still had her hand buried in Caleb’s chest.
“Bleeder’s controlled,” she said quietly, mostly for herself.
Footsteps approached the doorway.
“I literally just clocked in, so this better be good, and it better be surgical.” Walsh strode in, already tying the back of her surgical gown.
Langdon glanced over and spoke before anyone else could, “Twenty-eight-year-old, GSW to the chest. Hemorrhage controlled manually by Dr. Santos. Vitals stabilizing with fluids.”
Walsh stepped closer, assessing the wound.
“Jesus, what gun did that?” Her gaze flicked to Trinity, and she was speaking again before anyone could answer her first question. “You’re holding the vessel?”
Trinity nodded. “Yeah. I think there’s a foreign object in here too, but I can only feel it, not see it.”
Walsh studied the entry site, then the monitors, then the surgical clock in her head.
“We’ve got an OR open right now,” she said. “We’ll scan upstairs if we need to.” She pointed toward the bed. “Santos, since you’ve got the bleed–”
Trinity already knew where this was going.
“Hop on up,” Walsh ordered, patting the patient’s legs.
Perlah and Mohan helped shift lines and tubing while Trinity carefully set her knee on one side of the bed and swung a leg over Caleb, straddling his torso without releasing the artery.
Blood coated half her forearm now, but the flow stayed contained beneath her fingers.
She adjusted her balance as the gurney locks disengaged. And just like that, the shift from hell found a way to dig its claws into her and trapped her for who knew how long. She sighed faintly as Walsh and two other orderlies began to move the gurney toward the elevators.
Her gaze flicked to the computer she had abandoned – her charting was practically singing a taunting tune toward her, reminding her that she was never, ever going to catch up.
The only upside was that Trinity was going to get a field trip to the OR. And if there was one thing that woman loved, it was getting to see surgery up close and personal.
~.~.~
Robby stood near the nurses’ station, rubbing the back of his neck as he scanned the preliminary chart he was working on for Caleb’s case. “GSW to chest,” he muttered into the dictation remote. “Accidental discharge.”
Abbot leaned against the counter beside him, arms crossed as he watched the department churn and the orderlies clean up the surgical rags and bloodstains from Trauma 2. “You guys are stacking them up today,” Abbot said, making Robby smile faintly as he cut the recording and saved the file.
“You helped,” he replied dryly. “What is it about Fourth of July? People mix fireworks and alcohol, and suddenly everyone’s an amateur weapons expert.”
Abbot was about to respond when the ambulance bay doors hissed open, and a man stumbled in with security hot on his heels. His white shirt was streaked with blood that had soaked into the fabric and dried in rust-colored patches. His hands shook violently as he looked around the ED.
“Hey–hey!” he called out, voice cracking. “Someone–please–my friend–”
Dana, Robby, and Abbot all moved toward him immediately. The trio acting like the first line of defence between a potential madman and the rest of their department.
“Sir, slow down–” Dana tried to beseech, hands extending calmly but firmly.
“Is he alive?” the man choked. “Did he make it? Oh my God – did I kill him?” His eyes were wild, darting around as he looked for the person he came in after.
Robby stepped a bit closer, imploring him with a look as he tried to supply the most obvious patient who could be related to him. “Are you looking for Caleb?”
“Yes! Yes – that’s him! That’s him! Where is he–?”
“He’s alive,” Robby said, motioning for the chair behind the man that Abbot had pulled over.
The man flinched and didn’t sit. He clearly needed more.
“He’s being taken to surgery as we speak to repair the wound in his chest–,” The rest of his explanation barely left his mouth before the man finally collapsed into his seat in a flood of sobs.
“Oh, thank God! Oh my God – thank God.” His shoulders shook violently as his bloodied hands scrubbed his face. “I’m so sorry,” he gasped. “I didn’t mean to– I didn’t know–”
“What happened?” Abbot asked, motioning for the security to step back now that the man didn’t appear like an immediate threat.
“It wasn’t supposed to be loaded,” he said hoarsely, head shaking back and forth.”
“What wasn’t?”
The man said something, but it was muffled by his hands and tears. Completely indistinguishable gibberish.
“You want to try that again?” Robby encouraged.
The man nodded frantically, words spilling out between ragged breaths. “I bought it at an auction last month. Military surplus. They said it was decommissioned – I swear they said it was decommissioned. We were just setting off fireworks, and I wanted to show it off and–” His voice cracked again. “I thought it was empty. The bazooka was supposed to be empty.”
Abbot’s gaze took on a serious edge as he got in closer and grasped the man’s shoulder to get him to focus. “Hold on. Did you just say bazooka?”
The man nodded miserably. “Yes.”
Abbot turned slowly toward Robby, voice devoid of any usual humor that he maintained in their conversations. He was dead serious. “Was there an exit wound?”
Robby didn’t even need to think about it. “No.”
Abbot went pale, and for half a second, neither of them spoke as pieces began to fall into place. “Dana,” Abbot said, voice still steady. “Call the OR and tell them to stop everything.”
Dana blinked. “What?” Her hands still reached for her phone.
“If that thing is still intact–,”
The realization slammed into place. A rocket. Inside the patient. Still armed.
“We have a Code Black on our hands.”
Dana was already speaking into the phone as Abbot and Robby took off for the elevators. They caught one just as it was preparing to head up. As the elevator lurched toward the fourth floor, Robby felt the pit of dread deepen in his chest.
Because somewhere above them, in an operating room full of surgeons–
Trinity Santos still had her hand inside that patient’s chest around a live rocket.
~.~.~
The operating room was brighter than the emergency department, if that were even possible. Hard white lights flooded the space from above, reflecting off stainless steel trays and polished tile. The steady hum of machines replaced the chaotic noise of the ED, but the energy was the same; focused, purposeful.
Trinity thought that she’d like it more in the OR suite than downstairs. But it felt more sterile than she was used to. Clinical in a way that the ED could never truly achieve with how many people rolled through it each day.
She was still sitting on the patient as she looked around and took stock of the space. Well, she was technically straddling him, knees still braced on either side as she forced herself to hold her own weight up, so she didn’t accidentally press against any internal injuries to his lower extremities. Blood continued to sluggishly soak her forearm. She knew her blue shirt beneath it was now well and truly ruined. Just another fucking grand spot on her day.
Around her, the surgical team prepared. Walsh and another surgeon that Trinity rarely saw in the ED were in a room separated by a door and windows, both scrubbing in as they observed the patient from afar.
Trays clinked. Instruments were counted. A nurse adjusted the overhead light to angle directly into the wound.
Trinity tried to shift her weight just enough to keep her shoulder from locking up. It was already starting to ache – and it didn’t help that a wipeout on beam when she was fifteen fucked her right arm up well enough for it to occasionally give her a hard time. She really didn’t need it to rear its ugly head at the moment.
Desperate to distract herself from the aching, she looked back around the room. Somewhere between cataloguing all the machines and the purposeful setup of everything, her mind drifted to Yolanda. This was the part of the hospital where she spent most of her workday. Standing in operating rooms, opening bodies, putting them back together again. Holding a fragile life between her palms and protecting it until they got through to the other side.
That was ironic, Trinity almost thought bitterly, because she was certain that if she gave Yolanda her heart to hold and protect, the woman would find one reason or another to smash it together between her hands and watch her suffer for it.
So, what if Trinity had started it with the whole casual thing? She was stuck between a corner and a tight place – felt like a caged animal when Yolanda had demanded an answer a week ago about what they were to each other. It had been ten months, and she didn’t want to waste her time on something that wasn’t real. Trinity didn’t like her wording – it felt like a slap to the face. If Yolanda had to ask, then it meant that their time spent together really did feel like it wasn’t real, so why did Trinity owe her the knowledge of how she really felt?
She said, “We’re just casual. Aren’t we?”
And Yolanda had readily agreed, only to pull into herself and declare that it was late, and she wanted to sleep in her own bed.
Trinity fell asleep that night, wishing she had been brave enough to just say how she really felt. To confess that she wanted more. That she wanted to be with Yolanda exclusively. Not that she’d seen anyone else in those ten months – but fuck, she really wanted to tell her that too.
She didn’t follow up on their conversation. Didn’t pursue Yolanda beyond the occasional passing in the ED, where she would deflect when asked to come over, hiding behind dinner plans with friends and family every day of the week.
Then the fourth arrived, and Trinity knew they had made plans. Weeks ago – which was weird for them, but also had the ability to make Trinity feel like she was floating because ever since they set them, all she could think about was how excited she was to watch the fireworks together.
And then Yolanda had asked for the rain check. A slap to the face. And when Trinity had asked if she was sure later on, Yolanda had said she had made other plans and threw Trinity’s words back in her face. “We’re just keeping things casual. Right?”
Trinity knew Yolanda could be bull-headed, and short tempered, and yeah, sometimes mean. But that was a fucking punch to the gut. That was evidence that Yolanda didn’t see Trinity for more than her words because if she did, then she’d know that Trinity was bordering on a panic attack when she initially brought it up, and that she said what she said because she thought it was what Yolanda wanted to hear.
Fuck her. Trinity reminded herself of the mini-mantra she’d been saying in her head over the rest of the shift as she watched Yolanda breeze around for surgical consults, and act like nothing between them affected her. As she played buddy, buddy with Langdon and went back to treating her like the dirt beneath her shoe just the same way she did on Trinity’s first shift in the ED after she reported Langdon.
Fuck her. Trinity tightened her grip on the artery. She refused to think about it any longer.
Across the room, the doors opened, and Walsh and the other surgeon stepped in, freshly scrubbed and ready for the nurses to aid them in getting gloved and gowned.
Walsh approached the table first and adjusted the light for good measure. “How’s our bleed?”
“Stable,” Trinity said. “As long as I don’t sneeze.”
Walsh leaned over the wound, assessing. “Good work downstairs. Maybe next time, use an instrument instead of your hand?” She held up a curved vascular clamp for show. “We’re going to swap your hand for something a little more professional.”
Trinity snorted softly. “Rude. We don’t receive all our instruments on a silver platter.”
Walsh ignored that. “I’ll clamp the vessel,” she began to explain, eyes still studying the wound. “You get your hand out, and then you can go back to whatever ER doctors do when they’re not elbow-deep in someone’s thoracic cavity.”
Trinity tried not to let her disappointment show. Because yeah, technically that was the plan, and she did have to get back to charting. She wasn’t part of the surgical team, anyway. Once her hand was out, she’d be escorted right back downstairs to the chaos. To charting. To pretending she wasn’t thinking about Yolanda Garcia every five minutes. But it still fucking sucked that she couldn’t see this wound getting debrided and closed.
“Sounds great,” Trinity said lightly. “My shoulder’s already filing a complaint with HR.”
Walsh gestured to the nurse beside her. “Let’s reposition. Get you back on your feet first so I can get better access.”
The nurse stepped up to help. “Okay, doctor–slowly.”
Trinity shifted carefully, lifting one knee off the mattress so she could slide off the patient without disturbing her grip. The nurse steadied her elbow while she climbed down to stand beside the table. Her hand never moved. Blood warmed the inside of her glove.
Walsh adjusted the surgical light again and leaned closer with the clamp. “Alright,” she said. “Let me just–”
The OR phone rang. Walsh didn’t flinch, just pulled back some jagged skin with her fingers.
The circulating nurse answered. “OR two.” Trinity watched her as she paused. Her expression changed instantly. “Stop!” she said sharply, this time making Walsh flinch.
“What?” Walsh barked out, clearly displeased with the disruption.
The nurse stared at the phone. “Yes. She’s here.” Another pause, then she slowly lowered the receiver. “There’s a Code Black.”
The room went still.
Walsh frowned. “In the hospital?”
The nurse swallowed. “They said the patient has a live rocket in his chest.”
For a moment, Trinity thought she’d misheard.
“A what?” Walsh snapped out again.
“A rocket.”
Trinity blinked. “How the hell does someone get a rocket in their–,” she began to ask, looking back at Walsh.
Walsh’s eyes widened as the realization hit. “Don’t move!” Her voice cracked through the room loudly.
Trinity went completely still. Evidently, no one was fucking around. “What?” she still asked, because she was so incredibly confused.
“Do not move your hand,” Walsh repeated, slower and more deliberate now. She spun toward the rest of the team. “Everyone out. Now.”
The nurses and surgeon hesitated.
“You heard me!” Walsh snapped. “Clear the OR. Clear the floor if you can.” Metal trays rattled as people backed away from the table.
Trinity felt a slow, creeping knot of panic begin to build in her chest. “Emery,” she said carefully, barely processing that she dropped the formalities of the workplace and had called Walsh by her first name the way that she had somehow gotten comfortable doing in the last ten months of sleeping with her best friend. “What exactly am I not moving for?”
Before Walsh could answer, the OR doors burst open as Robby and Abbot rushed in. The last of the surgical staff were already retreating toward the hallway, leaving the four of them to go over what they knew.
Abbot approached the table cautiously, eyes locked on Trinity. “Dr. Santos,” he said.
She looked at him. “Yes?”
“Do you understand that you can’t move?”
Her jaw tightened. Her fingers begged to shift – a side-effect of being told she couldn’t. “Yeah,” she said. “I gathered that from the yelling.”
“You have to stay exactly where you are.”
Trinity nodded slowly. “Can someone please explain to me why I can’t move, though?” Her pulse had started pounding now, her body deducing that now was a good time to start panicking.
“Your patient here was shot with a bazooka,” Robby said in a steady explanation.
“Like a fucking World War II missile?”
“A rocket launcher, more precisely,” Abbot supplied, earning a glare from Trinity. “It’s old and unstable. If the metal you’re touching is that rocket, then you – and I cannot stress this enough – you can’t move it at all. Am I clear?”
“I understand,” she repeated, voice a little sharper now to hide the waver that begged to break through. “I’m not going anywhere.” Trinity could feel her heart hammering behind her ribs. Could feel the way her legs were turning to jelly. The way her shoulder ached–
She focused on the room again. It felt enormous without the rest of the staff. Just herself. Walsh. Robby. Abbot.
And a patient with a rocket lodged in his chest.
Trinity exhaled slowly. “Okay,” she said, seemingly coming to terms with the situation. “So, what’s the plan?”
Robby stepped closer. “Bomb squad’s on the way.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “You’re serious.”
“They’ll know how to safely remove the rocket,” Robby explained. Somehow, she still didn’t believe the enormity of the situation called for a bomb squad. That was definitely some movie-type shit.
Trinity stared at Robby a beat longer. Then she looked down at the patient. Then at her arm disappearing into his chest. “Well,” she said dryly, “if this thing blows, at least I won’t have to finish my charting.”
Silence. No one laughed. Tough crowd.
Robby met her eyes. “Just stay still,” he said quietly.
“We’ll get you out soon,” Abbot tacked on. He didn’t sound convinced.
Trinity didn’t call him out for that because she was desperately trying to make herself believe that he was right.
~.~.~
Whitaker approached the charge desk, staring down the overhead board as he considered any last potential patients he could pick up before shifts end. Javadi was already there, scribbling something down on a paper chart, even if they’d long since moved back to the digital forms. Whitaker glanced over at a clustering of nurses as they repeated the utterings that were already floating around the ED.
Code Black had been whispered time and time again. Maybe it was exhaustion from the day, or maybe it was a lack of being able to remember the color board of warnings. Either way, Whitaker was rubbing his neck as he passively asked Javadi, “What’s a Code Black again?”
“Bomb threat,” Javadi replied without missing a beat, and without looking up from her chart. “Why?”
“People keep saying there’s a Code Black in the hospital.”
That brought Javadi pause. Her pen stopped moving, and her gaze flicked up to Whitaker to see if he was pulling her tail. He looked dead serious. “Oh, good, because that’s exactly what this shift needed,” she said flatly.
Whitaker looked around the ED and noted the patients who filled the beds in the hallways. And the way that the nurses had dispersed to hustle about, gather charts, check monitors, and occasionally pause to whisper about the code that the rest of the department was still out of the loop on. “I’m confused – how did someone even get a bomb past security?”
They had metal detectors at the front for a reason. The only way it could come in was through the ambulance bay.
“Apparently, it came in through Trauma Two,” Langdon supplied as he joined them at the charge desk. He pointed at Javadi’s chart, “y’know we don’t have to do that anymore?”
“It’s meditative.”
“What do you mean it came in with Trauma Two? We were just treating him.” Whitaker felt his pulse uptick. Likely from the stress of knowing he was in close proximity to an explosive. If it had gone off while they were down in the ED... he looked at the hallways again. Thought about all the unsuspecting patients that would’ve died.
Langdon shrugged uneasily and tugged on his stethoscope around his neck. “I heard the guy security’s talking to say he shot his friend with a bazooka.”
Whitaker blinked. Looked at the chair by the ambulance bay doors where a man was sitting. He was holding a plastic cup with shaking hands, crying quietly as the security team continued to speak to him. A bazooka. For a moment, the words didn’t connect. The weapon didn’t take a shape in his head. The gravity didn’t set in for a good long moment. But then – all at once – Whitaker felt his stomach drop as an all-consuming dread flooded him. “Caleb?” he asked softly to no one in particular.
Langdon still nodded. “Seems like it.”
Whitaker’s mind started racing. The gaping wound in Caleb’s chest. The way Trinity was leaning closer, studying the wound, when an artery tore and she just… stuck her hand in there. With an explosive. Unknowingly, sure, but still…
She had said there was something hard in the chest. Something metal. No one thought much of it.
“She had her hand in his chest.”
Javadi looked at him with wide eyes, startled to learn that bit of news. “She what?”
“She was controlling the bleed. Walsh took her up to the OR.” Whitaker felt that uptick in his heart rate again. Felt it rattle in his chest as he finally caught up and realized the true danger that his friend got herself into.
“Hey!” Dana’s voice cut across the department, drawing the attention of every person who was milling about. “Listen up! As you will see on your pagers in a few seconds here, we have a specific code on our hands. We don’t need everyone panicking and running around like headless chickens. So, listen closely– ”
The surrounding chatter died down as Dana climbed a step stool and took a steadying breath. “All incoming traumas are being diverted to Westbridge.”
A ripple of murmurs spread through the room. Whitaker began to slowly step away from the charge desk, thinking of the stairs a few feet away. His one chance to get to Trinity–
“The surgical unit is in lockdown,” she continued. “No one in, do you understand?”
Whitaker did, but he wasn’t going to listen. He took another step back.
“Our priority down here is clearing the department. If a patient can go home, discharge them. If they need to stay, move them closer to central for possible evacuation.” She gestured toward the hallway. “Elevators are down as a safety precaution. I need all of yous to keep calm. Keep working. And keep an ear out for more announcements.”
The ED slowly came back to life as people moved to follow orders.
Pagers began pinging, confirming the Code Black that everyone had been whispering about. It was real – very, very real.
Realizing now was his chance to sneak upstairs, Whitaker turned on his heel and booked it for the stairwell. He encountered an immediate throng of bodies moving down the stairs as they attempted to evacuate from the fourth floor. Whitaker tried to push upward against them, finding pockets to slide between so he could get up as fast as possible.
“Coming through–sorry–” Someone cursed as he squeezed past. He called another apology over his shoulder. He rounded the landing and nearly collided with someone coming down. Their shoulders slammed together.
“Watch it!” the person snapped.
Whitaker staggered back, caught the railing to keep from falling. He came gave to face with Garcia who shot him an irritated look as she steadied herself and realized who rammed into her. “Jesus, Whitaker, what the hell–,”
He didn’t stop long enough to apologize as he continued onwards. All he could think about was Trinity–
~.~.~
From years of living in her own body and the general beratement from her parents, teachers, and coaches, Trinity knew she was notoriously bad at sitting still. It wasn’t that she was constantly bounding off the walls, but stillness always felt wrong in her body, and if given the option, she liked to shift between her feet, bounce her knee, pace around, or shake out her hands.
Fidgeting is rude, her mom tried to convince her when she was small. Tried to make her feel bad for getting the jitters out when they wanted out. But Trinity was also notoriously bad at listening and taking criticism… so, she still allowed herself to fidget and didn’t feel bad about it.
The only time she ever felt her body pause was when she was a gymnast. Right before a routine, standing before whatever apparatus she had to perform on, Trinity would feel her limbs go loose, her mind quiet, and all that energy just… stop.
She would run the routine through her head, step by step, letting it sink into her bones until every motion was already there waiting to happen. Then she’d get to move. She’d get to pop.
But now… she couldn’t move. She wasn’t allowed to. Not because her mom said so, but because the rocket was one wrong move away from blowing her up. So, her brain reached for the closest thing it knew. Her last beam routine – the one she had worked on to perfection, and then purposefully botched so she could injure herself and finally get away from her perverted coach. The reason her shoulder ached.
The routine was easy enough to picture, even after ten years. Mount. Step. Turn. Her breathing synced with the memory as she worked through the sequence in her head. Arabesque. Half turn. Pause. Then–
Every once in a while, the rhythm slipped, and she’d snap back into her body. Back to the OR, and the sterile lighting, and the warmth surrounding her hand. Back to the pressure in her shoulder as it locked from holding the same position for so long.
Back to the small, terrifying awareness that if she shifted even a little–
She forced her attention back to the beam.
Tried to remember, tried to remember, then– Second pass. Step. Jump. Land. Then–
Her neck ached. Her fingers twitched instinctively, wanting to adjust their grip. She didn’t move – barely allowed herself to breathe.
Her routine: Front aerial. Back handspring.
The door to the OR swung open, though she barely startled as she was so deep in her own head. She only came back to the surface as she heard Abbot yelling, “–not okay! She needs to keep still!”
Trinity blinked and looked over where Whitaker had entered the room, breathing heavily and surveying her situation like he was trying to spot the rocket where it was lodged.
“You’re not supposed to be up here,” Abbot went on sharply.
Whitaker ignored him. Trinity realized then how scared he looked. Pure, unadulterated fear marred his face. Like the time he burnt their dinner and started a small fire in the pan. Trinity had to chuck it out the window and into the rain. He looked like he was worried she’d kill him.
And now, he looked like he was worried that she was going to die.
“Get her hand out,” Whitaker said immediately, his voice wavering.
Robby shook his head and caught Whitaker’s elbow before he could get closer. “That’s not an option.”
Whitaker still shuffled closer, fighting the hold on her arm. “What do you mean it’s not an option?”
“If she moves the rocket–”
Whitaker cut him off. “It traveled all the way here from the accident site without blowing up,” he said. “Why would it detonate now?”
“Because old rockets are unpredictable,” Abbot answered, not beating around the bush. “Sometimes they sit quietly for decades. Sometimes they go off when someone sneezes near them.”
The room went still.
“Noted,” Trinity sarcastically muttered, only then realizing that her nose itched. She refused to touch it.
Abbot went on when it was clear that Whitaker wasn’t convinced. “If we want to keep Dr. Santos and the rest of us in one piece, she stays exactly where she is.”
Whitaker’s jaw tightened. Trinity could tell he wanted to argue. Such a Huckleberry.
Across the table, Walsh stepped closer to Trinity. She eyed her arms, gave her a thorough once over. “How are you holding up?”
Trinity fought the urge to shrug. “As long as I don’t sneeze, I’m good.” Her voice sounded steadier than she felt.
“You sure?”
“Yeah,” Trinity said. Right on cue, a yawn tried to force its way out of her. She swallowed it down quickly, pressing her lips together.
Totally fine.
Her shoulder burned. Her neck was tight enough to crack if she turned it. She tried, desperately, to slip back into the beam routine again. Third pass. Mount. Step.
Her concentration didn’t hold this time. Trinity’s brain wandered somewhere else instead. Somewhere darker. Then softer.
Yolanda.
The name slipped in quietly, filling her senses with all of her and taking over the present situation.
Trinity didn’t want to think about her – not if it was going to make her upset. But all she could think about then was the good bits. The way Yolanda sounded when she laughed. The way she looked with her hair splayed out beneath her as Trinity touched her. The way she moaned, and said Trinity’s name against her lips. The way she made everything feel so fucking easy, and then impossibly hard.
For the first time since this started, a small, selfish thought crossed Trinity’s mind: she hoped that, of all the people in the hospital, Yolanda was nowhere near the OR. Far away from the fourth floor. Far away from whatever might happen next.
~.~.~
Yolanda had never been able to appreciate the chaotic, frantic buzz of the ED. It made her skin itch – made her want to go back to the surgical floor as quickly as possible. She liked it when she had a trauma to get her hands dirty with. When there was a place for her to direct orders and take control. But this, helping the ED with the moving of beds from north and south rooms so they could be closer to central, was not something she liked doing. Easy, maybe, but everyone was on edge, and there was a constant concern of a bomb going off above their heads. Yolanda hated how out of control she felt.
Thirty more minutes, and then she could head out. Shift over – they wouldn’t need her. She just had to suck it up.
Unlocking the wheels of Jude’s bed, she began to wheel him out of his room and toward central. His sister trailed closely, carrying their belongings and reassuring him that he was doing great. Jude’s left hand was still heavily wrapped in layers of gauze and splinting where the fireworks had taken two fingers earlier that afternoon. He’d been stable all day, calm even, sitting patiently while the surgical board kept bumping him further down the schedule. Yolanda felt bad every time she checked the board upstairs and saw that the kid was being booted because he wasn’t emergent.
At least now they could send him to Westbridge, and he could probably get his surgery before morning.
Knowing the way things worked, Yolanda was certain she’d be back tomorrow morning to find that he was still waiting in the ED, and she would have the privilege of doing his debridement and closure.
Jude watched the commotion around them with wide eyes. “Am I going somewhere else?” he asked, mostly to Chantal, who looked to Yolanda for an explanation.
“Just another hospital,” Yolanda said, trying to be gentle for his sake as she pushed his bed toward the wall and then locked the wheels. “They’ll take good care of you.”
He nodded slowly, then asked, “Where’s my doctor?”
“Which one?” Yolanda asked before she went off to move another bed.
“Dr. Santos.”
Trinity. The name landed in her chest like a small, familiar weight. Yolanda glanced up automatically and scanned the ED. Normally, she didn’t even have to try to find her; Trinity had this gravitational pull in the department, and Yolanda’s attention just snapped toward her without effort.
Her Trinity-sixth-sense, she sometimes thought of it without telling anyone.
But this time: nothing.
Her brow furrowed as she leaned over the bed rail and gave Jude’s arm a reassuring squeeze. “I’ll go find her.” Yolanda straightened and looked across the room, clocking the first person who might have a sense of where Trinity had disappeared to. “Parker!”
Parker looked up from helping a nurse move a monitor stand. “Yeah?”
“Have you seen Trinity?”
Parker hesitated, a flicker of worry crossing her face. “You didn’t hear?”
“Hear what?”
Parker stepped closer, lowering her voice as she made sure the sensitive ears of patients weren’t able to hear them. “She’s holding the bleeder in the rocket chest.”
Yolanda blinked. “The what?”
“Guy from Trauma Two. Apparently, he came in with a rocket in his chest. Trinity stuck her hand in him to control a bleeding artery.”
The words took a second to land. Yolanda couldn’t believe it. Her mind wasn’t allowing her to understand – desperate to protect her from the truth that Parker had just shared.
“She’s up in the OR,” Parker went on to add. “With Walsh. And Robby. And Abbot.”
Something inside Yolanda’s brain clicked sharply into place. Whitaker was running upstairs, not down. He was going after Trinity too.
The hallway suddenly tilted. Yolanda reached out and steadied herself on the top of a desk, flinching when Parker reached out for her.
“Oh,” Parker said quickly. “Hey–”
Yolanda stepped away before she could be touched. If someone touched her right now, she’d either scream, puke, or cry.
Her mind had narrowed to a single word.
Trinity.
Trinity.
Trinity.
Of course, Trinity would shove her hand into an open chest cavity without hesitation.
Of course, she’d end up holding the artery.
Of course, she’d somehow wind up tangled in the case of the man with a live rocket inside him.
Because Trinity Santos was exactly that stupid. And exactly that brave.
Her girl. The thought was automatic – so was the biting reminder that followed up. Not your girl.
Trinity didn’t want that. She had said they were casual. And when Yolanda had thrown those words back in her face, she still didn’t correct her. God. Why hadn’t she pushed?
Ten months. Ten months of messing around, sharing a bed, pretending like neither of them wanted the domestic bits, but then having them anyway with meals, and grocery shopping, and cuddling long after sex. Sometimes cuddling without any sex at all. They shared stories, and secrets, and jokes. Had toothbrushes for the other at each of their places so the nights could drag on until morning.
Ten months of falling so hard that Yolanda sometimes felt like she’d forgotten how to stand upright. And she’d been too stubborn to say it out loud. Too proud to ask the question that terrified her.
Why haven’t you fallen the way I have?
Asking that would mean admitting she’d fallen at all; and if there was one thing that was certain, Yolanda Garcia didn’t confess things she couldn’t control.
Her stubborn streak had gotten her everything she’d ever wanted. Except this time… this time it was imploding in her face. And now with Trinity upstairs, holding a rocket in someone’s chest, it was dawning on her all too quickly that something terrible could happen. Something final but so horrible that she couldn’t even allow herself to imagine the word.
Not only would she lose someone she loved, but she could lose them without even getting the chance to tell them the truth. Trinity would never know, and that was what sickened Yolanda the most.
She made a straight path for the stairs, practically running through the bustling ED and dodging patients and ED staff.
Just as she reached the doors, Dana stepped into her path, hands locking around the push-bar that would let her through. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Upstairs.” She tried dodging to Dana’s right, but her attempt was met with a matching step.
“Absolutely not. The surgical unit is locked down. No one goes up.”
Yolanda’s pulse was pounding in her ears now. Her vision tunneling as a panic she rarely felt before was beginning to choke her. “Move.”
“Yolanda–”
“I said move!” Her tone was something she’d never dream of taking with Dana. She had respect for the woman – she was the only thing that kept the ED running half the time. But right now, she was the one thing standing between her and Trinity. Her and a fucking explosive.
Dana crossed her arms, not budging an inch.
“Dana,” Yolanda said, voice tightening before it wavered with her desperation. “Get out of my way.”
“You can’t go up there.”
“Trinity is up there.”
Dana hesitated.
Yolanda took a step forward, and Dana didn’t move to match it. That was just the opening she needed to shove past her and push through the stairwell door. She would apologize to Dana for jostling her later. The only thing swirling in her head was Trinity, Trinity, Trinity–
~.~.~
Abbot checked his watch for the tenth time in two minutes – Trinity was keeping count. “They’re two minutes out,” he declared. She fought the urge to say that much was obvious when he said they were two minutes and thirty seconds out thirty seconds ago. “Just a bit longer, Santos. Then you’ll have your arm back.
Trinity nodded faintly. She could withstand another couple of minutes.
She just needed another distraction. It came in the form of Caleb this time, her gaze drifting toward where he was connected to the ventilator and was partially draped off for surgery. It was easier to focus on him; it helped her ignore the cold knot that was coiling around her lower spine.
Caleb looked young. Twenty-eight, wasn’t he? She was struggling to remember what the medic rattled off as they carted him in. But he was in his late twenties – just like her.
Certainly too young to be lying unconscious with a rocket lodged somewhere inside his chest cavity (was there really ever an age for that sort of thing?)
“Stupid,” she muttered under her breath. Not maliciously, just… observationally. Maybe it was because she was coming off a day full of reckless injuries that were 100% preventable if people took a couple of seconds to think their actions through, but she couldn’t imagine being stupid enough to play around with a bazooka on the Fourth of July – or any day for that matter.
Her eyes drifted over the wound again. The gap where her hand disappeared. She started to wonder how much it had to have hurt when it hit. How much damage was hiding in that hole. His vitals were surprisingly steady, but physics were physics, and a literal rocket had punched through his muscle and ribs. No doubt, his lung was compromised in there. He was holding well on what was likely a single lung’s effort, but if that gave out too, then…
She pushed that thought away, not wanting to imagine her patient dying. Not after she spent this much time literally pinching his artery so he wouldn’t die.
It had to be less than a minute now – she really hoped it was.
The OR door slammed open, and Trinity wondered if the cavalry had finally made their appearance. But it would be so strange for them to just burst into a room that was sensitive to even a breeze. When she looked toward the source, she was surprised to find Yolanda in place of the bomb squad.
Just like he did with Whitaker, Abbot snapped out a warning. “Hey–!”
Yolanda didn’t stop to regard him, walking across the space that she very well owned alongside Walsh and making a straight path for the table. She looked angry. So angry that Trinity felt her stomach twist, worried that she had managed to fuck something up and was about to hear about it.
In place of a rolling lecture, Yolanda was quiet as she came to a stop and studied Trinity. She analyzed her arm position. The slight shake to her free hand. The blood that drenched the gown she still donned. Her face shifted, even angrier if that were possible–
Trinity braced herself. Yeah. She’s definitely mad.
Not exactly ideal timing for a fight, but Yolanda had a knack for doing things and saying things when Trinity least expected them.
Yolanda opened her mouth, but instead of lashing out at Trinity, she turned back to speak to Robby and Abbot. “Get her out of there,” she snapped.
Whitaker, standing near the wall, muttered quietly, “Tried that.”
Robby shook his head, raising his hands pleadingly between Whitaker and Yolanda. “You know we would if we could. But we can’t.”
Yolanda stared at him. “Excuse me?”
“It’s too sensitive,” Robby said. “If she moves the rocket–”
Yolanda whipped back toward Trinity. Anger was now definitely being projected toward her. “How stupid do you have to be to stick your hand into someone when there’s an explosive inside them?”
Trinity blinked at her. Really? Her own anger flared to match. “I didn’t know there was an explosive! My only priority was keeping my patient alive.”
“Of course, none of you adrenaline junkies down there paused to think for even a second!”
Walsh stepped in quickly, hands raised in an attempt to placate Yolanda, who looked about two seconds away from flipping the surgical tray or socking Abbot or Robby. “Okay, now is not the time to get the room worked up.”
Trinity glanced up at the OR clock to avoid the conversation between Yolanda and Walsh. Twenty minutes. Her shift ended in twenty minutes. Yolanda’s too, technically. They had agreed to meet in the parking garage at 7 – that was until Yolanda asked for a rain check. Because she had other plans.
Trinity looked back at Yolanda and felt her frustration begin to simmer below the surface. The one good thing she had to look forward to today, and it was taken from her. She didn’t need Yolanda here to rub that reminder in her face. “You should go,” Trinity said quietly.
Yolanda frowned, abandoning the fight she started with Walsh to look back at her. “Go where?”
“To your other plans.”
For a second, Yolanda just stared at her. Then she laughed; something short, and sharp, and entirely humorless. “Jesus, Trinity, I didn’t have other plans!”
Trinity blinked, yet again dumbfounded by Yolanda.
“I was upset,” Yolanda said. “And I–”
Trinity had heard those words from other people before. She knew the explanation that would follow. She interrupted Yolanda with what she knew, “Wanted to hurt me?”
Just after the words slipped out, Trinity realized that they shouldn’t have been having that conversation there. Not in front of Robby and Abbot. Whitaker knew of them, so he was cool; and Trinity had to guess that Walsh probably heard about them through Yolanda. But it still felt wrong hashing out their relationship in front of three attendings and a Huckleberry when they’d been cruising under the radar for ten months.
Yolanda opened her mouth, but before she could confirm or argue that, the OR door was slowly swinging open as a crew of three people in heavy bomb disposal uniforms was walking in. The woman in charge motioned for her team to set up on the side tables and looked at the group of doctors. “Alright, which one of you has the rocket?”
Abbot pointed to where Trinity was still looking at Garcia, daring her to speak. “That would be Dr. Santos.”
The woman approached the table, eyes moving quickly over the setup. “My name is Captain Renee Alvarez. We’re going to get this sorted out. You just keep holding still, okay?”
“Got it,” Trinity agreed.
Alvarez looked at Yolanda who was right beside her, then Walsh, and finally the three guys on the outer edge. “Non-essential personnel out.”
Whitaker hesitated, shaking his head as he tried to argue, “But we can’t just–”
“Out,” Alvarez repeated.
There was a brief round of arguing between the guys. The OR wasn’t their domain, so they were technically all considered non-essential. Their business was in the ED, where they needed to return. All the same, Robby tried to protest, Abbot muttered something about liability, and Whitaker hovered like he might bolt forward again and latch onto Trinity’s leg so they couldn’t remove him.
But Alvarez wasn’t having their shit and reminded them that a sensitive explosive was still inside a person, so if they could kindly clear the fuck out.
They relented then, Robby grabbing fistfuls of Abbot’s and Whitaker’s scrubs so he could drag them out behind him. Trinity tried not to let it show how much it meant that they wanted to stay at all. Maybe it was for the patient, but for her own sake, she wanted to believe they wanted to stay for her too.
“I’ll see you downstairs,” Whitaker said so surely before the OR door closed behind him.
With the guys gone, Walsh turned toward Yolanda and pointed her out. “You too.” When Yolanda refused to move, Walsh hardened her glare. “Garcia–,”
“No!”
“You’re not part of this surgical team. I was assigned to Caleb’s case. Not you.”
“I’m not leaving.”
Walsh opened her mouth to argue again, but Trinity knew it would be an endless back-and-forth between the two of them. She needed Yolanda to shut up and listen to someone, and suddenly, that person was going to be her. “Yoyo,” she said, the nickname slipping out of sheer desperation. Somewhere, somehow, in the last minute, Trinity wasn’t angry anymore. There was no space for that in her. Not with all this fear. Real, paralyzing fear. “Please,” she pleaded quietly as she found Yolanda’s beautiful eyes. She remembered just last week that she had complimented them while the sun streamed in through her window and bathed Yolanda’s brown eyes in light and made them shine like gold. The things she would give to go back to that slow afternoon. That was their last day off together. They were supposed to have another on Monday.
“Trinity,” Yolanda tried to argue, but Trinity shook her head ever so slightly.
“I need you safe.” The words were barely above a whisper.
Yolanda stepped closer to the table, something Captain Alvarez didn’t seem to take kindly to as she raised a warning hand. Yolanda ignored her and stopped until only the bed remained between them. “I’m not going anywhere.” Her voice was steady; so steady that Trinity felt like it was the only sure thing she could latch onto in that moment. “I’m staying right here.” She leaned slightly closer and said softly, “Until you walk out of here safe and sound, I’m not leaving.”
When it was clear that the people in the room were there to stay, Alvarez motioned to her team and raised three fingers. “Alright, Dr. Santos, our first priority is going to be getting some protection for you and your team. Once we have that sorted, I’m going to ask that we get an X-ray of the patient’s chest so we can figure out where exactly your hand is in relation to the rocket.”
“We have a portable X-ray for that,” Walsh supplied as one of the techs took her side and aided her in dressing in the ballistic vest. The other tech took to Yolanda while Alvarez did the very slow and deliberate process of dressing Trinity.
“You don’t move at all, okay? I’ll do everything for you,” Alvarez reassured, each move intentional and well-practiced as she set the weighted vest across Trinity’s shoulders and then began to strap it into place.
Ballistic helmets were handed out shortly after, all with a clear face visor and padded chin straps. Yolanda and Walsh adjusted their own, while Trinity, yet again, allowed Alvarez to set her up.
“Dr. Santos, my colleague, Leon, is going to wrap a blast blanket around your waist. This is just an extra precaution to protect your legs from any shrapnel.”
Trinity didn’t see Leon as he came up behind her. She didn’t like the idea of a man reaching around her, but she didn’t have a choice. She looked right at Yolanda and focused on her breathing as the next layer of protection was set around her.
It all felt absurdly heavy. Like an extra twenty pounds had just been added to her already exhausted frame.
Leon left Trinity and settled another blast blanket over Caleb’s legs and then his neck area. But his chest and face were exposed. There was no way to get him in a vest or a helmet. He wasn’t protected the way they were.
He was just some twenty-something guy with a rocket buried inside him, and he had no say in any of this. He didn’t know that he wasn’t being protected the way they were.
Somewhere in her periphery, she saw Walsh prepare the portable X-ray. Before she could get it arranged over Caleb, Trinity spoke through her tightening throat. “Wait.”
Everyone paused.
Trinity looked down at Caleb again and felt desperate tears well in her eyes. “He’s not protected.”
Walsh followed her gaze. So did Yolanda. Alvarez and her guys seemed more focus on the doctors, but for a moment, no one said anything.
“Walsh,” Trinity said, voice shaking slightly. “Is he going to be okay?”
Walsh looked at the monitors. Trinity did too, then; considered the barely steady vitals. It would get worse. The longer they waited would mean Caleb getting closer and closer to death.
“Once the rocket is out… are you going to operate right away?” Trinity wasn’t sure why she needed that reassurance, but it was all she could think to ask. She needed to know that Caleb would be prioritized. That someone would fix him.
Walsh hesitated. “It depends. Until the bomb is contained–,”
Trinity’s breathing started to change as she realized what she was alluding to. “But what if his lung collapses? What if there’s internal bleeding we can’t see? We’re just – we’re just standing here while he– And if you can’t operate right away, then he’s going to tank. He’s going–”
“Dr. Santos.” Alvarez’s voice cut through the spiral, but she wasn’t the person Trinity needed reassurance from. “I need you to stay calm.”
Easier said than done. Trinity shook her head slightly. “But we’re not helping him,” she said, panic creeping into her voice now. “We’re supposed to save people, and we’re not saving him.”
Her fingers tightened instinctively inside the wound. Her body flinched almost immediately after, knowing she just did what she wasn’t supposed to, which was move. The shift of metal under her palm was a sick reminder that she could’ve blown them all up.
Her breathing hitched. “We should be doing something.”
“Trinity,” Alvarez said more firmly, but Trinity barely heard her.
She looked toward Walsh again instead. “You’ll keep him alive, right?” Her eyes flicked between Walsh and Alvarez. “Please tell me he still has time.” The realization hit her a half-second later. She wasn’t just asking Walsh anymore. She was looking straight at Alvarez. Pleading, not just for Caleb, but for herself as well. I don’t want to die, the words whispered in the back of her mind. Please, fuck, I don’t want to die. I’ve made it this far. I’ve survived so much shit, and I’m not ready for a rocket to be the thing that kills me.
The room had gone very quiet. All Trinity could hear was her breathing. She felt suspended in the OR for two beats before–
“Trinity.” Yolanda’s voice came gently. So soft, and so careful, it felt like all the quiet moments they had shared late at night or early in the morning when they existed in each other's space and just breathed. “Pause,” Yolanda said quietly, raising her hand slightly and moving it up and down in a very slow and measured presentation. In and out.
Trinity wanted to shift her gaze from Yolanda back to Caleb. Her eyes started to move.
“Look at me.”
Trinity did.
“Breathe,” Yolanda softly pleaded. Hand raising then falling. Raising then falling. She inhaled dramatically, offering Trinity another visual guide. “Copy me.”
Trinity tried. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Again. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Again.
“No one is going to die,” Yolanda said, her voice steady even through her hands were trembling slightly. “Not Caleb. Not Walsh. Not me. And certainly not you.”
A tear slipped from the corner of Trinity’s eye, sliding down beneath the rim of the protective visor.
“I’m scared,” she admitted, the words barely making it out. What a jarring thing to confess. Fear. Trinity hadn’t confessed the fear she felt to anyone in a long time. Maybe if she was better about it, she would’ve told Yolanda last week that she didn’t want casual, but she was scared to ask for more.
Yolanda exhaled shakily and forced a small smile for Trinity’s sake, “Me too. I’m so fucking scared. But we’re going to be okay.”
Trinity latched onto those words, treating them as her lifeline as Walsh and Alvarez postured to resume their work.
~.~.~
Yolanda knew there was still so much she needed to say to Trinity. Too much, maybe. Given her predicament, it didn’t feel fair to spring the full weight on her yet. There was a priority list in her head, and telling Trinity she wanted more than casual was like number three.
Number one and two were reserved for getting Trinity’s hand out and then getting the lot of them as far away from that blast as possible. Then, when it would all be said and done, she’d be brave and say what she needed. Say the words that were choking her now and stopping her from saying anything else.
It almost looked like Trinity needed the silence anyway. Like speaking would threaten to break her concentration.
She’d been holding the bomb for almost an hour by the time the portable X-ray was up and running. Yolanda and Walsh carefully explained to Trinity and Alvarez where they were moving and the angles they were thinking of capturing. Alvarez gave her two cents, recommending beneficial viewpoints so her team could make the safest call.
The crew choreographed themselves and moved around Trinity like she was the trigger – well, she said was, Yolanda realized, hating the thought of not even being able to touch her in comfort for fear of sending off a wave of movement.
Thirty minutes of preparing, imaging, and repositioning around Trinity’s arm. Then another five as they waited for the scans to be projected on the monitor at the other end of the room.
Yolanda stayed by Trinity while Walsh and the bomb squad left to talk strategy. Still, Yolanda didn’t say anything. Just watched Trinity watch the clock as the time ticked slowly past 7 PM. She should’ve been off by now. If she didn’t ask for a rain check, they would’ve been grabbing dinner before heading to the park to watch the fireworks when it got dark. Yolanda certainly didn’t wake up that morning expecting this, and she was pretty sure neither did Trinity. Thinking of waking up alone made her realize she’d spent the last week avoiding Trinity. Not accepting invites, deflecting when she asked to come over. What a waste, she thought, all that time I could’ve been spending with her, and I didn’t.
It had been ten minutes of deliberating when Yolanda looked at Trinity properly and realized how pale she was becoming. There was a haze to her eyes, and she kept swallowing. No doubt nauseous either from stress or hunger. Did Trinity eat today? Yolanda wasn’t paying attention – and Trinity had a knack for neglecting her needs on shift. That whole damn department did. But it had happened time and time before that Trinity would get off shift and have a slight tremor to her frame that Yolanda would refuse to ignore. She would insist on food first, then fluids. Then maybe they’d have their fun, but Yolanda would always encourage Trinity to sleep after.
As far as Yolanda was concerned, Trinity likely only had a couple of Red Bulls to tie her over the thirteen-hour shift, and now her body was feeling the crash effects.
When Trinity’s breath hitched and she stiffened, her shoulders starting to tremble with small shudders.
Yolanda dipped her head and fought to catch her eyes. “Trin?”
No response. Trinity was looking right past her.
“Hey, cariño. Eyes on me–“
The nickname had never entered the hospital, but it did the trick, pulling Trinity back to attention and making her focus on the shape of Yolanda in front of her.
“I’m fine,” Trinity said on her next exhale. Diverting her gaze once more and looking at the clock again.
Like hell she was.
“Trin,” she said gently. “Look at me.”
Trinity’s eyes dragged toward her.
“Are you okay?”
For a moment, Trinity held the lie in place. Stiffened her lower lip stubbornly and tried to steady her breathing to show nothing was affecting her.
Somehow, Yolanda managed to pull the truth with just her pleading eyes alone.
“My fingers are starting to go numb,” Trinity admitted quietly. “And my shoulder really… really hurts.” The last word wobbled as her chin quivered. She clenched it to hold back her tears.
Yolanda’s chest tightened. Trinity so rarely cried. She’d only see her do it once or twice in the last ten months, and even then she didn’t stick around for Yolanda to comfort her; she just sequestered herself in a bathroom to have a private cry before she emerged and went on as if nothing had happened.
Yolanda itched to touch her. Comfort her. Hold her. Take the bomb from her and hold it herself so Trinity could be safe and free.
None of those were options, so she forced a calm nod and tried to smile. “Almost there, Sweetheart. Just a little longer, okay?”
Trinity gave the smallest nod she could manage.
“Garcia,” Walsh called from the monitor, nodding for Yolanda to join her and Alvarez’s team.
She gave Trinity one last, reassuring smile before she turned to attend to the scans.
“We need to figure something out,” she said under her breath when she got beside Walsh. “Now. Trinity’s starting to shake.”
Walsh didn’t look away from the screen. “I noticed.”
The X-ray glowed on the monitor and drew Yolanda’s attention that way. She scrutinized it. Considered the various angles they got of the rocket wedged deep in Caleb’s chest cavity.
Walsh pointed with a gloved finger toward the head of it. “Look here.”
Yolanda leaned closer. The tip of the rocket rested frighteningly close to the shadowed silhouette of Caleb’s heart. “And here,” Walsh continued. A dark mass filled half the chest cavity. Blood.
“A hemothorax?” Yolanda prompted.
Walsh nodded grimly. “That rocket’s sitting right against the mediastinum.”
Yolanda’s stomach dropped as she came to the shared conclusion, “There’s too much damage.”
Walsh finally looked at Yolanda, eyes flitting back to Trinity before she shook her head, “If that rocket moves even a centimeter, whatever vessel it’s pressing on is going to open like a faucet.”
“Meaning?” Alvarez piped up, getting both surgeons to address her.
“The second it comes out, he’s done,” Yolanda explained.
Behind them, one of Alvarez’s technicians hurried over. He extended a tablet her way with an urgent, “Captain.”
Alvarez read the screen, her lips pinching. Yolanda could already tell their bad news was about to get worse. “It almost helps that the patient doesn’t have a chance to make it. The auction report for the weapon came through. It’s a Cold War surplus launcher – Soviet-made.”
“So…” Walsh dragged out, never one to enjoy being left out.
“The stability is poor, and extraction is very unlikely.” Alvarez sighed in disappointment and passed the tablet along to the tech. She looked over at Trinity and the patient - the body, Yolanda tried resting the words in her head, but his beating heart on the monitor begged to differ. They didn’t do this. They didn’t prescribe death sentences without some sort of attempt to fix it.
“We’ll need to neutralize it in place,” Alvarez explained. “It’ll be a controlled detonation.”
“In the patient?” Walsh asked.
“Yes.”
Silence settled over the small group.
Yolanda’s gaze flicked toward Trinity.
Still standing there.
Still perfectly still.
Still holding the thing that was about to explode.
She swallowed.
“That’s not going to go over well with her,” Yolanda whispered, earning faint nods from Walsh and Alvarez.
“It’s the only option. Especially if she wants a shot at walking out of here,” Alvarez said before she motioned to her team. “No time like the present. Leon, West,” the men gathered close. “We’re setting up a controlled disruption charge. Minimal yield. Containment blankets over the thoracic cavity. Best estimate is the blast will remain localized to the surgical field.” She looked at Walsh as she revealed the extent of the damage. “You may lose the OR.”
“I don’t care about the OR. I care about getting her out of it.”
Yolanda was relieved that Walsh said that – she might’ve decked her otherwise for putting up a fuss over something so frivolous. But evidently, everyone in the room was shifting their priority from saving Caleb to getting Trinity out safely.
Alvarez clapped her hands once. “Let’s get set up.”
Across the room, Trinity continued watching the clock, oblivious to what they had just discussed. They were now an hour past the end of her shift.
Her arm trembled, and Yolanda knew that they were pushing their luck.
~.~.~
Trinity knew the team had come to a conclusion of how to fix this when they started bustling about the room with more intention than before. She wondered when she would be let in on the plan, if at all. She had to be – she was the one holding the explosive after all. But Yolanda and Walsh were watching her like they had a scary secret that she wasn’t brave enough to be privy to.
She’d seen and heard of horrible things before. She wasn’t fragile. She wanted to yell as much across the OR so they would get on with it and tell her.
Leon came over with thick black bundles while West pushed a cart with the reinforced metal case. More protection wasn’t a great sign. Was all that for her? Did they think she was going to blow?
The bundling was set down before Leon began to lay layer after layer over Caleb with very delicate maneuvers. His head was covered, and Trinity worried it would impact the ventilator helping him breathe. Walsh or Yolanda would surely intervene.
When they didn’t, and another heavy layer was set atop Caleb’s chest, Trinity was done waiting for someone to take initiative and speak.
“What’s going on?” Her throat was dry. She really wanted water.
No one answered right away. Walsh and Alvarez exchanged a look, which made Trinity bristle uneasily.
“Walsh,” she pressed, voice strained now. “What’s the plan?”
Walsh stepped closer to the table, her tone careful and hands raised slightly as if she were ready to tell a family that their loved one didn’t survive a procedure. “We’ve reviewed the imaging, and the rocket’s sitting directly against the mediastinum. It’s likely compressing a major vessel.”
Trinity frowned. That wasn’t a terrible thing. It meant it was controlling a bleed. It meant that it was keeping Caleb alive, and that they knew the problem they had to attack first once the plug was gone. “That’s good, no?” She looked at Yolanda then, deciding that her opinion was the one she trusted most in the room. Walsh was brilliant, but Yolanda was Yolanda.
“No, Trin. The second it moves, whatever vessel it’s pressing on is going to rupture.”
Trinity stared at her. Then Walsh. Then Yolanda again. “You can repair it. You’re both the best; together you can fix it–“
“Santos,” Walsh tried to interrupt, but Trinity didn’t want to hear it.
“No,” Trinity pushed, panic creeping into her voice, “you can repair it.”
“There’s too much damage.” Walsh’s words were final. The last nail to Caleb’s coffin.
He was young, though. Twenty-eight. And Trinity had done what she did to save him. She did it because she knew he could survive.
“No,” she said immediately. “No, that’s not–”
Alvarez stepped forward, motioning to where her team had managed to cover Caleb so extensively that he hardly took the shape of a person at all. “We’ve identified the rocket model. It’s unstable, and extraction is extremely likely to trigger detonation. We’re going to perform a controlled detonation.”
Trinity didn’t speak bomb, but she sure as hell could gather how that plan would be exacted. “In the patient?” She snapped out, her stomach churning more violently than before.
“Yes, Dr. Santos.” Alvarez didn’t look pained by the thought. She maintained her cold, technical front, as if she wasn’t about to blow a twenty-eight-year-old man with a long life ahead of him into nothing.
Trinity shook her head, very much not on board with the plan. There had to be something else. They didn’t just spend the last forty-five minutes deliberating over scans just to come to the conclusion that the person they were intended to protect had to die. “No. No. You can’t do that!” Her voice cracked, tears welling in her eyes.
“Trinity,” Yolanda attempted to stop.
“He’s alive. He’s still alive.” The heart rate monitor was beeping. The vent was still hissing. She could feel the heart quivering against her fingers.
“He’s being kept alive by the rocket,” Walsh reminded. “It caused too much damage going in.”
“That doesn’t mean we just–” Her arm began to tremble violently. She clasped her left hand over her wrist, willing herself to be still. “We can’t blow him up. What if he has a family? What if someone’s waiting for him? Parents. A partner. Someone who needs him! We’re doctors– we’re,” a sob cut off her rant, as her tears finally slipped. She was usually good about rationalizing patient losses. She knew when someone could make it and when someone needed support to pass on peacefully. It was part of the job. But this– willingly allowing an explosive to detonate in the chest of someone who didn’t even know any better? It was wrong. So fucking wrong. And Trinity hated it. She didn’t want to do it. She didn’t want Caleb to die. She didn’t want to die.
She wanted to go home. She needed to go home–
“Trin.” Yolanda’s voice broke the haze of her desperate crying. “Sweetheart, listen to me. That rocket destroyed half his chest. If it had gone all the way through, he would’ve bled out before he even reached the ambulance.”
“No, no– that’s not fair.”
“I know it isn’t. But today was his day to go.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.” Yolanda’s voice wavered around a desperate need for Trinity to understand. “I know because if that bleed had opened downstairs? Or even here in the OR, no doctor in this hospital could stop it. He’s alive, because that rocket is plugging the hole, and because a machine is breathing for him.”
Silence settled heavily over the room. Trinity’s cries had tapered as she tried to allow herself to believe that. Trinity stared down at Caleb’s open chest. Her fingers still inside it, still holding what little life remained. She couldn’t do it. “I can’t just let him die,” she whispered.
Yolanda’s jaw tightened. Trinity knew she would try to argue.
“What if someone loves him?” Her words were barely audible, lost to a whimper.
Yolanda reached across the table and touched her fingers to Trinity’s quivering jaw. Held her softly with her fingertips and tilted her gaze to meet her own. “I love you.” They were said so surely; so bravely. So beautifully.
It was a seemingly bold enough confession that even Alvarez’s team paused their tinkering in the background.
Yolanda’s breathing shook, her voice rough with emotion that Trinity hadn’t ever really heard from her before. “I love you,” she repeated. “And I need you.”
Trinity stared at her like she’d just spoken another language. Never in her wildest dreams…
“I can’t even begin to imagine what it would feel like to lose you, so no, I’m not going to stand here and pretend Caleb is the priority when the person I–” Her voice broke, eyes shining as her fingers soothingly brushed her jaw. “When the person I love is the one holding the bomb.”
Trinity blinked rapidly, tears threatening to start anew. “How?” She whispered in disbelief. “How can you love me?”
Yolanda almost laughed through the tears threatening her own eyes. “How can I not? It’s easy, cariño. So fucking easy. And even if you don’t feel the same way… I’m not going to stand here and pretend the last ten months didn’t mean something to me.”
Trinity’s chest tightened, her own words from a few days ago rolling around in her head. Did she hurt Yolanda when she spoke them? Was she wrong in her initial thought that Yolanda was the only one capable of smashing her heart between her hands? Could she inflict as much damage? Realizing she very well could die in that room, Trinity refused to leave Yolanda with the idea that she was alone in the sentiment. “They did,” she said quietly. “They meant something to me, too.”
The words hung between them.
For a moment, the chaos of the OR faded away. It was just them. Of all the distractions Trinity needed to fall away from her body, this was the most effective. This erased all the aching and sadness. This made Trinity feel like she could breathe.
When Trinity glanced down at the patient again, her shoulders sagged. She knew. She knew.
Slowly, painfully, she nodded. “This is the only way?” she asked.
“Yes,” Walsh answered quietly.
Trinity closed her eyes for a moment before opening them, this time looking for Alvarez as Yolanda’s soft fingers fell away. “What do you need me to do?”
Relief flickered across Alvarez’s face. “We’ll guide you through it.”
Trinity nodded weakly and looked back at Yolanda. She needed another beat. Another moment where she could be suspended. “I’m scared.”
“Me too, but it’s almost over.”
~.~.~
At 8:21 PM, the OR was finally ready for the detonation. Cables now ran beneath the blast coverage that had been settled over Caleb, all leading to the compact control box that West was manning. Walsh had disconnected the ventilator and removed the lead wires from the vitals monitor, moving whatever expensive equipment she could out of the room and down the hall.
Trinity wondered if the lack of support was starting to affect his body. Were his stats dropping? Was his heart slowing?
She hoped his death would be merciful and occur before the blast. She didn’t want him to feel it.
Alvarez moved through the very final setup quietly, eyes occasionally flicking to Trinity.
Trinity knew she was trying to problem solve something. She was considering the way Trinity was trembling harder now as she struggled to support her arm.
Yolanda remained close, her eyes locked on Trinity like she was trying to memorize every detail of her face. Trinity hated the thought that she could watch something happen to her. Something very bad. She wanted to tell her to leave. To get some distance so she could be safe and a little less traumatized. “Yolanda–,”
Alvarez finished checking the placement of the disruptor charge before straightening. “All right.”
Her voice cut Trinity’s whisper off as she pointed to Walsh and Yolanda. “I need everyone not essential to the detonation outside the OR.”
“I’m not leaving her,” Yolanda immediately protested.
“You have to. This room is a blast zone.”
Yolanda pressed closer to the bed and shook her head. “I’m staying. I’m not walking out until she comes with me–,”
“Doctor Garcia,” Alvarez cut in, her tone firm now. “If that device goes off, anyone standing near this table could die. You can’t help her from inside this room.”
Fuck– as if Trinity needed to hear those words. Clearly, Yolanda felt the same sickening punch as they landed. She was shaking her head, eyes pleading.
Walsh stepped closer to Yolanda and reached to take her arm. When it was shaken off, Trinity knew that Yolanda wouldn’t budge for anyone. But maybe she would for her.
“Yoyo. Please. I need you safe.”
Yolanda looked at her accusingly – like it made her so fucking angry that Trinity would do that to her; ask that of her. Like she would never forgive her if something went wrong and she wasn’t there.
Walsh placed a hand on Yolanda’s arm again; this time, she didn’t pull away. “We need to go.”
Yolanda stared at Trinity for another long second. Then, reluctantly, she stepped backward toward the doors. Abbot stood at the doorway, offering Trinity an encouraging wave before he escorted Yolanda and Walsh from the room. The door shut behind the three of them with a fluid hiss and thunk.
And suddenly, Trinity was alone. Well, not alone. But surrounded by strangers, which was the sort of alone she’d felt for so long.
Alvarez approached the table with a handful of extra gear. She smiled encouragingly at Trinity. “You’re doing great,” she said.
Trinity tried to laugh. “Feels like a weird definition of great.”
Alvarez lifted a rubber mouth guard and positioned it in front of Trinity’s face in a wordless command to open. “So you don’t chip your teeth,” she said in way of explanation as Trinity opened and allowed the guard to get fitted against her teeth. A pair of protective goggles was held up next, Alvarez not explaining this time as she fixed them under Trinity’s clear visor and made sure her helmet was properly secured to her head. When that was fixed to her standard, Alvarez crouched slightly so their eyes met through the plastic.
“Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to remove your hand quickly and drop to the floor. As fast as you can. If we’re lucky, the movement won’t trigger the rocket immediately. My team will grab you and pull you out of the blast radius.”
“And if we’re not lucky?” Trinity asked.
“It’ll go off immediately.” Alvarez didn’t sugarcoat it, not that Trinity wanted her to. That warning made Trinity feel even more sure in her decision to tell Yolanda to leave. “The shockwave will be the biggest risk,” Alvarez said. “That’s why we need you flat on the ground. I’ll speak you through everything, okay? You can do this.”
Trinity allowed her heavy eyes to close for a fleeting beat before she swallowed thickly, begged her nausea to abate for the next couple of minutes, and finally nodded her confirmation. She understood. She was ready.
Alvarez stepped back and looked to her team. “Positions.”
The technicians moved instantly as the room gave way to quiet, only permitting the low hum of equipment to remain constant in the space.
“Okay,” Alvarez took several sizeable steps back and lowered herself to the floor where Leon and West had already set themselves on their stomach. She raised three fingers off the floor as her palm braced against it. “On my count.”
Trinity braced herself.
“Three.”
Her heart slammed against her ribs.
“Two.”
She tightened her fingers one last time around the bleeding vessel.
“One.”
Trinity held her breath and yanked her hand free, dropping like a dead weight and allowing her protective gear to drag her to the floor.
The explosion came instantly.
A violent CRACK tore through the room, followed by a concussive boom that rattled the walls and sent a shockwave slamming through the floor.
The world disappeared, flooding all of Trinity’s senses with burning white. For a moment, she felt like she’d been ripped out of her body.
Weightless.
Silent.
Floating.
Sound was the first to return. It consumed Trinity in a piercing ringing that swallowed everything else.
Trinity blinked and found the world coated in a dark haze. It took several long beats for her to recognize that the haze was dust coating her visor.
The sound increased steadily until Trinity felt like her ears were screaming. Was someone screaming? Was she?
No, her mouth was clenched tightly. So tightly it made her teeth ache. She used her tongue to nudge the rubber around until she could dislodge it from between her lips. The guard slipped from her teeth and clattered by her face. She licked her upper lip and tasted blood. It immediately explained the warmth trickling from her nose.
Her stomach lurched violently, and it occurred to her that she hadn’t taken a single breath since settling back into her body. She tried an inhale, but the air wouldn’t come. Her lungs seized as she coughed hard enough to gag.
Trinity tried to push herself up, but she only got so far as her arms shook violently and threatened to release and send her plummeting back down.
Somewhere distantly, past the screaming that probably wasn’t even there, she heard her name being called. Shadows ran around her periphery before a set of hands landed on her shoulders.
Trinity saw purple scrubs kneeling beside her and tested herself by flitting her eyes up as far as they would go. Yolanda swam into view before her nausea reared its ugly head once more.
Trinity found the strength then to press up to her knees before she gagged, shuddered, and violently released the contents of her stomach onto the floor. She shook hard and narrowly slumped forward into her own sick when Yolanda’s firm hands locked around her and kept her from collapsing. Her hand rubbed firmly between her shoulder blades – when did she lose the vests?
“I’ve got you,” Yolanda’s voice came to her in a low murmur. She shifted closer, until her head was next to Trinity’s and repeated, “I’ve got you, Baby. Deep breaths.
Trinity coughed, gasping for air between ragged breaths as her body continued to quake. She tested herself again and turned her gaze to the side where the bed had been destroyed in the wake of the bomb. Somewhere, under all the protective shields and cover, was Caleb.
He was gone. He was gone, and she effectively pulled the trigger.
Her shoulders crumpled as a broken sob tore out of her chest. “I couldn’t–”
Yolanda pulled her closer. “I know.”
Trinity sobbed even louder. Tried desperately to cope with the fact that Caleb’s body had been reduced to something no surgeon could ever repair. From whole to… nothing.
“Trinity.” That was Abbot’s voice. He knelt in front of her and touched her neck, searching for pain. “Helmet?” He was speaking to Yolanda, asking her to get it out of his way.
Trinity felt the weight of the helmet fall away, taking with it the dusty haze. Her second set of protective glasses was peeled off before Abbot shone a pen light against her eyes. She didn’t bother following it – just continued to sob over something she couldn’t undo or change.
“Nosebleed. Possible blast concussion,” Abbot muttered.
“Airway’s clear, but she needs a full exam,” Yolanda said, hand never stopping on its path over her back.
“We need to get her downstairs,” Abbot determined, sliding to Trinity’s free side and capturing her arm.
Someone counted off, but Trinity didn’t care what came next.
Her body ached. Her heart hurt in a way she never thought possible. She felt like a failure, even if she was alive. Even if that bomb didn’t blow her to smithereens with Caleb.
Her legs barely cooperated. The world still spun violently around her and threatened to make her keel over and puke again. Supported on either side, she stumbled toward the door, vision blurred and ears ringing. As she was pulled from the OR, Trinity looked back once. Saw the commotion of the bomb squad dealing with the clean up while Walsh knelt by the remnants and laid a hand over the ballistic blankets.
Trinity squeezed her eyes shut and let herself be guided away.
~.~.~
The explosion had caused its own flurry of chaos through the hospital. While the structure wasn’t compromised, the ED was a mess of patients panicking and doctors and nurses bouncing between beds and rooms trying to reassure everyone that the situation was contained to an evacuated floor and that no one was in any danger.
Yolanda paid little mind to any of it as she set her sights on the empty bed in South 22 that was clearly just evacuated by someone who was well enough to flee the ED. Wanting to get Trinity checked, Yolanda nodded Abbot toward the bed and tugged the used blanket off, allowing it to land somewhere on the floor as she slowly set Trinity on the edge of the bed.
Abbot did the maneuvering of her legs up, a movement which made Trinity blanch all over again and lurch forward. Yolanda gathered a small waste bin from the corner of the curtained-off space and stuck it under her chin just as she evacuated stomach acid from her system.
“Easy,” Yolanda shushed, her hands returning to Trinity and reaching to comfort. She didn’t like not being able to touch her – to remind herself that she was real, and alive.
When that bomb blew… Yolanda felt her whole world crumble under her feet. And when she found Trinity just lying on the OR floor, she began praying to a god she long since abandoned.
Please, God, let her be okay. Don’t take her from me. Don’t take her–
Trinity had moved, and Yolanda felt her heart release. When this was all over and Trinity was in the clear, Yolanda was certain she would tear her a new one for scaring her that bad.
For now, she was doing everything to love on her quietly while the little space began to fill with Trinity’s team.
Robby, Parker, Dana, Whitaker, and McKay all found something or another to do, but not before faltering in step at the sight of a very worn, bloodied, and dusty Trinity. Yolanda had never seen her shake so badly, and she was certain it was a sentiment that the others in the room shared.
Abbot maintained the lead as the treating physician and began flicking on monitors around them while pulling at leads to connect to Trinity. “Let’s get vitals again.”
Dana stepped up to the bed across from Yolanda, easing the bin from Trinity and replacing it with a proper pulp kidney dish before she reached to snip away Trinity’s scrub top and blue shirt. Abbot passed the leads off to Parker who flanked Dana and reached to set each sticky tab where it needed to be on Trinity’s chest and stomach.
Trinity sank back onto the bed, still trembling as her eyes flicked up to look at the ceiling lights. Yolanda didn’t want to, but more bodies advanced into the space, forcing her to take a step back from the bed. Whitaker clipped a pulse ox onto her finger and rolled the blood pressure cuff onto her now bare arm while McKay took the oxygen mask and set it carefully onto her face. “There you go, Honey. Deep breaths,” McKay kindly coached as she gave Trinity a reassuring smile.
Dana adjusted the monitor leads that Parker had just set as Trinity’s heartbeat began pinging through the room.
Robby stood near the foot of the bed, arms crossed tightly, watching and waiting for any sign he needed to intervene.
Abbot shuffled Whitaker aside and grabbed his penlight again, tapping Trinity’s chin as he leaned in close and pointed the light at her eyes. “Trinity.”
She blinked sluggishly, but unlike upstairs, she was steady enough to follow him. Yolanda exhaled, knowing that tiny improvement meant she was closer to okay than severely injured.
“Yeah?” Trinity croaked out.
“Follow the light.”
Yolanda watched her try. Really try. She lagged behind the motion of Abbot’s finger in front of the light, and her eyes squinted sensitively, but it was still better than nothing.
“Pupils reactive,” Abbot muttered. “Headache?”
“Yeah.”
“Dizziness?”
“Mhm.”
“Nausea?” Robby spoke up this time when Abbot didn’t ask the question; Yolanda itched to snark that he would know the answer if he had been there from the start.
Trinity made a weak gesture toward the trash bin and beat her to the quippy punch, “Already covered that.”
Abbot huffed a faint breath of relief. “Good sign that you still have a sense of humor.”
A bag of fluids was hung beside the bed, as Dana made quick work of inserting an IV into the back of her hand.
Trinity still shook intermittently – Yolanda briefly worried that she was cold, even after McKay set a hospital gown over her and waved Lena down for an extra blanket. But those tremors could’ve been anything. Adrenaline crash. Hunger. Nausea. Fear. Exhaustion.
Too much that couldn’t be addressed all at once. Yolanda wanted to get close again and hold her hand. Ease the shaking where she could. But there was no room for her around the bed. Not with the team working so fluidly to treat their fellow ED colleague.
“Why are you guys still here?” Trinity asked, voice a whisper, and hard to hear from behind the oxygen mask.
Whitaker, closest to her head and likely the only one who actually caught her question, smiled softly and brushed her hair back. “Most of day shift stuck around. We weren’t exactly clocking out until the bomb situation was over.”
McKay nodded her agreement and tacked on, “We needed to know you were okay.”
Trinity blinked slowly at them before nodding, taking that answer and not fighting it. That was a first.
When McKay removed the mask to check on the nosebleed, the flow proved to be persistent and steady. She relayed as much to Robby and Abbot, both of them suggesting an ice pack and some gentle pressure until it stopped.
Dana disappeared for the ice pack, returning seconds later with it in hand. She gathered a gauze pack off the prepared tray too, but instead of heading for Trinity, she made toward Yolanda and pushed the items into her hands. “Doctor Garcia, perfect. A job for you to do that isn’t hovering while we work.”
Yolanda jumped at the opportunity to get back beside Trinity and slotted herself where McKay stood, tearing the gauze pack before she held it carefully under Trinity’s nose and followed with the ice pack on her forehead and nose’s bridge. Trinity sighed into the cool relief, her eyes flitting shut.
“Hold still,” she murmured, voice soft in a way that would’ve stunned half the hospital staff. Whitaker was the only one who’d ever gotten close to hearing her and Trinity speak to each other that way, and his surprised gaze spoke volumes about how obvious Yolanda was being about their relationship around the ED staff.
Yolanda didn’t care. She’d deal with HR another day. For now, she was focused solely on Trinity. She caught Whitaker’s gaze and nodded down to the ice pack, a silent request for him to hold it in place now that the situation didn’t demand so much of any of the doctors there. Trinity was evidently stable enough.
When her hand became free, Yolanda shifted closer and brushed dusty strands of hair from Trinity’s forehead with a soothing tenderness. She leaned forward a moment later and pressed a kiss to her hairline, whispering a little prayer of thanks to that God she had initially pleaded to for not taking her girl from her.
For a couple of minutes, everything felt okay. The room didn’t empty as no one was seemingly brave enough to depart from Trinity’s bedside quite yet, but she seemed to have hit a steady state. Her nose stopped bleeding faster than anticipated, allowing Yolanda to swipe the thick lines of dried red from her upper lip. A stain remained in its wake, but it wasn’t anything a bit of soap and water couldn’t fix.
Just when it looked like Trinity was set to doze, her shaking worsened slightly. Barely visible under the warm blanket that was draped over her, but Yolanda could feel it under her hand.
The monitor chimed softly as her blood pressure cycled again.
Dana glanced at the reading. “Pressure’s still low.”
Robby hummed and rubbed his neck, “Not surprising after that adrenaline dump.”
McKay pressed a bit closer to Yolanda and set her stethoscope to Trinity’s chest as her eyes tracked the screen displaying her heart rate. “Tachy but settling. Lungs sound clear, but I think we should do a chest X-ray to be safe.”
“Perfect,” Abbot commended as he snapped his gloves off. “We’ll get the scan order in, but for now: fluids, rest, and we’ll do neuro checks for the next few hours. Once you’re steady on your feet, we can spring you out of her. Sound good, Santos?”
Yolanda glanced over, expecting Trinity to have been paying a little bit of attention; instead, she found her head dipped down as she flexed her red-stained fingers. Somewhere in the hours she’d spent with a hand in a chest, the blood had seeped past her glove and gotten onto her hand. Some of the blood might’ve very well belonged to herself too, but clearly it was disturbing Trinity.
Her breathing quickened as her heart rate picked up steadily.
“Santos?” Dana prompted softly, hand squeezing her shin.
“I need–,” Trinity’s voice broke, her tears starting anew, but not with nearly as much devastation as her crying upstairs. This was quieter. Lonelier. “I need it off.”
Yolanda understood before the rest of the room, already shuffling to get more gauze and saline.
“All of it! Please, get it off! Get it off–”
Trinity’s hands were worrying against each other by the time Yolanda slid back beside her.
“Hey,” Yolanda said softly, sitting next to Trinity’s hip as she allowed her items to settle on Trinity’s lap so she could reach out and cradle her face between her hands. “I’ll fix it, okay? I’ll get it off.”
“C’mon, kids, show's over,” Dana quietly said, beginning to usher the team away while Yolanda opened her gauze and soaked it in saline. In Yolanda’s periphery, she could see Whitaker and Robby lingering, but everyone else went on with Dana to return to the ED that they’d been away from for too long already.
Yolanda took Trinity’s right hand into her own and began the delicate but deliberate process of rubbing the blood away. “It’s okay,” Yolanda whispered, feeding Trinity bits of reassurance as she went on. “You’re okay, Sweetheart. You’re doing great.”
In the minutes Yolanda spent scrubbing under Trinity’s nails, and in every crack or line of her skin, Trinity gradually loosened and sank back into the bed. Her crying had stopped. Her monitor began to show improving vitals – her heart rate lowering while her oxygen levels increased. When her blood pressure was tested again, it had a slight uptick from its massive low.
Several wads of gauze later, and Trinity’s hands and face had been relatively cleared. “There we go.” Yolanda brushed her fingers over Trinity’s fingertips, then her palm, up her wrist. She was admiring her – revering her.
Trinity watched in silence; eyes glassy with exhaustion.
“We’ll get you home soon. A proper shower. Real bed. Whatever you’re hungry for,” Yolanda promised quietly.
“C’mon, Whitaker – let her rest,” Robby spoke up, giving Whitaker’s shoulder a pat as he motioned behind the curtain.
Yolanda looked back and found Whitaker floundering for a moment, torn between staying and leaving. When he realized it wasn’t really a question, but more of an order, he approached the bed and gave Trinity’s arm a squeeze. “Next time you want attention, just ask.”
“Fuck you, Huckleberry,” Trinity managed to tease past her sluggish, sleepy speech.
Whitaker shifted close to lean down and carefully hug her before he pointed behind himself at the ED. “I’ll see you at home, okay?”
Trinity nodded her affirmation, which was enough for Whitaker and Robby to head out. Soon, the room was quiet again. Just the soft beep of the monitor and the quiet combined breathing of the two of them.
Yolanda shifted onto a chair by the bed, lowering her vantage. “I can’t believe it’s over,” she murmured as her thumb traveled across Trinity’s knuckles and back again. She leaned in closer, resting her forehead briefly against Trinity’s knuckles. “You’re alive.” She felt the tears prick her eyes and immediately fall, landing on the bed and Trinity’s hand where she still held herself.
When she felt Trinity watching her, she exhaled shakily and forced herself to glance up. “Please don’t ever do something like that again.”
Trinity gave a tired, crooked smile. “No promises.”
Yolanda shot her a warning look. Serious and wholly unimpressed. “Trinity–”
“I love you,” Trinity said on her next breath, saying back the sentiment that she didn’t get to express upstairs.
Yolanda hadn’t realized at first that Trinity hadn’t said it back to her earlier – what, with the high stakes situation and all – but now that she was hearing it, she realized that Trinity had intentionally withheld them and was itching to get an opening to share. She’d later have to ask why she chose down in the ED instead of the OR to say it; but Yolanda already had a good idea it was because Trinity would try to protect her from having her heartbroken.
It would be calculated, saving her I love you for after a crisis so Yolanda wouldn’t lose someone who loved her back. But Yolanda was just relieved to be hearing the sentiment being returned at all.
“I’ve loved you for a while,” Trinity said, filling Yolanda’s silence. Her voice wobbled as she confessed, “I just… didn’t think I was brave enough to say it.”
“Why?” Yolanda asked, laughing slightly when she realized they both could’ve avoided a week of tension if they had just both been brave from the get-go.
“Because I’m pretty sure you’re the only person on earth capable of breaking my heart.” The words were a precious, vulnerable confession, and Yolanda fully intended to treat it as such. She wanted to prove Trinity wrong from here on out. Make her see that she would never break her heart.
She started with what she knew Trinity relied on most: actions. Shifting forward, she kissed Trinity’s cheeks, nose, and forehead. Soft. Careful. Deliberate as she loved each bit of her she could touch. Like Trinity was something precious she’d almost lost.
Because she was. Trinity was precious, and brave, and strong, and beautiful, and alive.
Alive.