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One thing you learn very quickly when you work at a trauma hospital is that there’s a distinct and very important difference between the sound of screaming and the sound of yelling.
Most screaming is normal—it implies pain, examination, and treatment, all of which are inherent to an emergency medicine environment. But yelling? That’s almost never a good sign.
So when Garcia walks out of the women’s restroom and hears what’s unmistakably Langdon’s voice at almost top volume, she slows to a stop and raises a curious eyebrow at the door to Trauma 1.
“ … over FIVE HUNDRED HOURS…”
Garcia balks a little at such an odd and loud sentence fragment and starts to approach the door.
“ … simulation labs with senior faculty—IT DOESN’T MATTER.”
“Cual es tu problema,” she mutters to herself, reaches out, pushes into the room—
“Stupid or arrogant,” Langdon continues angrily, “you need to realize that you’re a beginner—”
Garcia feels her entire body react to the last word—
“—which means that your job is to shut up, listen, and learn—”
She reaches the edge of the wall, steps into the main space, and sees Mohan staring at Langdon in disbelief—
“—because so far today, the only thing you have been successful at is proving repeatedly that you know nothing.”
And standing by the other end of an ice tub is Santos, looking small and numb and rooted to the spot.
“Discúlpeme,” Garcia interjects before he can continue, with the pure iciness she reserves exclusively for when men piss her off; expression severe, arms crossed over her chest, and stance rigid and ready. “What the fuck is going on in here?”
Langdon lets out a big annoyed huff and glances at her over his shoulder. “Nothing,” he deadpans with a dismissive wave in Santos’s direction. “Just your new best friend continuing to put patients at risk because she wants to do everything her fucking self.”
“That’s not—” Mohan begins, then hesitates when Langdon shoots her a look, but she just steadies herself and proceeds to address Garcia only. “That’s not entirely accurate.”
Garcia’s eyes shift to the intern in question, whose body language hasn’t changed at all. “Dr. Santos?” she asks, just on the soft side of neutral.
Santos doesn’t react.
Mohan takes a half-step closer with her brows furrowed in concern. “Trinity?”
Santos doesn’t react.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Langdon grumbles under his breath.
Garcia officially hates everything about this and makes her way toward Santos, coming up beside her and tilting her head to try to make eye contact as her hand hovers but doesn’t touch yet.
“Dr. Santos,” she says gently, “I need to borrow you for a minute. Can you come with me, please?”
Finally, Santos blinks twice and then sort of nods and Garcia dares to lightly touch her upper arm, and when that initial contact isn’t rejected Garcia drifts to her back and guides Santos past Langdon, out the double doors.
Santos seems to walk just fine, but still doesn’t say anything as Garcia leads her through the ED and out a side exit, to a small green area with one thankfully empty bench tucked against the building. Garcia takes a seat, gestures to the adjacent spot, and Santos sits silently beside her.
Doesn’t say anything.
Doesn’t even fidget.
Just stares into space.
“Are you okay?” Garcia forces herself to ask eventually.
Santos takes a beat to process the words, then blinks hard before her breath catches and she looks up at Garcia.
“Sorry—what?” she asks, voice strained and shaking subtly, then seems to finally realize they’re outside.
“Are you okay?” Garcia repeats slowly.
Santos looks a little confused even as she squeezes both of her knees and her shoulders tense through a deep breath. “Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”
“Because verbal abuse is never okay,” she acknowledges, “let alone on your first day of rotation, let alone from an angry white man.”
The smallest head shake, bottom lip dragged between her teeth, visible swallow; then Santos goes to speak, but nothing comes out.
“Santos?”
Focused on her knees, forearms flexing, elbows locked.
“Trinity?”
Her eyes close for a beat as she takes a steadying breath. “Mm-hmm.”
Garcia smiles just a little. “Can I borrow your wrist?”
Santos offers her arm without looking up from her lap, and Garcia braces Trinity’s hand with her own and uses her other index and middle fingers to feel for her pulse. Garcia begins to count, and Santos doesn’t react or reject her, and Garcia wonders vaguely if she’s even processing the subtle pressure against her radial artery.
“Tachycardia,” Garcia observes after a long, silent minute. “Your heart rate shouldn’t be this elevated when you’re sitting still.”
“Sorry,” Santos offers under her breath, sounding too far away and not sarcastic enough, and doesn’t bother taking her arm back.
Garcia debates doing something with Santos’s hand—squeezing it for some grounding stimulation, or even just holding it for a while—but ultimately takes it upon herself to carefully return Trinity’s arm to her.
“Look at me.”
She makes sure the words are calm and even and harmless, but it doesn’t matter; Santos’s freed hands find each other in her lap and she wrings them slow and hard until her fingers are beet red.
“You’re not in trouble, Trinity.”
The motions freeze, her lungs stutter, and she works her jaw through a barely-there nod. “Okay,” Santos manages from some strange place somewhere between apathetic and disbelieving.
Quite frankly, that’s not good enough for Garcia.
She gets to her feet and then eases herself down to crouch in front of Santos, Garcia’s eyes flitting to her clenched hands again before lifting back up.
“Can you look at me, please?”
Santos’s expression twitches and twists like Garcia is asking the world of her. “Just say it,” she mutters. “Whatever it is. Just get it over with.”
Garcia sits with the words for a long moment.
“I’m sorry for earlier,” she says eventually, clear and gentle and hopefully sincere enough that Trinity believes her.
She watches Santos process the words, then understand them, then finally makes eye contact; doesn’t say anything, but looks like she’s waiting, looks more open than she did a moment ago, and Garcia seizes the opportunity.
“I wasn’t… prepared,” she admits, “to hear any of that. But you were just asking for advice, which is good, and I shouldn’t have been so harsh.”
A beat of hesitation becomes a small nod that becomes a slightly bigger nod, then her hands unclench and Santos folds one leg against her chest and holds onto her ankle. She wrestles with her thoughts long enough for Garcia’s knees to get sick of this position, so Garcia comes back up to the bench and waits.
She doesn’t realize how close they are until Santos lets out a deep breath and then tilts her head lightly against Garcia’s shoulder. Garcia chuckles softly at the contact, only for Santos to make an odd noise and sit up rail-straight.
“I—sorry,” Santos blurts, “I didn’t mean to… that was weird. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Garcia promises with an unbothered shrug. “You’re fine, Trinity.”
Santos once again takes a moment to digest, then worries her lips before returning to that same position.
Garcia gives her a while to breathe in the silence, using that time to think about their previous conversation and what she saw in that trauma room and how Santos doesn’t seem to want to return any of Langdon’s heat.
Which makes her extremely unlikely to throw around baseless accusations.
“Hey, Santos?” she begins softly. “You said you noticed inconsistencies. Could you be more specific?”
She feels Santos tense at her question but stay where she is, to Garcia’s relief.
“I don’t know,” Santos dismisses quietly, “it could be nothing.”
“True. But it could be something, and if you tell me what you’ve noticed, maybe I can help.”
Santos takes a deep breath and sighs it back out. “I don’t want to get him in trouble.”
“Neither do I,” Garcia agrees. “But it’s not about Langdon—it’s about what he may or may not be doing that he shouldn’t be. Vamos,” she encourages and nudges Santos’s leg with her own. “Five minutes, before we have to go back inside. My listening ears are on.”
She hears Santos snort at that and tilts her head up where it still rests on Garcia’s shoulder.
“They look a lot like your regular ones.”
“Didn’t realize you were an ENT on top of emergency medicine,” Garcia deadpans. “Impressive stuff, Santos. Four minutes thirty seconds.”
Santos laughs a little and eases away so they can face each other properly, eyes flitting between Garcia’s as she considers her next move.
“I’m ready this time,” Garcia says. “I promise.”
She nods, and they talk about it until Garcia’s pager goes off, and she promises to make up for the interruption with a cocktail.