Chapter Text
The shove happens fast. Too fast for Santos to react.
She's usually quick on her feet; quick to think, quick to find a way through. But there's no preparing for 250 pounds of forward momentum.
One moment Trinity is standing between the father and the door, voice level, posture squared.
"Sir, you need to step back."
Then the next second, his hand is on her shoulder, and he drives her sideways with everything he has.
She slams into the equipment cart. Metal shrieks, the top tray goes airborne, and syringes and gauze scatter across the floor in every direction. Her hip catches the edge first, then her shoulder. She reaches for the wall on the way down, a pure reflex,but there's nothing to catch. The back of her head clips the metal handle, and then she hits the cold hospital tile.
For a half second, the room is completely silent.
Then it erupts.
Security tackles the father. The little girl screams at the top of her lungs, tears streaming, inconsolable. Someone shouts for another nurse. Trinity blinks up at the ceiling lights, which are suddenly, brutally bright. She tastes metal.
"I'm fine," she announces to no one in particular, even though she hasn't moved yet.
"Don't." Robby's voice is sharp. He's already kneeling beside her.
When did he even get here?
"Just don't."
She pushes herself up onto her elbows anyway. The room tilts hard to the left.
"Okay." She can feel warm blood tracking slowly down her face, her lip split and swelling. "That's annoying."
Ten minutes later, she's in a bed she usually assigns to other people. It feels strange; the wrong angle, the wrong perspective, like sitting in someone else's chair. A CT is ordered. Whitaker presses an ice pack to the base of her skull. The bleeding is mild and already controlled. She's alert, oriented, and fucking irritated.
"You know," Robby says, checking her pupils with a penlight, "most people manage to avoid getting taken out by their own equipment."
She gives him a flat look. "Add it to my performance review."
Whitaker snorts from the doorway. Robby shakes his head, the relief underneath it poorly concealed.
"We're writing up the assault report. You good to answer a few questions?"
"I didn't black out."
"That wasn't what I asked."
She exhales through her nose. "I remember everything."
He holds her gaze a beat longer than necessary, then nods once. At the nurses' station, Dana pulls up her file to log an emergency contact. Robby leans over to check. The field is blank. He frowns, scrolls. Still blank.
"You've got to be kidding me," he mutters.
Whitaker peers over his shoulder. "What?"
"She doesn't have one."
Whitaker straightens slowly. "That tracks."
Robby shoots him a look.
"It really shouldn't. I'm pretty sure it's not even allowed, everyone's required to have one on file."
A beat of silence settles between them. Then Whitaker says, with a casualness that is clearly deliberate,
"Call Garcia."
Robby looks up. "Garcia? Yoyo Garcia?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
Whitaker shrugs, "She'll want to know."
Robby squints at him. "That's not an answer."
"It's the one you're getting."
After a moment, Robby dials. Garcia picks up on the second ring.
"This is Garcia."
"Hey, it's Robby."
"Rabbit-Bitch. Always a pleasure. I'm off today, why are you calling my personal cell?"
Direct. Borderline rude, but without the edge that would make it mean. Robby hadn't expected anything less.
"Don't ask me, ask Whitaker. Trinity Santos was assaulted by a patient's father. He pushed her into a cart and she smacked her head off of the ground. She's stable, head injury, CT pending. She doesn't have an emergency contact on file."
Silence. Then: "I'm on my way."
The line goes dead. Robby lowered the phone slowly. "Well. That was decisive."
Whitaker folds his arms. "Told you."
Garcia walks into the department like she's already behind and making up ground. Not frantic, not dramatic, just focused in a way that parts the general noise of the ER around her. She finds Robby first.
"Where is she?"
"Trauma three. She's okay."
Garcia's jaw tightens almost imperceptibly at the word okay. She nods once and heads straight for the bay without breaking stride. Robby and Whitaker exchange a glance and follow at a respectful distance. The ER is unusually quiet, and they are both, frankly, too curious to pretend otherwise. They know they're going to get snapped at. They've both decided they don't care.
Trinity is sitting upright when Garcia steps through the curtain. Her hair is slightly matted where it's been cleaned. Hospital gown. Ice pack balanced at the base of her skull. She looks annoyed. Which, Garcia notes, is a good sign. Then she sees the bruising along Trinity's temple, still darkening at the edges, and something in her chest does a slow, quiet clench.
"What the fuck happened?" Garcia asks.
"Lost a fight with a cart," Trinity says.
Whitaker, from somewhere behind Garcia, offers helpfully, "Cart's in stable condition."
Garcia turns her head slowly.
Whitaker blinks. "I — it was — "
"She got shoved into metal equipment by a grown man," Garcia says, with the particular tone of someone extending patience as a courtesy rather than a right.
Robby laughs under his breath. Whitaker folds immediately.
"Okay," he says, hands up. "Not funny."
Garcia nods, satisfied, and turns back to Trinity. "CT's clean," Trinity says, before she can ask.
"Mild concussion. Three staples."
Garcia steps closer, scanning her face with the careful, systematic attention of someone who does not like being caught off guard.
"Dizzy?"
"Only when I sit up."
"Don't sit up."
"I'm already sitting up."
Garcia exhales through her nose, something caught halfway between frustration and relief. Her hand comes up instinctively, moving toward the injury, then stops just short, hovering for a moment before she pulls it back.
"You should've let security handle it sooner," she says quietly.
"I did," Trinity replies. "He moved first."
A brief silence.
Garcia's composure slips. Just a fraction, just for a second.
"Jesus, baby-"
The word hangs in the air. Robby's head snaps up. Whitaker schools his expression into something neutral with visible effort, remembering in real time how frightening Garcia can be when she's in a mood.
Garcia closes her eyes for half a second, like she'd very much like to rewind the last five words. When she opens them, she's all business again.
"You hit your head hard enough to bleed," she continues, evenly. "If you start vomiting, you're staying overnight. That's not a discussion."
Trinity watches her carefully, but says nothing.
Robby clears his throat.
"So, um, just to clarify... should we update her chart?"
Garcia looks at him. "Update what?"
"Emergency contact."
A beat.
Garcia doesn't glance at Trinity. She just says, "Yes."
Trinity's fingers tighten slightly around the edge of the blanket.
Robby nods slowly. "Okay, then."
He gestures vaguely between the two of them, casting around for something to say into the silence. "Good to know."
"Is it?" Garcia asks.
He considers this honestly.
"It explains a few things."
Garcia arches a brow. "Careful."
"Right. I'm leaving."
He backs toward the curtain. "Call us if she starts vomiting or spontaneously begins quoting Shakespeare."
"I don't even like Shakespeare," Trinity mutters.
"That's the concussion talking," Whitaker says, and ducks out before Garcia can turn the look on him.
The curtain swings closed behind them. Silence settles over the bay. Garcia steps closer to the bed, and when she speaks again, her voice has dropped, quieter now, without an audience to perform for.
"You okay?"
Trinity nods. "Yeah."
Garcia studies her the way she always does when she doesn't quite believe something: thorough, patient, waiting for the seams to show. But her expression softens into the version of herself that only Trinity knows. The one who is there at the end of a hard shift, who memorizes her coffee order and knows she won't drink it if it's too milky, who has learned every sharp edge and never tried to sand them down.
”You don't have an emergency contact," Garcia says softly.
"Didn't think it was necessary."
"That's not an answer. And it's against the rules, and honestly baby, it's really dangerous."
Trinity shrugs, small and careful, but her stomach flips at the term of endearment. It always does, no matter how many times she's heard it from Garcia's lips.
Garcia lets out a slow breath.
"You can't keep moving through life like you're the only person in the room."
Trinity looks at her then. Something flickers across her face. Defensiveness, maybe. Or just the deep, ingrained pull of old habit.
"I'm used to it," she says.
"I know."
Garcia's hand finds Trinity's wrist, fingers settling lightly against her pulse. Clinical, on the surface. Routine. Like it doesn't mean anything.
Trinity's expression softens at the edges. "You came fast."
"I was in the area."
"That's not true."
Garcia doesn't answer that. Instead: "Next time someone shoves you, try not to lead with your skull."
"I'll work on it."
The corner of Garcia's mouth lifts into a soft smile. Her thumb passes once over the inside of Trinity's wrist before she withdraws her hand.
"I'll stay until they discharge you," she says.
Trinity watches her. "You don't have to."
"I know." A pause. "I want to."
That lands differently than an obligation would. Softer. More weight to it, somehow, for being a choice.
Trinity nods once.
Outside the curtain, Robby's muffled voice drifts through: "So how long has that been going on?"
"Not now," Whitaker hisses.
Garcia tips her eyes toward the ceiling.
Trinity exhales, and something in her shoulders, some tension she'd been carrying without noticing, quietly lets go.
For once, she doesn't tell anyone they don't have to stay.
And she certainly doesn't argue when Garcia pulls the chair closer.