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It seems to take Trinity forever to unlock the door. She grabs at her keychain clipped to her shorts and fumbles a few times with the clasp. The key (or maybe her hand) doesn’t want to cooperate, and she has to push it in using the full weight of her palm. The late July heat causes the door to swell against its frame and opening it is a whole ordeal. She watches, as if from above, as her hands do the familiar dance: pull the knob before turning the key, and push using your hip until the door springs open. She’s lived here for a year, but the force catches her off guard and she stumbles into the apartment, tripping over air before righting herself.
The door’s quirks get annoying, but it gives her peace of mind to have fair warning every time someone enters the apartment. The strap of her bag begins to slide down her shoulder, and Trinity makes no move to grab it. It slips down and hits the floor with a dull thud.
“Santos?” a voice calls from the other room, and she jumps.
“Fuck,” she curses, grabbing at her chest where her heart pounds loudly. She thought Whitaker was out playing farmhand tonight, but she must have miscalculated. The startle shocks her out of the fog she’s been wading through ever since she left her appointment with the trauma counselor.
See, Robby? Is this what you wanted? She’s so mad at him. So mad, and so worried, that the only thing she can think to do to keep from drowning in it is to heed everything he asked of her.
“Trin?” Dennis pokes his head around the corner. He’s clad in a dark grey workwear brand t-shirt and lighter grey sweat shorts. The grey-on-grey nearly makes her laugh, and her brain searches for a biting quip about his lack of fashion sense, but it comes up empty. Then, she thinks about how he looks extra mousey dressed in all grey, with his small frame and unruly curls and sad little eyes.
Trinity killed a mouse once, back in her college apartment. The exterminator had set glue traps when he came, and how was she supposed to know awful and inhumane they were? She remembers the panicked squeaks coming from the kitchen late at night, the sheer basal need to shut them up, and the brief moment of animal recognition she had as she slammed a boot down on the poor thing’s head, putting it out of its misery.
She thinks a lot about how fragile life is. (Or, tries not to.) She’s confronted with it daily at work. Sometimes–she can’t help it–she dwells on the surge of power she felt, bringing the boot down and ending a life. She wonders if the people who have pressed theirs on top of her have ever been haunted by the same guilt she feels. If there is something fundamental they share. Or–
“Hey, Trinity?” Oh, right. Huckleberry. He killed a mouse, too. A rat. Whatever. On their first day. Before… “Santos?” He approaches her slowly, brow furrowed and eyes looking more sad than usual. His hand begins to stretch toward her, but he seems to think better of it and retracts it. “Are you…okay?”
It’s then that she realizes she’s crying.
Not sobs, just tears welling and blurring her vision. She swallows, or tries to, against the dryness spreading in her mouth. Her throat hurts.
“Mhm,” she nods, the sound reverberating hollowly and loudly around her skull.
Dennis doesn’t buy it, of course not, but he doesn’t press either. Small blessings. Instead, he crosses the kitchen, taking a wide breadth around her and puts on the kettle. The thought of him making her tea is so tender and saccharine that she feels sick.
He was tentative and nervous for the first few months of their cohabitation. Part of her felt sorry for him. Wondered what had happened to make him so meek. But part of her felt safer for it. He’s harmless, but she locked her bedroom door at night for the first week after they moved in. Just in case. He’s learned the hard way not to get up in her space, especially when she’s upset or tired, and she despises the fact that he knows anything about her at all. And that he knows, he must know some of her deepest shame, the scarlet letter burning on her chest, even if they’ve never talked about it.
She refused to say her piece at the trial because she felt so far away from it, with a life she actually liked, and because she wanted to be known as Trinity Santos, M.D., not Trinity Santos, victim. The cowardice is one of her biggest regrets. The bid for privacy didn’t even matter. It’s all over her anyway.
Huckleberry has always been nice to her, far nicer than she deserves for how much of a bitch she can be, but these past few weeks have been different. Ever since he’s realized how much she…needs him (God, the thought makes her want to hurl), he’s been softer. More assured.
She’s so tired that the fight’s going out of her. And that scares her even more. Without her armor, her teeth, what’ll happen? She may as well just roll over and let them have her.
“Here,” he says. “Chamomile. Do you want to keep standing there or…” he nods towards the couch. She moves slowly, methodically. Has to concentrate to get her legs to listen to her brain.
“So,” he asks, once he’s situated. “Spill. What’s going on?”
She shakes her head. She’s done too much talking already. Dennis hands her the mug. It’s navy blue, proclaiming “Best Dad Ever” in chipped lettering. She found it at a thrift store and found it funny enough to buy. Heat radiates to her hands through the ceramic and she clutches onto it like a lifeline.
“Nope!” he says. He’s really getting too sassy for his own good. She’s rubbing off on him. “You don’t get to come in here crying and not say anything.”
“Cool it, Huck,” she raps, taking a sip of the tea. Too hot. Burns the tip of her tongue.
“Trinity,” he sighs, exasperatedly. God, he is so fed up with her. The fact that there’s somewhere for him to go, that he could just leave, taunts her. His next words are muffled, like her ears are stuffed with cotton. “Please. I…I’m worried, okay? Just give me something to work with here. Is it…Garcia? Did she say something to you?”
“No,” Trinity barks out an incredulous laugh. “No, that’s…” Over? They haven’t hung out since the disaster of the fourth. Trinity was waiting for her to text, and then fighting against all her instincts not to text back when it came. “It’s nothing. I’m fine. I’ve been…seeing the trauma counselor.”
Trinity’s not stupid. She knows what she needs, what she would suggest to a patient: to try in therapy, probably EMDR, and to start letting people in. But she also knows that it’ll get worse before it gets better, and it’s pretty bad now as it is. The only thing that scares her more than staying where she is, is facing it. Is peeling back her defenses and letting herself bleed out in the town square where everyone can point and laugh.
“Oh,” Dennis stutters, “Good. That-that’s good, Trin.”
The nickname–the ease with which it spills from his lips these days–makes her want to crawl out of her skin.
“Maybe…” she sighs. She takes another sip of tea. It’s cooled to the perfect temperature. “I’m not…good at talking.” She doesn’t know why she says it.
Dennis laughs at that. “Understatement of the century.” He looks at her expectantly, like he’s waiting for something else. It’s all she can afford to give.
He confuses her. Somehow, despite all odds, he seems to enjoy spending time with her. The fact that he’s still here and not crashing at Robby’s or Amy’s blocks all the desire-path he-hates-me spirals her mind loves to detour through. She can’t think herself out of it. They’re friends. Simple.
“The MCI,” she pivots. “Do you ever…someone did that. A person decided to do that.”
“Yeah,” he says, soberly. “Yeah. It’s fucked.”
She doesn’t know what she means. The pain of it all tangles and overlaps. She can’t parse through where one thing starts and the other begins. “Do you ever think, like,” her voice cracks and she almost loses her nerve, “What if I’m capable of something like that.”
The air in the room goes very still. “Trinity,” Dennis starts. She doesn’t know if she’s ever seen him more serious. “Are you–” An ambulance siren cuts through the noise and they both jump. She realizes how it sounds.
“No, no, not like that,” she scrambles, “I just…I’m not–I’m mean! I’m stubborn and petty and selfish. I give people stupid nicknames because I’m incapable of playing nice. I don’t know why you put up with it.” Put up with me, she means.
“You’re not mean,” Dennis starts, and she’s frantically shaking her head. “No, listen to me. You’re not mean. You’re scared. There’s a difference.”
She slams her mug down on the coffee table, pointedly avoiding the coaster right next to it. Tea splashes over the side of it, burning the flesh between her thumb and index finger. Her heart pounds so loud she’s sure it can be heard in the room. Tachy, her brain supplies unhelpfully.
“Okay.” She says. Her voice is flat and thick and not really hers. “Okay. Maybe I am. So what do I fucking do with that, then.”
He doesn’t speak right away. “You don’t have to do anything.” He says. “Not right now. Just…sit. You don’t have to know what to do. You just need to let people take care of you a little sometimes.” He closes his eyes and braces himself. Probably expects her to go off on him. She wants to, so badly. But she can’t. Doesn’t want to be that person anymore.
He’s really becoming a great doctor.
Tentatively, she shifts closer. Dennis stills, confusion visible in his eyes, as she rests her head on his shoulder. They don’t touch, really. Aside from when she’s drunk and giddy and happy and turns into a human koala bear. She used to love hugs, as a kid. Maybe she can start there.
He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t have to.