Chapter Text
“Oh, what the fuck is this,” Trinity’s words were more air than sound as she blinked at the sight in front of her. She could still hear Whitaker banging around in the kitchen, putting his own frustration with the worst Fourth of July ever into whatever food he was making. That didn’t matter, though.
What mattered was the crying child standing in her front door, still in her PTMC scrubs and purple jacket, Vera Bradley dufflebag in hand and a fucking Labubu swinging from her backpack.
“Um,” Javadi’s voice was choked as she tried to force a smile. Her eyes were bloodshot and filled with tears. “Hey, Santos. I- Can I stay with you? For a night?”
And for the first time in ten months, Trinity considered what being a fourth year medical student before being even twenty-one years old meant. “Yeah. Yeah, come in, come on.”
Javadi practically shuffled into the doorway, standing completely still as Trinity closed and locked the door behind her.
“Take off your shoes,” Trinity said, careful to keep her voice gentle and trying to ignore the pathetic sniffles that kept coming out of Javadi. “Here. I’ll take your bags.”
“Thank you,” Javadi hiccuped, passing the bags to Trinity as she toed off her sneakers. They had bows printed on the canvas.
This was going to be a problem. This was going to be a huge problem, because that stupid little hiccup went straight to the soft squishy part of Trinity’s chest that she liked to pretend didn’t exist. The same part that Huckleberry tap danced on ten months earlier.
“Let me just,” Trinity’s voice trailed off as she carried the bags to her bedroom, placing them on the floor there.
By the time she came back, it was to Javadi standing awkwardly in the living room. It reminded Trinity of their first day in the Pitt. Before she could say anything, Whitaker popped his head out of the kitchen.
“Who was at the- Javadi?” Whitaker fully came into the living room.
Javadi’s greeting smile was more of a grimace as she raised one hand in greeting. “Heyyy.”
Whitaker looked to Trinity as if she had answers. Trinity shrugged. He nodded, rolling his lips together, “I’ll serve up the food. Javadi, you like spaghetti, right?”
“Love it,” Javadi said. She sounded one wrong word away from a complete breakdown, if she wasn’t already in the middle of one.
Before long, they gathered in the living room with bowls of spaghetti, Whitaker and Javadi sat on the couch while Trinity curled up on the arm chair. Trinity let Javadi get in a few good bites of food and a drink of water.
“Okay, Crash,” Trinity earned a glare from Whitaker for that one. “What’s going on?”
It was a sign how out of it Javadi was that she didn’t even react to the nickname. Javadi just kept looking down at her bowl, her fork moving the noodles around without bringing the next bite to her mouth. “Got in a fight with my mom.”
“Seems like one Hell of a fight,” Trinity said. She had been helping some patient or another when Shamsi came down, but she had heard through the grapevine what the surgeon had said about emergency medicine.
In the middle of the Pitt.
Frankly, if the idea of working on the same floor as Yolanda no longer seemed the absolute opposite of appealing, what Shamsi said alone could have killed Trinity’s interest in the surgery residency program.
“I didn’t want it to be,” Javadi says to her noodles. The back of her hand swipes at her eyes. “I was- I was trying to actually talk to her!”
And just like that, the story spilled out of Javadi, starting with her and McKay’s cancer patient dying that afternoon. Javadi said that watching that woman’s sons lose their mom made her feel guilty for her and her own mom’s lack of communication.
“I figured it was my fault,” Javadi said. “I never told her that I decided I wanted to do emergency medicine, I just kept…Dancing around it. So I decided that the next time she brought it up, I would tell her I made my decision.”
Unfortunately, the next time Javadi’s mom brought it up was approximately two minutes after Javadi walked through the door.
Javadi rolled her eyes, “After she yelled at me for taking the bus home instead of calling my dad to pick me up.” Whitaker had moved Javadi’s spaghetti to the coffee table, leaving Javadi to pick at her cuticles.
According to Javadi, she didn’t remember most of the fight. Her mom started yelling and her dad tried to intervene, but then they started fighting about him being too soft on Javadi. Then, her mom started yelling about how Javadi almost killed a patient that day, that she clearly hadn’t been learning enough in the Pitt if she was still making such careless mistakes after so much time.
“Jesus, Javadi, you saw how useless I was my first day in the Pitt,” Whitaker said. “You’re doing great.”
“Tell that to my mom,” Javadi said. Somewhere along the way, Javadi’s feet had migrated onto the couch and the girl sat there, knees to her chest and her arms wrapped around her legs as she leaned back into the couch. “My mom just kept saying I was throwing away all our hard work. That I didn’t respect all she and dad did for me, how much people would kill for the opportunities that I’ve had, that I don’t respect what a privilege it is that they’ve been able to bankroll my education, but I just-” Javadi buried her face in her knee caps. “You guys are gonna think I’m so fucking spoiled. Spoiled, whiny nepo baby, that’s all anyone thinks of me in that stupid fucking hospital.”
Where did that come from? Anyone who actually spent time with Javadi could see what a pain in the ass having Shamsi as a mother was.
Whitaker, on the other hand, seemed less than surprised. “Garcia didn’t mean it like that, okay? She was just- Today was a bad day for everyone. No one thinks that-”
“Everyone on the surgery floor thinks that!” Javadi’s voice was high, thready, nearly hysterical as she looked to Whitaker. “Everyone my mother talks to thinks that! It sucks, every single other rotation outside of the Pitt has sucked, because they’re either walking on eggshells around me or pretend I don’t even exist! The Pitt is the only place where anyone’s treated me like a semi-normal med student!”
Well. Didn’t that make Santos just feel fantastic.
“Hell, I even started liking it when you called me Crash,” Javadi sniffed.
Okay, that actually did make Santos feel a little better.
“It really is how she shows her extremely constipated love,” Whitaker said.
Santos would let him have that one, because it did make Javadi laugh a little. The smile left as Javadi continued the story. “She said…She said that if I didn’t respect all she and dad did for me, maybe they…didn’t need to keep doing it.”
“Oh, that’s fucked,” the words left Trinity almost without her permission. So she repeated them, firmer. “That is supremely fucked up.”
“I- I mean, she just wants what’s best for me,” Javadi tried, but it was half-hearted at best. “I didn’t know where else to go. I barely remember packing, then all of a sudden I was back on the bus and…Well.”
Javadi had been to their apartment once or twice. Trinity was frankly impressed that she remembered how to get there, though Javadi’s memory was no joke.
“You don’t owe your parents just because they raised you,” Trinity said. She sounded like her therapist. “Did you ever ask for any of this?”
The silence says more than enough. Then, so quiet, “I don’t know what to do.”
God fucking damn it.
“Look, it’s nowhere near as nice as I’m sure your parents’ place is,” Trinity started, almost not believing the words coming out of her own mouth. “But…You can stay here. At least for a little while.” Javadi and Whitaker were both staring at her now. “The couch is a pull-out and…If you stay longer, we can…figure out something. My room’s about the size of my old dorm, it can fit two beds.”
Was Trinity seriously signing up to turn her room into another college dorm?
“I- I,” Javadi looked between Trinity and Whitaker, her mouth opening and closing like a fish. “I don’t have any money. I can’t- I can’t pay rent.”
“Yeah, well, neither could I,” Whitaker said, catching Trinity off-guard. Javadi, too, as she focused solely on Whitaker. “I still haven’t. Santos said I wasn’t allowed until my first residency check.”
Javadi blinked at Trinity. “Seriously?”
Trinity shifted uncomfortably in the chair. “I can be nice when I want to be.”
“Do you have any money saved up at all?” Whitaker asked. “From summer jobs or something?”
“I’ve never had a job before,” Javadi said, which Trinity automatically translated to my parents never let me have a job. “I have- I have some stuff from TikToK? But…it’s not a lot.”
“How do you pay for stuff? I’ve seen you use a card at the cafeteria,” Whitaker asked.
“It’s my mom’s credit card.” Yep. That made sense.
And they were way too late to apply for any sort of student loans for Javadi.
“Okay,” Trinity rubbed at her forehead a little bit and forced herself to remember the additional numbers that would appear on her next paycheck, coupled with Whitaker’s new paycheck as well. Though Whitaker would have plenty taken out for his student loans… “Okay. We can make this work. It…might suck for a little while, but we can make this work.”
“You’d- You’d really let me move in?” Javadi positively gaped at Trinity. “Just like that?”
“Well, yeah,” Santos said. “What were you expecting to happen when you showed up with your shit?”
“I really wasn’t thinking at all. I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
That might have been the saddest thing Javadi said all night.
“You know, if I focus more on my TikTok, I’d definitely be able to make enough money to help with groceries and stuff,” Javadi suddenly said, looking way more like herself than she had been.
Be mature, Trinity. “Do what you can.”
“I can reach out to some people I know,” Whitaker said. “I might be able to get you some emergency funding.”
Whitaker was the king of that sort of thing, Trinity had learned.
But suddenly, the uncertainty came back into Javadi’s face as she looked at Trinity. “You know. My mom’s not going to like you very much if she figures out I’m living here.”
It took Trinity a moment to remember why Javadi’s mom liking her mattered at all. “Oh, uh. Yeah. I don’t care about that anymore. I think it’s better if I just…stay in the Pitt.”
Trinity chose to ignore Whitaker’s muttered, “Oh, thank God.” He had only been slightly stressed about the idea of Trinity putting more work on her plate.
So they had a plan. Whitaker helped set Javadi up on the couch while Trinity rearranged her dresser and closet to make room for at least some of Javadi’s things.
“Girl, you are twenty years old, how much skincare do you need?” Trinity asked as she said watched Javadi unpack tubs.
“It’s preventative,” was all Javadi said in response.
When Trinity went to sleep that night, she was just glad none of them had to work the next day.
“I can’t believe there are three goddamn adults living in this apartment and one singular car between us,” Trinity griped as she pulled out of the parking garage and onto the street.
“You say that as if they don’t charge fifty bucks a month here for parking,” Whitaker said. “Not to mention gas, insurance, maintenance-”
“You’re listing all these things as if I’m not paying for them.”
“I help with gas!” Whitaker sputtered, but smiling. They had this argument frequently enough. It was fun, comfortable. Even if it had taken Whitaker a couple weeks to engage in Trinity’s play fights.
“I don’t have my license,” Javadi said from the backseat.
Of course she didn’t. Trinity sighed. “All right. Add that to the list of things you need to learn.” Then, “Wait, what are you using as an ID?”
“I have a passport card.”
“A what?” Whitaker’s nose scrunched as he turned to look at Javadi.
“A passport card,” Javadi repeated. “It looks like a license, but it’s got, like, your passport information on it and stuff. You can use it to cross the land border into Canada.”
Whitaker stared at her for a moment. “You know what, I can teach you how to drive. I’ve been driving since I was fourteen.”
“Fourteen?!” Javadi exclaimed.
“Farm kid privileges,” Trinity explained. “There aren’t many but the ones that exist are pretty fucking wild. You should ask him to tell you about some of the bonfires he went to when he was a teenager.”
“We really don’t need to get into that actually-”
It was funny how comfortable it felt, the three of them together. They ran the necessary errands, picking up specific foods Javadi needed while Whitaker taught her the important life skill of actually looking at prices instead of just grabbing.
“What’s your favorite flavor of ramen?” Trinity asked as she grabbed two packs each of hers and Whitakers.
“I’ve never had ramen.” Why was Trinity surprised? She grabbed a variety pack. “Isn’t that stuff bad for you?”
“It’s good enough for now,” Whitaker said. “What do you usually eat after a hard shift?”
“...my mom or dad usually cooked something,” Javadi said.
Trinity supposed it made sense. Her parents didn’t have to deal with the chaos of the ED. They were more likely to feel up to making proper meals after a day at work than Trinity and Whitaker felt some days.
Then, a horrifying thought, “Do you know how to cook?”
Javadi was quiet for a moment too long. Followed by, “Kind of.”
“We’ll teach you,” Whitaker swooped in, all cheery in the way that Trinity knew was hiding either how angry or upset or maybe even both Whitaker truly felt about the situation. “Santos is actually a really good cook. When she’s in the mood.”
“That would be nice,” Javadi said and Trinity really couldn’t handle how much this version of Javadi was breaking her heart.
The first text came after they loaded the car up with groceries and started buckling in. It came through on Whitaker’s phone, Trinity barely noticing he even got a text except for the way he stared at his phone screen with his eyebrows furrowed.
“Whitaker?” Trinity asked after a moment. “You good?”
“Yeah, uh…I just got a text from Robby,” Whitaker said.
Robby, who should have been in Canada by now and wasn’t one to just randomly text his residents. “About what?”
“He asked if I’ve talked to Javadi today,” Whitaker said. He looked back at Javadi, a full three shades paler than normal. “What do you want me to say?”
“Do you have read receipts on?” Javadi asked. Whitaker shook his head. “Do you have to respond?”
“...He seems worried,” Whitaker said.
“What if he says that he’s talked to you and you’re fine?” Trinity asked, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel. “He might just be worried after yesterday.”
And they really didn’t need Robby panicking and deciding to call the cops to do a wellness check on Javadi. The man’s ability to see when someone around him needed psychological help, yet completely avoid his own needs was almost impressive.
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess that’s fine,” Javadi conceded.
Except when Whitaker sent that text, he kept staring at his phone. Trinity started driving, but Whitaker kept staring.
“Oh, fuck,” he muttered as Trinity fulled to the first stoplight.
“Huckleberry,” Trinity snapped a little when Whitaker stopped talking.
Whitaker rubbed at his temple, his elbow propped up against the door. He read, “When did you last talk to her? Do you know where she is? Tell Javadi she needs to call her parents NOW. They are worried sick and the cops are at her house.”
“Oh, my God,” Javadi sounded seconds away from throwing up in the back of Trinity’s car.
“Javadi, did you turn your phone off last night?” Trinity asked.
“No,” Javadi said way too quickly. Then, “But…I did block my parents. And turn off Life360. So they couldn’t track me.”
Honestly, Trinity couldn’t blame her.
“Do you want to call your mom?” Trinity asked.
“Santos!” Whitaker exclaimed. “They called the cops-”
“Do you want to call either of your parents?” Trinity repeated over Whitaker.
“I mean, not really?” Javadi said.
Trinity nodded. The light turned green and she kept driving. “Okay, what county do your parents live in?” Javadi gave the address. “All right. Huckleberry, call their nonemergency line for the police and hand the phone to Javadi.”
“Why am I doing this?” Whitaker asked as he googled.
“Because Javadi is going to tell the police that she is perfectly fine. They’re going to ask for an address to check in with her and she will give them our apartment and let them know that we will be home in fifteen minutes to talk to them in person,” Trinity said. “Javadi, you didn’t do anything wrong. You are an adult. You are allowed to leave your house and decide you don’t want to live with your parents anymore, okay?”
Javadi managed to keep her voice steady as she talked to the police precinct. She rattled off the address and told them that they would be back at the apartment soon, before handing Whitaker his phone back.
“I can’t believe they called the police,” Javadi groaned. “It hasn’t even been twenty four hours!”
“You know, the forty-eight hour thing is actually a myth- Not the time, got it,” Whitaker quickly shut up as Trinity looked at him. Then, his phone buzzed. “Oh. Oh, this is- Awesome. Great.”
“Whitaker, words-” Trinity’s nerves could not handle this right now.
“Robby gave Shamsi my phone number,” Whitaker said. His phone buzzed, again.
“Robby,” Trinity groaned.
They had just enough time to park the car and carry the groceries inside before the police knocked on their door. Trinity opened the door to two police officers, a man and woman, both tall and imposing. It went simply enough, Trinity careful not to be too much herself and just answer their questions plainly.
“Clearly, this was just a big misunderstanding,” the woman, Officer Lennox, sighed as she closed her notebook and looked at Javadi, sitting on the coach with her hands under her thighs.
“I’m sorry that I wasted your time,” Javadi grimaced.
Officer Lennox shook her head. “Dear, no. You did not waste our time, at all-”
“If anything, your mom-”
“Jeremy. Not right now,” Officer Lennox cut off her partner. Trinity snorted at that. “Victoria, we’re just happy you’re all right. Okay?”
Javadi nodded, slowly.
“All right. I’m going to give you some pamphlets. Resources for counselors, that sort of thing, if you feel like you need it,” Officer Lennox said. “Are you feeling up to calling your parents?”
“I would prefer not to,” Javadi answered after a moment.
Officer Lennox nodded. “Okay. That’s fine. Do I have your permission to let your parents know that you are all right, but that you aren’t planning on coming home right now?”
Javadi’s eyes went wide. “You’d do that?”
“...Yes,” Officer Lennox said slowly.
“Can you also ban them from harassing me when I’m on shift in two days?” Javadi asked.
Officer Reid - Jeremy - snorted at that.
“No,” Officer Lennox said. Then, after a moment, “You would need a restraining order for that. Is there anything-?”
“Oh, God, no,” Javadi rushed. “No, nothing like that! They’re just- they’re a bit overbearing.”
Understatement of the century.
By the time the cops left, Trinity felt almost as drained as she had after the shift the day before.
“I can’t believe I had to talk to the cops,” Javadi groaned as Trinity once again collapsed on the arm chair.
“I can’t believe Robby gave your mother my phone number,” Whitaker said. Shamsi hadn’t blown up his phone and had kept the correspondence professional enough. Whitaker hadn’t said much more than that he had spoken with Javadi and that she was safe. Shamsi had told Whitaker to tell Javadi to come home and Javadi gave him the okay to say that he would, but that he didn’t think Javadi would be going home.
Before Trinity could say anything, though, her phone started ringing. “I swear, if Robby gave her my number-” She cut herself off.
It was Garcia.
Trinity declined the call. They were casual after all, Trinity didn’t need to give her an explanation for why she couldn’t meet up today. Garcia had said she would try to hit her up, Trinity never promised to answer.
Maybe Trinity was a bit hurt from the day before. Trinity was ignoring that, though.
Except as soon as Trinity declined the call, it was ringing again. Garcia.
Weird.
Trinity silenced her phone, but let it ring out face down on the coffee table.
“Who is it?” Whitaker asked.
“Who do you think?” Trinity shot back.
Javadi’s brow furrowed. “What-?”
Except the phone was ringing again.
“Jesus Christ,” Trinity muttered, standing and grabbing her phone from the coffee table. “Garcia, now isn’t-”
“Is the nepo baby at your house?” Jesus, Garcia sounded pissed.
“Excuse me?” Trinity asked.
“Javadi. Is she at your house?” Garcia asked.
Trinity looked at Javadi and Whitaker on the couch. They stared at her. “Why?”
“For the love of- Whitaker knows where she is, right?” Garcia asked. “Robby gave Shamsi his phone number and Whitaker said he talked to Javadi. Do you know where she is?”
“Why are you calling me about this?” Trinity asked instead of answering.
“Because Shamsi knows that we’re…friends,” Wow. Garcia could barely even call them friends. That made Trinity feel so great. “And she knows that you live with Whitaker. He needs to either tell Shamsi where Javadi is or he needs to tell Javadi to go home.”
Trinity waited a moment. Took a breath. “No, he doesn’t.”
“Trinity, Shamsi is pissed,” Garcia stressed. “If Whitaker doesn’t, she’s going to make his life a living hell.”
“Is she?” Trinity asked.
“Yes! She is! You need to tell Whitaker to pull his head out of his-”
“So you’re just cool with senior attendings threatening interns who aren’t even in their department, then?” Trinity asked.
Silence. Then, “I’m coming over.”
Garcia hung up before Trinity could say anything else.