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trinity santos with chronic pain (because i can’t help but project onto my favourites)

we’re diving pretty heavy pretty quick on this one- chronic pain from a sporting injury (again, i’m projecting) that spirals into a wave of depression. trinity basically reaches a point where she isn’t able to properly pull herself out of the slump that the injury puts her in anymore, and it takes a toll, mentally and physically. backstory isn’t discussed as much, but i’ll work on it if i decide to make this a series! i’ve chosen to focus more on character interactions for now.

understandably, trin’s negative to herself mentally (and physically, as we see in the show, though SH isn’t explicitely discussed in this fic). this is basically a bit of a projection/character study and how i envision this working in her relationships.

this isn’t a fully thought-out idea, rather a starting point of something i want to build on. pls be sweet, this was all typed up in this post and is essentially me rambling for however many words 💕

flare days are uncomfortable in the whitsantos household. not just physically, but mentally. with one trinity santos, who does the exact opposite of what she tells patients who come with issues related to chronic conditions, especially those dealing with pain, it’s harder to regulate than usual.

trinity won’t rest, won’t ‘take it easy’, and won’t listen to her body, until it’s screaming so loud that she’ll be down for the count for days on end.

dennis tries, and he tries hard, to do what he can. trinity, however, despite dennis’ best efforts, is incredibly resistant to letting others help. she’s the type who’d rather start a fight (that she genuinely can’t handle) than accepting what she sees as ‘charity’- food he makes as a peace offering, or his offer to watch a shitty show.

trinity isn’t the type to even consider wanting someone there when she doesn’t feel well. that in itself wouldn’t be a surprise to others, especially if they knew about the gymnastics thing.

but they don’t and that’s what the issue is (or rather, in her eyes, the bonus?). she didn’t want people to know who she was before medical school, not anymore. trinity wanted gymnastics to be a thing of the past, which wasn’t easy, given that it was the reason for her scholarship, the reason for her medals, the reason for her pain.

gymnastics in itself was a wound she didn’t want to dive into. she was good. great, if she let herself be honest about it. she could’ve had it all, as her mother had reminded her so often when it first happened. maybe if she trained more, if she had been a little bit more careful, she could’ve avoided the tearing in her knee. maybe she could’ve avoided a glaringly public, and painfully literal, fall from grace.

it was too late now though, for a could’ve, or a should’ve. all she had now was the pain, and the scars the surgery left. big, ugly things, sitting across her knee. it wasn’t a pretty tear, or an easy one. it was a ruptured acl- completely snapped, wouldn’t heal on its own. that, and a partially torn mcl, plus a worn-to-shit meniscus.

those, on their own, could’ve been manageable. could’ve, had the following physiotherapy not shone light on something she hadn’t wanted to deal with, hadn’t wanted to acknowledge. years of gymnastics had worn down her joints, had strained her muscles. it’d made the wrong ones too tight, and the others too loose. it left her with an instability she couldn’t keep up with anymore.

not that she didn’t try. she did. she really, really did. trinity tried, so hard, to push through the rehab, through the foggy doubt and the creeping wave of pressure. she tried, and tried, until she couldn’t. the knee didn’t heal right. the scar tissue spread, quicker than it should’ve. it crept in between the tendons, pulled the skin taught. she tried to fix it, at first, but in the end, she was so, so tired.

tired of the fact that the things she’d been working toward since she was old enough to want were for nil when her body gave up. tired of the fact that she wasn’t able to push through it anymore, that she couldn’t force herself out of bed to fix it.

eventually, one thing led to another, and she decided to put herself through medical school. she’d grown to crave the adrenaline of performing, whether it be on a beam and bars or on the floor in trauma three.

gymnastics left her in a body revolting against her, with tremors she couldn’t stop, and muscle spasms that stole her steadiness. she wasn’t well, and she knew it, but, like everything else, it wasn’t that simple. she didn’t want to explain why she felt the way she did to anyone, least of all to her roommate. she’d grown to like dennis, more than she’d ever willingly admit. he was a little bit like her brother, in the sense that he was well-meaning in his nosiness, in his sass, in the fire she’d helped stoke back into him after he’d become an intern.

she didn’t want to explain that her body acted the way it did partially because she’d gotten to the point where she let it- where she let the pain take control of her mouth, of her voice, where she let it spit and snap and bite rather than letting someone in. but more that, it felt embarrassing. it felt embarrassing to let someone see her like this, when she felt too shaky to keep herself upright through the tremors in her back, her arms, her legs.

dennis had seen it, once. one time, that hadn’t been spoken of since. she’d come back from a shift that night, tired, weary, and in pain. she’d brushed him off that night, had told him that all it was had been a busy shift. she didn’t want him to see it, not if she could help it. they’d eaten takeout on the couch that night, and trinity had fallen asleep to a rerun of real housewives, restless and fitful. it’d been almost midnight when it happened, when she woke up disoriented. when she’d woken up in enough pain, with enough noise to wake dennis, who’d been tucked into the other side of the couch. he’d seen it, then, the haze of tears in her eyes, the tremors in her hands, the way she wobbled when she shot upright, trying to hide a pained groan.

it’d been bad, really bad, that night. her worse knee felt close to locking, and her shoulder felt wrong, like it did more often than not. but she was tired- so, so tired, that she’d let herself slip, had let dennis see. and he did. he’d looked, had taken it in. he’d seen the pained haze in her eyes, had seen how she held herself, and how she wasn’t really fully present, not with the pain, and not with how tired she was.

that had been one of their easiest nights. dennis had gotten up, silent, and grabbed her two paracetamol and a glass of water- trying to treat a pain he couldn’t decipher, and that she wouldn’t name. it’d been the first and last time she’d accepted help. she’d taken the pills, and dragged herself to her room on stiff legs, had settled for a night spent tossing and turning, and had very pointedly ignored what she’d termed ‘the incident’ the next morning.

since that night, dennis had tried, more often than not, to help in whatever way he knew how when he saw that pained glaze to her eyes, or the stiffness with which she held herself sometimes. she’d been quick to turn it down- the offered food, watching something mindless on the couch, and occasionally, when he got bolder (or, more desperate, when he saw how hard she was trying to keep herself upright), the painkillers and a glass of water left on the counter.

she’d outright refused, and had, once, snapped at him to drop it. and he did, in terms of trying to bring it up. however, the silent check-ins didn’t. she’d caught him, sometimes, glancing over at her during handover, or when she was charting, or during a case. she saw him cataloguing it. weirdly, it didn’t quite make her uncomfortable, but aware- aware that someone could see how she felt, but, for her comfort, made the decision to leave it alone.

it’d changed, though, when dr al-hashimi had begun to find her place at ptmc. baran had a way about her, where she seemed to look through every defence that trinity had managed to draw up around herself. where she seemed to be able to catch out trinity’s lies of “i’m fine, nothing’s wrong” from across the room.

they’d grown comfortable with each other. they weren’t anything loud, anything official, but the thing between them carried enough meaning to grow roots deep in trinity’s chest. they’d let themselves fall into drinks, into dinner, into baran’s bed.

sooner, rather than later, she’d asked. baran had asked trinity, if there was anything she needed to know, and that she was willing to offer santos accomodations at work, should they be necessary. trinity had balked. balked, and then shut down. had chewed out another “i’m good, don’t know what you’re talking about”, and backed herself out of the room.

from then on, she’d tried harder than before to avoid al-hashimi. as much as she could, with someone she worked with. she kept their conversations completely clinical, and so, so far removed from the way they’d seemed to know each other just a few days ago. trinity wasn’t ready then, to let someone dig through her skin and examine all the little bits that hurt, that stung, that twisted and pulled. she wasn’t ready, not with dennis, and certainly not with the woman whose bed she’d shared more often than not in the last few months.

it’d been difficult, to try let baran in, eventually. trinity hadn’t gotten there with garcia- she’d been almost dismissive, had been happy to overlook the things that trinity wanted overlooked, to truly not care much beyond a good lay. it was different with baran- she was so, so attentive, so aware of the space she inhabited, and so aware of trinity’s tells. she’d become familiar with the movement of trinity’s chest in her sleep, with the way she hummed when she brushed her teeth, with the way she’d pretend to not pay attention to baran when she pulled up her hair, or read in the living room.

trinity had struggled, more than she was willing to admit, to let baran see the bits of her that twisted and festered, the way she grew teeth and snarled when the pain took hold. the way she didn’t feel like she could let others, including her roommate and not-almost-girlfriend-partner-attending-situation, see the parts of herself she’d tried so hard to keep buried.

it surprised dennis, to some extent, that al-hashimi had been able to break through trinity’s walls with a look and a few careful words, and had been the reason he was finally, truly, made aware of trinity’s situation. he knew that, eventually, trinity would’ve opened up to him on her own accord, that eventually she would’ve realised that he was the type to stick around for the people he considers his own, even when their situation was messy, or painful.

he was surprised, as one can imagine, that his best friend-almost sister-roommate had once been olympics bound, anyone would be. it wasn’t something he ever really brought up though. that, the fact that dennis didn’t push, or joke, or pry, was relieving for trinity. for the first time in her life, aside from baran, she had someone in her corner who didn’t comment about how she could’ve been great, about the things she didn’t choose to progress with.

it brought her a sense of peace, to know that. to know that she had people who cared. people who she could lean on, if she ever would willingly admit that she was hurting before they forced her onto a couch or into her bed, and that she was able to, for the first time in a long time, trust that her pain wouldn’t be shaped into a greater weapon against her.

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