It’s when they’re alone with their daughter that Trinity thinks about the person she married, about the woman that sits cross-legged on a Persian rug by the back door, letting her face warm in the dawn of the sun as their daughter tries to catch the rays with her hands.
It’s hard to quantify a person into a single sentence, a simple word or thought that can succinctly put them into a box, a category of preconceived notion and ideas, without detracting from the truth of them in some way or another.
Baran is impossible to put away.
Trinity had thought about it for a long time, long before they were married, long before they had had Christine - the kind of box Baran might be put into.
There’s categories to her, of course there are, elements that make up who she is. Doctor. Mother. Wife. Trinity, in the life they’ve made together, has the same.
But there’s more to Baran than that.
There are so many versions of her that Trinity hadn’t met, so many versions of her that no longer live in the real world and are carried in the distance of a memory or the faded pages of a journal.
Trinity thinks about those versions, the fissions of what’s left behind, the little flashes that leave as quickly as they arrive, like flickers on a film reel, here for a moment and gone the next.
She thinks about the passports that sit in a drawer in the office room; her American one sitting on the bottom, Baran’s German one that says Reisepass on it lying on the top and her American one wedged between.
She thinks about the journals they keep, hers thin and forgotten about, Baran’s full and weathered and loved. Postcards of Tehran, Yazd and Persepolis. Flowers pressed and dried into the pages, handwriting neat and scrawled in fading ink. Adventures and memories and songs. Old receipts and excerpts from books she’s read.
She thinks of the photos that scatter their home, of worlds so far far away from their own, of people that Trinity and their children have never known, of a Baran that no longer exists.
Baran doesn’t talk much of her time in Kabul but Trinity sees it in her, the pain, the old fear that is sometimes jostled into her features like a deck of cards about to fall. There is a Baran who is afraid and alert and despairing, and Trinity does not know her, does not understand or see the blood that stains her bones, the smell of soot and sand in her nose.
Trinity thinks of the little girl she might’ve been, the fragments of her that are so different from the one that sits in her lap. She thinks of a tiny Baran with short curly hair and big Bambi-like eyes, crying out for her Mama when she’s stuck with another needle, clinging to her Baba when it’s over, making him promise not to let them do that to her again. She thinks of a Baran that is tiny and terrified of everything around her, of the fingers that poke and prod, encased in sterile rubber, pulling anything they can from her. When Trinity finds photos of her, maybe at five or six, she runs the back of her fingers along her cheek and wipes away the tears.
She smiles on the Baran that she gets to keep.
The Baran that loves flowers and carries them home until they’re bursting out of her backpack. Roses, cowslips, borage, tulips; anything she can find.
The Baran that lies out in the little patch of garden they’ve made for themselves and naps on the flat swing they bought, basking in the sun.
The Baran that smiles and laughs with their children as if it were as easy as breathing.
Trinity often wonders what keeps her here, what makes someone who’s lived as many lives as Baran decide to stay and to settle.
Sometimes she wonders if it’s just another cycle, that one day this Baran who kisses their little girl’s cheeks will too fade and disappear like the rest of them, confided and kept into a picture frame on a mantelpiece, gone and forgotten about.
Other days she wonders if this is Baran’s end, if this is the life she settles to go out on and will lie in the sun until it sets and fades along with her, pulling her into the warm darkness of the summer nights.
She couldn’t put Baran into words.
She was so much more than that.
She was the smell of cherries in the morning, of fresh linen and dark-chocolate, of dried ink and crushed petals.
She was the sound of bare feet dancing along a sand-bitten floor, whispered and dying, the stretch of sinew, reaching out and longing.
She was the sun burned into a set of eyes, warm and reverent, bright and unyielding.
She was the hands that held her daughter close and tasted the salt of her tears.
She was the mouth that smiled and laughed and bit, that tasted blood and wine alike as if they were no different.
It’s when they’re alone with their daughter that Trinity thinks about the person she married, about the woman that sits cross-legged on a Persian rug by the back door, letting her face warm in the dawn of the sun as their daughter tries to catch the rays with her hands.
It’s hard to quantify a person into a single sentence, a simple word or thought that can succinctly put them into a box, a category of preconceived notion and ideas, without detracting from the truth of them in some way or another.
Baran is impossible to put away.
Trinity had thought about it for a long time, long before they were married, long before they had had Christine - the kind of box Baran might be put into.
There’s categories to her, of course there are, elements that make up who she is. Doctor. Mother. Wife. Trinity, in the life they’ve made together, has the same.
But there’s more to Baran than that.
There are so many versions of her that Trinity hadn’t met, so many versions of her that no longer live in the real world and are carried in the distance of a memory or the faded pages of a journal.
Trinity thinks about those versions, the fissions of what’s left behind, the little flashes that leave as quickly as they arrive, like flickers on a film reel, here for a moment and gone the next.
She thinks about the passports that sit in a drawer in the office room; her American one sitting on the bottom, Baran’s German one that says Reisepass on it lying on the top and her American one wedged between.
She thinks about the journals they keep, hers thin and forgotten about, Baran’s full and weathered and loved. Postcards of Tehran, Yazd and Persepolis. Flowers pressed and dried into the pages, handwriting neat and scrawled in fading ink. Adventures and memories and songs. Old receipts and excerpts from books she’s read.
She thinks of the photos that scatter their home, of worlds so far far away from their own, of people that Trinity and their children have never known, of a Baran that no longer exists.
Baran doesn’t talk much of her time in Kabul but Trinity sees it in her, the pain, the old fear that is sometimes jostled into her features like a deck of cards about to fall. There is a Baran who is afraid and alert and despairing, and Trinity does not know her, does not understand or see the blood that stains her bones, the smell of soot and sand in her nose.
Trinity thinks of the little girl she might’ve been, the fragments of her that are so different from the one that sits in her lap. She thinks of a tiny Baran with short curly hair and big Bambi-like eyes, crying out for her Mama when she’s stuck with another needle, clinging to her Baba when it’s over, making him promise not to let them do that to her again. She thinks of a Baran that is tiny and terrified of everything around her, of the fingers that poke and prod, encased in sterile rubber, pulling anything they can from her. When Trinity finds photos of her, maybe at five or six, she runs the back of her fingers along her cheek and wipes away the tears.
She smiles on the Baran that she gets to keep.
The Baran that loves flowers and carries them home until they’re bursting out of her backpack. Roses, cowslips, borage, tulips; anything she can find.
The Baran that lies out in the little patch of garden they’ve made for themselves and naps on the flat swing they bought, basking in the sun.
The Baran that smiles and laughs with their children as if it were as easy as breathing.
Trinity often wonders what keeps her here, what makes someone who’s lived as many lives as Baran decide to stay and to settle.
Sometimes she wonders if it’s just another cycle, that one day this Baran who kisses their little girl’s cheeks will too fade and disappear like the rest of them, confided and kept into a picture frame on a mantelpiece, gone and forgotten about.
Other days she wonders if this is Baran’s end, if this is the life she settles to go out on and will lie in the sun until it sets and fades along with her, pulling her into the warm darkness of the summer nights.
She couldn’t put Baran into words.
She was so much more than that.
She was the smell of cherries in the morning, of fresh linen and dark-chocolate, of dried ink and crushed petals.
She was the sound of bare feet dancing along a sand-bitten floor, whispered and dying, the stretch of sinew, reaching out and longing.
She was the sun burned into a set of eyes, warm and reverent, bright and unyielding.
She was the hands that held her daughter close and tasted the salt of her tears.
She was the mouth that smiled and laughed and bit, that tasted blood and wine alike as if they were no different.
the “splatter dennis with more liquids” campaign is so funny to me. that man grew up on a farm. he’s been helping the local vet do cattle pregnancy checks since his arm was long enough to. he was there every time a horse was born or had to be put down. he knew how to field dress a deer when he was 10. he snapped a rat’s neck in the ED and was proud of it, expected praise for it! he is totally fine being splattered in liquids. it’s a mild inconvenience.
if we wanna torture our faves in a low-stakes way, we should be splattering trinity with liquids instead. i wanna see her get progressively more irritated and blow up at someone in a narratively productive way. or have a breakdown and actually let someone in — baran, of course, in a moment where we find out they’ve been secretly dating.
better yet, splatter cassie in liquids. have her be exasperated for a moment until all her zen podcast, yoga, breath work practice kicks in and she chuckles mildly and says, “this reminds me of the time…” and have each story be progressively more insane until a betting pool starts about the content of her next tale. and then people are spilling things on purpose just to win the next bet. cassie is, of course, in on it with vic. post credit scene using their winnings on a ridiculously expensive date.
or, funnier, splatter baran in liquids and have her be genuinely, completely unfazed by it every time. she’ll disappear for like 10 min and then come back looking somehow better and more put together. until by the end of the shift somehow her hair has been blow dried and curled and she’s wearing makeup. this is never explained but acknowledged by all of her colleagues in private, baffled conversations.
i also just think we can do better than “splattering someone in liquids” as a punch line
I’m really good at writing sexy pale women with bangs fanfiction because one sleeps in my bed every night y’all im so sorry I deceived you. I’m not talented I’m just [redacted].
You’re drabble on Baran’s son calling Trinity mom for the first time got me thinking.
Baran’s son who is afraid of needles getting injured and needing to come to the Pitt for some stitches. We know that Trinity is the child whisperer so she takes care of him (pretend the rules about taking care of family doesn’t exist lol)
- @rosewoodlibrary
Trinity’s supposed to be concentrating at work.
Supposed to be.
The younger doctor has been gone for the better part of an hour when she finally comes back to the ED, one hand on Omid’s shoulder as she directs him towards the staff room.
They make it as far as the lockers when Baran spots them.
“That took you a while.” She says, standing before them with her hands on her hips. “I didn’t realise you were an orthopaedic practitioner, Dr Santos.”
Trinity’s ears go a little red but Omid’s already wriggling to try and take the sling off and show off his cast. He might not have been good at karate, but he was good at getting them out of trouble.
“Maman! Maman, look! Trinity’s really good at drawing!”
For a boy with a broken wrist, he gets the sling off without much pain and shows his mother the pale white cast enthusiastically. True to his word, the cast is littered with strangely well-drawn doodles of Superman and Spiderman, comic panels that Baran can tell have been drawn from memory.
They’d been frantically coloured in by a non-dominant hand.
Baran smiles. “And whose idea was this?”
Trinity bites the inside of her cheek. “Mine.” She admits. “Figured the little guy needed some help on being brave. It was a pretty nasty break, huh?”
He nods furiously. “Hurt.”
“Well,” Baran crouches down and gently tucks Omid’s injured arm back into his sling. “I’m glad you’ve got some company. Did Trinity help you?”
He nods again. “She made me brave.”
Trinity squeezes his shoulder. “You’re always brave, buddy. I would’ve cried if that had happened to my wrist too.”
“Really?”
“Hell yeah.”
“Thank you.” Baran says straightening up again. She knows she should be cross, should be reprimanding her resident for abandoning her patients to go and do a nurse’s job, but with Omid tucking himself back into Trinity’s side and her arm casually going around his shoulders, she can’t help but smile. “I’ll see you later?”
areudirty
snowghoul
theartofmadeline
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romaincrisis
