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It’s an hour and a half after their shift ends, twenty minutes into a season three episode of House MD, ten minutes after finishing off the Tupperware of sugar cookies Trinity’s mom sent along for her birthday a couple of days ago, and four minutes of absentmindedly itching at his neck when Dennis’ lips start to tingle and he instantly realizes he’s well and truly fucked.
“Trin?” he says. He hopes his voice isn’t as shaky as it feels, but when Trinity turns to him with her eyebrows furrowed, he figures it probably is.
“You okay?” she asks, pressing pause on the television immediately.
Dennis swallows. “Do you know–?” he starts. He blinks hard. “Do you know what recipe your mom used for the cookies?”
Trinity looks at him for a moment. “Are you going into anaphylaxis right now?” she asks, as efficient and accurate as always.
“Um,” says Dennis. “Yeah, I think maybe.”
“Oh, fuck me,” Trinity says, and she flies into action, grasping his wrist and pulling it away from his neck to see that angry red hives have started forming. “Where’s your epi-pen?” she asks, and he cringes.
“I don’t really–” he starts. He takes a breath. He’s starting to feel far away from his own body, his palms tingling, his heart beating out of his chest, and he can’t tell if it’s just panic or if the reaction is progressing quicker than he thought it was. “I mean, I kind of, like, don’t have one,” he tells her.
“Are you fucking with me?” Trinity asks, something steely in her voice.
“They’re, like, really fucking expensive!” Dennis argues in his own defense. “I don’t have, like, six hundred dollars to throw away–”
“Oh my God.” Trinity’s already scrambling off the couch and throwing his Keds at him. “Get your shoes on,” she says, rummaging through her purse for her keys. “I can get us to the Pitt in ten, okay?”
He pulls his shoes on as quickly as he can given the way his hands are tingling and dizzily stumbles to his feet. His ears are ringing now and he’s starting to feel it in his throat. He almost trips over the dining room table on his way towards the front door but Trinity catches him by the elbow. “You dizzy?” she asks, something unexpectedly soft in her voice, and he nods.
“Sorry,” he murmurs, and Trinity rolls her eyes.
“Shut the fuck up,” she says, no heat behind her words, and she leads him out the door as quickly as possible. When they reach her car, she helps him up into the passenger’s seat and closes the door for him before circling around and taking the wheel.
“Symptoms?” she asks, when she’s putting the car into drive, and he swallows nervously, noting with dread that it feels like there’s a rock in the back of his throat. “Hives,” he tells her. “Itching. Dizziness. Lips and hands are tingling. Getting, like, a little harder to breathe.”
“Okay,” she says, pulling out of the apartment complex parking lot and onto the streets of Pittsburgh. “Just keep breathing, Huckleberry. Tell me if anything changes.”
Dennis nods; squeezes his eyes shut, and wills himself to take as deep a breath as he can manage. He feels Trinity take his hand over the center console, and if he wasn’t putting so much of himself into a worryingly unsteady pattern of inhale and exhale, he might marvel at the closeness she’s showing him.
“Can you talk to me?” he asks, tears stinging at his eyes. “Keep my mind off it?”
“Only if you promise to keep, like, a quarter of your mind on it, yeah?” she says. “Monitor those symptoms, med student.”
“Promise,” he replies, and she launches into a story about one of her cases from this afternoon. There’s a calming kind of rhythm to her monologue, an engaging way she weaves her narrative. He tries to formulate a quip about her being a theater kid in high school, but his mind’s a little hazy, so he just shuts his eyes, wipes his tears, and lets her words wash over him, trying to ignore the sick feeling building in the pit of his stomach. Given the medical emergency at hand, Trinity probably wouldn’t yell at him if he were to vomit all over the upholstery of her Subaru, but she certainly wouldn’t be pleased, and he doesn’t doubt he’d be hearing about it later. He rolls the window down and tries to quell his nausea with deep breaths of fresh air, but after a while, the breaths are getting shallower and shallower, his vision’s going gray at the edges, and he doesn’t know how much longer he’s gonna be able to hold out.
“Trin,” he manages, as another dizzying wave of nausea melts over him, and she cuts off the story she was telling.
“I’m here,” she tells him, in her best approximation of a reassuring tone. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t feel good,” he says. The words feel like molasses coming out of his mouth.
“I know, bud,” she assures him, and in his haze, the strangely familiar endearment doesn’t even register.
“No, I–” he starts. Tries to take a deep breath, but he can’t get the air he needs. “Feel nauseous,” he tells her. “I don’t–”
“Got plastic bags in the glove compartment, okay?” she says. “You think you can get one out yourself, or do you need me to help you?”
He manages to pull the glove compartment open and fumble for a plastic bag with shaky hands, getting it open just in time for Mrs. Santos’ sugar cookies to make an unsavory reappearance.
“Oh, shit ,” Trinity says, a steady hand reaching out to rub Dennis’ back as he heaves again. “We’re almost there, I promise. I’m gonna park super illegally.”
“Sorry,” he breathes. The ringing in his ears is so loud he can barely hear Trinity’s voice.
“Don’t be sorry, dipshit,” she tells him. “Just keep breathing.”
But his breathing has turned into wheezing as he chokes up acid into the Ziploc bag. It feels like he’s breathing through mud, and he’s so lightheaded that he thinks he might just float up and out of his body before Trinity parks the car.
The car lurches to a stop and Dennis retches emptily into his plastic bag at the motion. “We’re here,” Trinity tells him, and before he can even register her words, she’s wrenching open the passenger’s side door and helping him out of the car, catching him when the dizziness sends him plummeting towards the concrete.
“Too dizzy,” he tries to explain, and he feels Trinity scoop him up into a bridal carry before she starts towards the ambulance bay at a run.
“I need a gurney,” she’s saying. “Anaphylactic reaction brought on by a food allergy. No epi’s been administered, he needs that shit now.”
Everything’s kind of a blur as he’s loaded onto a gurney. There’s a hand in his hair and a needle in his thigh and Trinity’s face is blurry above him as they wheel him in through the automatic doors. “Think I’m gonna pass out,” he mumbles, and Trinity squeezes his hand.
“Don’t fucking do that, Huckleberry,” she tells him, her voice firm. “Keep those eyes open for me, okay?”
She’s the only thing that’s not too blurry to hold onto, her striking gray eyes locked onto his, but he feels his vision fading out and knows he’s gonna faint in a second.
“Sorry, Trin,” he murmurs, and the world fades to black.
-
When his eyes flicker open again, it’s to the vague sensation of something uncomfortable on his face. His hand flies up to find some kind of plasticky wire. He tries to get it off, but suddenly someone’s there pulling his hand away and setting it back by his side.
“Woah, you’re okay,” a voice says. “Leave it there, yeah? Just a cannula. Helping you breathe.”
And there’s Trinity, fixing his cannula like she would if she was on shift and he was one of her patients. Instead of scrubs, though, she’s dressed in a graphic t-shirt and a pair of denim cutoffs. In her casualwear, she looks weirdly out of place in front of the white walls of the Pitt, and Dennis finds himself laughing at the idea of a Trinity who doesn't fit seamlessly into the world of the ED.
“What the fuck,” she intones. “Christ, Dennis, look at me.”
He does. “Hi,” he says. She gives an irritated sigh.
“Fucking idiot,” she says, but there’s no heat to it, as if she can’t bring herself to be anything more than mildly annoyed at him. “You know we had to give you two rounds of epi ‘cause your dumb ass couldn’t be fucked to spring for some life-saving medicine.”
“That shit’s expensive,” he tells her. “Med school insurance won’t cover it.”
Trinity sighs again. “We’ll get you that generic brand shit,” she tells him. “So you don’t scare the fuck out of me like that again.”
“You were scared?” he asks. He’s kind of poking fun, but he’s kind of curious. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen Trinity scared.
“Yeah, asshole,” she tells him. “I was scared. Excuse me for getting a little freaked when my roommate’s in my passenger’s seat, like, wheezing and vomiting and whatever the fuck ‘cause he’s too dumb to figure out a way around that co-pay.”
“You were, like, so cool,” he says. “Cool as a cucumber.”
“Yeah, of course I was,” she tells him. “I’m a trained fuckin’ professional.”
He huffs a laugh. There’s a beat of silence between them. Hesitantly, Trinity reaches out to take his hand.
“If you scare me like that again, I’m gonna kick your ass,” she tells him.
“Yeah,” he says. There’s a knock on the door and then Mel’s in the doorframe, giving a little wave before she continues into the room and stops by Dennis’ bed.
“Hi, Dennis,” she says. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m okay,” he tells her. “I didn’t know you were on night shift today.”
Mel smiles. “I don’t have Becca on Thursday nights, so sometimes if we’re short a few residents, I’ll hop onto the late shift. Keeps me on my toes.” Dennis nods and Mel looks down to her clipboard.
“So Trinity answered most of my questions while you were resting, but I just wanted to double-check some stuff with you. Have you ever had an anaphylactic reaction before?”
“Uh, yeah,” Dennis says. “It’s been a while since the last time, but it’s not, like, new or anything.”
“Okay. And do you usually carry an epipen on you?”
“Are you gonna yell at me?” Dennis asks. “Because Trinity already did that.”
“That’s a gross exaggeration,” Trinity points out. “God, how dare I have the nerve to gently reprimand you for being a dumbass.”
Mel seems entertained by their antics, but continues to look to Dennis for an answer.
“I mean, like, yeah, I did, but at some point, my old one expired and I didn’t have the cash, and then it–y’know, didn’t seem as pressing of a problem as, like, paying for food or having a place to live.”
Mel nods. “Okay,” she says. “I would–I mean, I would give you some pamphlets, but I mean–I think you know the drill. Street team and everything. Uh–I am gonna give you these, though.”
She hands him a box with two epipens in it and Trinity gives a quick fist pump. “Fuck yeah,” she hisses, and Mel fights a smile.
“I don’t know how much Trinity’s filled you in on, but we had to give you two doses of epi and put you on oxygen. You’ve been stable for almost an hour, but we’re gonna keep you here to monitor you for a while just in case you experience a biphasic reaction. Usually, we’d keep you for four hours or more, but you seem to be doing pretty well and I, uh–I know you two live together, so I don’t feel too nervous about sending you back home a little early.”
“Okay,” Dennis says. “Thanks, Mel.”
“Glad you’re feeling better,” she tells him. “Do you need anything else?”
“Yeah, could I get a sandwich?” he asks.
“Of course,” says Mel. “Turkey and cheese?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“I’ll get that for you,” she tells him, and turns on her heel before leaving the room.
When she’s gone, Dennis yawns, suddenly becoming aware of just how exhausted he is.
“Someone’s sleepy,” Trinity says, a subtle smile flitting across her lips.
“But I just woke up,” he whines, and she rolls her eyes.
“Yeah, that’ll happen when you go into anaphylactic shock,” she tells him, and he pouts a little.
“You can’t be mean to me,” he tells her. “I almost just died.”
“I can be as mean to you as I want,” she replies. “I just saved your fuckin’ life.”
“Thanks,” he tells her. “For, y’know, the life and everything. I mean, you could’ve had the apartment all to yourself if you wanted.”
Trinity huffs a laugh. “Yeah, well, my mom’s the one who almost killed your weak ass with almond extract, so I figured I owed you.”
“The cookies were great,” Dennis admits. “Tell her I liked them.”
“She’s already making you a new almond-free batch as a ‘sorry for almost killing you’ present.”
“Awesome,” he says, a silly smile coming over his features. He yawns again and he feels Trinity pull his blanket up to cover his chest.
“Get some rest, Huckleberry,” she says softly. “I’ll be here.”
Dennis nods, settling further into bed. “Love you,” he tells her, not really expecting an answer, before he closes his tired eyes.
“Love you too,” Trinity whispers, and he feels her hand brushing his hair away from his forehead. Just before he drifts off, he has the vague thought that he doesn’t want her to stop, and then sleep takes him again.