Chapter Text
Santos was back at PTMC just before five o'clock the next morning.
It was still dark when she wound her car up to the top floor of the parking garage, leaving her with the bizarre feeling that she had never left at all. Hadn't she? Yes, there'd been the fireworks on the roof, cheap beer in hand. Her other hand had grown hot from clutching her phone, hoping, pathetically, that it would light up with a message from Garcia. At first she wanted an apology; after some internal bargaining, she admitted to herself she would accept anything. She received nothing.
After the roof, there was the bar. Thrashing around on stage with Mel, drinking like the world was ending. Jesus, what a night. Mel had hung in there until three sips of Santos's tequila soda nearly put her on her ass, and then that was that. There, her memory was hazy—she had only a vague, contour-less recollection of an Uber to Mel's apartment, of making the driver idle on the curb so she could escort a slightly off-balance Mel up to her door. The ride to her own apartment passed in a blink, and then everything was thrown into sharp focus in her mind: the apartment had been dark and empty and sobering when she let herself in. Whitaker had never even come home from the hospital. Garcia wasn't coming over tonight, if ever again.
She'd tripped over her work bag in the hallway, stared as if it had burned her. After a beat, the significance of it hit her like a slammed door—there was still a scalpel in it, wrapped neatly in the pair of scrub bottoms she'd been wearing that day. Santos shut and locked her bedroom door as if the blade would grow legs and follow her.
She barely slept. This was normal for her on nights when she drank too much and when she couldn't hear Whitaker's gentle snores through the wall. She gave up at four, washed her face with just the hallway light on when the fluorescent bathroom light was too jarring, then found herself changing into a fresh pair of scrubs without really thinking about it. She didn't need to. The thought process was so clear to her, she hardly formed the idea at all: that clocking into work two hours early with a head-splitting hangover was the better, safer option than spending another minute alone with the blade in her bag.
That same bag now sat on the passenger seat beside her, but the scalpel wasn't a problem here. At work, it was just a tool, something half the doctors carried in their pockets without a second thought. She would be neither questioned about it nor compelled to use it, as long as she stuck within the four walls of the hospital.
That was easy. She could do that.
Santos slung the bag over her shoulder and grudgingly got out of the car, ignoring the wave of nausea that overcame her from standing too quickly. The glass of tap water she'd chugged over the sink before she left home had, shockingly, not cured the hangover. She crossed the garage slowly, wondering if by some miracle her body would feel better once she made it into the ED, when her eyes fell on a familiar shape in the darkness and she stopped, dumbfounded.
She rubbed her eyes and stared again, but it was no mistake—she was staring at the face of Dr. Al-Hashimi, leaning against her driver's side window, apparently fast asleep in her car. Santos stood rooted in place, forcing her sleep-deprived, liquor-soaked brain to unpack what she was looking at. From the neck-up, at least, Al-Hashimi seemed to be wearing the same clothes she'd been wearing when they'd bumped elbows on the way out of the locker room last night. Her hair was falling the same way, wild and loose in a way that had drawn Santos's eye as she left.
Alright. New attending sleeping in her car. Free country, I guess. Santos started walking again, made it three more steps before the doctor side of her woke up. Fucking hell. She turned back towards Al-Hashimi's car and squinted. Is she even breathing? It was impossible to tell from the distance. Santos approached slowly, wanting nothing more than to ignore this bizarre finding but feeling duty-bound to investigate. The laundry list of reasons for being unconscious in one's car ran through her head as she came closer. Stroke activity, maybe, or a hypoglycemic episode. Maybe just plain old exhaustion; Santos wouldn't blame her after Al-Hashimi's first day from hell.
Something we have in common, actually.
She stopped at the door. At this distance, at least, she could confirm that Al-Hashimi was breathing, cheek flush against the window. Her seatbelt was buckled and her keys were in her hand, resting palm-up on the seat beside her as if she had given out halfway to the ignition. Okay, Santos thought, studying her. Don't like that.
So she counted to five, sucked in a deep breath, and rapped her knuckles against the glass.
The knock was gentle, but Al-Hashimi shot awake as if Santos had banged on the window. Al-Hashimi's wide, bewildered eyes raked over everything—the steering wheel in front of her, the car keys digging into her palm, the morning dew frosting the windshield—before they finally landed on Santos's face.
For a long, pregnant pause, neither of them moved or spoke. Al-Hashimi's face contorted with some expression Santos hadn't seen it make in their fifteen hours working together; she looked embarrassed, maybe, or just unguarded, defenses totally stripped. The careful, controlled set of her jaw that she'd worn at work yesterday was wiped away. Under the low light of the street lamps, the dark circles under her eyes were more pronounced, making her eyes look as large and frightened as a young child's.
Eventually, Al-Hashimi undid her seatbelt with a shaking hand and opened the door. Santos took a few steps back to give her room to get out, worrying the strap of her bag and trying to look anywhere but at Al-Hashimi.
"Um, sorry, I didn't mean to bother you," Santos said, staring resolutely at the asphalt between them. "It just looked like you were maybe having a medical emergency. And I think I'd get fired for ignoring a medical emergency on hospital property."
She glanced up in time to see Al-Hashimi's face darken at the words medical emergency.
"I'm fine," Al-Hashimi said, stiffly, like the two small words took a great effort. Her voice was still rough with sleep. She took a steadying breath and looked up at the dark sky above them. "What—what time is it?"
"Almost five. Are you sure you're—?"
"I'm fine," Al-Hashimi repeated. She looked anything but; her face was twisting again. She crossed her arms tightly. "I was just... worried about driving home last night. Worried about falling asleep at the wheel, I mean. Long day."
"Yeah," Santos agreed, unsure of what she was supposed to say or do in this situation. Med school had not prepared her for how best to rouse her sleeping attending from an impromptu night on top of the parking garage. "Shitty day, too."
"Yes. Shitty." Al-Hashimi rubbed her eyes with both hands. When she opened them again, she fixed Santos with one of her piercing stares, looking more like herself for the first time. "What are you doing back here?"
Santos found it easy to lie to her. "Just thought I'd get a head start on charting before my shift."
"You got caught up last night," Al-Hashimi said. Not a question. Just the truth. Santos, King, and Whitaker had caught up on every damned chart together, digitized and shredded down to the last. And Al-Hashimi knew that, apparently.
The first lie was easy, but Santos had no backup prepared. The silence stretched a little too long for another lie to be convincing, anyway, and Al-Hashimi was looking at her with that odd new face of hers—open, barbless—so Santos surprised them both and told the truth.
"Yeah. I just." She stopped, swallowed, dropped her gaze again. "Didn't really want to be alone."
Al-Hashimi looked at her, then looked over her shoulder at the car, then looked back at Santos. She was weighing something in her mind; eventually, she made a choice and shut the car door.
"Come on," she said, eyes straight ahead, walking off without confirming that Santos was keeping up with her. "We're getting a coffee."
"Coffee?"
"Yes. And something to eat."
"I really don't need—"
"You smell like a bar," Al-Hashimi noted, matter-of-factly. Santos briefly considered throwing herself over the edge of the parking garage out of embarrassment. Is it really that bad? she thought, trying to subtly sniff the collar of her scrub top. "You need to sober up before you go back in there."
"I'm sober," Santos muttered, walking quickly to keep up with Al-Hashimi's furious pace. "Hungover is different from drunk."
"Not meaningfully."
"Shouldn't you be going home?" Santos pointed out, unable to keep the prickliness out of her voice under Al-Hashimi's scrutiny. "No way you're about to work a shift after spending a night in Hotel Volvo."
"I'm perfectly rested," Al-Hashimi said, staring straight ahead.
"Are you seriously still worried about driving?"
"No," she said, flatly this time, with a hint of something like anger bubbling underneath. Santos could sense that she was poking a bruise, but she couldn't fathom why. "Come on, this is the place."
Al-Hashimi had led her to the shitty twenty-four hour diner across the street from the hospital, empty at this time but for a handful of drunks slumped over in their booths. A waitress sat them in the corner booth and returned shortly after with a pot of coffee.
Santos studied Al-Hashimi while she poured the coffee, noting the light tremor in her hand as she lifted the carafe, but she chose not to comment beyond murmuring a soft thanks as Al-Hashimi slid a mug to her.
"Eat something," Al-Hashimi urged, passing a menu across the table.
"I think I'll be sick," Santos countered, passing it right back.
"That bad, huh." Al-Hashimi shook her head, a small, disappointed, almost maternal gesture. When the waitress came back around, she asked for toast, then gave Santos a look when she tried to protest. "How much did you have to drink?"
"I wasn't exactly counting."
"I suppose I don't need to tell you the results of the latest AMA study on excessive alcohol consumption," Al-Hashimi sighed, sipping her coffee gingerly. "How often do you drink like this?"
Santos squirmed under her gaze, bristling as she always did when someone looked like they might care a little too much about her wellbeing. Since when did this turn into a counseling session? She busied herself with the coffee creamer and tried to decide between a half-truth and an outright lie. The real truth—that if she did not get wasted as often as she did, she would do something much worse to herself—was off the table.
"Every once in a while," she finally answered, still looking down at her hands. "You know how this job is. Don't you ever need to take the edge off?"
Al-Hashimi was silent, her eyes glassy and unfocused as she stared off into the middle distance for a few seconds. Tell me about it. Santos took that as an answer, distracted herself with the creamer again. The waitress returned with toast. Al-Hashimi blinked sluggishly when the plates hit the tabletop.
"You sure you're alright?" Santos asked again, half out of concern, half out of discomfort with the whole situation.
"Yes." Her voice was low and heavy. She brought a hand up to rub her brow, swept her eyes curiously around the diner before something like recognition settled in them. "Like I said, long day."
"Yeah, I saw you get into it with Robby last night." She took a tiny bite of a dry piece of toast, found it mostly agreeable, and took another.
Al-Hashimi's jaw rolled at the mention. She dropped her gaze to the table, a ghost of last night's anger flitting over her face. "You heard that?"
"Didn't hear what you were arguing about, but I have eyes," Santos said, trying to make a joke but wincing at how harsh it landed. "Probably not the best idea to have shouting matches in glass-walled rooms."
"Yes, you're probably right."
Santos watched her for a moment, gathering the courage to pry. "Everything okay with you two?"
Al-Hashimi didn't answer again. Her eyes slid to the window beside them, tracking the slow approach of daylight over the horizon. She kept them there when she finally spoke.
"I trusted him with something I probably shouldn't have." Short, cryptic, with no indication that she would elaborate if Santos asked.
Santos waited for an explanation but none came. She studied Al-Hashimi's profile, thinking. What could she even say? She knew Robby could be rough around the edges. He'd been a pill lately, Santos wouldn't deny that. But when she thought of him, it was hard not to first imagine him as she first knew him—as someone who listened to her. A protector. She could still picture the way he looked when he appeared behind Landon mid-snarl those ten long months ago, a literal savior.
"He's been going through something recently," Santos finally said, drawing a sharp look from Al-Hashimi. "You met him at a hard time. But he's good. He cares."
Al-Hashimi laughed at this, a harsh, bitter, humorless laugh that Santos was fully unprepared to hear from her of all people. "He cares about himself, certainly."
"You don't even know him," Santos said, a hard edge slipping into her voice before she could stop it.
"And you do?" Al-Hashimi challenged.
Santos, quick to anger, met her where she was. "I do. A lot better than I know you. And if I have to trust anyone, it's him."
Al-Hashimi laughed again, almost mockingly. The mean lilt of it was so far removed from the emotionless, hyper-professional image Santos had built of Al-Hashimi in her mind that it stunned her into silence.
"I'm afraid you may have misplaced your faith," Al-Hashimi bit back.
"You don't know what you're talking about."
"I don't?" Al-Hashimi's eyes narrowed. The coffee and toast between them were long forgotten. "Alright, tell me this. Did Robby warn you that Langdon was coming back?"
"What the fuck does Langdon have to do with—"
"Did he?" she repeated, eyes boring into Santos's.
Santos stared back, mouth dry. She could feel her heart suddenly thudding loud and fast in her chest.
"No," she finally answered, breaking the eye contact first.
"So he didn't tell you that Langdon was coming back," Al-Hashimi said. Her voice was softer now, the anger giving way to weariness. She looked at Santos with the expression that Santos hated most of all: pity. "And he didn't tell the hospital administration about the drug theft, or that you were the whistleblower. He was just going to take off for his sabbatical and leave all of that on your shoulders."
Santos opened her mouth to speak and shut it when she couldn't find the words. These weren't brand new revelations—she'd toyed with these thoughts all day yesterday, watching Robby damn near run out of the room when Langdon was around—but Langdon's presence had clouded her mind, too, and she hadn't put everything together. Now, hearing it starkly presented by Al-Hashimi's clinical observations, she felt the walls of it all closing in.
"He didn't tell me until I forced it out of him," Al-Hashimi continued, observing the naked betrayal playing across Santos's face. "He was willing to let me believe that you were just unprofessional. Who knows what I might have done if that belief had gone uncorrected."
The gravity of this settled over Santos like a physical weight. She didn't have to imagine what might have happened—Al-Hashimi and Garcia had both delivered rebukes yesterday after the disastrous trauma with Langdon, after the barbs she'd shot at him. How could she have explained to Al-Hashimi then that that was about survival? Santos had learned long ago that sometimes the best way not to get hit was to hit first.
"You never should have been in that position." Al-Hashimi's tone was gentler than it had been all morning; she looked at Santos with a kind of concern that made her skin crawl. "And if Robby was worthy of your trust, he wouldn't have put you in it."
A long silence stretched between them. Now it was Santos staring very intently out the window, focusing on calming breaths and brute-forcing the heat behind her eyes to subside.
"So, I guess I owe you an apology," Al-Hashimi said, after Santos stayed silent. "I didn't know yesterday what I know now. I'd do things differently if I could."
She said it so earnestly, so softly, that it was the final straw for Santos; she felt the first prickle of tears in her eyes and wiped at them forcefully, refusing to cry in front of Al-Hashimi. Her whole body itched like an animal about to bite or bolt—she couldn't tell which. She swallowed back the lump in her throat and finally met Al-Hashimi's gaze again.
"Thanks," she said, in a voice that was anything but grateful. "Congrats, you won. Robby's a fucking asshole and so is everyone else in this hospital. Happy now?"
Al-Hashimi seemed unfazed by the redirected anger, tracking the slight quiver in Santos's bottom lip. "No. I want things to be better. For you and everyone else in the ED."
"Good luck with that. If anyone can do it, it's you," Santos said, dripping sarcasm and not caring one ounce how petty she sounded.
"Not according to Robby," Al-Hashimi murmured, glancing at the hulking visage of the hospital outside the window. The sun was finally breaking over the roof, casting PTMC in a golden haze.
"So what? He's off your back for three months at least. You're calling the shots now."
Al-Hashimi bit the inside of her cheek, choosing her words carefully. "I'm not so sure about that."
"Is he not going through with his sabbatical after all?" Santos asked, stomach twisting at the thought. She was no longer sure if Robby would feel like a safe space to her, not after the world-tilting conversation she was having with Al-Hashimi, and the prospect of facing him anytime soon felt suddenly daunting.
"I don't know," Al-Hashimi answered, still looking away. "I meant, I don't know if I'll be in charge."
"Why not?" Santos asked slowly. She wasn't sure how many more bombshells she could take; she was still hungover, still had a twelve-hour shift to work, and it wasn't even six in the morning yet.
"That—that thing that I trusted Robby with," she hedged. "He thinks it means that I can't do the job." She huffed out a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. "And he might be right."
Santos absorbed this, watching Al-Hashimi's face. It had done a lot in the last hour that she hadn't seen all shift yesterday; now, it was concealing something, rigid like a mask, but her trembling breath gave her away.
Santos looked down at the cold coffee, unable to shake the heavy, consequential feeling that two very different paths were unfurling before her. She could get up and leave. She could forget all of this ever happened, welcome Robby back with open arms in three months, grit her teeth and bear it with Langdon, leave Al-Hashimi to languish in whatever private drama she was currently wrestling with. The status quo was the status quo for a reason. She could handle the pain if she knew exactly how much was coming.
But there was the other path, snaking into undiscovered territory. She could reach across the sticky Formica tabletop to the woman in front of her, to the attending who actually saw her, the one who offered, if nothing else, the truth. Would that mean she was turning her back on Robby? She thought suddenly of being forced to Easter mass as a child, sweating in a starched dress while the Passion played out before her and a bleeding Christ came down from the cross. How much suffering was the right amount?
"He's wrong," Santos said, before realizing the words were even slipping out. "You're good, too. You deserve to be here."
It was the truth, Santos had to admit. Al-Hashimi was tough but she was fair; one shift was enough for Santos to know this for a fact. She excelled in everything that Robby struggled with—she didn't play favorites, she kept her cool. Santos could not help but imagine how different the last ten months would have gone if Al-Hashimi had been her attending physician that first day, and for a reason she could not place, this thought became a physical ache in her chest.
For a while, Al-Hashimi just looked at her. Her eyes, dark and expressive, made Santos feel like she was entirely transparent, and it thrilled her as much as it terrified her. Finally, she spoke.
"That means a lot," Al-Hashimi said simply.
The conversation felt way too heavy and charged; Santos reached desperately for a lame joke, something to cut the tension. "And while you're in charge, I promise I'll bitch about charting less."
Al-Hashimi cracked a smile, though it didn't reach her eyes. "I'd like that."
"Notice I just said 'less.' Please don't expect a complete moratorium on bitching."
"Wouldn't dream of it," Al-Hashimi said, smiling more convincingly. "And I'll do something for you, if you'll let me."
"What's that?" Santos asked cautiously.
"I want to open a file," she said, slowly, like Santos was about to run. She wasn't far off the mark. "A real HR file, so what happened between you and Langdon doesn't happen again."
"Absolutely not," Santos snapped, surprising them both with the vitriol in her voice.
Al-Hashimi sighed. "This should have been done a long time ago, Dr. Santos. For your protection, not his."
"I don't need protection."
"What would have happened if I wrote you up yesterday?" Al-Hashimi asked, firm but gentle. "And the next attending did too? How many black marks do you think you deserve on your record for telling the truth?"
Santos looked away sharply, feeling her breath hitch.
"The way it stands now, it looks like you're being unreasonable while Langdon is blameless," Al-Hashimi continued. "This is why we document. There should be guardrails in place to keep you two from working together more than necessary, and when you do work together, you should be protected from retaliation like any other whistleblower would be."
"I tried to do it the right way ten months ago," Santos said, after a long pause to steady her voice. "And look what fucking good that did me. No. It's too late."
Al-Hashimi frowned, trying to divine what the right way meant by the look on Santos's face and coming up short.
"Okay," Al-Hashimi coaxed, placing her hands flat on the table as if to show she was unarmed. "No file. Nothing official. But will you at least tell me what happened?"
Santos considered this for a beat. She was so exhausted; did she really need to rehash the Langdon conflict for a fourth time in twenty-four hours? Garcia had shut it down. Whitaker had looked apologetic but was ultimately useless. Langdon himself had done nothing but enrage her. And now, here was Al-Hashimi, the only one with the power to do anything and the person she least wanted to tell. She took a deep breath and spoke to the plate of stale toast between them.
"It's not even about the drugs," she said, barely above a whisper.
"Pardon?"
"I mean, it's fucked up that he was stealing drugs," Santos conceded. "But that wasn't really the worst part. It was everything he did when he realized I was onto him."
Al-Hashimi said nothing. It was clear from her expression that she did not know this angle of the story; Robby had probably only mentioned the diversion.
"How did he know?"
"I noticed some... discrepancies," Santos said, fiddling with a sugar packet. "Drugs being over-prescribed, disappearing. At one point, I picked up a vial of lorazepam that I think he'd diluted and put back into the PDS. He told me to just double the dosage when it obviously didn't stop the patient's seizure activity. And then gaslit me about it when I told him I'd felt something wrong with the vial."
Al-Hashimi's lips drew into a hard, flat line at the words seizure activity. "Excuse me?"
"Yeah, happened twice actually," Santos said, mind wandering to the seizing patient in the ice bath before she forcibly shut down the memory, not wanting to relive what Langdon had said moments later. "I didn't accuse him of anything, but I pointed things out when I saw them. He didn't like that."
"What did he do?" Al-Hashimi's mouth was still tight.
"Anything he could think of to make me look incompetent," Santos said, with a humorless laugh. "Snide remarks, always in earshot of other staff. He dressed me down in front of everyone, called me unfit for the ED. I saw him trying to get Robby alone all day, probably to impress upon him what an idiot I was."
"This was your first day?" Al-Hashimi asked, once she had digested this. Santos just shrugged, staring very hard at a syrup stain on the table.
"I wasn't even going to say anything," she admitted with another harsh laugh. "I know that's probably a breach of my oath or something, but I wanted it all to stop, and I was ready to pretend nothing ever happened if it meant getting Langdon off my back. But Robby cornered me about it, and I ended up being right. So here we are."
Santos glanced up at Al-Hashimi and noticed her chest rising and falling a little more sharply than before. Her eyes were clouded. Something about the story had clearly affected her, though Santos wasn't sure what.
"You're not going to report this, right?" Santos asked, hating herself for sounding so small.
"No," Al-Hashimi said, measured, though Santos could sense the carefully-concealed indignation under her words. "I hope you'll change your mind, but if you don't want me to put this on record, I won't."
"Thanks," Santos said, not knowing what else to say. Al-Hashimi still seemed to be grappling with a dull anger across from her.
"Thank you for trusting me." Al-Hashimi took an audible breath and exhaled slowly. "I'm sorry that you had to go through that."
Santos hated hearing the words I'm sorry almost as much as she hated hearing everything Langdon had screamed at her ten months before. Being handled with care did nothing but make her feel more breakable, so she fumbled for something, anything, to change the subject.
"Yeah, well, them's the breaks," she said, clearing her throat. "Look, you don't have to tell me what the thing is that you told Robby. But if there's anything I can do to help, I will."
Al-Hashimi smiled. A new smile, one that Santos had not seen on her yet: sad, wistful, almost mournful. She reached across the table and squeezed one of Santos's hands with her own. Santos had noticed how tactile Al-Hashimi was yesterday—the way she tended to put a hand on her lower back or upper arm as she passed, the ease with which she offered an encouraging pat on the shoulder—but this gesture felt different. The contact lingered. Santos felt the cool press of the ring on Al-Hashimi's index finger against her skin, almost too hard to be comforting, like she was holding on for dear life. Then, just as suddenly, it was gone, and Al-Hashimi retracted her hand.
"I don't think you can help with this, Santos."