Chapter Text
“𝓘 𝓴𝓷𝓸𝔀 𝓸𝓯 𝔀𝓲𝓽𝓬𝓱𝓮𝓼 𝔀𝓱𝓸 𝔀𝓱𝓲𝓼𝓽𝓵𝓮 𝓪𝓽 𝓭𝓲𝓯𝓯𝓮𝓻𝓮𝓷𝓽 𝓹𝓲𝓽𝓬𝓱𝓮𝓼,
𝓬𝓪𝓵𝓵𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓼 𝓽𝓱𝓪𝓽 𝓭𝓸𝓷'𝓽 𝓱𝓪𝓿𝓮 𝓷𝓪𝓶𝓮𝓼.” - 𝓗𝓮𝓵𝓮𝓷 𝓞𝔂𝓮𝔂𝓮𝓶𝓲
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He's back at that place, too small and too skinny, hair still thin and wispy only just starting to curl, blue eyes impossibly large. He's sitting on a tree stump, swaying back and forth to self regulate as each of his aunts approach one after another and drop an offering at his feet, he softly repeats the same words his family chants 'we hear the wilderness and it hears us', the chant bordering on hymn had been a constant comfort in his life since his birth. He's clutching his blanket to his chest and smiling as each offering plops down at his feet in the pot his aunt Van had placed there, the offerings bright red with the only other constant thing in his life, blood. Dennis is there, he's in that tiny body, he has that innocent mind, he feels the comfort he felt in that moment but he's also himself now, viewing from somewhere above. He has the all knowledge and guilt he holds now but he can't move as he tries to go to that younger version of himself, all he can do is stand there and watch, reaching out to no avail as his aunt Lottie kneels next to the younger him. She's tilting his chin up, humming softly to him, the tiny version of himself smiles at his aunt, he feels comforted and excited. He feels a sense of belonging that he hasn't felt since. He tries moving again, straining against whatever force keeps him in place as his aunt begins to paint that damned symbol onto his forehead from the small dish in her hands, the blood drips down his nose and he giggles because the feeling of it tickles. A scream rips from his throat.
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That's how Dennis wakes, screaming, and thrashing in the arms around him because he's still trying to run to that younger version of himself. Trinity is trying to push him back down towards his mattress but it takes him a good few seconds to realize that, for his brain to connect back with his current reality. She's trying to speak, to calm him, but between his own screams and the chanting still echoing in his ears, he hadn't heard a single word she'd said. He stops moving when his scream finally cuts off, he's panting, partially up right in bed and being half held up by Trinity. He can hear her now but he isn't actually registering her words, he just hears that her voice is soft and comforting. It takes a moment before the shame and embarrassment sets in, a flush comes over him and he lowers himself back down in bed, hands over his eyes. Trinity slowly, hesitantly, pulls her arms back but she stays on the edge of his bed - which is really just a mattress on the floor.
"You doing better now?" She asks quietly, he doesn't hear any judgment or fear in her voice and he notices she doesn't ask if he's 'okay', she worded her question very carefully.
Dennis peeks at her from between his fingers, "Uh, yeah…I'm so sorry." He lowers his hands, staring up at the ceiling.
"It's okay."
"Hm." Dennis shakes his head. "You shouldn't need to be bothered by me and my problems."
"As doctors we kind of sign up for dealing with other peoples problems, Huckleberry."
Dennis frowns, rolling his head to look at her finally, somehow she's smiling slightly. "I'm not a patient. I'm a roommate who isn't paying rent." He reminds her.
She shrugs, "Still. I have a feeling you wouldn't leave me hanging if I needed it. I won't either. You don't need to tell me why this happened but it's okay it happened." Dennis chokes down the shame rising in his throat, he looks away again.
"Thanks." He whispers.
"Want some food?" red flashes through his mind, he shakes his head. "Okay, well I'm gonna go make breakfast," She says as she stands up. "I'm bringing you a glass of water you should hydrate."
"I can get my own glass." He quickly sits up only to be pushed back down by Trinity's socked foot., which he looks at in offense.
"You just had the most hellish first day in emergency medicine for any med student ever only a day ago and now you wake up like this? You need a break, Huck." She says sternly. "Just fucking stay here, dingus or I'll make you're life at work today a different kind of hell."
Begrudgingly he lays back down deciding it was best to do as she said after everything she's done for him.
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It - the dreams, the screaming - doesn't happen often but it does happen. Especially after particularly rough shifts or days when blood gets anywhere past his wrist or when one of the Chaplins is requested to come down to be with one of the patients or their families. Trinity never asks. Sometimes she sits with him in bed - or more likely pulls him to her room because she has a bed frame - or brings him to the couch to watch TV until they fall asleep again, when he wakes up crying as well and he asks her to leave she'll just pants his shoulder and leave him be, she seems to understand what he needs without him speaking it most of the time, sometimes better than he knows what he needs himself. She never pressures him to tell her anything doesn't suggest a therapist, she's just present with him, but with each time she's there for him after one of his nightmares the more he feels like he should open up to her. Or maybe he just…wants to. Wanting to tell someone about that part of his life has never happened before, his parents and brothers tried for most of his life and he told them simple half-truths his mama had trained into him. So he doesn't recognize the feeling and as such it builds and builds in him until he just sort of blurts it out one night.
They're lounging on the couch in their matching plaid pajama pants, holding bowls full of sinangag, a little breakfast for dinner, their legs laying side by side and their backs pressed to each armrest. Trinity had turned on Love Is Blind and is currently bitching about one of the men, gesturing with her spoon. Dennis was watching her filled with this fond feeling for the women in front of him. His chest full with the feeling and he realizes he's never had a friend like her. He'd barely had any friends at all but she was a true friend.
"Hey, Trinity?" He blurted, cutting her off, to which she gives him an annoyed look. "Do you know about the 1995 yellowjackets soccer team plane crash?"
"What? Where did that come from?"
"Well do you?"
Trinity rolls her eyes, pauses the show, "Yeah I've heard of it."
"You know they were out there until 2000?" Trinity nods. "And how one girl had a baby out there?"
Trinity whistles in a sympathetic way, "Yeah, that had to be rough."
"Yeah" Dennis agrees casually, taking another bite of food, chewing and swallowing before he continues, "I'm that baby."
Trinity chokes on her food, eyes widening, holding a hand up when Dennis tries to sit up to help her. "Jesus Christ." She mumbles when she can breathe again. "You what?"
"My mama, her name is Shauna Shipman or I guess Sadecki now, she was the girl who was pregnant on that plane. I was adopted by the Whitaker's when they were rescued."
"Oh, wow." Trinity sits there a moment, staring down at her bowl. "I-"
"You don't have to say anything. I just wanted to tell you."
"Oh, thanks."
"That's why…that's the reason for the dreams."
Trinity's eyes light up in understanding, nodding slowly. "Oh, right, that makes sense." She says softly. "I can imagine why you don't talk about it."
Dennis nodded, "It's hard to talk about trauma, huh?" He knows she's been through something bad, he doesn't know the details and would never expect her to give them unless she needed and wanted to talk about it just as she's done for him.
"You can say that again, Huckleberry." She smiles, nudging his side with her foot. "You know this doesn't change the way I see you, yeah? You're still my awkward little Huckleberry."
Dennis shakes his head and jabs his toe into her ribs playfully. "Yeah yeah, can't catch a break from you ever.
"You better believe it." She winks, holds up the remote. "You still wanna watch this?"
"Can we watch love island instead?"
She shrugs. "Sure reality slop either way. Something to rant about for me."
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The next day, despite how great Trinity had been about the whole thing Dennis still wakes up with a knot of anxiety in his chest. He still worries that his reveal will change things anyway. There was a reason he'd decided to take his adopted parent's name when he'd gone off to college despite how upset he knew his mama would be - it had been even worse than he'd imagined - people in Broken Bow had always treated him differently when they found out who his mama was. He could still remember the first prayer circle he'd experienced. Everyone in the church hovered over him in a circle as all of them began to pray, hands pressed together. He hadn't recognized a single thing they were saying, it felt wrong and twisted at the time, filled his chest with fear. Almost like the rituals his family did but slightly to the left, just wrong enough. He'd pressed his hands to his ears crying for his mama and when she hadn't come he'd called for each aunt and then finally he tried calling out to the wilderness which had only made the prayer raise in pitch as if they were driving trying to drive something away from the five-year-old. He'd seen the way people in town whispered behind their hands, or pulled their kids away from Dennis in the park, and how they'd praise his mother and father for taking him in and how hard it all must have been for them. It faded with the years only for the rare times outsiders would move to town starting the cycle once more.
So that morning when he woke up to the sounds of Trinity banging around the apartment as she got ready for their shift he sent out a little thought of hope that everything would be fine. It wasn't really a prayer, he didn't do that anymore, he just let it out into the universe because he wouldn't know who or what he was praying to anyway. He didn't think, not really, that Trinity would lie about how nothing would change between them but sometimes things change unconsciously despite all best intentions.
"Huckleberry! Get up and get dressed, you don't have time for a shower at this point dingus!" She yelled through his door, banging her first once on the door frame in case he was still asleep. Dennis smiled so wide it hurt his cheeks, that was a good sign.
It started much like it always did, with little things. Like how Dennis began doodling the symbol absentmindedly, Robby and Trinity had both caught him and asked what he was drawing over and over. He'd never felt more mortified in his life as he'd stuttered out he didn't know what it was or why he'd been drawing it. Something told him that answer gave Trinity a good idea of what it had to do with. But then the animal anomalies began. At first they were somewhat explainable. Dogs following him on his way to work could be explained away by the protein bars and jerky he usually kept in his scrub pockets. The murder of crows that bravely flew through the open ambulance bay doors to perch across the ED were caulked up to odd corvid behavior and general bad luck. The two separate nests of rats and mice is thought to be because of the unhygienic city surroundings and the unhoused population that regularly took care of. But things only got stranger. He can't exactly explain to Trinity why there's a skulk of dead foxes in an array outside their apartment building. He tries to act as miffed as everyone else when a colony of sick stray cats come bounding into the ED to lay right at his feet - he gets away with it because he is genuinely distressed by the whole ordeal. Dennis just wants whatever it is, whatever event relating to the wilderness or his family that is about happen to come and go already. But he'd never exactly had good luck before, his bad luck started before he was even born so why would now be any different? And just when he'd grown accustomed to who he'd made himself into at PTMC.
"Dr Whitaker, got a patient asking for you by name." Dana tells him, with a proud kind of smile. "Guess you made a good impression. Room south ten. Minor head injury but acute pain." Dennis gave her a firm nod and headed over to the room, a warm feeling filling his chest at the prospect he had made a positive impact on someone enough they asked for him by name.
"Hello, Ms Roberts, I'm Dr Whitaker. Can you tell me a little about what brings you to the ED today?" He asked, keeping his voice relatively low in case she had sensitivity to noise. Closing the door behind him as he looked up from the tablet to make eye contact as they spoke. In front of him was a nice enough looking woman, she had a bright smile which was clearly a bit forced, and short curly hair framing her face. Dennis never would have guessed how quickly she'd blow a whole through his life. But he didn't recognize her by any means.
"Yes, well, I'm sorry but nothing on that chart is true. I just couldn't seem to get a hold of you any other way." Dennis frowned, caught a bit off guard. Perhaps something psychological was going on with her and she'd imagined she knew Dennis. Either way he was determined to help.
"Okay. Well, how can I address what did bring you here?"
"Jessica Roberts, Star-Ledger-" Dennis smile dropped. "I couldn't find a current address, and you never answered my calls or perhaps I'd gotten the wrong number, you're name was hard to come by. I've been searching for Dennis Shipman for quite a while, I'm glad I could find you."
"I'm sorry. I need to get back to real patients who are here for serious help." He tried to be as polite as possible and keep the irritation from his voice. He was instantly tense all over, his jaw clenching, hands tightening on the tablet as he stood. "I'm sure you can find you're way out."
With that Dennis left the room, trying not to stomp around like a petulant child. With everything that had been happening around him he'd thought perhaps his mom or one of his aunts were hurt, maybe someone was visiting, or Callie needed him, not some ridiculous fucking reporter tracking him down to get all the juicy details of his traumatic formative years.
Unsurprisingly someone willing to fake an injury with the ED staff and track down his adoptive name was more than willing to follow him out of the room and across the hub. He was trying to get to Ahmad before she could cause any real damage to his life but once again he never was lucky.
"Please, Mr Shipman, I really think you'll-"
"Do not call me that." He snapped turning on the women a white-hot rage filling his chest, his voice louder and angrier than he'd meant it to be. He could feel so many eyes on him. "I have people here who need me. Please Ms Roberts see yourself out."
"We can offer you a lot of money Mr Sh-Whitaker, a book deal like this could change your life, even the signing bonus alone. I'm sure medical school couldn't have been cheap."
Dennis didn't even notice Robby approaching until he was speaking, "Is there a problem here?" His arms crossed over his chest, placing himself between the two, eyes scanning back and forth between them as he tried to get a read on the situation. There was also a familiar presence at Dennis' now, he knew Trinity must be hovering near him, waiting to help however she could.
"Oh, no." Jessica Roberts offered Robby a soft placating smile. "I just needed to ask Mr Whitaker-"
"Dr Whitaker." Robby corrected, Trinity's hand was on his elbow now offering silent support.
"Of course, Dr Whitaker and I were just discussing an important deal-"
"There is a problem, actually." Dennis cut her off, not wanting to hear her voice any longer. "Dr Robby this woman has stalked me across state lines, I don't really even know her, she faked an injury to get in today after many failed attempts to contact me." Dennis wasn't even finished speaking when Robby raised his hand motioning for Ahmad to join them.
"Ahmad could you please escort her out?"
"So sorry, of course I can leave." She said quickly, reaching into her pocket and holding out her hand towards Dennis. "But please if you change-"
"Ma'am, I'm gonna need you to come with me." Ahmad was polite as he pushed her arm down and away from Dennis, beginning to herd her out of the department, he didn't even notice the business card falling to the ground. Dennis couldn't breathe once more until the door was closing behind them, a physical barrier between them.
"Dr Robby I-"
Robby's voice was barely above a whisper, "Take a moment in the break room, Whitaker. If you need Dr Santos or I please let us know."
Dennis nodded and though it felt silly to take a break over something so small he still handed the tablet still in his hands over to Trinity and headed off for the break room.
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Unsurprisingly Robby comes to find him. Dennis doesn't know how or why he finds the time but still it brings a tired smile to his face anyway when he looks up to the sound of the break room door opening to see the attending was the one walking inside. Robby sits across from him at the table, Dennis eyes all the space between them with a good bit of grief, but they were at work. Robby leans back in his chair and spreads his legs wide until his knee is brushing Dennis', he's smiling fondly and the whole thing makes Dennis' heart flutter.
"How are you doing, Whit? After all that."
"Been better." He says trying to make the words sound as light as he can.
"I bet." Robby muses, watching Dennis carefully, his eyes scanning over him in that way that use to make him squirm and hope for something more.
"Are you gonna ask?"
Robby raises his eyebrows, "Ask what? I already asked my question, I was just mulling over how I can best help."
Dennis' heart aches with how much he loves the man in front of him. "I mean, if you wanna know…"
"Kid, I've lived long enough to know that some things aren't to be asked from someone. That was a rough situation and I could see how shaken you were, whatever that has to do with I'm not going to try and pull from you." Robby reaches out like he's going to grab Dennis' but the movement is aborted as he remembers where they are. "I want to know everything about you." He says after lowering his voice despite the fact the door is closed. "But I only want you to tell me in your own time."
"Wow, you and Trinity are more alike than you'd imagine."
"Oh?"
"She basically said the same thing when she noticed…well, something was happening that is related to this whole thing and she didn't push. She knows now though."
"That's good, I do keep hearing how important it is to have a support system you can open up to." He says it in a way to teasingly suggests he tired of his completely voluntary therapy he'd started a few months ago after a particularly bad day at work and nasty fight with Dennis who'd confronted him about his mental deterioration.
"Can a 'support system' be just one person?"
"I don't know and I'm not willing to ask Caleb only to get scolded. But you know…I'd like to think I'm part of that support system as well even if it takes time for the opening up bit. And I'd be a hypocrite if I held that against you. Still, I'm here for you, Den. Whatever way you decide. Want me to see if Santos has a moment for you?"
Dennis shakes his head. "God no. I wanna go back to work. It'll get my mind off everything and I can push it all down and maybe confront it later."
"Hey now, that sounds like a very Michael Robinavitch way of dealing with things and that man is notoriously bad at dealing with basically anything."
"Oh my god shut up." Dennis kicked Robby's calf.