Girls' Day In
a one-shot by jodief1
SUMMARY: On a rare day off, Callie and Arizona take a break from their own child-rearing to help Meredith with hers.
TIMEFRAME: Set a week or so after the events of 7x22 (the S7 finale).
A/N: Originally posted for the post-S7 one-shot competition over at Grey's Gabble. Thanx to all for reading and your comments!
Lexie opened the heavy wooden door, her face pale. "Thank God you're here!" She turned her head to yell, even more shrilly than usual, up the stairs: "Mer! Mer! They're here!"
As she stood aside to let Callie and Arizona enter, Lexie started wringing her hands and whispering rapidly. "I'm so glad you're here – 'cause she – you know I love Zola, she's so cute, but she's got a pair of lungs on her like you wouldn't believe, and I've bought earplugs, but I feel so guilty about wearing them when Mer has to deal with Zola on her own in the middle of the night, and I'm just not sleeping well, and so Jackson isn't either, and yesterday he overslept the alarm, and the Chief yelled at him again, and it's just..."
Callie leaned forward and gripped Lexie's shoulders. "It's oooo-kay, Lex. All new parents go through this. And I know you're not a parent, but..." She gestured around with her head. "As long as you and Jackson keep living here, you're just gonna have to get used to it." She released Lexie and started moving across the threshold, stopping on the other side to face Lexie once more. "You know what? Just...just use the damn earplugs. I'm sure Meredith doesn't expect you to help her out at two in the morning." Walking in behind Callie, Arizona nodded solemnly, her eyebrows furrowed.
Once they were inside, the couple could hear ample evidence of Zola's lung capacity: the frantic crying seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere in particular. The hardwood floors in that house might be gorgeous, but they certainly turned the place into an echo chamber. In a moment, Meredith appeared at the top of the stairs, leaning down so that she could see her guests in the hall. When she had their attention, she gestured frantically for them to join her. Callie and Arizona tromped up the stairs, feeling like a fire brigade, complete with bags and medical kits strapped to various parts of their bodies.
"Baby whisperers to the rescue," said Arizona brightly, once they had reached Meredith on the upper landing.
"Thanks for coming, you guys," Meredith said softly, the lines in her face testifying to her fatigue. "I'm really sorry for calling you so early on a Sunday morning – I hope you didn't have plans..."
"Nope!" chirped Arizona. "Glad to help. Where's Zola?"
As the three women moved down the hall, Callie leaned forward to whisper in her wife's ear: "Nope, no plans, none…except that today is the first time we've both had a day off in three weeks, and we were going to stay in bed while Sofia played at Mark's..."
"Hush!" Arizona hissed out the side of her mouth, while lightly punching Callie's shoulder. "I like being the expert, remember? It gives me a little charge...a charge that I'd be happy to share with you later. Deal?"
"Deal." Callie kept her tone grumpy, but she gave Arizona's shoulder a little squeeze to suggest that she was, in fact, looking forward to sharing some alone time later.
The couple's whispered conversation had been drowned out by the ever-louder cries emanating from the door at the end of the hall. Meredith passed swiftly through, leading the way to a cute – but very makeshift – nursery in what clearly had been a study. A couple of bookshelves remained, filled with decades-old surgical textbooks, flanking a brand-spanking-new, top-of-the-line crib. Three separate mobiles whirred above the baby lying in it, but they were evidently not working their usual magic today: Zola had gotten so worked up that her face had an ugly, purplish tinge and was flecked with spittle. "Aw, look at de lil cutie pie!" exclaimed a beaming Callie, as Arizona turned to her with a quizzical smirk.
Meredith picked up Zola in a well-practiced motion and started to bounce agitatedly. If anything, the crying intensified. "See?" Meredith practically yelled over her daughter's screams. "I hold her in every possible position, I rock her, but she just won't quiet down! She's actually made herself sick from crying every day this week, and I'm starting to lose it!"
Arizona leaned closer so that she could speak at a normal volume. "You tried the holds we talked about?"
"Yes! Look!" Meredith turned Zola so that her tummy was down, relieving the pressure on her back. She still wailed.
"And there's no sign of urologic or fecal blockage? Or excess gas?"
"No, nope, definitely not. I'm still weighing diapers, I can show you the charts. And believe me, she's a rootin' tootin' girl – but she still cries just as hard after she's let out all the gas she could possibly hold."
"No, okay." Arizona wrinkled her nose. "No inflammation or tenderness around the surgery sites?"
"No, look!" Meredith, still bouncing jerkily, unsnapped Zola's onesie and pushed it up so Arizona could see. "And her last checkup was the day before last, everything seemed fine."
"She won't take a binkie?"
"God, no, and I don't care what they say about overbites...I'd let her have one every waking moment if she would just take it!"
"Uh...Wait. Wait," interjected Callie. "Can I take her for a minute? I'm getting a little dizzy watching you from over here." She leaned forward, and Meredith nodded, shifting Zola into Callie's arms. Callie immediately started humming and rocking gently side-to-side, dropping her head to look into Zola's eyes, smiling her biggest mega-watt smile. Zola cries ratcheted down a notch, and she started hiccupping in-between wails. Arizona smiled just looking at the pair of them, while Meredith flopped in a nearby rocking chair, running her hands through her hair. Within two minutes, Zola had stopped crying altogether and was just hanging out, her eyes glazing over under heavy lids.
Meredith stretched out a plaintive hand. "Look! God! You can do it too! Just like Derek. I can never do that, I just can't. I'm...I'm just like my mother. Just...great." She leaned heavily back in the chair, looking up, blinking back tears.
"No, I'm not doing anything special," protested Callie, "I'm just chilling out with her! See? I'm sure you do the same. What tunes do you sing to her?"
"Sing?" Meredith scoffed. "I can't sing to save my life."
"Well, neither can I, except in my dreams. But you hum to her, right? What do you hum?"
"I dunno. Twinkle Twinkle?"
"Wow. Hmmm." Arizona exchanged a look with Callie. "Well, do you remember having any songs sung to you as a kid?"
"No!" Meredith flung both hands in the air in a gesture of complete helplessness. "That's the whole point! My mom had no idea what she was doing, wasn't even around for my bedtimes most days, and my dad was out of the picture by the time I was old enough to form solid memories!"
"Right." Arizona's mouth was set in a line. "Okay. But there must be certain songs that you really like, that go back a long way for you, even if it wasn't your parents singing them to you. Like I remember having my own little record player, and some old records that my parents didn't mind if they got scratched – like..." She went to grasp Zola's little hand and leaned in to sing softly. "...Tiptoe, through the tulips, though the tulips, la la la la and tiptoe, through the tulips, with me." She was rewarded with a sleepy smile and grinned at Meredith, who had closed her eyes. "I don't remember all the words, but it doesn't matter. Does it?" she asked Zola, tickling her chin.
The ghost of a smile danced around Meredith's mouth. She opened her eyes slowly. "Yeah. Yeah, I can think of a couple of songs like that. You wouldn't think it to look at her, but my mom was, like, totally obsessed with The Captain and Tennille. Would put on the record or the tape constantly, especially when she was lonely...which was a lot, I guess, especially when I was older."
Meredith closed her eyes again and began to sing, in little more than a breath. "...Love, love will keep us together, think of me babe whenever, some sweet talkin' girl comes along, singin' a song..."
Callie caught Arizona's eye and moved forward to pass Zola back to Meredith, who opened her eyes when she felt her daughter's pressure in her arms again.
"...Don't mess around, you just got to be strong," Meredith sang softly to the now-drifting Zola. "Just stop, 'cause I really love you, Stop, I'll be thinking of you – look in my heart and let love keep us together...whatever."
Zola was now asleep, clearly exhausted by her earlier vocal marathon. Meredith sighed and leaned her head back again, as tears began to spill down her cheeks. Callie shifted her weight uncomfortably, not accustomed to seeing Meredith so emotional, but Arizona knelt beside the rocking chair and rested her hand on Meredith's arm.
"How can I be a mother?" Meredith whispered hoarsely. "I don't know how to be a mother!"
"You already are a mother, and you're learning how to do it, day by day, just like all mothers." Arizona used a tone Callie had never heard before: it was like her professional one, but simultaneously more urgent and gentle. "No matter how we were raised, we all have to learn it."
"I didn't give birth to her! I think I'm missing something, some connection..."
"No." Arizona was firm, but not dismissive. "You have that connection, just like I have that connection with my daughter. We don't have to give birth to them to feel it. You haven't run away from this screaming child, as most of us would do if it were someone else's child. This is your child, and you've stayed with her. She just needs you to...to..."
Callie stepped forward to touch Arizona's shoulder. "...To soothe yourself, first. There's no one right way to do this, any of this, but I do know that kids sense nervousness, agitation. Babies especially. We create routines for them, but also for ourselves. You can sing to her, but it's even better to sing to yourself, and let her listen in. She'll take comfort from your comfort – or at least, that's what we've found with Sofia."
Arizona reached her other hand up to grasp Callie's and gave it a squeeze. But she was surprised, when Meredith next opened her eyes to stare at Zola, at how steely and bitter her gaze had become. Meredith cleared her throat. "That's what Derek was able to do, and that's what he's supposed to be here to do. And to teach me how to do. But he's not here, and I really don't know how to do this without him."
Callie knelt down on the other side of the rocking chair and grasped Meredith's other arm. "Sounds like he had good reason to be pissed off. But if he loves you..." Callie raised her eyes to Arizona's. "...And if he loves the family you've begun to create together, he'll come back. Eventually. When he's ready." Arizona held Callie's glistening gaze for several long moments.
"But..."
With effort, Arizona broke her gaze with Callie and looked directly into Meredith's eyes instead. "Listen. There are no guarantees. But we all know how much you love each other, and I saw Derek with Zola. He's got that bond too. He's not going to be able to stay away, not forever. And when he does come back..."
Meredith raised an eyebrow.
"...You'll be the resident expert on Zola, and he'll have to take a turn being your intern."
"Yeah," Callie laughed, "Be sure to put him on diaper duty for a month! Hazing's not just for hospitals, you know."
Meredith smiled in spite of herself, and caressed Zola's peaceful face. "Oh yeah, he'll get what's coming to him. Seriously."
Callie and Arizona stood up and began to gather their things. "You good?" Arizona softly asked.
"Yeah. We're good. Thanks so much." Meredith didn't take her tired eyes off Zola.
Arizona smiled to Callie and gestured toward the door. "Anytime. We'll see you...soon."
As they walked hand-in-hand back down the hallway toward the stairs, Arizona and Callie were followed closely by the slightly raspy strains of Meredith's voice: "...You, you belong to me now, ain't gonna set you free now..."
Callie paused at the top of the stairs and surprised Arizona with a quick, but very ardent, kiss. "So..."
Arizona beamed her super-magic-smile. "Oh, babe. Our deal is so on."
END