"Anyone here?"
"I'm in the baby's room."
Alex threw his briefcase onto the kitchen stool and ran up the stairs. He and Pam had bought the two storey, 3 bedroom a month ago and boxes still lined most of the living room and garage. One thing that Pam had made sure was unpacked was the baby room.
An ode to any baby that was born the room was a blue speckled euphoria for the expecting mother. Alex leaned against the doorway and watched Pam folding teeny little clothes on her heaving belly. She looked up and smiled.
"I saw these in the kids department and I had to have them. They're so cute! Is that okay?"
Alex took one the small brown corduroy trouser legs and rubbed the soft material between his fingers. The fact that Alex Mahone was going to be a father in three months shocked no one quite as much as it shocked Alex Mahone. It seemed only yesterday he had married the delicate Pam Stone. Now she was a Mahone and pulling along thirty pounds of extra baggage that was going to be his son. In the scheme of things, life was starting to look up for Alex.
Pam tugged gently at the other end of the miniature clothes and beamed at her husband. He reached for Pam's arm and took her in as close as he could. He leaned in lightly and pecked her lips.
"You taste like strawberries."
Pam bit her lip and laughed quietly.
"Lip-gloss. Do you like it?" she whispered.
Alex went in for another kiss and spread his tongue across the top of her lip.
"I like it a lot."
Pam pulled away from the embrace, and her face light up with amusement.
"Come look at these new crib sheets I bought."
¨ · ¨
The elevator doors were about to shut when a manicured hand stuck itself through the thin crack and croaked,
"Hold the door."
Izzie pressed the open door button and let a exasperated Meredith Grey into the elevator.
"Izzie, I'm glad I caught you!"
Izzie who was fresh off a twenty-hour shift looked warily at the grinning resident.
"You are?"
Meredith drummed her fingers on the clipboard she was holding and rocked back and forth on her heels. Izzie contorted her face to a look of anguish. The stance Meredith had just taken could only be described as the "I'm about to ask you a favour stance".
"No."
The grin fell from Meredith's face.
"Izzie please. Derek wants to take me to this restaurant on the water front and last week I had to miss another date because I was in surgery. Please Izzie I need to go on this date, I've missed too many."
Izzie slumped her shoulders and snatched the clipboard from Meredith's hands.
"The things I do for love," she groaned.
Meredith jumped up, causing the elevator to jolt a bit.
"Thank you so much! You're with Alex in the pit."
The elevator doors slid open and Meredith danced out before Izzie could get to Meredith's throat.
¨ · ¨
"Do you want popcorn or ice cream?" Alex called from the kitchen.
Pam adjusted herself on the king sized bed, they had spent the better part of a week assembling.
"Both."
A questioning silence filled the space between the bedroom and the kitchen.
"Both," Pam repeated.
"Both," Alex said as he walked back into the bedroom and handed Pam the bowl of butter topped popcorn and tub of Ben&Jerry's Phish Food. The colourful lights of the action movie flicked off of the white walls.
"Carson."
Alex rolled his eyes.
"We're not doing this now."
Pam crunched on a piece of popcorn thoughtfully in her mouth. Ever since they had found out there baby was going to be a boy, Pam had picked up the habit of blurting out baby names at random times. She then chose to have a debate over them, this proved consequential on many occasions including pulling Alex out a homicide crime scene for almost an hour on the subject of the classic grandeur of Benjamin.
"I like Carson, it's new. Not a lot of little boys are called Carson. It's a C too, after your mother, that's what you want."
"It is."
Alex kept his answers as succinct as he could. Better to keep quiet then elicit another name out of Pam.
"No not Carson. How about-- oh I don't know. What's a good C name?"
Alex took an arm around Pam and took a handful of popcorn.
"Whatever makes you happy. Now can we watch the movie?"
"Cameron! Cameron William Mahone. Cameron Austin Mahone. Oh baby, I love that. Cameron. Can we name our son Cameron?"
Alex ran a caring hand through Pam's hair. He took another handful of popcorn, this time missing his mouth. He reached down the crack between Pam and him to reach for the kernel. His hand pushed against the sheets, they were wet and sticky.
"Ugh, I think we spilled something."
Pam shifted her weight to the edge of the bed and pulled back the duvet. Crimson soaked the bed spread. Pam pressed at it gently with a manicured finger. The room began to smell of the metallic reek of blood. Alex jumped out of the bed and pulled the cover off. Pam was soaked from the waist down.
"Oh god. I'm going to call an ambulance. Stay where you are."
Alex rushed out of the room to the phone. Pam studied the blood tainted fingers with a blank stare.
"I like Cameron."
She slunk slightly into the pile of pillows and her hand went limp. As the world began to go fuzzy and black she heard Alex scream her name. It was only a whisper though as she fell into the black depth.
¨ · ¨
"I need coffee, or a jolt of like, two hundred volts. Preferably the coffee but whatever keeps me awake."
Izzie lay over the nurses' station, and her coffee rant had gone unheard for the last 20 minutes, when the nurse had gone to fill orders at the pharmacy. Out of the corner of her half-closed eye she saw a figure approach her.
"I need you down in the pit."
Alex stood over her, his arms crossed and his eyes focused on the wall above Izzie's head. Izzie rolled herself into what could be interpreted as a standing position and tried to look Alex dead in the eye. He kept his gaze to the wall.
"Am I that disgusting to you? Untouchable? Should I douse myself in kerosene and have my tainted soul be taken to hell?"
Alex's face remained expressionless. For the better part of the week, starting when Izzie had told Alex that she a George had slept together, his face had remained in the same stone cold gaze to the blonde doctor.
"We've got two ambulances coming in. I haven't got enough help. Come on."
Alex turned on his heel and back down the stairs. Izzie dragged behind complaints flying at the back of Alex's head.
"I hope Meredith Grey is having really good sex right now, or all of this was for nothing. She better be getting laid."
Interns were already flying out of the emergency room doors by the time Alex and Izzie managed their way down the stairs. Alex grabbed a nervous looking intern by the arm.
"What's going on?"
"We've got a guy who fell out of a tree, and now he hasn't got half his leg and an old woman who's got half of an cabinet door in her head and some pregnant lady who's bleeding more blood than she should have in the whole of her body."
Alex sighed in frustration.
"The things people decide to do at 1 in the morning. Alright you're going to need to page Shepherd for the old woman, don't move the cabinet it's probably the only thing holding her brain in right now. Find the other half of the leg, if it's a clean cut clean it out and book OR 2. Where's the pregnant woman?"
The intern's eyes bulged out of his head with information and he shuttered over his answer. Alex took the sleeve of his scrub's firmly.
"The pregnant lady?"
"Bed four," he spat off before running in the opposite direction to either cry or get the resident's order's done.
Alex stormed forward to the bed and swept back the curtain. The woman, heavily pregnant was completely soaked with blood. It trickled off of the side of the waiting bed. The husband's sterling blue eyes flicked back and forth between the wife's sickly expression and the alarming amount of blood coming from her,
"I'm Dr. Karev. How far along is your wife?"
"She's about 7 months along. What's wrong, what's happening? Is the baby going to be alright?"
Alex pulled up a wheelie chair and pulled out the stirrups from the side of the bed.
"Steven's cut her pants off. Sir, I need to examine your wife to see what's happening. There's a waiting room right outside of the door's. As soon as we establish the problem we will come find you."
The man ran his finger's through his hair and stumbled towards the waiting room doors.
"Her blood type is A negative and her name is Pam. Pam Mahone."
Izzie was half way down the left pant leg when she asked,
"What do you need me to do?"
"Nothing Steven's, I've got this."
Izzie snapped the scissors with an extra sharp snip and she finished off the left. She reached over Alex aggressively to get to the zip.
"Don't Alex. Jesus, this woman might be about to loose her baby, don't make it personal. If you make it personal you're going to kill a mother and her unborn baby. What can I do?"
Alex cracked his neck as he peeled back the crimson soaked cuts of fabric.
"Get an OR booked. This baby is coming out tonight. Her placenta he completely ripped from one end to the other. Call the blood bank too, we need a ridiculous amount of A negative."
Izzie nodded and jogged off to the OR board. Alex turned back to the unconscious woman.
"Stevens has got to deliver you after a 32-hour shift tonight and go home to O'Malley afterwards. And you thought you had it bad, little foetus."
¨ · ¨
Alex's feet tapped steadily against the linoleum floors. His head sat like dead weight in his hands. He could only imagine the horrific things they were going to have to do to her if they baby had died. Would he have to choose mother or child? Could he?
He stood up suddenly, all of the macabre thoughts were making him nauseous. As he paced the corridor up and down, trying to calm himself down, he saw the blonde doctor from before running to the staircase. She looked in a hurry. It couldn't mean anything good.
"Doctor?!" Alex shouted from across the room. She whipped around quickly almost causing herself to trip over the first step.
"Mr. Mahone if you want information your going to have to walk with me."
Alex pushed his sleeves further up his arms and ran after her. When he caught up she had already begun talking.
"Your wife's placenta has teared completely from one end to the other. The only thing holding in your baby is your wife's unconsciousness, if she waked up the pain is going to be too great. She's going to want to push. We're scheduling an operating room, for an emergency caesarean"
They were walking up to a large white board where names and the longest Latin terms Alex had seen since grade school were written up. The doctor picked up a pen and scanned the whole of the board. She yelled across to a doctor down the hall.
"Dr. Hahn we've got an emergency caesarean, can we push back your bypass?"
The stern looking woman nodded, and turned swiftly back to her charts.
"Right then Mr. Mahone. If you'll jut wait here. We'll be bringing your wife up in a minute and you'll be able to see her before she goes into surgery."
Alex looked into the doctor's eyes. She looked confident, too pretty though he didn't think that Claudia Schiffer was supposed to be the person saving his wife's life.
"I can't be there when the baby comes."
The doctor bit her lower lip.
"No, Mr. Mahone. I'm sorry, you can watch from the gallery and see the whole thing from there. If all goes well, you'll be able to put your new baby in your arms in an hour."
Her words seemed to wash over Alex and pull him back from the strong tide of hysteria he was falling in.
"Wait here?"
She nodded.
"Okay I can do that," Alex said wearily as he slid to the floor his back against the wall.
The doctor shifted on her feet, looking slightly at a loss.
"You can go. I'll be okay, Dr…"
"Stevens," she answered, "Isobel Stevens. And Mr. Mahone, your wife is going to pull through this."
¨ · ¨
"On the count of three. One, two, three!" Alex called to the interns as they lifted the limp pregnant woman's body on to the wheelie stretcher.
"Alright guys, let's get Mrs. Mahone to the OR."
The interns moved swiftly up the corridor, and as they turned the corner, a few of them skidded with the stretcher and ended up on the side of the wall.
"Interns," Alex barked as they slid the stretcher into the elevator.
They all muttered their apologies as the elevator doors shut. Alex stood at the side of the stretcher, aligned with the woman's face. As they reached the OR floor, her eyelids fluttered.
"Where am I?" she asked weakly.
Alex did a double take. She had lost almost a third of her body's blood supply, and she was talking. The shock should have put a rhino out.
"Mrs. Mahone, you're at Seattle Grace Hospital. Your placenta had teared and we are going to have to do an emergency caesarean."
"Alex?"
"How did you know my name?"
"No, my husband?"
"Oh, he's upstairs with my colleague, Dr. Stevens, you'll see him before you go into surgery. Now Mrs. Mahone it's very important you don't breath to heavy and try to keep your legs crossed."
The woman looked up at Alex with a quizzical look.
"Is my baby going to fall out?"
If he wasn't afraid of making Mrs. Mahone laugh too hard, he would have laughed at the question.
"Something like that."
The doors dinged open and Alex could see the other Alex pacing the corridor, his fingers running through his auburn hair.
"Mr. Mahone."
He turned and ran to the stretcher.
"Pam, Pam, it's me. Alex. You're going to be okay, Dr. Karev and Dr. Stevens they're going to help deliver our son. We're going to be parents tonight."
Pam smiled weakly in return and held her hand out to her husband. He took it in his hand's and kissed the clammy palm.
"You're gonna both be okay. I promise."
Alex gave the stretcher a slight push to break the hold. The whole scene was playing out a little too sappy, anymore and he would be using the OR phone to call Eva.
"Dr. Stevens will show you to the gallery, Mr. Mahone."
"She's not going to be in there with you? I want her to be there."
Izzie stood across the hall from the scene. Her arms were folded and she raised an eyebrow to the shock on Alex's face.
"Of course, Mr. Mahone. Dr. Stevens, scrub in."
Izzie shot a fist in the air, a sign of victory and walked into the scrub room. Alex scowled at her back as he passed Mrs. Mahone off to a scrub nurse.
Alex walked into the OR and was quick to pass Izzie on his way to the operating table.
"Right then, Dr. Stevens monitor the foetal monitor and make sure this birth canal remains closed. Ten-blade."
Alex made the incision into the woman's heaving abdomen. Izzie felt the burning stare of Mr. Mahone in the gallery. She turned her attention to Alex. His cut was precise and he worked meticulously, one step after another. His surgery technique was impressive, it seemed that Addison hadn't just kept him around as a toy boy.
"Stevens how's that baby's heart rate?"
Izzie glanced quickly at the monitor.
"Steady."
Alex nodded.
"Right then, here comes the world, baby."
Alex's hands went deep in the womb and a wail filled the room.
¨ · ¨
The first thing Pam saw when she opened her eyes, was a worried husband.
"Hi," she whispered.
He smiled and leaned in to kiss her forehead.
"Hi."
Pam tried to pull herself up to look around the room. She struggled and fell tiredly back into the pillow.
"He's in the nursery. Pam, he' so perfect."
Pam sighed with relief. She cupped her hand around the side of Alex's face. He kissed her palm gently.
"We've got a son," she said. Her voice was filled with satisfaction.
"What should we call him?"
Pam smiled and rolled her eyes.
"If you had been listening to me for the last trimester you might have picked up on some names."
"I think we should call him Cameron. Cameron Steven Mahone."
Pam raised an eyebrow.
"Steven?"
Alex only smiled in reply.
"Okay then. Cameron Steven Mahone. Our little boy."
¨ · ¨
"You did an amazing job in there."
Alex looked up from the chart and stared at Izzie.
"Don't."
Izzie threw the scrub mask she was still wearing on the floor.
"Don't? You don't get to tell me what to do because you think I'm a whore Alex. That's not the way it works. Why are you angry with me? You love Eva, not me. I love George, not you. And don't say it's because its O'Malley, that Alex, doesn't even make any sense. Alex, I didn't do anything wrong!"
The silent hall filled with the reverberations of Izzie's words. Alex ran his tongue over the top of his teeth. He put down the clipboard and walked up to Izzie. There bodies weren't any more than an inch apart. He softly put his lips to Izzie's, he kissed her for only a brief moment and then pulled away and began to walk away. He turned and threw his hands in the air.
"You're right."
Izzie just stood where she was.
"Seriously."