A/N: Much gratitude to all who are following/favoriting/commenting on this story (as well as an apology for this update taking so long). I am honestly surprised, as I expected people to hate either the direction I am going with it or how I portray certain characters. This is only my second story, and first Grey's fic, to hit more than 100 followers. My humble thanks to you. This chapter includes some direct quotes from Grey's canon, as well as other lines adapted to this story's needs.
X-X-X-X
Teddy Altman stared at her phone. The email displayed thereon shocked her. Well, most of it was the norm for her email exchanges with Arizona – interesting cases, hospital gossip, general chitchat. She was surprised she was even still getting the emails, nine months into Arizona's time in Malawi. Her friend had literally said she didn't stay in touch with many friends from her past when questioned about it – a result of growing up a Marine brat and moving so frequently. Teddy knew Arizona had one or two friends from her "horror show" days at Hopkins, one friend from childhood she spoke of glowingly, and a handful of casual friends from her undergrad and med school years, but generally, when Arizona moved, she let her ties to wherever she left drift off into the sunset. That nine months after ripping her heart out in Sea-Tac she was still in contact with Teddy, Bailey, and had rescued Karev from Stark's joke of a peds department, was a minor miracle Teddy was incredibly thankful for.
Even if she could have gotten Arizona back. If only she'd not told her friend the truth about that night at Joe's. If only, if only, the woman might have come back to a knocked up ex and the mess would be even worse. She sighed. But even the emotional carnage of the Callie-Arizona breakup couldn't explain, to her at least, why the woman who had somehow become her closest friend wanted her to be a reference as Arizona tried to adopt a baby.
She continued to stare at her phone. Until a small hand waved in front of her face, and she ripped her attention away from the email boggling her mind and redirected it towards Miranda Bailey, who was looking at her with an amused smirk.
"I guess you got the same… unusual email from one of our lost lambs that I did this morning, huh?" the shorter woman said, shaking her head.
Glancing around to make sure the lounge was empty, Teddy nodded. The two women had bonded from sharing Arizona as a long-distance friend. Where Teddy used to share coffee and chat with a shorter blonde, now she shared it with Bailey regularly, when not dragged into a conversation with the unusual combination of Torres and Kepner.
"I have no idea what she's thinking, trying to adopt in Malawi," Bailey continued. "I'll help her, don't get me wrong, but she broke up with Torres over not wanting babies and now she's basically gone and found one right as Torres is about to pop out Sloan spawn?" She clucked her tongue, "Are you worried?"
Teddy stretched her face into a sad smile, "A bit, yeah. I'll ask, we're scheduled to talk on Skype tomorrow night. If she wants me to lie about her sexual orientation to the government of Malawi, the least she can do is explain what the hell is going on in that mind of hers."
Miranda laughed, opening her mouth to speak as both their pagers screeched. "911 to the pit. You too?" Nodding, Teddy rose from her chair and the two of them bolted out towards the emergency room.
X-X-X-X
April felt the jolt in her bones. One moment she was driving herself and Callie to the airport to pick up Addison Montgomery and the next her head was pounding, blood dribbling into her eyes, ribs hurting, and her airbag deployed in front of her. She gasped, looking over to her mentor and friend. Callie, taller than her, had hit her head even harder and more awkwardly on the windshield of April's old Focus. She was unconscious, blood covering most of her face. April spurred herself into action. With one hand she fished out her cell phone, dialing for an ambulance, while with the other she first checked Callie's pulse – strong – and then laid a gentle hand on Callie's prominent baby belly, just barely seven months along. A solid kick met her fingers and she sighed in relief, even as she directed the ambulance to their location. As she clambered into the back with a stretchered Callie ten minutes later, she made a quick call to Addison's voicemail, instructing the other woman to get a cab as quickly as possible once her plane landed at Sea-Tac which, checking her watch, should have been five minutes ago.
Time passed in a blur for April as she rattled off Callie's condition to the group of surgeons that met them outside the ER. Single-mindedly following Callie's gurney into the trauma room, she watched as Lucy Fields set up the fetal heart monitor and ultrasound, quickly checking for a heartbeat and the condition of the placenta before a hyper-focused Addison Montgomery rushed in, dumping her suitcases by the door before taking over for Fields, who bowed out to the world renowned surgeon's expertise. She felt a rough hand on her arm, pulling her into the doorway.
"What the hell happened?" demanded Mark.
"I don't know! We were heading to the airport and a truck came out of nowhere!" April replied, grabbing a trauma gown from a nearby supply cart. She tore herself from Mark's grasp, moving forward to assist with the portable x-ray a nurse had just rolled into the room.
Owen glanced up at her, seeing the smears of blood over her face, "Get out of here, Kepner. Get that head lac looked at and I want you to get a CT," he ordered. "Little Grey, check her out."
April resisted for a moment, which let the pounding of her head take over her awareness. Lexie pulled her gently out of the room, past Mark's angry glare, and towards a trauma bay.
X-X-X-X
Lexie Grey carefully led her friend towards CT. With the blood on her face, and her cuts sluggishly bleeding, April's pale features stood out even more. Tears silently made their way down her cheeks and her breath was stressed.
"April," Lexie said softly, "April, you need to breathe. Okay? Just breathe. In and out." She studied her friend worriedly. There was an underlying panic there that she had rarely seen before.
"I… I almost killed her! Them!" the words were high-pitched, breathless.
"No! No, listen to me," Lexie shook her friend, stepping directly into her line of sight and forcing their eyes to meet. "Some asshole in a truck did. You can't control what other people do, and you got her here as fast as you could. You did everything right in a horrible situation. Just breathe, April, please, just breathe."
A sob tore through April's chest, and she began to hyperventilate. Luckily, they were next to a supply cart and a bag to breathe into was easily available. Shaking it open, Lexie pressed it against her friend's mouth, wrapped an arm around April's shoulders to steady her. As soon as her breathing was under control, April turned to burrow into her friend's embrace. They stood, silent in the hall, for several minutes while April regained control of her emotions.
"CT?" she hiccupped eventually.
"Yup, and I want to patch up that nasty cut on your forehead, too," Lexie smiled, leading April along the hall.
Half an hour later she was back, in clean scrubs, to check on her mentor as Addison kept watch in the ICU over a sedated Callie with a temporarily closed abdomen. Addison met her worried gaze with a warm if strained smile. She held out the chart to April, letting the younger doctor take in what had happened after she'd been escorted from the trauma room. Lexie hovered by the door, watching over them.
"Oh, sweetie, I'm so sorry. But don't worry, we got this," Addison murmured, stroking her best friend's cheek. "We'll take care of you." She looked up as April finished skimming the chart, hugging herself in a dismal attempt at self-soothing.
"We took my car because the Thunderbird only has lap belts," she said softly. "But the thing is a tank. My tiny car was totaled and we were both knocked around when we were hit. The T-bird would have shrugged that off like nothing."
Addison sighed. The situation was dire, but at least the baby had avoided any serious issues as far as they could tell. The problems for Callie were the abdominal damage done by the restraining belt and the brain bleeds hitting her head on the car's frame had caused. "You did the best you could, April," she replied quietly. "The baby is fine, and we'll take care of Callie. If we have to take the baby early to make it easier on Cal, she's at a good weight and stage to do it, and I've already given steroids just in case. Not perfect, but good enough. Certainly better than if it had happened earlier."
Outside the ICU room, the three women could hear Bailey explaining Callie's current situation to Mark, detailing the strain on her cardiovascular system. "Why are we even talking about the baby?" they heard, all their ears honing in at his words. "We give Callie the best shot we can, no matter what."
"Callie wants to carry her baby to term," Addison said, stepping out of the ICU room to join the conversation.
"Callie wants to live," Mark retorted at his ex.
"It's not an either-or situation, Doctor Sloan, not at this point in her pregnancy," April piped up, standing shoulder to shoulder with Addison.
"Why are you even talking? You're not making this decision. You're the one who got her into this mess!" he snapped angrily.
April recoiled, stepping back unconsciously until she felt Lexie's hand settle lightly between her shoulderblades.
"A truck running a red light got her into this mess, not April, so shut up. And I'm the one making this decision," Addison glared.
"You! You never wanted my baby before, so why the hell should you get a say in what happens to this one?!" Mark steamed. "Are you going to kill this one too?"
"She's Callie's Emergency Contact and has power of attorney," April said, letting Lexie and Addison's silent support strengthen her shaky voice. Her head had barely stopped pounding, while a potent mix of guilt and stress ate her alive. But she remembered helping Callie set up the paperwork only a few weeks earlier after the reality of her mentor having no family she'd trust – or was even speaking to, nor a girlfriend, available to list on the yearly update required of their E.C.'s at SGMW. She'd even been there for the conversation, and Addison's lawyer had set up the power of attorney paperwork, as well as a will, for her friend. Several of the baby books had suggested various legal steps and Callie had done everything possible to protect herself and her unborn child.
"And the baby is at the seventh month point. She has a 96% chance of surviving delivery right now. Of course we'd like to improve that, but Callie would also like to live to meet her child. A scheduled C-section would let us repair the damage to Callie's body, and the baby would have a great chance," Addison stated calmly. "The ultrasound didn't show any damage to the baby. Two months early isn't bad if it means she gets to meet her mother." The calm doctor disappeared for a second, her eyes flashing with fire, "And don't you dare bring up our past. I want what's best for Callie and her baby, that's it."
"You don't get to make decisions about my baby, Addison! This is my baby, I'm the father!" He pointed at her, "You're nothing, you hear! That's my family in there! I'm the father! You don't give a shit about my child! You didn't a shit four years ago and you don't care now!"
Addison sucked in a breath, ignoring April's gentle hand on her arm. "She's my best friend, Mark. And I care a hell of a lot about her baby. Her baby. Which means I will do my damndest to make sure Callie meets her child when she wakes up. Now get the hell out of the ICU. You're disturbing the patients."
"I think you'd better listen to Doctor Montgomery, Sloan," Bailey said, steel in her voice. Flushing red, he stomped out of the unit. "He's going to be trouble," she muttered.
Addison snorted, "He's been trouble since she told him she was pregnant. Having me around just makes it worse." She sighed, "But it is the best plan. We need to take the baby so you can finish repairing the bleeders, Miranda. I wish Karev was still here. I trust him more with this than I do Fields."
"We'll have to make do, since the boy ran off to Africa," Bailey pointed out. "Kepner, I know you did well on your pediatric rotation. Are you feeling well enough to join this little soiree, keep an eye on Fields?"
April nodded, "The painkillers have started to kick in, I'm good."
As soon as she'd finished speaking, the monitors started to blare. Lexie, who had been keeping half an eye on them, shouted, "Her pressure's bottoming out!"
"Call an OR, let them know we're on our way," Addison instructed as she and April started to move Callie's gurney, Lexie and Miranda grabbing the IVs and monitors.
In a mass, doctors moved together towards the OR, scrubbing in and gowning up. If she were asked later to describe the multiple surgeries that occurred, April drew a blank. She knew something had happened with Callie's heart, Teddy jumping in to fix the issue, that Bailey had finally found the abdominal bleeder, that Meredith and Shepherd had had to jump in to repair a just-diagnosed brain bleed, that Addison had carefully done the C-section as frenetic activity swirled around her, but all April concentrated on was the baby, shadowing Fields as the three pound, seven ounce little girl was pulled from her mother's body with a strong heartbeat. After a few moments of suction, and the determination of her Apgar score, Fields moved to hook the slightly squirming baby up to oxygen.
April hovered over the portable incubator, running a gentle finger down a tiny arm and smiling widely when there was reflexive grasping of her finger. She turned, meeting Addison's eyes as the other doctor quickly glanced up to meet her gaze. April nodded, and she could tell there was a wide grin beneath her colleague's mask. "Go with her," Addison said softly, "I'll follow you as soon as I'm done here."
An hour later, April sat collapsed into a chair in the NICU, pink gown in disarray around her tired body. As soon as Addison had finished suturing Callie closed, she'd followed April to the NICU and taken over the baby's care from Fields. With only supplemental oxygen, the baby was doing well, her Apgar rising quickly for a preemie.
The two redheads met each other's eyes, exhaustion lacing both their features. April checked her phone as it beeped, a quick message from Lexie taking up the screen. "Callie's doing well," she murmured. "Bailey's sitting with her for the moment, but I think she was near the end of her shift when we came in; she has to be beat. I should probably take over. Text me with any changes?"
Addison nodded, "I'll keep her company. Was there any further thought on a name?"
April smiled, "She had it down to two, but she wouldn't tell me which. Wanted to tell you first, godmomma. Once she wakes up, we'll know."
Addison looked at the placard at the end of the incubator, which currently read Baby Girl Torres, "What about her head injury? Any news on that?"
"Meredith told Lexie and Bailey that if she wakes up, she should be okay, in time. She might need some physical therapy." A natural optimist, April didn't elaborate on the alternative.
"She'd better. She named me primary guardian in her will, and I don't want to have to fight Mark every second," Addison sighed. "Where'd he disappear to, anyway?"
April shook her head. "I don't know. No one's seen him. And Lexie's angry at him for what he said in the ICU. No one's going to bother checking on him now."
After a soft groan, Addison rubbed her eyes, "He hasn't made any friends the past few months."
"He lost most of them, I think," was April's hesitant reply. "Only Jackson's even sitting with him at lunch now."
"Idiot. Egotistical idiot."
April nodded, dragging herself out of her chair. "I'm going to go now. Maybe I'll stop and get a coffee on the way."
"Shit. Do you know what happened to my luggage?"
At the non sequitur, April laughed. "I had an intern stash them in the attendings' lounge."
"Thanks, April. Cal lucked out to mentor someone like you," Addison smiled.
Blushing, Kepner grinned, stretching before she left the NICU for the ICU.
X-X-X-X
The brain is understood, yet not. Bleeds can be repaired, physical damage fixed, but what makes us who we are, what creates our thoughts and what interprets our senses, remains a mystery in many ways. When Callie Torres smacked her head, hard, on the windshield of her protégé's car, her mind changed things for her. Perhaps her mind wanted to give her a happier story than the one she was living. Or maybe her unconscious was a bitter, cruel bastard taunting her with might-have-beens.
The first thing Callie really noticed was the pain. It was everywhere, all underneath the generous dosage of morphine. The pain was there, but she was so drugged she didn't particularly care.
She drifted between sleep and wakefulness. Her dream had been odd, but in her medicated condition it had made perfect sense. Of course she and Arizona were heading out of town for a weekend away. Of course Arizona proposed just before they were in an accident. Of course she had gone completely through the windshield – even with the morphine she felt like that could be true.
And Arizona was there as her muddled thoughts climbed towards awareness. She had come back. Karev had never followed her to Africa. And they all – all of them, except Cristina who couldn't carry a tune in a bucket – had sung. Songs from the radio, songs from her iPod, songs she heard in passing at the grocery store. They had all sung, and it had felt fitting and normal. Maybe that afternoon of watching movie musicals had been a bad idea.
So when she woke, and saw through her blurry vision a dirty blonde ponytail slumped against her bed, of course it was Arizona. All she wanted in that moment was to reply to the question she'd been asked before flying through a windshield. To promise her future to Arizona. To promise her everything to Arizona.
"Yes," she croaked, startling the ponytail's owner. "Yes, I'll marry you."
Teddy Altman grinned sadly, "I'll keep that in mind if my paper husband doesn't work out, Callie. How are you feeling?"
Callie recoiled as she recognized her friend. "Where's Arizona?" she demanded, voice rough and sore.
Teddy shook her head sadly, "In Malawi, honey. Do you know what the date is?" She pulled out a penlight, checking Callie's pupil response carefully.
"July fifteenth," Callie stuttered. "Water?"
"Of course," she slid her flashlight into a pocket before offering Callie a sip of tepid hospital water. "Actually, that was yesterday, Callie. You and April were hit by a truck. Do you remember that?"
"Yes," Callie said, her real memories overtaking the dream slowly. She wanted to shatter into a thousand pieces, but the soreness in her abdomen overrode her grief. "My baby?" she asked, voice high with panic.
"Doing just fine," April offered from the door way. "Her vitals are great and Addison's keeping an eye on her right now." She pulled out her cell, calling up a photo on the screen and letting Callie squint at the image. "Here, she's beautiful."
"Just like her mother," Teddy offered, grinning. "She did a lot better than you did. Had us worried there for awhile, Torres."
X-X-X-X
As she walked out of Seattle Grace, Teddy bumped into Miranda in the parking lot, their cars only a few feet apart.
"Long day," Teddy murmured to her friend.
"You could say that. Or just that it sucked," Bailey countered, shaking her head. She studied her exhausted coworker, "Are you going to tell Robbins what kept you here on your day off?"
Teddy leaned against her car as she fumbled through her purse for the keys. "I don't know," she breathed. "I mean, I don't want to lie, by omission. And she'd want to know."
"It's not like you can tell her everything. This hospital may be staffed by a bunch of children, but we do have doctor-patient confidentiality."
"When she woke up, she thought I was Arizona. She thought Arizona was here, and had proposed," Teddy murmured. "She said yes, and then freaked out when she realized I wasn't Arizona. I had to tell her what continent her ex-girlfriend is on."
"She had a head injury," Bailey tried to soothe the upset woman before her. "You can't take what she said while coming out of that completely seriously."
Teddy raised one eyebrow at the shorter woman before her, "Have you not been paying attention? I never met her before she was with Arizona. And let me tell you, I see a difference right now. Whatever happened in that airport broke her. She spends her days with Kepner, avoids Sloan, and has this look in her eyes…" She trailed off, unsure how to pinpoint the differences she'd noticed in the past months.
Bailey shook her head, "Kepner's an unlikely protégé, I admit, but you haven't seen them in surgery together as much as I have. Girl has skills, and Torres is making sure she perfects them. They're friends, as strange as that is. And given Sloan's behavior, I'm not surprised she's avoiding him. Man's an ass. And a whore. Not someone you want as the father of your child."
Teddy nodded, "I know, I know. It's just… she's not Callie. She's more… the hardcore badass surgeon person. And maybe that'll change with the baby here. Who knows?"
"I stopped by her room before I left," Bailey said, ignoring that her statement seemed a non sequitur. "Did you hear what she's naming that little girl?" Teddy shook her head. "She decided on Sofia Ruby Torres."
"No Sloan?"
"No Sloan. She's that angry with him."
"Well he did get kicked out of their childbirth classes," Teddy shrugged. She'd sat through more than one uncomfortable lunch with Torres and Kepner in which Callie had ranted about that very fact.
"And do you know where the Ruby comes from? Oh she didn't say it, but I know."
Teddy shook her head again. "No?"
"Ruby was the little girl they operated on in peds, during the shooting," over a year later, and Bailey's voice still caught when she mentioned the shooting. "The one with the burst appendix?"
Teddy nodded, slowly remembering her best friend's vague babbled story of what had happened that horrible day.
"Arizona threw herself over that child when Clark walked into the room. Bodily threw herself over that child."
"Maybe they realized how much they loved each other over that kid," Teddy mused, softly.
Bailey nodded, "And they got back together in the parking lot. Half the hospital saw them. Didn't hear anyone yammering about much else after that."
"Everyone wanted to talk about something good in the middle of all of," she gestured vaguely, "that."
"They did. And now Torres gave that girl's name to her own child. Something that can't be anything but connected to her ex."
"Head injury. You said it yourself."
Bailey grimaced, shaking her head, "No. She'd written it down as what she decided on before they went to pick up Addison. She'd finally decided on Sofia, but apparently Ruby was the middle name contender from the get-go. As soon as she stopped crying over the pregnancy test."
"Shit."
"Exactly."
X-X-X-X-X
Teddy stumbled through her front door, fighting with the sticky lock she kept forgetting to fix. Exhausted, she simply dumped her purse and keys on the counter. Her mind circled around thoughts of Callie, and little Sofia Ruby. She wasn't sure if the name worked, or not. She tasted it on her tongue; it had a good rhythm at least, something she could imagine Callie shouting at a surly teenage version of herself.
And thank god for that – barely out of the womb, still mostly in that vaguely Winston Churchill phase, and already Sofia resembled her mother a bit. She was truly a beautiful baby, even a month early. Teddy sighed, she wouldn't worry about Sofia – that was Addison's job, and something she was doing quite well, basically camping in the NICU until Callie could be there for her daughter.
Stripping off her blouse and jeans as she walked through her apartment, Teddy reached her room just to pull off her bra and slip into her pajamas. Over the past few months, she'd gotten used to the routine of talking with her best friend via skype. It'd been a too-long shift; she just wanted to be comfortable before diving into the undoubtedly intense discussion ahead of her.
Dropping onto her couch with a glass of wine, she booted up her laptop and clicked on the application. The connection noise grated on her nerves until she was able to click on Arizona's little icon.
Within a few seconds, the grainy video feed kicked in and she glimpsed blond hair above a tired smile. "Good connection?" came the static-laced question.
"So far, so good," she replied, grinning back.
Arizona cocked her head, studying the video, "You look tired. Wasn't today your day off?"
"Big trauma. I just got home from my last shift." Teddy hedged as best she could.
"Didn't your shift end midday yesterday?"
"Yup. But I got a very interesting email before that trauma came in, you know." She raised one eyebrow in challenge.
"Interesting? Yes. Are you too tired to interrogate me, Theodora?"
"Not at all, Arizona." Teddy shook her head. She couldn't see the room behind her best friend, and so carefully chose her words, "You broke up your last relationship because you didn't want kids, and now you want to adopt one? Clear this contradiction up for me, okay?"
Arizona leaned back in her chair. "We're in my office, you can say exactly what you want to. And yes, I did. Yes, I do." She took a deep breath. "After the shooting, after we got back together," she choked on her words slightly, the grief still apparent, "I started to look into options. To get used to the idea? I promised her ten kids. If that was what she wanted, I wanted to want it too."
"And you do? Now? In Malawi? Alone?" Teddy couldn't keep the incredulity out of her voice, and didn't try to disguise it.
Her friend laughed, a heaviness behind the sound, "I know, it's insane. Dangerous? I don't know. Maybe it helps that even in the US, she'd be hard to adopt with her medical conditions. I'm a doctor, I can get her the care she needs for as long as she needs it."
"Arizona, what does she have?" Teddy asked lowly, afraid to hear the answer.
"Spina bifida, hydrocephalus, but she's already in treatment for both. The shunt's in to reduce the fluid in her skull, and the neurosurgeon says she'll be ready for her next surgery soon," Arizona rattled off confidently.
"She's in your NICU?"
Arizona shifted in her seat, "Not exactly. You know how I run things for spina bifida patients- she's in a latex-free room near it."
"She's still a NICU patient," Teddy said softly. "Arizona, you aren't her doctor, are you?"
She bit her lip before shaking her head, "Only in the sense that she's in my clinic? I've turned over primary care to Karev."
"Karev?"
"I trust him. You should see how well he's doing here," Arizona defended her protégé.
"Okay. So you want to adopt a sick child in a country hostile to your very existence. Can you see why I'm having trouble figuring this out? You didn't even want kids a couple years ago!"
"Do you know what they say on the adoption message boards?"
Teddy shook her head, curious.
"When you see your baby, you know it. You know it was meant to be. And maybe I wouldn't have seen it if I hadn't been here, met her here, coming off the bus from the orphanage screaming her head off until I cuddled her, but I was here. I saw it. She's my baby," Arizona's words were a whisper by the time she finished, tears pooling in bright blue eyes, stubbornly refusing to fall down pale cheeks. "Who would choose this situation? I mean, really? But she's my baby. I'm her mom."
"And this one-eighty about having kids at all?" Teddy pushed, not letting herself show any emotion. "After the shooting, I could think of it as just plain desperation because you need Callie so much, but…"
Arizona shook her head, a hint of anger coloring her words, "I'm not some trauma case, Teddy." She stared at her friend, trying to come up with the words she needed. Instead, a heavy knock at the door diverted both their attentions. With an apologetic glance, Arizona rose to unlock her office door and open it.
With the door open, Teddy could hear soft crying. "Someone didn't want to settle tonight," Karev said gruffly, as she strained to hear over the static-filled connection.
"Ahhh…" she heard from her best friend, "Did you miss me, Zola?" A high-pitched whimper was all she could make out. Seconds later, Arizona appeared in view of the laptop's webcam again, carefully cradling a baby whose head showed signs of a recent surgery. Arizona settled into her chair, rocking the infant as she started to quiet. Teddy sat back, her mind whirling. She'd seen Arizona with babies before, she'd assisted her friend on numerous infant surgeries, helped talk to the distressed parents, so she'd seen Arizona in her "patient/doctor mode" quite a bit. Arizona the doctor was friendly, kind, calm, efficient, gentle. The Arizona she could see on the grainy webcam feed was, obvious over even the internet, glowing. There was a sense of wonder on her face that Teddy had never seen before. Instead of the gloom that had overtaken Arizona since her breakup, she was smiling broadly. She couldn't help but think that Arizona was made to be a mother. Specifically, this little girl's mother. She shook her head. Even a week ago, she wouldn't have believed this change in her best friend.
"I believe you," she said softly, not wanting to startle the dozing baby. "You two look beautiful together, Arizona."
The wide smile on Arizona's face brightened even more. "Thank you, Teddy! You'll have to come visit us, you know. I want Zola to know her godmother."
Unbidden, Teddy blushed. "I'd like that, a lot.
Zola squirmed in her sleep, letting out a quiet murmur. The two women returned their attention to her, a happy silence overtaking them.
X-X-X-X
A/N: Have you ever looked up the different kinds of shunts they put in babies with hydrocephalus? It's pretty amazing stuff. Seattle Children's has a few neat pages showing what they're up to, with some excellent illustrations. I got a kick out of that.
