"Eat," Faith told her husband.
Sebastian had been asked to give Adler's eulogy because no one in the family thought that they could handle doing so. He was honoured to have been asked, but he wasn't sure how he was going to write and deliver a tribute that lived up to what his friend deserved. He hadn't liked anything that he had written so far, so he was starting over. With the funeral in only two days, he didn't have much time now. Even though no one was pressuring him, he was clearly stressing out over wanting to make his words just right.
"I'm not even that hungry," he said.
He did stop to take a bite of the hospital cafeteria sandwich as he typed out part of the eulogy. He knew that if he didn't even attempt to eat, Faith would continue to pester him about how he needed food in his stomach since he had just taken some of his medication. She was correct, and he would have been telling her the same thing if she had been picking at her meal, too.
"Still," she said.
"I ate. Happy now?"
"I'd be happy if you actually finished it," she asked, standing up and massaging his shoulders in an attempt to relax him.
"I'm not that hungry."
"Seb –"
"I just need to finish this, okay?"
"It'll be great no matter what you say," she assured him as her pager went off. "It's Lexie," she announced as she checked it. "I've got to go."
"You haven't finished lunch either," he pointed out.
She picked up her sandwich and ate some of it. She could take it with her and finish it on the way.
"There," she smiled. "Now eat yours. Seriously, Seb. You haven't been sleeping, now you're working on the eulogy instead of eating. This isn't good."
"Our friend just died," he said. "You're not exactly sleeping well either. You just get to pretend that work is the reason behind it."
"I know," she admitted. "We'll adjust eventually. We always do."
This hadn't been the first friend that they had lost. They had a few friends with similar conditions. This had both been a blessing and a curse. They were able to relate to other people around their age who had been born with heart conditions or who had received transplants, but they had also lost a few of them.
"We weren't as close to anyone else as we were to Adler."
"I know that, too."
Faith and Lexie ended up going into two surgeries one after the other. Just before they were about to head home, Callie and Arizona found their daughter fast asleep on a gurney in the hallway. She wasn't even laying down. A combination of her busy shift and the trouble that she had been having with falling asleep in these last few days had done her in.
"Do we wake her up?" Callie whispered as a strand of their daughter's now curly blonde hair fell over her face.
"No," Arizona replied. "Let her sleep. She looks so peaceful."
Memories of the many, many nights that they used to watch her sleep – especially in their arms during times that she was hospitalized – came back all of the sudden. Some of these were bittersweet simply because many of the nights that Faith had spent in the hospital were rough, but they couldn't deny for a second that they didn't still love those moments. Now that they had fully grown children, they missed the times when they were small enough to cuddle with.
"She still makes the same little facial expressions that she used to," Callie noticed.
Arizona laughed.
"Not much about her has actually changed," she said. "She aged and her hair started getting curlier, but she's still so much like she was as a child. Sometimes I'll find myself forgetting that she's really this old. Same with Sofia, but she's changed a bit more than Faith has."
"She has."
Sofia walked up. Just by looking at her sister she could tell that Faith's day had been a demanding one. She had had many like these herself, however, she had never fallen asleep sitting up at work. The small part of her that still wanted to give her baby sister a hard time every now and then found this amusing.
"Leave her be."
"I didn't say I was going to wake her up," she said. "But there's an on call room twenty feet that way. Yet she picked the gurney."
"Maybe it was occupied," her mom suggested.
Faith awoke as they talked. She opened her blue eyes to see the three of them standing there.
"I fell asleep here?" she asked.
"Yep," Sofia replied. "You were out cold."
"What time is it?" she questioned. "Where's Seb?"
"It's eight thirty," Callie said.
Faith had been asleep for about two hours now. The good news was that her shift was now over, so she could head home and sleep in her own bed.
"And Sebastian went home when you were in the O.R.," Sofia finished. "I was working with him, so..."
"Oh."
"And he finally finished the eulogy."
"Thank God."
"Addison's flying in tonight and she wants to know if some of us want to get together for dinner tomorrow," Callie told them. "Do you want to come? It'll just be us, Mark, Lexie, Derek, Meredith..."
"It's 'just' half of the hospital," Sofia exaggerated, knowing that her madre wasn't even finished naming off all of the people who would probably attend.
"Well, Addie wants to see her friends while she's here," Arizona replied. "She might as well."
Even though Dr. Nerissa Kaye had replaced her on the trial all of those years ago, Addison still wanted to know how the patients – particularly Adler – were doing. When she had heard of his death, she had decided to fly in for the funeral. However, she also didn't want this trip to Seattle to only be a sad one. She wanted to scrub in on some surgeries, teach some things, and spend some time with her old friends. She tried to see them every now and then, but it was never enough.
"True," Faith said. "Okay, we're in. As long as I'm not stuck here and Seb's not freaking out about giving the eulogy."
"But how are you managing to get reservations for that many people so soon? And at a decent place?" Sofia, who had already committed to the dinner, asked.
"I called Max," Callie explained. "We're going to his work. He's going to make it happen."
"Okay."
Faith was on her way home when she received a text from her husband that told her that he was headed over to Cohen's house. Cohen just needed to hang out with someone who knew Adler well, but wasn't related to him. He needed to say some things that he didn't think he could express in front of his mom, dad, or brother because they were just as distraught as he was.
Sebastian tried not to wake Faith when he arrived home, but she felt him get into his side of the bed and she was up.
"What time is it?"
"Midnight."
"And you just got home?"
"We just got talking about Adler," he said. "It started off really sad, but we were actually laughing by the end of it. We have so many good memories, too."
"Yeah," she said. "So I shouldn't feel bad about being happy that Addison just flew in?"
"She did?"
"Yeah," she nodded. "And I miss Adler. In fact, my phone went off earlier right around the time that he would text me if he was bored and I wasn't at the hospital to stop and see him, and I seriously forgot that it wouldn't be him for a second."
"I've already had so many moments like that. It's normal."
"It is," she nodded. "But it'll still be nice to see Addison. I've never scrubbed in with her, and I might get to. I wish more than anything that she wasn't here for the funeral, but I'm deciding that I can still be glad she's here. She's Addison Montgomery. I'm not even interested in her specialty, but she's amazing. So is Nerissa, but Addie's just a little bit better."
"So you're willingly going to opt not to be with Teddy or Cristina tomorrow?"
"Clearly! Again, it's Addison Montgomery."
He smiled.
"Good luck with that."
"Thank you."
"With what I do, I don't usually get to follow too many of my patients into adulthood," Addison told Faith the next day as they did get to operate together. "I save them and that's that. I like to think they go on to lead perfect lives, but sometimes that doesn't happen. Obviously."
"You don't regret it, do you?" Faith wondered. "Because I think my mom feels like she didn't do enough for Adler. That's not true, though. She gave him a much better quality of life, and probably still a longer one, than he might have otherwise had. But just because she can't say that for sure, she feels –"
"I don't feel that," Addison said. "Every trial creates unknowns. I can see why your mom feels that, but I don't."
"Good."
Addison found herself just watching Faith operate with her. She knew that the resident was only interested in Cardio as a specialty, but she had so much talent. That was apparent. Addison had taught many surgeons. She knew skill when she saw it.
"You know, you could make a good fetal surgeon."
"Everyone thinks I'd be good at their specialty," Faith laughed. "My madre wants someone she really likes to go into Ortho, Mark thinks Plastics would be –"
"You're good at more than one thing," she said. "That's good. We all know that you're going to pick Cardio, but don't limit yourself just yet. Gain all of the skills and knowledge that you can. Well-rounded doctors are the best ones. Why do you think I have so many qualifications?"
"Because you're a genius?"
"Like I said, Cardio's for you. We all know that. Still, soak up the other things. Cardio cases aren't always just Cardio cases. The more you learn, the better you'll be."
"I know," she agreed. "Bailey forces us to branch out."
"Bailey's a smart woman."
"She's awesome."
"She is," she nodded. "Oh, and don't listen to Mark. Plastics isn't for you. Sure, you have the skills. The surgical dexterity you have is not too bad for a resident. But Mark just thinks that all of the pretty people should be in Plastics."
She laughed.
"I feel old," Addison said at dinner that night.
Their kids were all grown up. Now, instead of filling her in on how school was going for them, they were discussing serious relationships and careers. Meredith and Derek had filled her in on Zola's new job at a local elementary school, she had been able to see Maxwell and Chelsea, and Lexie was now showing off pictures of Declan practicing his role as a little firefighter since Halloween was coming up. The list went on and on, but it was making Addison feel ancient all of the sudden.
"We are old," Bailey said. "And my son's older than any of your kids. Except for Sloan."
"But I don't really have much of a relationship with her these days," Mark said. "So yeah. Bailey gets to feel like she's older than any of us because she's got the oldest kid in her life."
"Jake's daughter's older than that," Addison said. "We had grandkids around when Henry was twelve. You would think that that would help supress my need for more grandkids, but nope. Angela's kids are huge now, too. I can't wait for more someday. I've been told that Henry'd like to start and finish a fellowship first, but..."
"That's all I'm saying," Sofia agreed. "I'm still training. Technically. As much as I hate to admit it. Can I please just get settled in my career before I get married or anything?"
"It's just amazing that you grew up around all of us at the hospital and you can think of more than sex and cute doctors," Meredith said. "We all assumed we'd be the super focused ones, too. Then that place happened to us."
"No, then Joe's happened to us," Derek said.
"Not just us. Hardly anyone at that hospital wasn't thinking about wanting to be with someone else."
"Very true," Mark agreed.
"I appreciate the cute doctors," Sofia said. "I just don't want to get serious. And I know, I know, my biological clock or whatever. I'll deal with that at some point."
Callie laughed.
"I love how adamant you are," she smiled. "We know."
Sebastian's phone started ringing. Typically, he would have just ignored it and turned it off, but he suspected that it was probably one of Adler's brothers.
"Justice said that they might want my help with a few things," he explained. "I'll be back."
"Okay," Faith said.
"I just hope that it goes well," Sebastian told them at the funeral.
It went without saying that this day was already an emotional one. However, Sebastian was feeling an added level of stress over giving the eulogy.
"It will," Faith assured him.
"I did the eulogies for my brother, my mom, and my dad," Arizona added. "It's nerve-wracking and hard, but no one is going to come up to you and tell you that you did a bad job. People understand that it's tough. Genevieve, Gavin, Justice, and Cohen want you to do it. They know you'll do great. Don't worry about it."
"Okay," she said.
"She's right," Sofia agreed. "Remember how much I obsessed over my abuelo's? Everybody else thought it was great. Today's about paying tribute to Adler and that's exactly what you're doing."
It was a beautiful service. Of course, there were plenty of tears and sad moments. These were to be expected and they were only normal. However, there were also some great memories shared that made everyone feel a strange feeling of happiness and sorrow combined. Adler wouldn't have wanted his funeral to only be a depressing event, so everyone decided that it was just perfect.
"Thank you so much for coming," Genevieve said, walking up to a group of the doctors afterwards. "I know you're all so busy. I still can't believe you actually flew in, Dr. Montgomery."
"Stop thanking us," Addison said. "We want to be here."
"Adler wasn't just another patient to us," Austin Brady told her.
"We hope you know that," Teddy agreed with her now husband.
"We do," Genevieve nodded. "And we hope you know that Gavin and I are still nothing but thankful to you. We don't regret the trial. We don't wish we would have chosen anything else. The only thing we wish is that he was still here. You all saved his life and gave him more of the life that we wanted for him. When I was pregnant, we could never have imagined that he'd even make it as long as he did."
Arizona knew that Genevieve was mostly directing her words to her. As the head of the trial team that had operated on Adler, she felt like she should have been able to foresee the issues that he would have later in life and plan for them. However, logically, this was impossible. Logically, she knew that her trial was still a success. It had given Adler – and many other people now – a chance to live a better quality of life with hypoplastic left heart syndrome. Adler's death didn't mean that she was a failure. Still, she couldn't deny that she was feeling these feelings.
She hugged the bereaved mother.
"We're at your son's funeral and you're trying to make me feel better," she said. "That's not how it's supposed to be, I don't think."
"None of this is how it's supposed to be," Genevieve stated. "But it's not because of you. Please, please know that. Arizona, as far as we see it, you're a hero. Even if we had to say goodbye to him before we should've had to."
"If there's anything at all you need –"
"We'll be in touch," she promised. "Just because we don't have Adler anymore doesn't mean we're not still close."
"Good."
