A/N This chapter picks up where the end of episode 7.19 leaves off: Callie and Sofia have been discharged from the hospital, so Arizona and Mark get to take them home. Hope you enjoy!

"Back to Life"

Callie's POV

"We don't have to take the car. It's across the street—I could walk. We can walk."

"It's been a long, stressful day, I don't want you to push yourself. Please, Callie, we'll be in the car two minutes. We'll be safe."

I knew I was being ridiculous. I'd gotten pep talks from Arizona, Bailey, Mark, Arizona again, Mark again, Arizona again, Webber, Arizona again, and even a brusque, dismissive, yet encouraging talk from Yang. Still, I was terrified. My anxiety attack was all-consuming and multi-dimensional, but I focused on one particular aspect of it: my baby was not safe in a car.

Sofia, for whatever reason you'd like to attribute, was fine. Her little eyes were flickering everywhere, taking in all the things she hadn't experienced before: a car seat, hallways, elevators, fresh air, the sky. Finally getting to be part of the world she'd been so cruelly, traumatically ejected into before she was ready. Now at an impressive five-and-a-half pounds, she had kicked the NICU's ass, and she was prepared to kick the world's ass, now.

But she wasn't ready for the car.

At least, not according to my postpartum, post-traumatic brain.

Okay, fine. Maybe I just wasn't ready for the car.

"Hey," Arizona said softly, placing her hand on my cheek. "It's gonna be okay. Five minutes, tops. You can sit in the back seat with her and protect her every second of it."

"Yeah, there's nothing to freak about. I'm driving, not Blondie," Mark added teasingly, but Arizona and I both glared at him enough to take the blood from his face. "What? Too soon?"

"Yes, Mark. Too soon."

"You're lucky I'm holding Sofia or I'd kill you," I snapped at him.

He rolled his eyes at me, but my sustained withering stare set him straight. Paling even further, he opened the car door and began thoroughly, demonstrably testing the stability of Sofia's car seat. In the meantime, Arizona stroked her thumb over my jawline.

"I promise," she murmured for only me to hear. "I won't let anything happen to either of you."

"But you can't actually promise that," I whined, hearing how petulant and stupid I sounded as soon as the words left my mouth.

Yet, her eyes met mine with enough fortitude to stop the sun from shining. Suddenly, I realized: Arizona was just as scared as I was. We were both scared. We were both terrified.

Somehow, nonsensically, that made me feel a lot better.

The actual ride back to our apartment building was a blur of panic and yelling. I yelled at Mark every time he braked (or accelerated), and I yelled at Arizona because she kept twisting around in the passenger seat to place a soothing hand on me. God bless their patience, because I doubt I'd have tolerated it, roles reversed. Sofia, my brave warrior, let out only a few isolated whimpers during the drive, but mostly just slobbered on herself—adorably so, I must add. Of course, she also slobbered on me, because, of course, I had my arm defensively draped over her carrier the whole time, as if she could be in mortal peril while Mark drove the two blocks from the hospital to his assigned parking space in the garage of our complex.

Walking from our car to our apartment, we instinctively configured ourselves in a highly telling manner: I delicately carried Sofia while Arizona followed ever-so-slightly behind me, her left hip touching the back of my right hip, her right hand on my shoulder while her left hand stretched across my waist to firmly hold my left elbow, as if prepared to hold my weight at any moment. Meanwhile, Mark, diaper bag slung across his body, kept close pace behind Arizona, arms aloft and at the ready, as if prepared to catch her after she failed to catch me.

But they couldn't have been too worried about me—they let me carry my baby. My perfect, unstoppable baby, who had made it through the car ride home in one piece.

I'd been so concerned, I barely registered that I was taking her home. I was taking her home. I'd get to spend the night with her. When she cried, I'd be there. I'd be there. Twenty seconds away. I'd be there when she needed me. For the first time in the three months since she'd been prematurely ripped from my body, I would be there when she needed me, whenever she needed me. I'd be there.

My baby was home. We could finally start our life together.

When Arizona opened the door to our apartment, I was not at all shocked to see it pristine. You could have eaten off the toilet seat. My gorgeous control freak had a habit of stress cleaning, and boy oh boy, if I hadn't already known how stressed she'd been the past three months, it became abundantly clear the second I walked into our home. Honestly, even before that—by the looks of it, she had stress-cleaned the door and stress-polished not only the doorknob, but the number plates demarcating our unit address.

"Damn, Blondie," Mark muttered. "How come you didn't do this to my place when you came over to build the baby furniture?"

"I started to," Arizona blushed. "But then I found a bra in the couch cushions and deferred to my better judgment."

"What size?" he rumbled.

"Can we not talk about your discarded conquests when we're bringing our daughter home for the first time?"

"Fine."

Meanwhile, I was mostly oblivious to their bickering. The only thing I cared to do was soak in the joy of being home again. Even over the pervasive odor of Fabuloso, the smell of Arizona was much more prevalent than usual. Usually, it wasn't so strong when the both of us lived there (because honestly, who can smell their own house?), but now, I was drenched in the overwhelming comfort of cherries and jasmine. What more could I ask for? What more could I ask for than an apartment full of my wife's smell? What more could I ask for than having my sweet girl spend her first night at home surrounded by the smell of the only other person I loved as much as her?

And my beautiful, strong, perfect, indestructible little girl seemed to find the same peace in the scent of cherries and jasmine as I did. As we walked further into our home, her eyes began to flutter more and more. We'd planned to give her the whole tour, but evidently, the couple hours had been far too stimulating for her. I couldn't blame her—I felt the same way.

"You set up the nursery?" I asked Arizona for the fiftieth time that day. Again—God bless her pediatric surgeon patience.

"It's ready," she repeated for the fiftieth time that day.

But when we walked into it…it wasn't ready.

Yes, the crib was built. The changing table was set up. The rocking chair was in the corner. The rug was on the floor. Everything necessary was there, but it wasn't finished. The arm for the mobile was connected, but the mobile wasn't. The nightlight wasn't plugged in. I mean, there weren't even any stuffed animals in her crib! They were all still in gift bags lined up against the walls.

"This is not ready!" I yelped, bouncing Sofia in my arms to try my best not to transfer my anxiety to her, but it didn't seem to work. "It's only half set up!"

"Yeah," Arizona shrugged. "Did you think I was gonna do everything without you? Take all your nesting fun away?"

I stared at her, slowly registering her words until tears sprung into the corners of my eyes. "Mark, take the baby."

Jumping at my command, Mark scooped Sofia from me. As soon as he did, I pounced on my wife, covering her lips with mine and exploring her mouth with my tongue. Cristina hadn't cleared me for sex yet, but I was starting to wonder if she was just doing it to mess with me, so I wasn't taking it too seriously; the nervous wreck I fell in love with, however, heeded my former roommate's words like gospel. She peeled us apart before things got too heated (which happened quickly, because it was wholly my intention to heat things up).

"Get used to seeing that, kid," Mark told Sofia in his gentle baby voice. "Your moms are horndogs."

"Look who's talking," I muttered. "Okay. Let's make our girl feel at home."

It took about an hour to put the finishing touches on the nursery, that time extended due to our incessant shifting of our baby from one parent's arms to another. Sofia didn't seem to mind—she'd fuss a bit during the transfer, but once settled into position against a warm chest, wrapped in warm arms, she fell content again.

"Which friend do you wanna cuddle with tonight, mi vida?" I asked my daughter, who lay nestled in my wife's arms, nuzzling her little face with each plush creature as I listed them off for her. "¿El cachorro? ¿La jirafa? ¿El oso?"

Mark raised an eyebrow. "So we're really diving headfirst into the whole bilingual baby thing?"

I glowered at him. "Hey. My daughter will grow up hablando la lengua. ¿Entiendes?"

"Entiendo," Arizona replied effortlessly, and though her accent was silly, the fact that she had been able to understand me, and to reply, warmed my heart.

"And Nintendo," Mark stated with teasing confidence.

"Close enough," I muttered, taking the baby from Arizona. "Okay, sweet one. Time to get you to sleep."

It only took a few minutes in the rocking chair until Sofia was fast asleep, chupo half-hanging out of her mouth, clearly tuckered out from her day. But I wasn't ready to let her go, so I kept rocking back and forth with her in my arms as Arizona and Mark put the finishing touches on the room, quietly bickering over where the baby monitors should go and which outlet the nightlight should go into and whether the wastebasket should go on the left- or right-hand side of the changing table. I sighed, watching them.

"Your momma, and your dad? Te quieren mucho, sweet girl," I whispered to Sofia. "Se odien, pero disimulan. Para ti. That's how much they love you."

"I heard that!" Arizona whisper-yelled. I looked up to find her much closer than I had expected her to be, an adorable pout on her adorable face. "We do not hate each other."

"When did you get so good at Spanish?" Mark gaped.

"I had to learn. Calliope can't speak English on morphine."

"Yes I can!"

"Ssh, don't wake the baby."

"She's out, Torres," Mark chuckled, sitting in front of the chair and placing his huge hand on our creation's tiny head. "Ain't nothing gonna wake this kid up for a while."

"Well, she's had quite the day," Arizona mused, perching on the arm of the rocking chair, pausing its movements. I rested my head against her side, and she draped her arm around me, her other hand reaching down to wrap around Sofia's little, balled-up hands.

We stayed like that a long time. A long, long time. Arizona tried a few times to kindly coax me to go to bed, to put our baby down in the crib we'd lined so meticulously with pillows and blankets and stuffed animals and go off to the comfort of my real, actual bed, the one I hadn't seen in three months, but—I couldn't. I couldn't put her down. In the three months she'd been alive, I'd never gotten to spend the night with my daughter, and this was my first chance. What did I care about a bed? I wanted to spend eternity watching my kid sleep blissfully in my arms.

Gradually, once it became clear I wasn't moving any time soon, Arizona moved from sitting on the arm of the chair to sitting across my lap, helping my still-recovering arms support our joyful bundle of sleeping dead weight. Mark, meanwhile, dragged over the chair from next to the crib, refusing to leave us alone no matter how many times I insisted we would be okay if he wanted to go across the hall and sleep.

Next thing I knew, I was jarred awake by Sofia's cries. Arizona woke at the same time, our combined movements causing the chair to rock slightly. Mark also lurched into consciousness, swiping at a sheen of drool that had escaped his mouth.

"Whatimezit?" he grumbled.

"Time to feed her, I think," Arizona declared with a maternal wisdom that made my heart flutter. "I'll get the—"

"I'll get it," Mark insisted, up and out of the room before my blonde genius could even dream of untangling herself from me.

"I was hoping he'd get it," I admitted groggily. "Too comfy how we are."

As if my world couldn't get any better, she flashed me those magnificent dimples, and I swear I was in heaven.

After that late night/early morning feeding, Sofia went right back to sleep, and so did we. In fact, we ended up spending the whole night like that: Sofia in my arms, Arizona in my lap, Mark in a chair next to us. And when we woke up with sore muscles and cricks in our necks, we could not have possibly cared less.

It wasn't quite what any of us pictured, I'm sure, when we had dreamt of the first night we took our daughter home. At least, not what we would have pictured three months prior. However, for three months, there was that fear—the fear we tried to ignore, the fear we tried to pretend was so impossible, so outlandish and catastrophic that it wasn't even worth entertaining—that we would never be able to take our daughter home at all.

But we had.

So as far as we were concerned, it was the best first night home with our daughter imaginable. Better, even, than anything we could have dreamt it would be.

Arizona's POV

It had been very, very, very difficult for Callie to convince me to go to work.

She and Sofia had been home less than two days; I wanted to stay, to take days off. Legally, I wasn't allowed any family leave, but Webber had promised the utmost leniency—especially since I lived across the street from the hospital, he assured me that there would be no consequence for me spending as much time at home with my family as needed, provided I showed up at the hospital when I was needed, resulting in a debt of gratitude I knew I'd never fully pay back. So, given such benevolence, Callie and I decided I should save my actual vacation time for our honeymoon, as well as our impending sex marathon.

It seemed like a wonderful plan, until Alex Karev called me thirty-seven hours after my wife and child had finally come home after their three-month hospitalizations.

"Karev, you have exactly one minute to explain to me what could possibly be important enough to warrant interrupting the first two days my family has spent at home together."

"I'm sorry, Dr. Robbins," he said, sounding as heartfelt as down-to-business mode Alex Karev could sound. Just from the tone of his voice, I knew some tiny human was in dire straits, and that my favorite, but still-learning, resident couldn't help them without me. "I tried everything. I've run every test I can think of—this kid's case doesn't make sense."

"Did you try Stark?" I asked, knowing what the answer would be like I knew my own name.

"He says the kid's faking it, and I should send him home."

I sighed loudly, glancing across the room at Calliope, who sat on the couch, gently swinging Sofia in her baby rocker while keeping one eye on me.

"You know I would never ask this normally," I prefaced. "But given what I'd be leaving behind if I came running to the hospital right now…are you sure he's not faking it?"

"He missed his summer league tryouts," Alex explained, in the clipped, agitated way he did when he stood up for the patients he cared about most. "All this kid cares about is baseball, but he missed tryouts because he was in so much pain."

Pinching the bridge of my nose, I braved another look at my favorite girls. "Is it urgent? What are the chances you can come to me?"

There was some muted shuffling on the other side of the line. "Give me ten minutes."

"Thank you," I said as sincerely as I figured he could take. Hanging up the phone, my eyes found concerned brown ones almost immediately. "Alex Karev is getting the greatest rec letter any resident has ever gotten from me. Bar none."

"Mentirosa," Callie snorted, and I allowed myself an internal, triumphant grin for understanding her, despite the fact that she was calling me a liar. "You won't let him go. You'll do whatever it takes to keep him under your wing. You're way too jealous and possessive to let him go."

"Nuh uh," I huffed. "You are the mentirosa."

"Your accent is ridiculous."

"Because I've been mimicking your slurred morphine Spanish. You gotta speak more normal Spanish at me so I know what it's s'posed to sound like."

"Mentirosa," she enunciated, extending every sound like a song sung just for me.

"Mentirosa," I attempted to copy, but I was too distracted by how beautiful and perfect and jaw-droppingly sexy she was. Studying her, I tilted my head. "Do you think there's any chance Cristina is refusing to clear you for sex as a way to convince us to talk to Teddy for her?"

"There's no other explanation," Callie seconded without hesitation.

"I'm gonna bury her in scut."

"Or, you could just bury your fingers in me."

A shiver ran up my spine, and I deliberately turned away from Callie, busying myself tidying up something that was already quite tidy.

"You're such a rule follower," my brunette goddess chuckled teasingly. I turned back to her to see she had stretched her legs across the couch, Sofia having fallen into deep sleep in her glider.

"I'm gonna talk to Teddy," I announced, more to myself than anyone else. "Make sure Cristina isn't just screwing with us."

"Cristina will hate you forever."

"Off the record, obviously," I clarified.

"She'll still find out."

I rolled my eyes, on the verge of responding when I heard a knock at the door.

"Your protégé awaits."

Sticking my tongue out at Callie, I headed to the door and opened it. "That was quick."

An uncomfortable but determined Alex Karev stood on the other side of our door, arms nearly overflowing with charts and scans, and as soon as I stepped slightly aside, he barged in, not waiting for a verbal invite before spreading the materials across the kitchen island.

"Austin Perez. Eleven-year-old boy presenting with severe pain and mild swelling in his upper left arm. Worse with activity. Mom says he won't even play video games, it's so bad. No breaks, no tears, no osteosarcomas. Nerves are great, vascular is excellent—his dumbass family doctor said it was growing pains, which makes no damn sense cuz it presents asymmetrically. The kid keeps pretending he's fine, but his parents are freaked, and honestly…I got a feeling about this kid. There's something wrong with him."

I nodded, trying to contain the overwhelming pride I felt for my resident—I knew he had something in him. Everyone told me I was crazy, that he was an irredeemable jackass, but I knew he would one day be the kind of doctors who had such strong, distinct gut feelings about patients that he would go to the ends of the earth to heal them, to advocate for them. Say what you want about Alex Karev as a man, but as a doctor? He was hardcore peds. Through and through and through. All the heart and soul he tried to hide in his personal interactions couldn't help but shine through in his work with children.

And, frankly, I understood it. It's the same thing that drew me to peds to begin with: the less faith you have in people, the more hope you find in children. I'd been drawn to the specialty for a while, of course, but it wasn't until the last couple years of my residency, after my brother died, that I really found my home in it. Peds became my saving grace. People sucked—but kids? Kids were people you couldn't hate yet. Kids were blank slates: they could be great, or they could be awful. They weren't people yet, not really. They were people, but they could still be changed, swayed, more easily than adults could. And as a pediatric surgeon, as the doctor whose job it was to fix them…I had a chance to tip the scale.

And I knew Alex saw that. He wasn't the way he was for no reason; he didn't tell me a lot about his personal life, or his history, but…I knew. From the grapevine, from the bits and pieces he'd trusted me with, from the way he acted. I knew. I had a good picture of how his life had been—he was always the caretaker, never the taken-care-of. Surely, it was what drew him to medicine, and surely, it contributed to his initial resistance to OB/GYN and Pediatrics. For somebody whose life had been nothing but premature responsibility, for somebody who had been forced against their will to take care of others who couldn't take care of themselves, it would inevitably seem like much of the same, to be a doctor for lives that had barely started.

But, that's not what pediatric surgery is. Pediatric surgery is not about responsibility or protecting fragile souls—I mean, it is, but not any more so than any other specialty. In any specialty, a patient's life is in a doctor's hands. A family could be irreparably ruined. A life could be ended. In the grand scheme of things, pediatrics isn't much different from any other specialty.

Except, it is. Pediatrics is different because of one phrase, and one phrase only: "They're just a kid."

Ask any surgeon who works on adults, and you will get the same answer—every single one has, at some point, operated on a patient they wished they didn't have to save. Sometimes, inevitably, people suck.

That's the great thing about kids: they're not people yet. They are, of course, but they're more hopeful people, more optimistic people, more…malleable people. A horrible, mean kid can possibly be shaped into a wonderful person, but it only gets harder the older they get. For the same reason Callie insisted upon exposing Sofia to both English and Spanish from the day she met her, that was the reason Alex Karev found a home in pediatric surgery. The younger you are, the easier it is for you to learn. And Alex Karev was destined to connect with kids, to provide them with the care and attention he had been deprived of, the care and attention he had given to the people in his life who had needed it. Alex Karev was a good man. He was a good man who refused to show it, so much so that he went out of his way to act like a bad man, and I was determined to show him (because of all the people in his life, it seemed like he was the least aware his own potential) how great he was.

So I studied Austin Perez's chart, which he had personally brought to my apartment. Any other resident, I would have shut them down and sent them to Bailey—or Stark, if I wanted to punish them—until they proved to me they'd ruled everything out. But Alex Karev? He wouldn't call me unless he had no other option.

Looking at the scans of Austin's humerus and elbow, I furrowed my brow and shot a quick look at my Ortho Goddess. "Karev, do you have any ideas what this could be?"

He hesitated, shooting a look to Callie much as I had. She, however, either was oblivious or did a spot-on impression of being so. "I, uh—I'm not sure."

"Yes you are," I urged. "You have some idea of what this is, you're just afraid to say."

"Honestly?" he snorted. "I'd say chondrosarcoma. But in an eleven-year-old? It's impossible."

"Lemme see those scans."

I glared at Alex, waiting for some indication that this wasn't his plan all along, to entice my brilliant fiancée off of maternity leave with an exceptionally rare and exciting surgical case. He didn't show it to me, but nonetheless, I snatched the rest of the scans from him and delivered them all to my dream woman.

Then, of course, I found myself hypnotized as she studied them, holding her bottom lip between her pristine teeth, taking my breath away. I didn't even realize how far gone I was until I heard her speak.

"He's right."

My eyes snapped first to Callie's, taking in her conviction and heart, then to Karev's, taking in his smug pride.

"You're sure?"

"It's rare, but it's there," Calliope confirmed. "Chondrosarcoma. Right there by the elbow. You caught it early. Barely noticeable, to the untrained eye, given his age. I'm guessing a growth spurt compounded the pain, not to mention his activity level. It's lucky, honestly. The tumor is small enough, it could have gone unnoticed for months, had it not been for puberty. It's rare enough for anyone under fifty to get these, let alone kids who are still growing."

I couldn't help it—I draped my body over hers, stretched out across the couch, and kissed her deeply, meaningfully, conveying just how sexy it was when she was saving lives.

"Jeez," Alex groaned. "Would you keep it in your pants long enough to tell me if Torres can operate?"

We jerked apart like magnets with opposite poles.

"It's, uh," Callie began, clearing her throat. "It's a very simple surgery. You don't need me in the room."

My eyes widened.

"Seriously!" she shrugged. "He's a kid, he's gonna be fine. Might even be back swinging a bat by playoffs. Arizona can do it."

"If you're staying, I'm staying."

"So I can do the surgery?"

"No, Karev," Callie barked. "Go to the hospital, talk to the parents, schedule the procedure, and text Dr. Robbins the details. She will be there."

I tried to open my mouth to protest, but the mother of my child gave me a death stare that informed me I couldn't argue.

"I will be there."

As soon the door closed behind Karev, I slumped down on the couch next to Callie's feet, the most pathetic, theatrical pout I could manage on my face.

"How come you hate me?"

"Don't be dramatic," she sighed. "It's a simple procedure, but he still needs an experienced attending such as yourself."

"Stark can do it."

"No, I don't think he could. He's not awesome. You're awesome."

I picked up her legs, placing them in my lap so I could slide closer to her face. "I am?"

"And hot."

"You want me to go to the hospital so I can talk to Teddy and get you cleared for sex, don't you?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"That's why you're forcing me to go back to work less than two days after you and Sofia came home? So we can do it?"

"If you're waiting for me to be ashamed about that, it's not gonna happen."

A/N: I apologize if my Spanish sucks. My girlfriend is a native speaker, so I've picked up a decent amount, but I've never had to write it before, so I'm sure I didn't do very well. Anyway, thank you for reading, as always.