Though Santana calmed down a little after her conversation with Brittany, she realizes that her anger with Kurt doesn't fade. She doesn't want to burden Brittany with it, not while she's still recovering, and the last thing she wants to do is get Mercedes involved, so she bottles it all up. It scares her sometimes—well, all the time—how her emotions tend to eat her alive, and she fears running into Kurt in the hospital. All she can keep thinking is that he just doesn't get it. There was a time where she'd drop everything to hang out with him, but now she has responsibilities that she just can't drop...and she doesn't want to.

Two weeks go by. Brittany is getting stronger every day, she's hardly taking her Vicodin and she's really killing it on the crutches. The Pierces get the house and they go back to Boston to pack up, but Santana feels okay that they're running the house on their own. With the exception of bath time, Brittany has pretty much conquered everything on crutches. She cooks dinner, she cleans up the house and Santana is so grateful for it.

On the first day of the third week, there's a knock on her office door. When she looks up, she sucks in a breath. It's Kurt, and she's still not really sure she's ready to talk to him. He hurt her feelings, but she won't do the weepy thing with him.

"Can I come in?" He asks, leaning against the door frame.

"I...yeah, I guess."

"So..."

"Yeah."

"Dave told me I was wrong."

"And do you agree with him?" Santana raises an eyebrow.

"I...I don't know."

"So you came here to tell me you don't know?"

"Yes. No. I honestly don't know. You're my best friend, Santana. I miss you."

"Well I don't have time for gallivanting in bars. I've got three kids, I've got an injured wife, I have to help my in laws move into their new house in a week."

"You make time for Mercedes." He mumbles.

"What was that?"

"I said you make time for Mercedes."

"Because Mercedes recognizes that I have different priorities. Do you think the night Britt got hurt, I even thought about calling you to come watch the boys? No. You've made no bones about it that kids aren't your thing."

"I would have watched your kids." Kurt defends. "But that doesn't mean hanging out with you always has to be with them and Brittany."

"What do you want me to do, Kurt? You don't just get to pick and choose when you're a mother."

"Other mothers leave their kids at home once in a while."

"Other mothers don't have an infant son who might have cerebral palsy. Do you know how much of my mind is occupied by making sure Oliver is okay? That I'm not giving him too much attention and neglecting Liam and Max? You know better than anyone that my mind goes a hundred miles a second, now add the worries of motherhood into that equation."

"I can't say I get it, Santana. I don't know what you're going through."

"You're right, you don't."

"Then let me know. Half of the news I get about you, I get about Mercedes and another forty-five percent I get from gossiping interns. You don't even bother to let me in anymore."

"I...you're right."

"I want to be part of your life. I was hurt when you got married and I wasn't there. I was hurt when you told Mercedes you were pregnant first. I guess I just feel like I don't matter anymore."

"Kurt." Santana takes a breath. "You're always going to matter to me."

"I just...I miss you."

"I miss you too, Kurt. I'd love to spend time with you, I just wish you didn't hate my kids."

"I don't hate your kids at all. I love them, actually. I'm just not...good with them."

"Just spend time with them. Come over and have dinner with us, without Mercedes, without anything else. I want to spend time with you, I just have..a lot on my plate right now."

"Okay." Kurt more. "I can do that."

After Kurt leaves Santana's office, she doesn't feel like everything is resolved, but it's a start. And maybe Kurt is right, maybe other mothers can take a step away, but it's just not something she can do. She spends enough of her time away from her kids at work, she can't imagine not being there for bedtime, she can't imagine just...leaving them for something else.

The rest of her day is packed with surgeries. She wants it that way. She feels like Lauren Zizes is on her heels and she wants to be the best. Maybe it's all in her head, maybe Zizes isn't interested in competition...but they're surgeons, so she probably is. After she finishes her last set of rounds for the day, she doesn't even bother to change out of her scrubs. She'll just go home and take a shower, have dinner with her family and relax.

When she gets to the house, it's loud. Liam is shouting, the babies are crying and Brittany looks like she's at the end of her rope. With one arm holding a crutch, the other cradles Max, trying to settle him and Santana immediately feels bad. Maybe she should have taken more time off, maybe she shouldn't have left Brittany to deal with all of this while she should be healing. But she insisted she would be fine, she insisted that she didn't need Maribel to come down and help. Still though...

"Hey honey." Brittany smiles as she walks into the living room, a shock of hair fallen over her face. "You're home."

"I'm home and it looks like just in time."

"Do you want to deal with babies or Liam?"

"I've gotta nurse, if you don't mind handling Liam."

"Nope, got it." Brittany hands Max over to Santana and grabs her other crutch before hobbling into the kitchen where Liam sits on the floor screaming.

"Hi Maxie baby." Santana coos down to him, then lifts Oliver from his seat. "What's going on with my boys today, huh?"

"I don't like it!" Liam screams from the kitchen. "Go away, Mama!"

"Li..." Brittany sighs. "I'm sorry we couldn't go to the park, I really am."

Santana's heart breaks just a little at that. She knows Brittany wants to enjoy the kids while she's home, but obviously, going to the park is just something she physically can't do. And of course, it's impossible to reason with a four year old, especially when he's been cooped up in the house except on the weekends. It's clear that Brittany is pained by the fact that she can't do what she used to do and Santana just wonders if she should have taken more time, despite Brittany's insistence that she shouldn't.

"It's not fair! I want to go!"

"Liam. I told you if you had good behavior today, we would see if Mommy could take you, but you didn't have good behavior."

"I don't want you! I want Mommy Noodle!" He tears into the living room and hops up onto the couch, jostling the twins away from nursing and making them start wailing again.

"Liam." Santana says firmly, hating when she has to and trying to settle Max and Oliver back on her breasts. "This behavior is not nice and you need to say you're sorry to Mama right now."

"No! No! No! No!"

"I'm sorry guys." Santana murmurs down to Max and Oliver, slowly taking them off her and laying them down. They start to cry again and she has no idea if she's making the right choice, but she needs to take Liam upstairs, needs to have him sit and regroup in his room. "Let's go, we're going upstairs."

Carrying Liam up the stairs and feeling like her breasts are going to explode, Santana looks quickly over her shoulder at Brittany who has settled on the couch and is trying to soothe the little boys. Liam kicks and screams the whole way up and Santana realizes she hasn't ever seen him like this. She thinks of something one of her patient's moms had told her years earlier about the "fuck you fours" and she thinks this might be the epitome of that. Once she's sitting on Liam's bed with him, he tries to run out of the room, but she stands up and stops him.

"We're staying here until we calm down."

"I don't want to!"

"I understand that, but when you're not treating Mama nicely and you're scaring your brothers, you have no choice."

He screams and cries until he finally throws himself on the bed and collapses in total exhaustion. It's early for him to go to bed, but Santana thinks that maybe he needs it. She's sure Brittany has fed him dinner by now and she'll just get up a little earlier to bathe him in the morning. Breathing in deeply, she goes back downstairs to where Brittany holds the whimpering twins in her arms.

"He's sleeping." Santana tells her, lifting up her shirt completely and taking Oliver, then Max to get them all some relief.

"He's been like this all day. I just feel so...helpless."

"I know, he never had a fit like that when I was on bed rest, but I know the feeling of being helpless."

"I'm just ready for this to be healed. There's ten million things I want to do that I can't. Take Liam to the park, help my parents pack in Boston, go back to work..." Brittany buries her face in her hands and Santana aches for her. "I'm just...God, this is horrible but I need to get out of this house. I'm about to go back to work and at least sit in my office."

"Is that what you want to do?"

"Who knows if Sue will even let me?"

"There's no reason you can't run your department. You're all but off painkillers. Even if you just started with some shorter days. It would probably be good for you."

"You don't think it's crazy?"

"I don't." Santana shakes her head. "I'd do the same thing. You know I would have, I begged Shelby to let me do anything. I'll call my mom tonight and you can see if you can set up a meeting with Sue when I go in tomorrow, that way you only have to take a cab one way."

"You really are the best, I hope you know that."

After Santana and Brittany eat dinner, the twins finally soothed, Santana calls her mom while Brittany calls Sue. Maribel is understandably not as thrilled about Brittany going back to work, worried about how she'll be able to rest and recover, but she agrees to come in the morning. Luckily for Brittany, Sue has a meeting open at eight the next morning, so she'll go in with Santana, see how things go and then work from there.

After the phone calls, they spend some time with just Max and Oliver, laying on the floor and playing with them. Santana is always so carefully observing Oliver, seeing if he's catching up, but she knows there's some rigidity to his limbs. Contrary to his she felt before and at his appointment, she's reconciled in her mind that it will be okay if he needs a little extra help, that she doesn't love him any less or love herself any less if he has special needs. He's one of her beautiful, wonderful, perfect boys and she'll spend her whole life fighting for him to have the very best of everything.

"I talked to Kurt." Santana murmurs as she picks up both boys to bring them up to bed. "I'm going to put them down for the night and then we'll talk."

Santana looks over her shoulder at Brittany settling in on the couch and she walks up the stairs with the boys. They're both nearly asleep when she gets up there, but once she lays them down in the bassinet, she can't help but look over them. Max's fingers are in his mouth and Oliver has his hand over his eyes and she swells with love for them as they settle into their dreams. She thinks of how they'll grow up always side by side, how Liam will watch over them and is so grateful for this life she has.

She leaves the room and checks on Liam, glad he's still sleeping, before she heads back downstairs. Brittany is in the big chair and she has her feet up on the ottoman and Santana is so glad to see that she looks much more comfortable than she has in the weeks past. She sinks down onto the couch, close enough so she can touch her, and runs her hands through her hair.

"Long day." Brittany says. "For both of us."

"I'm sorry they were such a handful today."

"It's okay, Santana. We both know they have those days. But tell me what happened."

"He came to my office. It was...kind of a lot. I don't know, I have this weird guilt thing with him, I guess. He said Dave said he was wrong, but I don't know, I think it's more complicated than that."

"What do you mean?"

"I guess it's like...I don't know, you become friends with someone when you're one person and then you go through these evolutions and you're just not the same anymore, I don't know."

"I think..." Brittany takes a breath and Santana thinks she's really considering her words. "Okay, I think that friendships evolve with you, I don't know. Like you two have been friends since med school, you getting married and having kids shouldn't change that."

"He was really hurt that we got married without telling him and that Mercedes knew I was pregnant first."

"I can understand that on some level." Brittany nods. "But he also knows you have anxiety and have to do things your own way."

"Do you not think I should forgive him?"

"No, I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying that I don't want you coming out of this thinking you're in the wrong."

"I'm not, I promise. He started about how other mothers leave their kids to go out with their friends and I...just can't do that, I told him that. We leave them to go to work and once in a blue moon for a date night, but I love being here for bedtime, I don't know."

"What did he say to that?"

"He said he'd come over and spend time with us. Also that he doesn't hate our kids. So that's a start, right?"

"I think that's a really good start."

"It was easy when we were young, you know? We were all single and getting drunk after twelve hour shifts. But that being said, I wouldn't trade what I have now for being young. I wasn't happy, not really."

"I know, honey. Lately, you've been less anxious than you have been since I've known you. You've found your stride and it looks really good on you."

"For someone who never thought they'd have kids, I sure am into it."

"And maybe that's part of what's going on with Kurt, you were both kind of on the same page about where your life was going to go and you changed your mind. That's hard." Brittany reaches over and takes Santana's hand.

"I guess, I don't know, Britt, it's hard."

"I know, and it's okay if you want to stop talking about it."

"I do. Have you decided if you want to go to Boston?"

"I mean, I feel like we should, I just don't know what kind of help I'm going to be."

"Your parents understand if you need to relax. I mean, especially if Sue lets you go back to work. You'll probable be exhausted by the weekend. And when they get here, we'll go out to Long Island, I'll unpack with them."

"Yeah." Brittany sighs. "I guess it's still just a thing for me about Liv's stuff, I want to make sure it's okay."

"They're going to take care of it, it means as much to them as it does to you."

"No, I know, you're right. I'll tell them tomorrow that we're not going to go. They said they had it under control. Sorry, I'm just...whatever."

"It's okay to be like that, it's a lot."

"I know my mom told you I never got to grieve. And she's right. I've got a lot of stuff to unpack."

"You know you can do it with me, right?"

"I know." She nods. "It's just still hard for me to process the way she died. And the fact that she'd overcome so much. She wished for a life where she was happy with a family of her own and she was just getting started. She deserved so much more. I don't know, we're new at our family thing and it scares me a little."

"Like it'll all be taken away?"

"I don't know, maybe I just don't feel like I deserve it. I know you go through that sometimes."

"But you've always been the one who tells me I do. And I'm going to tell you the same."

"I don't think I ever got to thank you, you know, for letting me name Oliver after her."

"You don't have to thank me. I feel like he has a special guardian angel, I don't know. I don't normally believe in that stuff." Santana shakes her head.

"I don't either, but yeah, I feel that. I just always think about how she would have been so calm about the whole thing."

"Britt, you're so calm about the whole thing. You've been a rock while I've freaked out. But I feel like we're in a good place with it now."

"I can tell. We've got this, whatever comes along."

"I know."

Santana watches TV with Brittany for a little while and then she showers and they go up to bed. Santana is surprised how infrequently the twins wake up throughout the night and she savors the extra sleep. It may be restless, since she's still not taking her pills, but she sleeps. When she gets up in the morning, she's surprisingly refreshed and she rolls over, seeing that both boys are up and gurgling contentedly in the bassinet. Brittany is already out of bed, she hears the shower running, and Santana picks both of them up to nurse. While they do, she thinks about how surprised she is that Liam is still sleeping, but she's glad he's getting the rest he needs.

Once the babies are fed, she lays them back down and gets dressed. She slips into the bathroom to wash up and brush her teeth, then she carries them into Liam's room. He's slowly opening his eyes and a Santana just looks at her oldest son. He's had a tough day yesterday, but he's still just the sweetest boy, and she sits down beside him with Max and Oliver in her arms.

"Hi, Mommy Noodle." He murmurs sleepily, not opening his eyes.

"Hi, Sir." She smiles, leaning over to kiss him on the head. "How are you feeling this morning?"

"I feel like I'm ready to go to the park. Can you take me?"

"I have to go to work, but Grandma Maribel is coming over and I bet she'd be glad to take you."

"What about Mama?"

"Mama's going to come with me to talk to Dr. Sue this morning. But I promise you this, tomorrow is Saturday and I'll definitely take you to the park then."

"Hmmm...okay, what about Maxie and Ollie?"

"They'll come with us. And we'll see how Mama's feeling, maybe she can come too."

Once her promise is made to Liam, Santana brings the three boys downstairs and puts a waffle in the toaster for her oldest. Brittany comes down the stairs, one crutch under her arm, and Santana smiles at her. Brittany looks beautiful, dressed up for her meeting with Sue and a big smile on her face. With everything that went on with her parents and then her leg, Brittany hasn't worn that smile of hers in too long, so Santana goes over to her and kisses her, just soaking it all in.

Brittany is chatty on the way to the hospital and Santana is so happy to talk to her, she almost doesn't want to get out of the car. But they get there and Santana kisses her again outside her office and goes to meet her first patient. She knows she has back to back surgeries all day so she won't be able to check in with Brittany for awhile, but she hopes that things go well with Sue, she hopes her wife can come back to the hospital and feel like she can breathe again.

The day feels like it lasts forever, and when Santana finally gets back to her office at the end of the day, realizing that she hasn't pumped in six hours and her breasts feel like they're going to fall off, Brittany is sitting on the couch and smiling at her. She's so happy to see her wife's smiling face that she immediately pulls her in for a kiss.

"You're back?"

"I'm back." Brittany grins. "Sue said I know my body and if I feel like I can work, I can work. It'll be a few weeks before I can go back to surgery, but I'll take just being here and running my team."

"That's amazing, Britt. I'm so glad it went well!"

"Are you okay? You keep rubbing your breasts."

"Yeah, I'm fine, I just haven't pumped in basically forever. I'd love to wait to get home and just feed the boys, but I feel like I might actually die if I don't get some milk out of me. Do you mind?"

"Honey, do what you have to do. I checked in with your mom a little while ago and things are all good over there."

"I've gotta be better about this. My milk is going to dry up if I keep waiting so long to pump." Santana sighs, closing the door and grabbing her breast pump from her bag.

"How do you feel about that?"

"What?"

"Your milk drying up? I mean I know nursing and working full time has been a lot on you."

"You know...I honestly don't know. I told myself I was going to do it for a year, especially for Oliver, but finding time to pump just feels like it's impossible. I know they have to give it to me, but also I can't exactly stop in the middle of a surgery to do it. I don't know."

"Okay. You know that whenever you're ready to stop, I'm okay with it, right?" Brittany asks, gently touching Santana's shoulder.

"No, I know. I guess I'm ready to start thinking about it. It feels weird to say that out loud."

"The boys are doing great, it's amazing you've been able to keep this up this long."

"Thank you. But seriously, I want to hear all about your day."

"It was a lot of scheduling stuff, my team really stepped up while I was out, so there were no major fires to put out. And I was able to talk to some of my long term patients who are still here. It felt good, when I was at home, I didn't feel...useful. I felt like Liam was always mad at me for not being able to do things, I don't know."

"I felt like that when I was home too, so I get it." Santana nods. "But he loves you."

"No, I know. And I miss all three of the boys today, but it also felt really good to be here."

"Our second home."