"Hey, Avery. When was the last time you delivered a baby?"
I'm a plastic surgeon. I don't do babies. Yet I'm standing across Arizona Robbins from the opposite side of her operating table. I'm scrubbing in on a scheduled c-section – the reason being that her patient wouldn't settle for anyone but a plastic surgeon to tidy up her incision. My wife is upstairs in the gallery watching us. It's been a slow day at the pit and April decided to drop by. To watch me do stitches. That's how bored she is. Or maybe that's just love.
Meanwhile, Arizona's prompting me with bright blue diamond eyes. There's a fuck ton of optimism in her sparkly voice, I could swear I taste candy. Her question is pleasant, casual even, but I find myself fumbling.
"Uhm," I mutter. "Not in forever… actually."
"What? You're kidding me," she says, throwing the words up in the air. When she starts to think about it, her eyes are dancing on the ceiling while she feels her way around the patient's abdomen. She can do it all by touch and it's really impressive. "So you're saying… in your entire medical career… you've never delivered a baby?"
"I chose my specialty early, okay?" I say, trying to ease her down. I smirk a little behind my mask at the thought. "Mark had me at hello."
"Ugh. You two were disgustingly cute," she scoffs, but then the expression in her eyes changes. A little less sparkle. "God, I miss him."
"Me, too," I sigh.
When a moment of silence passes, the delight is back with a vengeance. "Well, you should totally take this one then."
"Woah woah woah. What?" I contest, like she's trying to push me off a cliff. "No. You're right there." I have to physically gesture that she's right there. Right there in front of me – the overqualified one who can handle this. Who should handle this.
"So? I've delivered thousands of these," she says, her voice all skippy. Then her eyes center to me. "Your turn."
If I hadn't known any better I'd think she was trying to teach me how to jump rope but she's not. This is someone's child. So that's what I say. "This is someone's child."
"Yeah I know. Isn't it miraculous?" she smiles, voice as calm and happy as ever.
"Uhhh, it won't be if I mess it up," I insist.
"Would you stop freaking out like a prissy little intern?" she teases, then looks up to the gallery for support. "Kepner, tell him he's being a wussy."
"What the fuck is a wussy?" I ask, still thrown by the fact that the intercom was on the whole time. It's always great to have your spouse laughing at you from a glass box.
"The royal crossbreed between a wuss and a pussy," Arizona explains easily.
"I'm… not… " I say and see her eyes roll. I feel the unimpressed stares of all the women in this room – half-smiling and curious to see whether or not I'll do it. Even Bohkee the scrub nurse is looking at me expectantly and I realize that I'm starting to sweat.
"Then do it," Arizona says, before looking to the woman on the table. "She's done all the hard work. You're just here for the harvest."
"You'll do great, Honey!" I hear April cheer, and my heart stands up a bit. My mind is skidding along as these women downplay how terrifying this actually is. At least to me. I see my fair share of gnarly shit on a daily, especially being married to a trauma surgeon. But this is otherworldly – scary on an advanced level. I can't do this. And I don't need to. I won't. It would be a kindness. I look up at her again and she's giving me the most endearing look of encouragement.
I guess I'm doing this. I will because she somehow knows that I can. She's right a lot of the time and I trust her with my life. In the two years we've been married, I figured that much out.
So I nod along.
"Now. I know you're precious little plastic surgeon hands would do a gorgeous C-section," Arizona compliments me. "You know the depth, right?"
"Yeah," I say, still in a haze of disbelief. My first delivery. And it's a c-section, no less.
"Awesome. I'll walk you through it. Don't worry." Her tone is reassuring. This is probably the voice she uses to talk to scared little children – and it's working wonders on me. "I'll be right here."
"Okay," I say, getting into it with a bit more confidence. I do the incision flawlessly but that was the easy part. She guides me along the rest of the process and I catch on like a toddler learning how to count. "Okay, I got it."
Moments pass, and somehow, some way, there's a crying little baby in my arms and it's covered in blood and goo. I'm the first person to ever hold her, and that's something I don't feel I'm enough for. But I'm honored. She's grabbing onto my surgical gown with her tiny hands. I can't explain what I'm feeling because I think my heart is about to explode.
I do the thing that comes naturally. I slowly look up to the gallery to find April. She's already looking at me with an expression of pure wonder. She's as floored as I am and I'm sure she wasn't expecting to feel this way, too. I'd stick my tongue out at her if I wasn't having an emotional breakdown myself. Her eyebrows are raised subtly in that way where the right one is slightly higher than the left. Her pretty lashes are framing her beautifully open eyes and her mouth is parted with the tiniest smile tugging at one corner. She's so beautiful. The wonder turns into warmth as my eyes start to shine at her with emotion.
I have to will myself to see this through. I depart from our silent exchange to hand the baby over, gown and glove anew, and start working on what I came here for. Arizona looks pleased with me, and equally pleased at herself for being able to convince me to do her job for her. I steal one more glance at my wife and there's a slight bounce to her shoulders as she giggles and smiles wholeheartedly. She's propping one arm up with the other and her fingers are resting on her left dimple. I see her wedding ring shine alongside her smiling face; it's a look that suits her so well. I'm the luckiest man alive – knowing that I get to be hers.
I'm out in less than an hour. Prior to that, April had been called to the pit. I don't see her for another two, until I finally find her making coffee in the attendings lounge.
"Coffee?" she asks happily when she sees me.
"Sure," I say, holding her shoulders and kissing her cheek from behind.
She pours me a cup and slides it over to me. "Boop."
"Thank you, Sweetheart," I whisper as I take my mug and walk her to the couch.
"Mhm," she hums.
We sit down together and I hook an arm over her shoulders to keep her close while we both hug our cups. She's looking at me thoughtfully like she's thinking about a million things. I don't know if she's aware that she looks like she's undressing me with her eyes. So I let her know.
"You're kinda giving me bed eyes," I say.
"Yeah," she says simply like it's the most trivial thing in the world.
"What did I do..." '...To deserve you' was what I was going to say, but I stop myself to ruffle her feathers and act suspicious. "...Or what did you do? Did you break something of mine?"
"No," she laughs, clearly amused. "I just love you."
"I love you, too," I say. Ugh. She got me there.
"And…" she trails, before putting her mug down on the short coffee table in front of us.
"And?" I repeat, sipping mine.
"I loved seeing you today. You did so well," she says, one hand on my chest.
"To be honest, it felt like I was the baby," I say, my cup soon joining hers. "It was absolutely terrifying. And amazing. I swear I almost shat my pants. Robbins really pulled a quick one–"
"Make a baby with me," she says softly and in all seriousness. I'm amazed by how calm she is because my heart is now beating so fast, it's almost vibrating.
"What?" I smile.
"Sorry, that sorta just came out –"
"No no. Go on," I urge. I know there's something more she wants to say. She scoots in to face me and my hand is now resting at the small of her back.
"I loved seeing you hold that little life in your hands. And I see it, too, ya know? You holding ours. One we'd make together…"
My thoughts race to our imminent future. A future where there's a miniature version of me and her combined running around our home. Maybe even two or three. We've gotten better at a lot of things, and I feel that we've grown so much together. I knew her like nobody's business back when we were friends but being married is different. There are a bunch of fights that you have with your spouse and not with your best friend. We had both. And we've come out stronger because of it. This conversion is so overdue that it surprises me it took us this long.
"I don't wanna force this on you if you don't think you're ready or if it's not what you want right now," she says. She's leaning her head on her hand with her elbow resting on the edge of the couch. It's near to where my head is reclined comfortably. My attention is fully on her and how she's talking about taking our next step. "I just wanted to open up the conversation is all. Because I think I am. I think I'm ready for it." She ends with a tentative look my way and I know she's wondering what I'm thinking.
"There's nothing more I'd want…" I finally say, taking her hand in mine and kissing it softly. "Than to start a family with my best friend."
"Really?" she asks me. She's reeling on the inside but she's playing it cool. She should know by now that I know better.
"Really," I say softly, before kissing her once and pulling her into the most meaningful hug I can give.
"Two years in and we're finally doing it," she says over my shoulder.
"We're finally doing it," I say.
Before I can kiss her properly, she pulls back for a second to take a jab at me. "It took Robbins to get you to –"
I drop my forehead on her shoulder. "To stop being a wussy? Yeah."
"No." She strokes the back of my head and laughs. "I was gonna say that she made you look so good that… I upfront decided right then and there that I want your baby in me."
My head leaves her collarbone the second she says it. I had no idea that the thought could turn me on so much. Suddenly, the idea isn't terrifying. It's tempting.
"I know what you're doing," I say, because I do.
"Do you?" she says. Her eyes are half closed and lusty and she's looking at my lips and every section of my face. It couldn't be more obvious.
"Mhhhmm," I growl quietly, then look around the room. "... Here?"
"Why not here?" she purrs.
I love it when she's naughty. But I also know how mortified she'd be if one of our friends – or God forbid, a whole group of them – comes storming in to find us having unprotected penetrative sex on the lounge room couch.
I snag a passionate four-five second kiss from her before I stand up to lock the door. As I reach for the knob, it turns on its own and our friends start piling in exactly the way I had hoped they wouldn't.
I wanna strangle them.
April and I exchange looks and we know. It's not happening. At least not right now.
I try to act normal. But the fact that I'm awkwardly standing by the open doorway makes that a difficult task. With the momentum of my stride, they were all expecting me to be on my way out. Grey, Shepherd, Karev, and Yang are all staring me down. What do I do? What do I do?
"Jackson," I hear April call out. I turn to face her, wondering what she's up to. Everyone seems to share my curiosity because they do the same thing. With all our eyes on her, I can see it in her face. She's thinking on her feet. She's still a little flustered over what we were about to do, but it takes her zero think time to get it together. She pats on her scrub pockets a couple of times and fishes out her set of keys to the house – then throws them my way just in time to make it all look natural. I catch them with one hand and she pretends to scold me with a half-ass pointed finger. "D-Don't forget yours next time."
"Thank you, baby," I play out as well, waving the keys around with a fake smile straining my features. We're both really bad actors and it probably shows. But she just bailed me out of that awful situation and I make a mental note to give trauma think speed a little more credit. "I won't!" I call out, halfway out the door.
When I'm out and the door is closed behind me, I slowly look back with knotted brows. I'm sure that confusion is written all over my face. What the fuck just happened?
I'm still hovering by the lounge when I pull my phone out to shoot her a text.
Thanks for that. I'll find you later. Love you.
How on earth did deciding to try for a baby end up with me out the door with nowhere to go and her on the couch with two cups of coffee? I get a reply right away. She's still just a couple of feet away from me and we're texting. This is ridiculous.
You better. You have my keys.