It's impossible to sleep. Santana has decided that she's going to just give it up all together. Instead of laying in her bed and thinking about Brittany and what she'd said, Santana comes home from the hospital, and sits up reading a study about organ life support. She hates feeling out of control. She hates emotions. That's why she became a doctor, mostly. Because she gets to control things that other people can't, and because the compartmentalization of feelings is an absolutely crucial part of her career path.
At ten-am, she takes an Ambien. If she shows up at the hospital tonight, and looks worse than she does now, Shelby is going to send her home. If she does it again tomorrow, Shelby will threaten her with the Board of Pediatric Surgeons. She won't make good on the threat, but it's enough to scare Santana into forcing sleep. She can't operate without it. She can't survive without it, but yet, she's spent her whole life chasing it. It seems like some sort of riddle, but it's not. It's just reality. Just her reality.
When she wakes up from her eight-hour partial coma, she checks the date. Part of her was hoping that she'd gone back in time. That she was back in the morning of the day where she was trapped in the elevator with a gorgeous blonde Doctor. Part of her would have taken the stairs instead. But the date is still the same as it was when she went to bed, and the other part of her, this small, and very, very loud part is so glad for that. That very loud part is screaming for her to let herself feel, let herself be touched by someone she cares about, let herself open up and tell Brittany all there is to tell, show Brittany all there is to show. She hates that part of her, more than anything.
Santana is on a warpath when she gets to work. She feels bad for it, but she can't help herself. The interns beat the brunt of it—they always do—and she tells them to take it as a learning experience. Don't fuck up. Their consequences today are just her words, the consequences when they're on their own are greater. Suspension, revocation of their medical license, or worse, grave bodily injury or death of a patient. They should be grateful for what she's teaching them now. Grateful she doesn't allow them to get away with poor workmanship.
Shockingly, it's Hayward that sends her over the edge, and not for anything she does medically. With the pit quiet, Santana goes to lay down. She's tired, a lingering effect of the Ambien, and though the won't sleep, a pillow and a bed sounds like a good idea. Unfortunately for her, when she opens the door to the on call room on her floor, it's occupied, and not by anyone sleeping. The first thing she sees is Hayward's bare back, and she absolutely loses it.
"Are you fucking kidding me right now, Hayward?" Santana snaps, and in a frantic effort to cover herself, the intern grabs a pillow from the bed. "Do you think this is Grey's Anatomy? Do you think you get to get away with hooking up in a public space, while you get paid?"
"Dr. Lopez, I—" Her eyes are wide with panic, and Santana pinches the bridge of her nose.
"Save it. I've already had the misfortune of seeing your bare ass, I don't need to add hearing your bullshit on top of it. And you—" She points at the mostly-dressed girl, who wipes her hands on pink scrub bottoms and barely bothers to hide her smirk. "Who are you?"
"Sugar Motta, dermatology." She extends her hand, and Santana wrinkles her nose in disgust, before grabbing hold of her ID.
"Who's your resident?"
"Uh…Dr. Lynn."
"So help me God, I catch you on my floor, hooking up with a surgical intern in my on call room again, I'll meet with him, Dr. Martinez, and the head of the whole goddamn hospital to have you fired for poor conduct. I'm letting you off with my warning tonight, so consider yourself damn lucky."
"Dr. Lopez." Hayward tries again, as Motta scurries like a rat to the elevator.
"I said save it. Get dressed, take every goddamn sheet in this room down to the laundry, and then go down to the pit, and don't let me see you again for a week. You're off this service until you prove that you take it seriously."
"I do ta—"
"So seriously that your getting screwed by someone in derm, while I was hoping to actually train you. Doesn't add up, Hayward."
Without another word, Santana turns and leaves her standing there. Maybe someone else would let them get away that, maybe she would, on a better night, but right now, the last thing she needs is to see two women having sex. The last thing she needs is to imagine her and Brittany having sex. The last thing she needs is to feel even the smallest bit turned on. She needs rational thoughts. She needs self-preservation. She needs to fucking breathe.
Locking the door to her office, Santana lays down on the couch. She really needs that damn pullout. She wonders how comfortable of one she could realistically get. She wonders how soon one could come. She wonders if Shelby would be pissed about it if she did. Probably not. Though Shelby never works overnights anymore, Santana is sure she remembers what it's like, and sure she'd understand why she wants to sleep in her own space.
Of course, all the thoughts about pullout couches are just noise for her mind. Nothingness to cover up the sound if the last words Brittany said to her. If you want to talk, you know where to find me. The more she thinks about it, the more frustrated she gets. The more she thinks about it, the more she wants to barge into Brittany's office the moment she walks in for the day, and tell her exactly why they can't be together. Exactly why she's just not good enough for her, or to have in the life of that little boy. The more she thinks about it, the more she checks her pager and finds nothing to do to distract her, the more that feels like a good idea.
At 5:45, Santana does a spenectomy on a twelve year old girl. By the time she's done, she can probably go home. But when she looks at the time, she knows that Brittany will be in soon. She's tired, so tired, and now, her ridiculous idea seems even more sound. She's going to put and end to this once and for all. She's going to make Brittany know just why they can be friends and nothing more. She's going to make her know why she's too damaged, too stunted, to ever have anything worthwhile.
Santana stalks down the hall, and then the stairs, glaring, when she sees Hayward. She'll take her back on her service sooner than she would anyone else for a similar transgression, but she wants to scare her. She wants the word to spread that the goddamn on call rooms aren't for sexual escapades. They're for her, and for every other doctor who works ninety hours a week to sleep in. She may be on a warpath today, but certain things, she feels strongly about. Certain things, she'll let the interns know, no matter what her mood is.
When she gets to Brittany's office, the light is on, and she sits at her desk. Of course, even at seven-am, Brittany is flawless. Her hair is pulled back in a tight knot, and her blue button down lacks a single wrinkle. Over the black rims of her glasses, Brittany looks up from her computer at Santana. Without an invitation, Santana steps into the office, closing the door behind her.
"You want to know why this is a terrible idea?"
"Good morning to you too, Dr. Lopez."
"You're driving me absolutely insane. You're under my skin, and I hate it." Santana huffs. "I don't dofeelings."
"Yeah, you've made that pretty clear." Brittany arches an eyebrow, and takes her glasses off. "I wasn't aware that feelings were something you could control though."
"Ugh! You're so frustrating! You're being so patronizing."
"No, I'm actually not at all. I'm just being honest, and I'm tying to figure out why you obviously have some sort of feelings, but you refuse to allow us to talk about that."
"Because I can't, Brittany. I'm incapable of having a relationship. I'm incapable of being good for anyone. There's nothing I have to offer that you can't find better from someone else."
"Who did this to you? Who made you feel like this?"
"How far you wanna go back?" Santana mutters, swallowing the lump in her throat that forms whenever she thinks about every single thing that made her who she is today. "Actually, it doesn't matter how far you go. It's all one person."
"I…could probably guess." Brittany looks at her, looks too far into her, that it makes her squirm.
"Yeah, well, we could just start with he wanted a son. Or we could start with the fact that after me, my mother couldn't have more children. We could start with me being a disappointment in every way possible, for as long as I can remember. Too tom-boyish, too mouthy, too opinionated. Or, you know what, we could just cut to the chase. We could start with this." Santana pulls the hem of her scrub top, and before Brittany can stop her, she yanks it up over her head. Her deepest fear, someone seeing the mangled purple lines, the lump, the damaged nipple, still there, even after having her implants taken out. She reveals it, because she needs Brittany to leave. She needs Brittany to stop making her feel things. If she leaves now, she can't leave later, when she realizes just how fucked up Santana is. "There you go, there's your explanation for two things. Why I just fucking can't, and why I hate plastic surgeons. It's right there, all in one seriously fucked up job on my tits."
"Santana."
"You see this? This is the kind of fucked up I come from. The kind of father who berated me my whole life, and convinced me I needed them done in the first place, and who didn't want to hear it after his buddy basically butchered me, before I even started my junior year of high school. The kind of father who emotionally beat my mother down so badly that she couldn't say a damn word to him, and it took her twenty-five years to feel like she could leave him. The kind of father who, after I came out, only agreed to pay for me to go to college if I promised him it'd be for medicine, and then stopped talking to me the day he realized I wasn't going to be the kind of surgeon he wanted me to be. You know what that kind of shit does to you? The constant inadequacy? It makes you question every single breath you take. So I can't do this, because I can't make someone else take on these damaged goods. Especially not someone who already has enough on her plate."
"Santana." Brittany gets up, and she closes the gap between them. Gently, she pulls down Santana's top, reminding her that she basically just flashed Brittany. Gently, she presses her thumbs to Santana's cheeks, wiping away tears she didn't even realize had started to fall. "Oh, Santana."
"Brittany, please." She squirms, trying to escape from the feelings inside of her. Trying to make herself run. But Brittany engulfs her in a hug. Brittany holds her slackened body. Brittany's just there. "Why are you likethis?"
"Because you deserve kindness, Santana. No matter what anyone has ever told you."