Getting out of the hospital is beyond stressful, and takes far longer than either Santana or Brittany expected. Considering Santana's profession, she probably should have expected the delays, given Liam's age, but she doesn't think of him like she does her patients. She thinks of him as a tiny superhero, capable of absolutely anything. But alas, he woke up screaming and crying, his stomach aching from the anesthesia and his empty stomach. He refused to drink anything and urinate, he refused to let Liz, and even Shelby do the final check before they discharged him. He even refused Santana, when she finally convinced her colleagues to let her help. All he wanted was Brittany, holding him, soothing him. All he wanted was his Mama, and quite frankly, Santana didn't blame him one bit.
Six hours after his surgery began, an orderly pushes a wheelchair with Brittany, holding Liam in her arms, to the curb, where Santana had pulled up her car. Liam wails as Brittany gets him into his car seat, careful, so careful with his wounded arm. Liam wails, even as she tucks Percy and his blanket in with him. He wails the whole way back to the house, and wails as Brittany unbuckles him and carries him up the stairs to his bedroom.
"Li, baby, shh, shh, Mama's here." Brittany continues to soothe, though her voice cracks, and her hands rake through her hair. "Mama's right here."
"No like it! No like it!" He claws at the soft cast that protects the sutures on his arm. "Go 'way! Owie! Owie!"
"I know, it hurts a lot, but what did I promise you? That it's going to go away soon. That in a few weeks, we'll get this off of you, and you'll be able to play with both arms, right?"
"No! No! No!" He cries harder, and Brittany crawls into his bed with him, holding him against her chest. She knows that he's probably feeling pain everywhere, post-surgery, but Santana knows that the best way for Brittany to calm him is to hold him just like this. "No Mama! No!"
"Let's sing your song, Li, let's rock you to sleep."
"No, Mama, no." He whimpers, his face pressed into her neck. "No, Mama."
"Would you like to swing on a star?" She begins, looking up at Santana, and patting the space beside her on the bed, and invitation to sit, and invitation into this moment. "Carry moonbeams home in a jar?
"Doccer Santana?" Liam hiccups, picking up his head a little.
"I'm right here, Sir."
"You can sing too?"
"Yeah." She sucks in a breath, taken aback by it. "I can sing."
"Sing with Mama."
Santana doesn't hesitate. She's certain there's nothing she could deny Liam. She's certain that she'd give the entire world to see the smile on his face again. It's a strange feeling, but it's a right feeling, and so she starts to sing along with Brittany. And all the monkeys aren't in a zoo, Every day you meet quite a few. So you see, it's all up to you. You can be better than you are.
Before they finish, Liam falls asleep. Santana is surprised, actually, that it took him so long. His little body trembles from the lingering impact of the anesthesia, and Brittany tucks a pillow beneath his arm, and a blanket over his body. She kisses his forehead, letting her lips linger there, checking for a temperature, Santana thinks. Lord Tubbington hops up on the bed while Brittany's still leaning over him, and Santana scratches behind his ear, appreciate that he'll watch over Liam.
Once the monitor and the sound machine are turned on, Santana follows Brittany back downstairs. For several seconds, she lingers in the doorway of the kitchen, as if she's going to start cooking something, before she simply sinks down on the couch, dropping her head back and closing her eyes. If Santana is exhausted from the day, she knows Brittany must be absolutely wrecked, and she shifts her weight between feet, before she sits down beside her.
"I think I could sleep for ten years and still be tired." Brittany sighs. "I'm so glad he's home, but I know how much pain he'll be in. Last time…he was in the hospital for twenty-nine days on a morphine drip."
"Twenty-nine days…"
"Twenty-nine days, and when I brought him home, my first experience with motherhood was that of a burn unit nurse. Sorry…God, I never dwell on the past, but lately, I feel like it's all I've been doing."
"You can tell me whatever you want." Santana slowly brings her hands to Brittany's back, letting her thumbs dig in, massaging up her neck, and into her hair. "I think I'm so lucky to have Liam in my life right now, and I love hearing all about who he was before i got to meet him."
"He's always been special. Since the day he was born, he just filled up the room with brightness. His face is what saved my mother after my sister died, I swear to you. She was devastated, and then there was Liam, recovering from surgery in a plastic crib, and smiling. She figured if he could smile, so could she."
"It must have been really good for you to have him too, right?"
"Yeah, it was." Brittany nods. " I was so close to my sister, and at first, I really wasn't sure I could adopt Liam. I didn't hesitate about taking him. I knew from the very beginning that I'd have guardianship of him, like she'd asked, but even minus the crap in my relationship, I wasn't sure me being his mom was the best thing for him. He had one, you know?"
"I can't even wrap my head around how you've done the things you've done honestly."
"Because it's what she would have done. That's what my mom told me, anyway. That she'd be more than happy for her son to have two moms, her and me, and that she'd be happy someday too, if Liam had threemoms."
"Three?" Santana swallows hard, her stomach dropping, not, necessarily, in a bad way.
"If that's what the future brought. Mom, mother-figure, stepmom? I don't know what it would look like, just…part of our family." Brittany shrugs, then shakes her head a little. "Anyway, that feels really good, what you're doing. I could use this after a long day in surgery any time."
"That's because you do that teeth grinding thing while you operate." She's surprised she can find her voice, after the things Brittany said, but she does, and it sounds mostly normal.
"I wore a mouth guard for two weeks during my residency."
"Did you?" She has to giggle, picturing Brittany wearing one under her surgical mask.
"It ended up being nothing but a distraction. I almost had I scrub out and rip it out of my mouth in the middle of a labiaplasty."
"I was going to make a really bad joke."
"I kind of opened myself up to it." Brittany leans back into Santana's hands, and she massages a little harder. "This is the most relaxed I've been in a week."
"Are you hungry? Do you want wine?"
"Yes and yes. But right now, I just want this. I'll order something on my phone in a minute."
It ends up being more than a minute. It's close to an hour later when Brittany orders from the Italian restaurant around the corner. She talks to her parents for awhile, filling them in on what's going on, assuring her mom that they're okay, that they can come down over the weekend as planned. By the time Santana gets in the bath with her, it's obvious Brittany is wiped out. She can see her eyes drooping before she even finishes her second glass of wine. When she gets out, she goes back to check one last time on Liam, and Santana turns down the bed. She plugs Brittany's phone in, and she pulls the blackout curtains. She knows Brittany will be up and down, but at least she won't have to wake up with the sun if Liam is still asleep.
When Brittany comes back into her bedroom, she doesn't even bother to put on her glasses and try to read before bed. She leans in to kiss Santana goodnight, and she sinks into the pillow, closing her eyes after a murmured I love you. Santana watches her for awhile, unable to fall asleep herself. She watches her, until she's sound asleep, and then she fidgets.
Afraid she'll wake Brittany with all of her moving around, Santana slips out of bed. She's not sure exactly what she's going to do while Brittany's sleeping, but she'd rather let her sleep in peace. She goes down to the kitchen, and she fill a glass of water. She thinks about what Brittany had said earlier. She thinks about the gravity of those words, if Liam had three moms. They lay heavy on her chest, the thought of it, the possible implication of it, and with her glass of water tight in hand, she wanders through the living room.
She and Brittany have been together since the spring, and now they're on the cusp of winter. Among the pictures of Liam, lined up on the mantle, arranged on the end tables, there are some of Santana. She hadn't notice them before, but they've found their way into the mix. One of her leaning back laughing, Liam in her lap at the park, one of her kissing Brittany's face, a selfie Brittany had taken, that she'd gotten printed, apparently, one of the three of them, ice cream all over Liam, and Brittany, looking at both he and Santana in some sort of way. Somehow, someway, she's become so fully entwined in their lives, and Santana isn't sure whether to throw up right on the carpet, or jump for joy.
Instead, she opts for going back to bed. These are deep thoughts for after midnight, especially after the day she's had. She creeps up the stairs, still holding her glass of water. Figuring she may as well check on him while she's awake, Santana slowly pushes the partially opened door to Liam's room, and approaches his bed.
"Mama?" Santana is jarred by his little voice, raspy from being intubated in surgery, jarred by the word Mama, though she knows, rationally, that he assumed she was Brittany. "Mama, you here?"
"It's not Mama, it's Santana, buddy." She whispers, hoping maybe Brittany will stay asleep a little longer, if she can handle this. "How you feeling?"
"Pull-up's'all wet."
"Oh. Okay." Santana nods, she can handle this, she can absolutely handle this. "Do you want me to change you?"
"You know how?" He eyes her skeptically, and Santana bites back a laugh.
"I do know how, Sir." She smiles softly, leaning over the bed to kiss his head and reassure him. It's a new sort of gesture for her, but it feels right.
"Doccer Santana?"
"Uh huh?" She looks up from pulling out the bin of Pull-Ups and wipes from under the bed.
"You gon' lay wif me?"
"If that's what you want, Liam, I'd be happy to lay with you."
Santana changes him. She's not sure if she should get him up to use the bathroom, so she doesn't. She doesn't want to do anything that puts him at risk of falling, of getting hurt, when she's trying to handle this on her own so her girlfriend can sleep. She'll have to wake up when her alarm goes off to give him more medicine, but for now, Santana can take care of thing. She lets Liam sip from her water glass, giggling as he does, because he never drinks from the big ones. She tucks him back under the covers, making sure his arm is still positioned properly on the pillow, and she lays down beside him, smiling a little, as he snuggles into her.
"You can tell me a story?"
"Uh…yeah. What kind of story?"
"You s'possed to tell me that! Mama say."
"Okay." Santana nods, wracking her brain for something. "Let me tell you a story about when I was a little girl."
Santana tells him story after story, the good parts of her childhood, the parts where her father stayed in the city to work, and she and her mother went to visit aunts and cousins and her abuelita. He listens, wide-eyed, and it makes her feel good to see his rapt attention. It makes her feel good to have someone to share these stories with, the ones she holds so close to her heart. She can tell he's starting to squirm in pain toward the end of one, and when she looks over at his owl wake-up clock, she sees Brittany, standing in the doorway, medication in hand, and a soft smile on her face.
"Hey." Santana mouths, then turns back to Liam. "Look who's here."
"'S it Mama?" He cranes his neck, but winces when he moves too much.
"It's Mama. I'm gonna get up so she can lay with you?"
"You lay too." He shakes his head. "You don't go."
"Okay. Okay. I'm not going anywhere."