If it's possible, Santana is certain she has every single symptom of her hormone shots. As a doctor, she's used to telling the parents of her patients about the rare incidents of so many drug side effects, but as she crouches over the toilet for the countless time, emptying the contents of her stomach, with a bone crushing headache and a continuous bruise that covers a large portion of her upper thighs and buttocks, she begins to question everything she knows. She's miserable, and the only think that keeps her from stopping is the knowledge that she's almost finished…at least with the medication.

Luckily, Santana manages to make it through her surgeries without getting sick. She pops her pain killers to keep her headache at bay, and she refuses to succumb to the exhaustion that she feels. Nearly every other day, she meets Brittany upstairs at eleven-am, spreading her legs on the exam table, or presenting her arm to take blood, or talking about her ovaries while she inhales whatever snack Brittany inevitably brings her. Though she's tracking her own ovulation, she's fairly certain Dr. Roz Washington will know the instant she's ready for the next step, and for that reason, she can't complain about the frequency of her daily doctor's visits.

Liam has trouble going back to day care. For the first week after Damien broke his tiny heart, Santana had asked her mom to take him while they were at work, and for the second, she and Brittany were on opposite schedules. But when it's time to send him back, both of them knowing that their irregular schedules mean that they can't keep him out of there forever, he cries. In the weeks he hadn't been there, Santana half-suspected that Liam had forgotten, but then, suddenly, when the morning came for him to return, it all comes rushing back.

"I wanna stay with Gramma Mary-bell? Okey?" He pleads, clinging to Brittany's side outside of the day care center.

"Li, baby, I wish you could stay with Grandma Maribel too, but she's very, very busy this week. Besides, you're going to see all your friends, right?"

"No! No! No!" He shakes his head vehemently. "I can go home and Lord Tubb-a-Ton will stay with me!"

"Hey, Sir, c'mere." Santana holds our her hand, seeing Brittany's deep internal struggle. "Remember, Mama and I talked to Miss Sandy? And there'll be no mean words anymore?"

"Mommy Noodle, Damien don't never listen to Miss Sandy!"

"I do too listen to Miss Sandy!" A boy shrieks, and Liam tugs on Santana's coat, begging her to lift him. Without hesitating, she does, and beside her, Brittany stiffens. "You don't know nothin', Monster Face!"

"Damien John Heyward!" The familiar voice jars Santana, and she looks over to see Heyward standing there, absolutely horrified. "Oh God, Dr. Lopez, Dr. Pierce, I'm so sorry."

"I…" Santana opens and closes her mouth, unsure what to even say. For two weeks, she's considered hunting down Damien's parents, to give them a piece of her damn mind about raising a terrible human being, and now, Jane Heyward is his mother?

"Damien!" Heyward crouches down to his level, and looks him straight in the eye. "I never want to hear that out of your mouth again, you hear me? You apologize right now."

"Sorry." Damien mumbles, looking at his feet. Liam tenses in Santana's arms, and she squeezes him a little tighter.

"Like you mean it."

"I'm sorry, Liam. You is not a monster face."

"Never again, Damien. What have I told you about people's feelings?"

"They is break-inble."

"That's right." Her tone softens a little, and she stands up, smoothing her scrubs, clearly mortified. "I'm so very sorry, Liam. Dr. Lopez, Dr. Pierce."

Santana just shakes her head a little. She isn't sure what to say, and quite frankly, she's stunned. First off, she had no idea she had a child, she'd just assumed because she was young, and because she's caught her making out with that girl from dermatology that she didn't, but…that's not even the point. Carefully, she sets Liam back on his feet, and she can't even really hear what Brittany is saying to Heyward. She just watches her son, holding the side of his face, cautious, so cautious as he looks at Damien. He bounces back, she thinks, and with his little backpack on, he toddles into the room, blowing kisses back to her and Brittany.

She's quiet, as she walks with Brittany down to her office. They do this every day, Brittany kissing her goodbye when they get there, but today, Santana is shaken. Maybe it's the shots, making her more emotional than she already is. Or maybe it's how mature she'd been about all of it, emotionally supporting her wife when she was having such a difficult time with this. Honestly, she's not even sure. But she feels herself trembling, she feels herself being wrapped in her wife's arms, wishing she didn't have to let go.

"Are you okay, honey?" Brittany asks her after a long while.

"Uh huh, yeah. Sorry, I just…"

"Yeah, I know. Easier without faces attached, right?"

"So much easier." She nods into Brittany's shoulder. "You know that Heyward is my favorite."

"You know that doesn't have to change, right?"

"I pretty much fantasized about torturing her for two weeks…"

"If she hadn't been so mortified, and made him apologize, I'd still be right there." Brittany confesses. "But…this was obviously just…i don't know. Liam is okay."

"Liam is okay." Santana echoes.

"I'd like to think that he would never say something that would hurt someone like Damien hurt him, but…he could very well say something he doesn't mean, or doesn't quite understand, that would hurt someone else."

"No, yeah, I get that. I just…knowing he's Heyward's son makes me think there was less ill-intention behind it than I'd though. But still… Sorry, I'm just really emotional this morning." She wipes the tears from her face. "God, I'm a mess."

"Don't be sorry." Brittany runs her fingers through Santana's ponytail. "I'm still upset. Even two weeks later, I'm heartbroken, because I know it's a reality that our son will face for his entire life. I'm trying to be rational, really."

"Let me tell you, these shots? Total erasers of all rationale. If you ever need an army of women who get angry over kitchen sinks and cry during Target commercials, line them up and inject them with Lupron."

"C'mere." She pulls Santana closer, and Santana closes her eyes as Brittany runs her fingers through her hair.

"What?"

"Nothing, just wanted to hug you. I have a 9:00 surgery."

"I know. Go, I'm fine."

"You're sure you don't want me to come up for your ultrasound this morning?"

"Britt, I promise, I'm fine. It's ten minutes, and we both know it's nothing exciting. You've come to more than half of these ridiculous morning visits, go do your surgery, okay?"

"Okay." Brittany brushes Santana's hair away from her face. "But page me if you're doing the trigger shot today, and I'm in surgery."

"I will, don't worry." Santana kisses her lips. "I love you."

"I love you too."

Like she's done every day, Santana has her morning ultrasound, checking the size of her follicles. The nurse tells her Roz will be in touch later on, and Santana just nods and goes back downstairs. Maybe it's feeling like she can't get too attached to this whole process yet, or maybe she's just so versed in medicine that she doesn't get emotional about it. Either way, she has to work. She has two appendectomies back to back, and she has to admit, for the first time, she's glad Hayward isn't on her service. She's not mad at her, per day, she just…needs time to process the idea that her son is the one who made hers cry. That her son is the reason hers pulled at his face, and crawled into bed with she and Brittany nearly every night since it happened. That her son told hers that he wasn't beautiful.

Porter is on Santana's service, and he brings her a cup of coffee when he comes in. She guzzles it down, still trying to combat her omnipresent exhaustion. She's glad both her appendectomies go smoothly, and when her second patient is in recovery, Santana goes back up to her office, checking her pager on the way, to make sure she hadn't missed a call from Roz.

There's no call, so she warms up her coffee from earlier in the microwave and sits at her desk, thumbing through some new research on Spina Bifida. Just after noon, there's a knock on her door, and when Santana looks up, she expects to see Brittany. Instead though, Heyward stands there, wringing her hands in front of her body.

"What is it, Heyward?"

"Dr. Lopez, I was…hoping for a second of your time."

"Make it quick." Santana doesn't meet her eyes, fixating on rearranging the pens on her desk.

"I wanted to come apologize again. Look, I know there's no excuse for what Damien said to your son, and I'm absolutely mortified by it. He's a sweet kid, Dr. Lopez, his father and I have a really good relationship for his sake, and—"

"Heyward?"

"Yes?"

"I'm not your therapist, and I've got a lot of work to do."

"No, I know that, and I'm sorry if I'm being unprofessional, but I respect you so much. I hope to get a peds fellowship someday. I know this reflects poorly on me, between this, and the time you caught me in the on call room with Sugar—"

"I don't judge the medical ability of my interns based on their personal lives." Santana shakes her head and clicks her pen. "You're the best intern in the program, my recommendations from you in the future will reflect only on that."

"I appreciate that, Dr. Lopez, more than you know, but I mostly just wanted to make sure you knew that Damien won't ever say anything like that to your son again. God, I don't even know where that came from."

"Yeah, well…it hurt my kid. But I appreciate your apology, and his, Heyward. So, thanks for that."

Without another word, Santana goes back to her work. Her head hurts, she's exhausted, and honestly, this is the last thing she feels like dealing with today. Heyward leaves her office quietly, and she goes back to her reading, managing to get ten pages done, before her phone buzzes on the desk in front of her. Grabbing it, she swallows hard, seeing that it's Roz, and she takes a breath before she answers the phone.

"Dr. Lopez speaking."

"Santana, it's Roz Washington."

"Hi Roz. What's going on?"

"Based on your ultrasound this morning, your follicles have reached an ideal size for harvesting."

"Has anyone ever told you that what you do kind of sounds like an alien horror movie?"

"Same could be said to you, Dr. Lopez, removing organs from children and all that."

"Touché." Santana laughs a little, nerves tangling her belly. "So I should do the trigger shot then?"

"Do it between two and three. Then clear your schedule for Thursday afternoon, and we'll do the retrieval."

"Oh—okay. Okay." She nods to herself. "So, should I, like, come up there this afternoon?"

"Nope, just give yourself the shot, and I'll see you Thursday."

"Okay, uh, thanks?"

Hanging up the phone, Santana feels more nauseous than she's felt throughout this whole procedure. She's not nervous in a bad way, but still, she's anxious. Leaving her papers where they are on the desk, she opens her refrigerator and stares at both the egg salad sandwich Brittany made her, and the vial containing the trigger hormones. She takes the sandwich out, and she sits back at her desk, taking small bites of it while she turns the backlight of her phone on and off. Brittany should be out of surgery any minute. She has an hour before she's even in the window where she can do the shot. She doesn't want to interrupt her while she's finishing up. She'll be done in time to just…be there while she does it.

When she finishes her lunch, she takes the vial and syringe, and she puts it into her bag. Then she goes down to Brittany's office, and she breathes a sigh of relief seeing that it's open. Slipping in, she closes the door behind her, and Brittany looks up, smiling, when she sees her standing there.

"Hey honey, how was your morning?"

"Roz called." Santana rushes out, feeling out of breath. "I'm kind of freaking out, and I don't really know why."

"Santana." Brittany stands up, and walks across her office, pulling Santana into her embrace. She doesn't say anything else, she just holds her there, and Santana sinks into her, waiting until her heart stops racing.

"Okay, sorry, I don't know what the hell is wrong with me."

"I've been nervous too, and it's not my body. It's something new."

"Can you…maybe do the shot for me this time?"

"Of course I can." Brittany kisses her lips twice. "I'll shut the shades."