While Santana has her eggs harvested three days after her trigger shot, Brittany holds her hand. Though Santana insists she's fine to go home and rest on her own, Brittany comes with her. Liam sits on the floor beside the couch where Santana lays, and Brittany makes her tea. When she falls asleep, Brittany covers her with a blanket, and she swears, even dreaming, she can feel her wife kiss her forehead. This is the woman she's trying to have a baby with. This is the woman who loves her in such a quiet, unimaginable way.
Even after she wakes up, she's tired. Her morning at work was busy, and maybe she's kind of a baby when it comes to even the most mundane of medical procedures. So she doesn't do much. They order takeout, and Liam crawls into Santana's arms to watch Storks. Santana rests her head on Brittany's shoulders, and she plays with her fingers, feeling Liam breathe against her neck as she does. A year ago, happiness would have looked like widespread acclaim for some new medical procedure she invented, or membership to some prestigious club, but today, it's this. Today, she realizes that they're more important than anything else.
She thinks about it a lot, as she holds Liam in her arms. She thinks about it as she rubs his lotion on his scars, and she gently stretches out his atrophied arm. She thinks about it as she tucks him beneath his blankets, and kisses his forehead just before he falls asleep. With all the anxiety that her fertility procedure has caused her—and certainly, it's a lot—she hasn't really had time to consider what the intended eventual outcome is. That she'll have a baby. Another little human person to love, another little human person who loves her. For someone who has spent most of their life feeling like the most unlovable person in the world, that's a lot to take in.
They get into bed early. Santana is sore, and exhausted, and still feeling a general sense of ick, so she gets into her most comfortable pajamas. Sex is off the table, for obvious reasons—and it has been, since she started her shots and just hasn't felt like it—but she lays with Brittany. Brittany, for her part, is particularly physically affectionate with her. She kisses her hairline, her cheeks, her lips, and she massages Santana's shoulders and back. It's the kind of touch Santana relishes. The kind that says I love you, I've got you. And with those touches, she falls asleep, wrapped up in her wife's arms.
For the next two days, Santana is a mess. She's nearly glued to her phone, checking to see if Roz called every two minutes, even though she hasn't let it go long enough that she'd miss the call. Even when she's in surgery, she puts an intern in charge of the device, directing them to let her know as soon as she gets a call. She knows the procedure is happening on Thursday, she knows that won't change, but still, she can't function thinking that she might possibly miss a call that gives her some kind of pertinent information.
Santana isn't sentimental about the idea of pregnancy. She's a surgeon, and she's entirely awake that she's having a surgical procedure to implant a microscopic ball of cells into her body, one that may or may not become a fetus. She has no magical ideas of wishing, or praying, or wearing lucky underwear to help the procedure along. The embryo will take, or it won't, depending on several thousand cellular factors. Still though, as she walks hand in hand with Brittany up to the fertility center, she can't help but feel a little wistful. Part of her can't help but feel some bitterness that she can't just get pregnant by having sex with her wife, that she has to have another doctor intervene so she can experience something so natural, that it's costing them several thousand dollars for something straight couples do by mistake. But it is what it is. Wishing for something that's impossible will never make it real.
"Are you okay, Santana?" Brittany asks, squeezing her hand, and squinting her eyes in concern.
"No, yeah, I'm fine. Just…thinking."
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"It's okay. It's not a big deal." She shakes her head. "So, we're doing this."
"Are you ready for it?" Brittany stops and turns to face Santana. "I know that it's a lot to take in."
"I really am, Brittany. I'm really nervous, but…I'm glad we're doing it. I want to do it."
"Okay, good. Because I don't want you to feel—"
"Hey." Santana leans forward, and gently kisses Brittany's lips. "I don't feel any kind of way except glad to be having a baby with you. Right now, this is the most put together and confident in myself that I've ever felt. I didn't think this was the kind of experience that I'd ever have, or even want to have, but…I mean it when I tell you how much being a mom has meant to me. I'm looking forward to experiencing pregnancy with you. I'm sorry that I've been really distant and clinical about it, but I guess…I don't know. Maybe I'm afraid of disappointment or something."
"You don't have to apologize. It's a lot. I'm overwhelmed by it, and I'm not the one who's been going through all of the testing, the medication, and the shots. I can't imagine how you feel, but if you want to talk about anything at all, I'm always right here."
"I know, and I love you more for that."
While Santana is on the table in Roz's office, she starts to get a little panicked. From her three harvested eggs, there's only one viable embryo, only one shot this round, and it all feels really real, and really intense. When she notices her breathing is too shallow, she takes deep breaths, sucking in as much air as she possibly can. Roz talks, but she can hardly hear anything over the sound of her own heartbeat. Brittany holds her hand, and Santana squeezes it tightly, attempting to ground herself.
"Are you ready, Santana?" Roz asks, snapping her gloves on. This woman is the best fertility specialist in the country, and when she talks, she makes Santana incredibly nervous.
"Uh huh. Yeah." She nods, shooting a glance to Brittany, who smiles adoringly at her.
Because she's a surgeon, Santana can't help but watch the ultrasound screen as Roz guides the catheter into her. It's uncomfortable, definitely, but Santana is careful not to squirm, knowing that the location of the transfer needs to be precise. She's screwed up a lot of things in her life, but she won't let this be one of them. If the transfer doesn't take…well, that's a medical reality. If the transfer doesn't take because she messed something up, she'll be disgusted with herself. Every instruction, she's followed to the letter, every shot she's given herself at exactly the same time. Today is the last step of this cycle. Today she'll go home and lay in bed, while she waits.
For the entire duration of it, Brittany rubs her thumb on the inside of Santana's wrist. She knows, she always does, and maybe it's stupid, but her presence relaxes Santana to such a degree that she can forget the discomfort, she can think about what might be happening at this very moment. Medically, it's an embryo, medically, this is not a human being for Santana to pin her hopes and dreams on. But still, Santana is in her thirties, and for the very first time, she feels like she could ignore logic, like she could believe in something as absurd as wishing.
"And there you have it." Roz pushes her stool back, and the tension in Santana's thighs loosens. "We'll see how it goes."
"That's it?"
"I can give you the standard 'take it easy' speech if you want it, but you know the deal. Go home, have a glass of wine. Don't take home pregnancy tests, unless you want to drive yourself and me nuts, when they're inaccurate, and you'll know from your blood test in twelve days before you'd get a real read anyway. Don't freak out if you're spotting, it could be implantation bleeding. Take your progesterone, don't have sex or take a bath. That's it."
"That's it." Santana repeats again, nodding. "Well…okay. Thank you, Roz."
"Yes, thank you." Brittany reiterates.
"Call me if there's anything you need, but I don't expect to hear from you."
Having come to the agreement that they weren't going to pull Liam out of his day early, Brittany drives Santana home from the hospital with the full intent of having a late lunch together at home before she goes back to the hospital to get him. Roz hadn't advised any sort of bed rest, and she'd told Santana she should keep up her normal activities, but given the fact that she's temporarily not taking her sleeping pills, and she tossed and turned all night, she wants to just do absolutely nothing.
They get home, and they make a salad together. Roz told Santana to have a glass of wine, so she does, looking over the rim of the glass at Brittany. When they're through with lunch, Santana is itching to get out of the pants she's been wearing, and she pads up the stairs to the bedroom.
She yanks off her slacks, and grabs a clean pair of scrubs from the top drawer and slides into them. When she takes her shirt off, she looks at herself in the mirror. Her bra covers most of her scarring, and she looks down, just for an instant, at the flat plane of her stomach. She feels…exactly the same as she felt before her appointment, which is sort of surprising to her, and she can't help but wonder when and if she'll feel different before she knows. Shaking her head, she pulls a long-sleeved t-shirt over her head, and sits down on the edge of the bed, fighting to the urge to lay back and pretend like she'll be able to fall asleep there.
"Hey." Brittany leans on the door frame, squinting her eyes.
"Hey, sorry, I've been up here way too long for just changing my clothes."
"You don't have to apologize. I just figured I'd come up and change out of my work clothes too."
"Hmm, so tease me by getting naked?"
"I can go in the bathroom." She laughs.
"You better not."
"Yes boss." Brittany unbuttons her blouse and pulls a soft cardigan over her head. While she slips into her jeans, she looks over at Santana. "You're sure you're alright today?"
"I think everything just has to do with how tired I feel. I guess maybe I was a little addicted to the Ambien. I haven't been sleeping much."
"I figured. You have your appointment next week, right?"
"Tuesday, yeah. I'll get it sorted, I guess. Or learn to live without sleep. We're trying for a baby, I should probably get used to that anyway, no?" Santana flops back on the bed, hair splaying out on the pillow.
"You never know." Brittany lays beside her, brushing the hair from her cheek. "And I really would like you to be able to sleep. Do you want me to leave you so you can try to nap?"
"No, don't." Santana turns on her side. "Sorry, I'm being stupid today. It's just emotional. I guess I just want to know, and maybe I hate that there's nothing we can do. I mean, if…"
"If we weren't both women, we could have a lot of sex and increase our odds." Brittany finishes for her.
"How did you…?"
"I've thought about it too. Medicine is ninety-percent impersonal, and making a baby probably the most personal thing a personal thing you can do." Santana knows her face falls at Brittany's words, but Brittany smooths away the wrinkles on her forehead and kisses her between the eyes. "But making a baby is so much more than a sperm and an egg. If and when you get pregnant, there's so much we can do together to get ready. I'm excited for that."
"Why are you still like this?"
"What? You think marrying you meant I'd undergo a personality shift?"
"Maybe…you're sure you won't get sick of me?"
"Santana, if anything, I get less sick of you." Brittany squeezes her hip.
"You." She kisses Brittany's lips, and sits back up. "Are the love of my life. I'll go with you to get Liam."
"Didn't you want to lay down?"
"Nah, if I do fall asleep, I'll sleep like shit, and then I won't tonight. And I promised Liam we'd get some new books this week."
"So bookstore and then dinner?"
"Then some of that sleepy tea I caught you buying."
"I just want to help you sleep."
"I know, and it means a lot."