The thirteen days that Oliver spends in the hospital are the most excruciating of Santana's life, which says a lot, considering. With two sons at home, she and Brittany manage to work out a routine, though it means having very little time with each other. The whole of it exhausts Santana so completely, especially because she can't drive on her painkillers, everything makes her cry, and if she hears one more goddamn Christmas song, she may very well stab someone right in the throat. Even as she watches Liam get excited about Santa Claus, even as she watches Max flourish at home, even as she watches Oliver grow stronger in the hospital every day, there's an inexplicable sense of…something…that settles over Santana's whole being.

Two days before Christmas, amidst Santana's attempt to wrap some of the gifts that need to go beneath the tree while Liam and Max nap, she gets a call from Brittany at the hospital an hour before they're set to switch off shifts sitting in the NICU. Leaving the gift wrapping mess on the bedroom floor, she takes the phone out of the room, so as not to wake Max in the bassinet and shuffles down the stairs. By the time she makes in there, the call goes to voicemail, and she curses under her breath, rage bubbling in her chest at the minor inconvenience. But before she can call Brittany back, the phone rings again, and she sinks down onto the couch to answer her wife.

"Hi." She murmurs listlessly. "What's up?"

"Hey. Listen, Holly wants to meet with us at three o'clock. Can you get your mom to come down and stay with the boys and meet me here. If not, I can call—"

"No." Santana cuts Brittany off, adamant that no one besides their parents take care of their newborn, and Brittany's parents have gone home for a few days to settle things in Boston before returning for Christmas. "I'll call my mom."

"Okay. Can you do me a favor and bring me a change of clothes? Ollie spit up all over my shirt, and I'd rather look a little decent for a sit down with the head of neonatology."

"Holly doesn't give a shit what you look like." She finds herself saying, though she doesn't mean to be so brusque with Brittany. Running her hand through her messy hair, she takes a breath and sighs. "Yeah, sure, fine. I'll get there as soon as she's here."

Santana hangs up without a goodbye, and hardly realizes she does it. After she calls her mother and arranges for her to come down, Santana looks down at herself, sweatpants covered with a questionable stain that may or may not be Max's urine. After shoving a skirt and blouse for Brittany in a bag, Santana goes into her own closet, forcing herself into maternity jeans and a sweater, and hoping that Max wakes up already so she can nurse him before she leaves. Instead, her mom comes, and she settles for waking him up, shuddering at the sound of his scream, and getting her nipple into his mouth to feed him.

She takes a cab uptown, and for the first time, it hits her that Holly might want to meet with her to give terrible news. The thought of it makes her sick, and she gags a little before staring out the window to scowl at the Christmas lights. At 2:36, she gets to the hospital, and she's beyond grateful that she gets a few minutes with Oliver, hurrying up the elevator, and barely answering her colleagues who try to offer both congratulations and sympathetic smiles.

When Santana is finally in the NICU, she crosses over to where Brittany holds Oliver, and breathes the smallest sigh of relief to see him awake. He's growing, he's growing so fast, and before she can stop herself, tears stream down her cheeks. Noticing her presence, Brittany murmurs down to Oliver, then looks up, smiling at Santana.

"Hey honey, you look nice."

"It's…honestly whatever." She shrugs. "Are you going to change?"

"Yeah, thanks for bringing me something. This guy took down more than he could handle earlier, I think." Brittany strokes the side of Oliver's face. "Mommy's here, Ol."

"Hi, sweet baby." Santana takes him from Brittany's arms as she stands up, then settles down into the chair. Everything else melts away in the precious moments she has with him, and Santana kisses his newly unbandaged head, careful to avoid his surgical incision, and rocks him back at forth. "I'm here."

When he blinks up at her and nuzzles her face into her chest, Santana struggles to remember which side she fed Max on at home. She tried those bra clips, and hair bands, and even switching her wedding ring from side to side, but ultimately, everything failed. She's too exhausted from stress and nursing two babies in two places to even remember to switch around markers. Instead, she goes by feeling, and sometimes she fails miserably, having to pump an overfilled side, and worrying over whether whichever baby she fed last got enough to eat. Truth be told, she's a mess, and the only thin threads preventing her from completely falling apart are her wife and the three little boys she loves with every fiber of her being.

Oliver is still nursing when Brittany comes back in her clean clothes, looking more like Dr. Pierce than Mama Brittany. Santana just gives her a small smile and continues to stroke Oliver's head. It feels like a hundred years have passed since she was last Dr. Lopez, but right now, she can't be. Right now she just has to be Mommy Noodle with bags under her eyes from a crying baby, rather than a double shift. Right now, she has to remember how to even take a shower, before she can manage incisions and stitches and every procedure she's spent the last decade and a half of her life attempting to perfect. Right now, she has to exist,because even that feels like a lot.

Once Oliver is settled back in his little plastic crib, adorned with pictures of Christmas trees from Liam—after Brittany quietly put up their tree late one night, to avoid making Santana cry that they did it as a family without Oliver—Santana leans her head against the top of it, and looks down at him one last time before she follows Brittany down to Holly's office. The door is open, though she's on the phone, and she waves them in, smiling a smile too happy for Santana to handle. She sinks into a chair, and she puts her hand on the arm rest of the one beside her. When Brittany sits, she gently placed her own on top of Santana's, and Santana's mind wanders for a moment, trying to remember the last time they held hands. Trying to remember what things felt like when they were normal, trying to remember how it felt to be a human being, and to remember these things. It feels like a lifetime ago, that's all she can determine.

"Sorry about that." Holly chirps, hanging up the phone. "It was my mother, somehow she hasn't gotten the hint that I've worked a double every Christmas for the past fifteen years. The turkey dinner in the caf is on point, trust me."

"Good to know." Santana mumbles. "Because who knows we'll be eating this year."

"What's that, sweet cheeks?"

"Nothing, it's fine." She shakes her head, though Brittany looks at her with concern. "No offense, Holly, and not that I don't care about your mom or the turkey, or whatever else is going on with your life, but why are we here?"

"Cut right to the chase, okay." Holly laughs, and her typically endearing presence just grates on Santana's fragile nerves. "Want to take your kid home?"

"What?" Brittany leans forward a little, and Santana watches her. "The great Christmas discharge?"

"You know it's a real phenomenon." Holly smiles at them, but Santana doesn't soften. "He's ready. The incision is healing well, he's off oxygen, and he's gained weight. I'm releasing him to two surgeons, both of whom will be home for some time. It happens to work out that it's Christmas, but I'm not just releasing him for that reason."

"So when can we take him?" Santana is curt in her response, and she doesn't even care.

"Look, Santana." Holly leans over the desk. "I can set a discharge date for tomorrow or the next day, and you can have to deal with all the fanfare of everyone in this hospital getting in your business like we know they will, or we can do this privately in my office right now, and you can take him from there."

"Now?"

"If you're ready, yes. Nothing is going to change overnight, and I personally don't like to do it that way. It's up to you."

"Santana?" Brittany looks over at her when she remains quiet, giving her the choice, though Santana knows they both want him to come home now. She just…doesn't know how to make the words to say it, doesn't know how to express her gratitude for Holly for everything she's done.

"Yeah…okay. The car seat is in the car, and I left his going home clothes in there too in case. Let's just…get him out of here."

While Holly writes up the papers and talks incessantly about everything, Santana just sits quietly, staring at the magnetic balls she hates so much on her desk. She doesn't have any questions. She's heard everything, she's read everything, she's stayed up night after night obsessing about what the future looks like for Oliver, so she just wants her to sign the stupid forms, and let them go. Even when Brittany goes down to the car to get Oliver's clothes, Santana still stares ahead of her, incapable of making conversation with someone she's long considered a friend.

"Santana?" Holly finally breaks the silence. "You okay?"

"Fine." She clips the word at the end, and pretends to dig in her bag for her phone.

"I'm saying this because I care about you, and we all watch out for each other around here. You don't seem fine."

"What do you want me to say, Hol?" Santana rolls her eyes and huffs. "That I'm fucking falling apart and there's nothing I feel like I can do to make it better? That I keep promising my wife that I'm not beating myself up, but I can't stop? That fucking Campbell's soup commercials make me cry? Huh?"

"The way you feel is perfectly normal." Holly tells her softly. "I see this a lot."

"What are you, a shrink now?"

"I'm a doctor who has seen parents go through this enough times to recognize the signs, and I'm also your friend."

"He's coming home. That's what the problem was, that I couldn't have my son in my damn house, and I had to split time between my kids, and I barely saw my wife. It's fine now. It's going to be fine."

"Santana—"

"It's fine." Santana stands up, huffing as she does.

Her incision still hurts, but she makes it a big point to walk toward the door. She doesn't have to stay in the room with Holly, God knows she has patients walk out on her all the time. So, she walks back down the hall to the NICU, and she finds a nurse standing over Oliver. Like she always does, Santana waits. She doesn't tell the nurse not to do what she's doing. She doesn't want word to get it that they're taking Oliver home on this cold December day. She just wants to go quietly with her wife and her baby, because any more than that, she can't handle.

When Santana finally picks him up again, Oliver is sleeping. So she sits in the chair, and she rocks him, beyond grateful that she gets to have him next to her bed. Beyond grateful that this little boy, so much smaller still than his brother, is okay. Despite how everything else feels, she clings to that, and when Brittany comes in the room, donning the small gift bag with Oliver's outfit—the one meant to go with Max's two weeks ago—Santana manages the smallest of smiles.

"Do you want to change him, honey?" Brittany asks, always so careful with Santana these days, always waiting for her to snap.

"It's fine, you can do it." Santana stands and hands Oliver off to her.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, Brittany, I'm sure. That's why I said it."

After Oliver is dressed, and Holly comes in to give the final word on his discharge, they leave quietly, managing to get down the elevator without running into anyone they know. It's bitter cold in the parking garage, and before Santana can say something to Brittany, she sees the car, still running and warmed up for them. While Brittany buckles Oliver into his car seat, Santana gets in the front seat, looking out the window. She can't understand why she doesn't feel elated. She can't understand why all she feels is exhaustion, coupled with the smallest bit of relief. Oliver is coming home. Her sons will be together. She should be over the moon. But for some inexplicable reason, she's not.

When they pull into the driveway, the lights Brittany hung twinkle in the front of the house, and the tree glows through the window. Santana sees Liam's face press against the glass, and when Brittany gets Oliver out of the back, she sees him react, then run shouting to her mother. She looks over at Brittany, with Oliver close to her chest, a blanket covering him, and she tries to smile. It shouldn't be this hard. Nothing should be this hard.

"You bringded home my brother!" Liam cries when Santana opens the door. "It's a surprise and he's home! He's home! He's come! I askeded Santa to bring him, but you're so silly, you did instead!"

"We did." Brittany whispers, beaming at him. "Is Max awake?"

"No." Liam's face flushes. "I forgetted not to be screaming. Sorry Mama."

"It's okay, buddy, I know you're really excited. How about we wash up our hands, and then you can meet Mr. Ollie?"

"Yes! Yes! Yes!" Liam cheers, and Brittany passes Oliver over to Santana so she can help Liam, as Maribel comes into the room.

"Oh! What an amazing surprise! Did you know he was coming today and wanted to surprise us?" Maribel asks, peering beneath the blanket in Santana's arms. Though she's seen him countless times in the hospital, Santana knows it's a big deal for her mother to see him at home for the first time…but she isn't ready to let anyone else hold him. She isn't ready for any of this.

"We had no idea." Santana shakes her head, and sinks down into the chair beside the Christmas tree, cradling her sleeping son in her arms. "How long has Max been down?"

"Nearly an hour. Gave me a little break to give Liam his dinner." Maribel laughs, patting Santana's arm. "There's chicken in the kitchen, can I make you a plate?"

"I'm fine. Thanks, Ma."

"I'm going to head home then…" She shifts her weight between her feet, looking pointedly at Santana.

"You don't have to. You came all the way down here, so you can stay if you want."

"I'm okay, sweetheart. I'll talk to you tomorrow about Christmas Day?"

"Yeah, fine." Santana nods. "Thanks again for…you know."

"Any time, baby girl, you know that."

Maribel says goodbye to Brittany and Liam as they come back into the living room, and Santana sighs heavily, making room in her chair for Liam to scramble up beside her. It's a weird sense of deja vu for her, knowing they've done this before, knowing Liam say with Max and held him for the first time in this same chair.

"Can I hold my brother now?" Liam asks, clapping his hands excitedly.

"He's…" Santana pauses, trying to choose her words carefully. "Right now, Sir, I want to let him sleep, okay?"

"I can hold him sleeping. I'm good at holding Max sleeping and he's the same."

"Liam." Brittany steps closer to the chair, squeezing his little hand. "This is all very new for Oliver. How about we watch him sleep for a little while, and then you help me get Max up from his nap?"

"But what about baby Ollie? I never held him before."

"Baby Ollie is very delicate right now. Let's give him a little while to adjust, okay? Remember what I told you about his head?"

"Mama." Liam looks up at Brittany. "I never touch a baby's head, it's against the rules."

"You're right." Brittany smiles at him, just as Max cries over the monitor. "It is, but that rule is extra important with Oliver. Come on, come with me and let's get Max down so he can see who came home."

Santana sits with Oliver as Brittany and Liam go upstairs. She can hear them still talking about Oliver over the monitor when they get into the bedroom, and Santana feels terrible about it. Liam has been nothing but gentle with Max, and she knows he would never hurt Oliver, but right now, she's so protective of this delicate little baby, that she just can't handle the stress of it.

For most of the night, Santana sits with her boys and with Brittany. Max and Oliver nurse together, and Liam watches so intently. Though Santana knows he's itching to hold Oliver, he doesn't ask again. Instead, he shows the babies his trains. He lays beside the Christmas tree and talks about Santa, he listens as Brittany reads to them all from their big Christmas story treasury, and he goes to bed without hassle, when he's told it's time.

Once Liam is down, Brittany helps Santana bring the babies up to their bedroom. She nurses them one last time, and they fall asleep in her arms, little pajama clad feet tangling with each other. Brittany takes them then, and settles them side by side in the bassinet for the first time. Before Santana goes to wash up for bed, she looks in, glad that Brittany put Oliver so his shunt isn't on the same side as Max's head, glad that they both seem to be resting easy, and not feeling crowded by the presence of their brother.

After brushing her teeth and scrubbing her face, Santana stares at the pill bottles on the bathroom counter. Briefly, she recognizes that they aren't really working the greatest right now, but she swallows them with water from the faucet, before going back to the bedroom and pulling on clean underwear and a long t-shirt. Brittany is already in bed when she's finished, and Santana crawls in beside her, laying on her back and looking up at the ceiling.

"Santana?"

"What the fuck is wrong with me, Brittany." Santana continues to stare straight above her, her voice flat and emotionless. "He's home."

"I…I don't know." Brittany's voice softens, and she feels her roll over to look at her. "What can I do?"

"I really have no idea. I thought I would be better when he got here, and when I wasn't worrying about which of our kids I was spending time with. I had all three of them tonight, and I felt nothing but this sick sense of fear that something was going to happen. It's fucking Christmas Eve in three hours, I got my wish, and still…"

"This might not be what you want to hear—" Brittany begins, and Santana shivers when her fingers find the crook of her elbow. "But you've been back on your meds for two weeks, and if they're not helping right now, maybe you need to talk to your psychiatrist."

"I've been on the same dose for ten years, Brittany. They don't just suddenly stop working."

"You know that's not true, Santana."

"Why are you condescending to me right now?"

"I'm not trying to condescend to you. I'm concerned about you. I feel like we've been talking in circles for two weeks, and I'm not getting through to you."

"Well sorry it's been a little fucking stressful around here." Santana sits back up, and pulls the covers off of herself. "I'm going downstairs."

"Santana. You can't run away from this."

Santana ignores Brittany, and she walks out the bedroom door and down the stairs. She goes into the kitchen, and she stares at the faucet, before she fills a water glass, and brings it into the living room with her. Wrapping a blanket around herself, she sits down on the floor beside the dark Christmas tree. The weight of everything seems to crush her, and she begins to cry into the blanket, trying to muffle the sound of her tears. She sits like that for a long while, unable to control herself, until she feels strong arms wrap around her, and she buries her face in Brittany's chest, incapable of pushing her away.

"I don't know what's wrong with me. I have you, I have Liam, I have both of the babies finally home. I have everything I never even dared to want, and I just can't even feel happy. My chest hurts and I can't make it stop."

"I know you don't want to hear it, honey, but—"

"I know." Santana nods. "I know. I missed my meds for three days when they were born and I don't know if it messed me up or what. I just really thought I wouldn't have to talk to her and change things. I thought when he got home I magically wouldn't feel this way any more."

"It's just one thing." Brittany strokes her hair, and Santana calms a little under her touch. "It doesn't change a chemical imbalance."

"I'm so tired of these chemical imbalances. If it's not one thing, it's another. I just want to be normal already. I just want to have a nice Christmas with our sons."

"It's just Christmas, Santana. We'll have so many more of them."

"I know, but…it's their first one. It's our first one married. It's the first one where we're a whole family. I just…"

"You're putting a lot of pressure on yourself." Brittany murmurs, and Santana knows she's trying not to negate her feelings. "Why don't you see if Jean can see you tomorrow? I know adjusting your meds won't be a quick fix, but at least maybe you can get on the road to it."

"Yeah. I know." Santana nods into her chest. "I'll do that."

When Santana finally gets back into bed, her sleep is restless, and interrupted by three separate feedings of the twins. In the morning, she's groggy and anxious, but she calls her psychiatrist, and she manages to get an appointment in the afternoon, despite it being Christmas Eve. Though Brittany offers to drive her, Santana shakes off the offer, insistent that it's too cold to bring the kids out, and also, because she's been so wrapped up in everything else that she hasn't even found time to get Brittany a Christmas gift.

She kisses the boys and Brittany goodbye before she goes out into the cold to hail a cab, and she takes time to reflect on her feelings and anxieties. It feels like a cesspool most of the time, but she has to do it. She has to sort out everything that goes on in her tangled brain, and she has to make sense of her feelings before she can articulate them to Jean. She knows the hormones have knocked her off track, but she knows it's more than that, she knows it's bigger than that, and by the time she gets out of the cab in front of the office, she thinks maybe she'll be able to explain things to her.

As she expected, Jean adjusts her medication. Though she's been going to the psychiatrist once a month for as long as she's been medicated, Jean wants to see her next week. Though she's sighs at how disappointed she is in herself, Santana also feels like the next visit is some sort of lifeline, a rope she can grab onto while she's being pulled under by the grip of sadness. It frustrates her, that Brittany and her sons can't be enough to pull her out, but for their sake, at this point, she's willing to try anything.

The stores are crowded when Santana goes to shop, and it makes her anxious. She hates that she feels this way, but she just wants to buy Brittany a damn Christmas gift and go home. It makes her sick to her stomach that she feels no emotion behind it, but she just can't do anything to fight it. After an hour of deliberating over nothing, Santana finally settles on a necklace with leaf charms of the boys' three initials, and she has it wrapped by the girl behind the counter before she trudges outside where it's started to snow.

She has to pick up her medication, and she waits in line at the drug store, frustrated by how many people are still out. When she gets home, she sees, as usual, Liam's face pressed to the window—since she'd texted Brittany that she was on her way, Santana assumes he's been waiting for her. She unlocks the door, and he pops up and down, fully clad in Santa pajamas and a hat.

"Mommy Noodle! Mommy Noodle! Mommy Noodle! Me and Mama made a surprise for you!"

"You did, huh?" She forces a smile, and tries to to wince when he hugs her a little too hard and aggravates her incision.

"Come see the babies! Come see the babies, okey?"

"Okay, Liam, let me just take my boots off, and then I'll come up, okay?"

"Okey! I'm gonna tell Mama!"

Liam runs out of the room, and Santana gets her shoes off. She takes her time hanging her snow-damp coat in the closet, and climbs the stairs. When she gets into the bedroom, Liam is still bouncing up and down, and Brittany is in gingerbread pajamas, leaning over the bed, cooing down at Max and Oliver. For just a moment, Santana stands in the doorway and watches the four of them, feeling the strangest sense of disconnect, and wishing that simply walking through the door with bridge the cavernous divide she feels between real life and the things that go on inside of her head.

"They're elfs, Mommy Noodle! I'm Santa, and Maxie and Ollie are the elfs!"

"Say hi, Mommy." Brittany lifts the boys one at a time off the bed, beaming as she holds one in each arm.

"Britt." Santana sucks in a breath, watching the way her wife is trying to make things special for her, even while she feels like she's falling apart. "This is really cute."

"I know it's early for pajamas, but Liam was excited, and we thought we'd surprise you."

"Put yours on, Mommy Noodle! Then we can all be silly in p-jamas together!"

Santana concedes to Liam's request, letting Brittany take the kids downstairs while she changes into the new pajamas that match her wife's. When she's dressed, she goes downstairs, and finds Brittany laying the twins on a blanket beneath the Christmas tree, while Liam carefully guards them from Lord Tubbington's intrigue. She breathes in the smell of ham and potatoes, and she realizes just how much Brittany has done to let her sit back and relax, without worrying about trying to keep up with the holiday expectations.

"We have to do the star! We have to do the star! Mama said because Ollie is home, we can put it on the tree now!"

"Give me just a minute with Mommy, okay, Li? Then we'll do the star, and take some pictures of all my best boys."

"Okey! I'll get Percy for the pictures!" Liam jumps up and runs into the playroom, while Santana keeps watching Max and Oliver, blinking up at the bright lights above them.

"Is this okay?" Brittany asks softly, swatting away the cat.

"Yeah. It's nice. I'm sorry I just…couldn't do the big Christmas Eve thing this year."

"Don't be. We'll go to your mom's tomorrow, my parents will come down in the afternoon. A low key night with the kids tonight is what we all need. How was it with Jean?"

"It was…" Santana looks down, embarrassed. "She changed things, and I'm going back next week."

"How do you feel about that?" Brittany kisses her head, letting her lips linger there.

"I honestly don't even know." She shakes her head. "I guess I'll tell you when I see how I feel in a week or so."

"I'm back! I'm back!" Liam bolts in, holding three trains. "I brought Daisy and Edward for my brothers!"

"They'll like that a lot." Santana stands, then bends over as best as she can to lift up the babies, accepting help from Brittany, who puts them both in her arms.

"Come on, Liam." Brittany lifts him into her arms, and reaches for the tree star with her free hand. "Help us out the star on the tree."