An Axe to the Stomach

When Maya had first come to her about her plans to become a firefighter, Carina had been wary. She understood why Maya was doing it. Still feeling the responsibility that she had felt as a kid to protect her brother, and thinking that she had failed, she believed that she owed something to those who had stepped up in her place. It had been firefighters that had saved Mason from death on various occasions. Carina understood, and she knew that Maya needed to follow through. It did not make it any easier to think about the love of her life running towards danger every day, especially when she was so hyper aware of the risks that came simply from living a normal life. The final semester of med school included a week spent shadowing trauma doctors in the emergency room. Carina had witnessed everything from a paper cut that wouldn't stop bleeding to a honeymooning couple impaled together on a dinosaur skeleton that had fallen from the ceiling during their visit to the Maryland Science Center. One of the bones had sliced straight through the man's aorta. What was supposed to be the beginning of their lives together had ended in tragedy, leaving the woman a widow before she'd even gotten the chance to be a wife. If turning the page of a book could result in severe anemia, a routine trip to a museum in death, what business did people have actively running in to burning buildings?

However, as a doctor, whether it be one who frequently saved lives or not, Carina knew the answer to her own question. Somebody had to do it. Somebody had to be willing to risk their own life to save another. Maya had one insecurity that would never go away, no matter how much she changed, how much wiser she became. More than anything, she did not want to turn into her father. Even if that meant overcompensating by being that somebody— the somebody that risked their own life to save another. Carina could not deny Maya that opportunity no matter how much it scared her. It scared Maya too. They had talked about it. There had been a time in Maya's life, before she'd met Carina, when she wasn't scared of death. In fact, the thought of closing her eyes and drifting up past the clouds had brought her comfort. It had gotten her through some bad days, her worst days. Maya no longer felt that way and hadn't for well over a decade. She wanted to grow old with Carina, to create a family of their own and be the parents that they had always longed for. But she also wanted to ensure that their neighbors, far and wide, were able to do the same.

"Who else is going to rescue unsuspecting Baltimore residents from falling skeletons?" she'd said, attempting to break the tension that had been present ever since the words, "I want to be a firefighter." Carina had laughed, and then bit the inside her lip apprehensively.

"I know that you think you need to do this, and I will support you no matter what you decide. I just want you to know that if you were to decide not to, you would not be any less of a good person. It would not make you your papà," she'd paused, looking into Maya's eyes, "You do not need to put out any fires to be a hero, perché bambina, you are already my hero every day just by being here." Maya had sighed, giving her a sad smile, a stray tear rolling down her face.

"I love you, Carina. So much. You saying that means more to me than you will ever know. Even so, I need to do this. This is what I am destined to do. I haven't always known it, but I do now, and I cannot just ignore it."

"I was worried you were going to say that."

"I'm sorry."

"Oh Maya, you do not have to be sorry. Just promise me that you will do every thing you can to come home to me every night."

"I promise. I promise, my love, no matter how big the fire is, it will not get in the way of our life together."

"Bene."

Carina had made her own promise that day. She'd made a promise to herself that she would never take another day, another moment with her girl for granted. Maya could say a hundred times that she wasn't going to die, but it wasn't really something that she could control. If Maya needed to follow a calling that would regularly put her in danger, Carina was determined to ensure that they still got their happy ending. Even if it came sooner rather than later.

She had just finished an emergency C-section, and all that she could think about was the butter croissant that was waiting for her in her locker. Carina made it a habit to eat three meals a day, as often as her schedule would allow. She was on her feet a lot of the time and being well fed made that considerably easier. However, she had been working a 48 hour shift, and had been called into surgery before she'd gotten the chance to eat breakfast. Once Carina was sure that her team could finish closing up, she went to go scrub out. Dr. Laurier, the chief of OB, and her boss was standing by the far door, the one that connected the scrub room to the greater surgical floor. Carina was worried for a brief second that she had done something wrong, but Dr. Laurier looked too calm for that. There was probably just another patient that she wanted Carina to see. Carina may have been the hospital's newest OB attending, but she was already the best that they had.

"Ciao, Doctor. The surgery went well. Gracie has a beautiful, healthy bambina. 7 pounds, 4 ounces—"

"Carina," Laurier interrupted her. Carina stopped what she was doing, the soap slipping from her hands and hitting the bottom of the sink with a thud. Dr. Laurier had called her by her first name.

"Dr. Laurier, is there something wrong?"

"It's been really windy today. Fourteen miles per hour, unprecedented in Baltimore." Dr. Laurier said instead, and Carina wondered if she was stalling, in which case whatever it was, it was bad. "A grill in Riverside Park caught fire." Carina was starting to feel uneasy. Something was definitely going on.

"Così? That happens all the time, no?"

"Yes. It does. But with the wind speeds, they were unable to put it out fast enough. It spread to a nearby high rise, causing the whole corner to go up in flames." Suddenly Carina knew exactly where the conversation was going, and she felt sick.

"Where is she?" she asked, stepping forward, preparing to take off at a sprint as soon as she got an answer, "Where's Maya?"

"Carina." Dr. Laurier placed a hand on her arm, anticipating what Carina planned to do.

"What!" Then she gasped and let out a stifled sob. "Is she dead? Oh mio dio, la mia ragazza è morta?" (Oh my god, is my girlfriend dead?) Dr. Laurier's eyes bulged, and she quickly shook her head.

"No. Heavens, no. She's alive. I am just not sure when you will be able to see her. Maya suffered extensive damage to her abdomen, and her leg is fractured in three separate places. Dr. Gordon and Dr. Vivek just took her to surgery. Dr. Gordon is confident that he can fix the damage, although he may have to remove her spleen. Due to Maya's prior ACL injury in the same leg, Dr. Vivek is predicting a longer recovery time, but is also confident that he will be able to fix the breaks," she explained. Carina finally allowed herself to breath. Maya was alive. She was in bad shape, but she was stable, and she was going to be okay.

"She wasn't burned?"

"No. She was on the roof. The bur holes of firefighting, I believe." Carina nodded. Maya had talked about it before. Ventilation was one of her favorite duties— going up on the roof with an axe and taking out her frustrations on the shingles. "Anyways, I guess the roof was not as stable as they initially thought, and she fell through. Then her axe fell in after her." Carina cringed at the image that created in her head. She could have gone without picturing her girlfriend with an axe in her stomach.

Dr. Laurier accompanied Carina to the attending lounge to wait for Maya to be out of surgery. Carina had wanted to go sit in the gallery, but Dr. Laurier had advised against that, telling her that she did not want to think about Maya in that way, as just another body on the O.R. table. Dr. Laurier placed a mug of coffee in front of her, and a hand on her shoulder.

"Call your brother," she said. Carina had confided in Dr. Laurier after a particularly hard case a couple of months before. Her laboring patient's husband had been hit by a car on the way to the hospital. Carina had gone to the E.R. for an update, and immediately she had been frozen to the spot. The guy was the spitting image of Andrew down to his cleft chin. At the end of the day, Dr. Laurier had found her crying in the basement hallway, where she often went when she needed to be alone. After some convincing, Carina had told her what had happened, and how with everything that was going on with Mason, she was particularly sensitive to the thought of something happening to Andrew. That she missed him and hadn't seen him in person in over a year, and that, as unrealistic as it was, for a fleeting moment when she'd seen her patient's husband in that trauma room, she'd wondered if it actually was Andrew, and that they were so out of touch with each other that he had a wife and baby on the way that she was completely unaware of. Dr. Laurier had just sat there and listened, every once in a while nodding, and giving Carina's shoulder an encouraging squeeze. When Carina was done, Dr. Laurier had looked at her, smiled, and told her to go home and get some sleep so she'd be ready for her shift the next morning. Carina hadn't been entirely sure that Dr. Laurier even remembered it until now.

"I will give you some privacy. Page me if you need anything, okay?" Carina nodded, barely registering what Dr. Laurier had said before she was gone, and she was alone with her coffee and her croissant. Carina could not quite believe that it had only been half an hour since she had been standing in the O.R. fantasizing about the very croissant that now sat in front of her. It felt like it had been a lifetime. She no longer felt hungry enough to eat it and debated throwing it out. Instead she pulled her phone out of her pocket and called Andrew.

"Ciao. Siamo sommersi in questo momento. Posso richiamarti più tardi?" (We are swamped right now. Could I call you back later?)

"Andrea." Carina's voice broke, alerting him that something was wrong.

"Carina, stai bene? Cosa sta succedendo?" (Are you okay? What's going on?) he asked.

"Maya's in the hospital."

Maya made it through surgery with no complications and was already well on her way to making a full recovery. With the addition of ten stitches in her stomach and a medal rod in her leg, and minus a spleen, she was the same Maya that had gone to work the afternoon before. She had been moved into a room in the ICU, and Carina was sitting beside her bed, holding her hand, waiting for her to wake up. She knew that Maya's face was covered with an oxygen mask because she had been completely under during the surgery, and not because she was unable to breathe on her own, but it still made her anxious. An oxygen mask was a step below a ventilator, and Carina never wanted to see her girlfriend on ventilator. She had seen way too many of the hospital's past patients go on ventilators and never come off of them, whether it be because they died, or became vegetables, or just never woke up. That was her biggest fear. No matter if it had been fairly routine or not, Maya had undergone surgery, and there was always a slight chance with even the easiest surgeries that the patient would not wake up.

"Thank you for keeping your promise to me, bella. I know that it isn't always the easiest promise to keep. I also know that you probably did not sleep a lot last night, and that you need the rest even more now, and that you're probably in a lot of pain, but I'm still going to need you to open your eyes for me. I need to see with my own eyes that you're really alive." Carina felt herself start to cry again. One her tears dropped off the bottom of her chin onto Maya's hand, leaving a puddle in its wake. Almost immediately Maya's fingers closed around Carina's, and her eyes opened, darting around. Her other hand shot up to her face, grabbing at the mask. Carina sniffled, wiping her cheeks with the back of her palm, and then helped her remove it.

"I'm alive. See, words coming out of my mouth. Sign of life," Maya said. Her dry throat caused her voice to be raspier than usual, and as inappropriate as it was given the circumstances, Carina had to admit that it made her feel a little hot and bothered.

"You heard me?"

"Sí. I heard your voice, and I fought to go towards it, and then I opened my eyes and was here."

"Do you remember what happened?"

"A collapsed roof, and an axe to the stomach. Also, quite a few cracks that didn't sound too good when I landed on my leg." Carina nodded, not excited to tell Maya that she would not be able to walk for the foreseeable future. The torn ACL had been hard enough for her, and that was back when she was already doing nothing due to having just completed her ultimate goal. "Do you know where my phone is?" Carina took it out of the ziplock bag that Maya's teammates had dropped off with her personal effects and gave it to her. Maya pulled up a picture and showed it to Carina. It had been taken at the scene; Maya was lying on a gurney in front of the aid car, smiling wide, double thumbs up, axe handle sticking out of her abdomen, leg bent beside her in a way that a leg should never be bent. Carina shook her head aggressively and swatted the phone out of her line of sight.

"Nope. Nope. No." Carina shook her whole body in an attempt to forget what she had just seen.

"I thought the kids might enjoy it one day," Maya explained. Carina couldn't help but to smile. As much as she wished that she'd never seen the photo, the reasons behind it were so wholesome, and Maya was still the cutest even with an axe handle sticking out of her abdomen.

"You are very adorable even when you are trying to traumatize me for life."

"So what's the prognosis?" Maya asked, deciding that she was ready to hear what she was dreading to hear. Carina sighed, and sat back down, taking Maya's hand in her own again.

"The axe severed your spleen, so they had to take it out. That is fine though. You can live a perfectly healthy and long life without a spleen. You have stitches now that will stay in for about three weeks before you have to come back and get them taken out. Those cracks that you heard when you landed on your leg was it fracturing in three places. They set it, but they had to put in a metal rod because the break was so extensive. Also, because you tore your ACL in that same leg, that makes the recovery longer. You won't be able to walk for at least two months," Carina repeated what Dr. Gordon and Dr. Vivek had told her when they'd finished operating. Maya did not say anything at first. She just sat there, staring straight ahead, not meeting Carina's eye. Then, finally, she turned and looked at Carina. There were tears in her eyes, and she was chewing on the inside of her lip. Carina brought their conjoined hands to her mouth and pressed a kiss to Maya's knuckle.

"Do you remember that month during your second year of residency when you were seriously considering transferring to Seattle, because after the plane crash, Arizona was struggling with the loss of her leg, and you wanted to be there for her?" Maya asked. Carina nodded, tightening the grasp that she had on Maya's hand, absently tracing over the IV port with her thumb. She wondered if this was Maya's roundabout way of addressing how she felt about the rod in her leg. "Well, at the time I put out feelers at a few stations in the area so that were we to end up moving, I would have a job. I guess one of the captains I talked to must have held onto my name for the future, because the other day I was offered a job as a Lieutenant at Station 19 in Seattle. They seem to be pretty desperate, because on top of the promotion, there's a hiring bonus, and they would cover our moving costs."

"Wow, bella, I bet that makes you feel good. I am proud of you." Carina studied her girlfriend's face, and then she realized. "Oh, are you trying to tell me you want to take it? Maya, you just got done having major surgery. You cannot even walk for the next two months."

"I know it sounds crazy but hear me out. This accident is exactly why I should take this job, for a few reasons. The first is that being a Lieutenant puts me one step closer to having a leadership role at the scene rather than an active role. The second is that should I ever end up in the hospital again, I do not want you to have to deal with it all alone. Andrew and Arizona are both in Seattle. Plus, I will be spending all of my time at home for the foreseeable future. Packing the house would give me something to do."

"I- Maya, I will admit being back in Seattle, being near to Andrea and Arizona, and even my papà sounds nice. And everything that you just said, minus the packing, because what you will be doing is resting, is true. But what am I supposed to do when we get there? I have not even begun to apply anywhere."

"Andrew is always telling us about how cool his boss at Grey Sloan is. You could go to her and beg for a job. Carina, you just completed a residency and a fellowship at a world-renowned hospital and you are now their best OB/GYN attending. You passed your boards with flying colors. She would be crazy to say no," Maya pointed out, "Or, you are always telling me about that thing with orgasms. You could focus on research for a while. I am sure that Grey Sloan has an MRI machine and plenty of potential subjects to masturbate in it." Carina gave her a look.

"I doubt that even if she is as great as Andrea says, that Dr. Bailey will let a virtual stranger come into her hospital and conduct research about orgasms. As I am always telling you two, gli americani sono puriti (Americans are prudes)." She looked up at Maya, her lips coming together in a smile, "I am happy to hear that you actually listen to me when I am talking about my research ideas. You often look as if your eyes have glazed over, and you are off in your own mondo (world) of flames and rescuing kittens from trees."

"Of course I am listening, beautiful. Your brain never ceases to amaze me and make me fall even more in love with you. Also, we do not actually rescue that many kittens from trees."

"Wow you must really want to take this job."

"I resent the implication that I am only complimenting you so that you will agree to move back to Seattle. But yes. If for nothing more than that my current teammates are never going to let me live down sticking myself with my own axe." Carina laughed, a laugh that overtook her whole body, causing her head to tip back so far that the top of it touched her chair. Maya smiled from ear to ear. All that she had wanted since she'd woken up with an oxygen mask on her face, and Carina by her bedside was to make Carina laugh. She could only imagine how scary the whole experience had been for her girlfriend, and she wanted her to be able to forget about it, even if only for a second.

"Okay, Maya. We will discuss the possibility of you taking this job. Once you are not in the hospital. As for your teammates' teasing, you can tell them that if they say one word about it, they will have to deal with me."

"Thank you. Now will you please get into this bed with me?"

"Bambina, no. Two hours ago, you had an axe nel tuo stomacco (in your stomach). I do not plan on doing anything that might risk reopening your stitches. I love you and I too would like to be close to you, but you must allow yourself the space to heal, bella." Maya pouted.

"But I had an axe in my stomach, and the only thing that would make me feel better is to cuddle with my girlfriend. You have to do what I want, because the patient is always right." Carina scoffed.

"You are not my patient, and the patient is rarely ever right. Are the people whose house fires you put out right about what they want to do when their house is on fire?"

"Well a lot of the time they try to refuse to leave until they have all of their belongings, but I think that is more the shock factor than anything."

"Hmm. What would happen if you allowed them to do that?"

"They would probably suffer from severe smoke inhalation that could lead to death, and maybe get up to fourth degree burns depending on how big the fire is."

"See. So you should listen to me when I tell you that I am not getting into bed with you for your own wellbeing."

"But I am not your patient," Maya repeated what Carina had said a minute before.

"Si. I am your fidanzata, who is starting to get a little bit frustrated, because you are not taking this seriously," Carina said.

"Damn't, I'm sorry," Maya responded quickly, "I do not mean to be difficult. It has just been long day, and I was so scared when I fell through that roof that it was going to result in me breaking my promise to you, which is why I brought up the job, because I never want to break my promise to you, but I also cannot stop being a firefighter. And now I am rambling, because I am in so much pain, and there's a metal rod in my leg, and I really wish that you could hold me and never let go." Maya huffed in exasperation, attempting to wipe away the tears that fell down her face, but there were too many. Carina's heart hurt. She'd known that Maya would likely break at some point, and that it was necessary for her to get it out, but it was still hard to witness.

"It's okay, Maya. It is okay to cry. Let yourself fall apart. You went through something really scary, and it is okay not to be okay about it." She got up from her chair, and moved closer to the bed, leaning down to press a kiss to Maya's forehead. She took Maya's head in her hands, and kissed her temple, then her cheek, then her jaw, not caring about the tears that she caught with her mouth in the process. "Shhh, you're alright. Stai bene. Va bene."

"Please hold me." Maya said when she'd gotten control of herself again. Carina pondered it for a moment, before nodding.

"Alright, but, Maya, you have to tell me if I am hurting you."

"I will." Carina helped Maya adjust so that there was room next to her. Then she carefully climbed onto the bed, getting situated before wrapping her arm around Maya. Maya curled into her side and nuzzled her head into the crevice between Carina's head and shoulder.

"I can't lose you."

"You won't."

"You can't say that."

"I know." Maya and Carina fell into a troubled silence, surrounded by words unspoken. Carina had ascertained that they would discuss the job offer, but truth be told, she was already on board. She had been on board the second that Maya had mentioned the part about it putting her one step closer to being an administrator, no longer a pawn. Carina wanted to be in the same city as her brother, her best friend, her father, but more importantly, she wanted to be on the same plane of existence as the woman in her arms. If she had learned anything from the thoughts that had swarmed her head when she'd incorrectly jumped to the death conclusion earlier that morning, it was that she did not want to think about a life without Maya. If that meant risking being unemployed, then Carina was okay with that.

"Ti amo," she whispered into Maya's ear, already looking forward to their next journey together, to going back to where it had all begun.