Carina's Good News

It had been days since Maya had been home. As sometimes happened, her and Carina's shifts had been consecutive rather than overlapping. Not wanting to go so long without sleeping in her wife's arms, Maya had spent the night before her shift at the hospital. Being so close with her wife's boss had its benefits. Chief Bailey had snuck her into the gallery to watch in awe as Carina oversaw the wellbeing of a baby still in utero during what was known as "the intern appy." It was a Grey Sloan tradition where one of the new surgical interns would be selected to assist on an appendectomy before the end of their very first day. Now, normally the recipient of said procedure would be low risk. A pregnant woman was far from low risk, quite the opposite as pregnancy fell under the category of high risk. However, part of being a teaching hospital was to evolve as time went on. Following the failure of the Webber Method, a method that had almost led to the overall disbandment of Grey Sloan's entire residency program, Bailey had been looking for a way to give more responsibility to the residents while still maintaining the correct level of supervision at all times. Allowing them to take point on surgeries with more high-risk recipients would give them the opportunity to become more comfortable in the O.R., more confident in their surgical skills, without putting them in a position where ordinary complications that they were ill equipped to handle by themselves could lead to death. This way, the residents were placed in charge of situations where those complications were more likely to occur, but if and when they did occur, an attending was always right beside them to take over. Not only would it set them up to feel more comfortable and confident going forward, but it would give them the experience that they needed to become equipped to handle those ordinary complications.

The whole idea had actually been Ben's suggestion. Maya knew this, because he had shown up to the station one morning with a pep in his step. The team had spent the day placing bets on what had him so giddy, from something Pru related to something in the bedroom. Eventually Andy had gotten impatient, and just asked him.

"The PRT," he'd said, and there had been a brief moment where they'd wondered if he had gotten permission to bring it back. That wasn't the case. "Part of the reason that I thought of it to begin with was because of this experience I had more than once during my surgical residency. As firefighters, we do not have the necessary training to do anything more than damage control. The same thing is true for surgical residents. Unless they are assisting a higher-level surgeon, they aren't allowed to perform major procedures. Sometimes damage control isn't enough." He then proceeded to tell them all about the urban legend of Seattle Grace Mercy Death, and that despite the fact that it was just lore, Grey Sloan did have a tendency to attract disaster. More than once during his residency, he had found himself at the center of one of those disasters, alone, with a patient who needed more than damage control. Each time he had attempted to do whatever he need to, to save their life, and each time his job had been in jeopardy as a result. He explained how one of those instances had ended in tragedy, because despite what training he did have, he had not been prepared to perform the proper life saving measures on his own.

"Miranda always comes home with so much to tell me about, so much to rant about. Being the chief of surgery at a hospital is never easy, but at a teaching hospital it is often near impossible. The past few months she kept going on and on about how she had to save the residency program. They had been let off the hook for what happened with Dr. Schmitt, but she needed a new method to replace Webber's. It got me thinking about damage control, and I realized that, especially with the current doctor shortage, we need as many surgeons as possible that can perform those live saving measures, even if they are not attendings. We need surgical residents that know what to do when there are complications."

Maya had gone home later that day to find her wife in a mood quite different from the one that Ben had been in. Carina was hysterical, pacing back and forth across their apartment, arms swinging around her as she talked animatedly in Italian.

"Bambina, non crederai a quello che ci ha detto Bailey alla riunione dei capi questa mattina." (Baby, you will not believe what Bailey told us at the meeting of Chiefs this morning.)

"What did she say?" Maya had asked, amused. She'd known before Ben had even finished his spiel that Carina was going to be far from on board. Carina had not given Maya an answer to her question, instead firing off a list of reservations.

"Non abbiamo imparato nulla da quello che è successo con Schmitt? No! Non possiamo fidarci di loro! Non permetterò a un bambino chirurgo di avvicinarsi a mia madre. L'intervento chirurgico su un paziente che sta ospitando un bambino è già abbastanza difficile senza che i bambini chirurghi lo eseguano." (Did we learn nothing from what happened with Schmitt? No! We can not trust them! I am not allowing a baby surgeon anywhere near my mothers. Surgery on a patient who is housing a baby is hard enough without baby surgeons performing it.)

"It was Ben's idea. He told the team about it."

"Mio dio. Warren. Of course it was Warren. That man can never stay in his own lane," Carina had huffed. Maya had smiled. She was right about that. The 'dad' of their team had begun his working life as an anesthesiologist.

"Carina, I understand why this is scary for you. Your whole job as an OB/GYN is to be an advocate for your patient and their child, to make sure that they are put in the best position for a healthy pregnancy that will lead to a healthy delivery that will lead to a healthy baby. Having surgery already puts that at risk, and I can only imagine how nerve racking it is to think of that procedure being performed by a less experienced surgeon." Maya had stepped towards her wife, taking each of her hands. "Would you like to hear something that I think might make it easier?" Carina had nodded, her eyes meeting Maya's.

"Si."

"Ben told us a story. It was about when he was a resident, before we moved back to Seattle. He was on his way to take a pregnant patient to get a CT when there was an emergency at the hospital, and they got trapped in the hallway. They were unable to leave, and no one was able to come in. After a few minutes the patient's vitals began to go downhill, and he did not know why because they still had no idea what was wrong with her. As you know, according to protocol, he was just supposed to give her CPR until he was able to get her to an operating room with an attending. Well, Ben could tell that if that was all he did, she and her baby would die. He attempted to perform an exploratory procedure, and when that failed, he tried a C-section so that he could at least save the baby." Carina had heard about it. Arizona had called her in a panic when April had gone into labor. She had been petrified that even though the circumstances were wildly different, something would go terribly wrong because Warren did not have the best track record with babies. "Now of course, that was a unique set of circumstances. However, it was still an occurrence where the life of a mother and her child were lost when that could have been avoided. If Ben had been adequately trained in fetal medicine, on what to do in a situation where there were complications with a pregnancy, maybe he would have been able to save them."

"Perhaps. Or maybe the same thing would have happened, and it would have been even harder on Warren given that he should have been prepared," Carina had pointed out.

"We will never know. However, you also won't know what difference this new protocol could make if you don't give it a shot. This is not the Webber Method. You will be there the whole time monitoring the baby, and there will be another attending on standby just in case."

Maya figured that part of the reason why Bailey had been so willing to sneak her into that particular surgery was because she had been the one who had convinced Carina to agree to it in the first place. Whatever the reason, Maya had been glad to be there. She had been delighted to get the opportunity to watch her wife in her element, as well as proud of her for going out of her comfort zone so that they could do a trial run of the new method. After the surgery, which had been a success, Maya and Carina had ordered takeout from their favorite casual restaurant and eaten in the caf with Amelia and Kai, who was visiting from Minnesota. Then they'd gone to their bench and watched the sunset over the water, whilst eating cannoli that they had saved from dinner. Then they had gone to bed. It had been a nice change of pace from the constant stress that came with the process of trying to have a baby. Getting pregnant was hard enough without the added steps of egg harvesting and sperm implantation. After the news spread about the first baby conceived without sperm, Maya had even made a few jokes about waiting until that option became available to the general public. Carina had reminded her that by the time that was possible, they would not have any eggs left, and would likely already be dead. Maya had mumbled something about the in vitro process sucking the life out of her anyways, to which Carina had given her a sad smile, and pulled her into a hug complete with a kiss to the forehead.

While Carina had been in the bunks at the station a few times, had even spent the night there on occasion, Maya had never seen the inside of an on-call room. From the very first night of her very first shift, when Carina had spent ten minutes on the floor of one in Johns Hopkins to the many she had slept in since, both in Baltimore, and in Seattle once they'd moved back, Maya had never been able to picture exactly what her wife's temporary living space looked like. Since coming to Grey Sloan, where she had an office, Carina had often found herself choosing her couch over the metal frame of a bunk bed. However, she sometimes grew tired of waking up on the floor, having rolled over in the middle of the night. That particular night, though, they were forced to go for an on-call room given that the couch was barely big enough for Carina by herself, let alone her and Maya. Ergo, Maya had finally gotten the chance to see what one looked like.

It was now almost four days later, and Maya was entering their apartment for the first time since she'd gone to meet Carina at the hospital. She was equally as nervous as she was excited to see her wife. Carina's most recent implantation of embryos had been a week before, meaning that if it took, it had been long enough that a pregnancy test would show up positive. Maya was not sure if Carina had taken one yet— she had been at the scene of a fire all night and hadn't been able to check her phone. If she had, then she knew, and if she had waited, then that was the first thing that they would do. Either way, Maya was about to find out, after months of trying, if they were finally expecting.

"Carina!" she called out gently. There was a possibility that Carina was still asleep, but Maya doubted it. Usually Carina set an alarm on mornings that Maya got back from a shift, wanting to kiss her hello as soon as she walked through the door. Maya was the same way when it was the other way around. Physical touch was one of both of their love languages. This was good, because they were both equally touchy feely. However, it made not being in the same space as each other a lot harder. Due to the nature of their jobs, they often found themselves apart for prolonged stretches. As a result, they were even more desperate to be physically connected to each other in some way whenever they were together.

When Carina emerged from the bedroom, she was still dressed in her pajamas, and her hair was stuck to the side of her face like she had just woken up and had been sweating in her sleep. Her skin tone was paler than usual. She looked almost green. Neither of them had been sick in well over a year, the Covid protocols at each of their workplaces having been so strict that they prevented the spread of other illnesses as well. Nevertheless, if the look of her wife was any indication, it appeared as if the streak was over. Maya wouldn't be surprised if Carina had forgotten all about taking a pregnancy test, instead spending her morning with her head in the toilet. She did not even consider the other possible cause for Carina's wilted appearance, the cause that would all but eliminate the need for a pregnancy test altogether. Looking back on this moment later on, Maya would determine that it had been painfully obvious, and she was a little stupid for not going there. However, at the time, her first and only thought was that Carina had picked up a stomach bug.

"Oh no, are you sick?" Maya approached Carina and ran the back of her hand over her forehead in an attempt to check for a fever. Her body temperature felt slightly elevated, but not enough to be feverish.

"Not sick. Well, not exactly," Carina replied. She gave Maya a look in an effort to convey the true meaning of her words. Maya was still clueless.

"What do you mean not exactly?" Carina chuckled, realizing that she was going to have to give her wife a more obvious hint. Undoubtedly, she was tired from putting out fires and her brain wasn't at its prime.

"It is a certain type of sickness, bella. Because of its name, there is this universal equivoco (misconception) that it only happens during the morning. However, I am an expert in the field, and now I also speak from personal experience when I say that at least for the first trimester, it has this sneaky tendency to last all day." Maya's eyes opened wide in realization. A smile began to inch its way onto her face.

"You're pregnant?"

"Si," Carina nodded, "Took a test last night. Not that I needed one. I have barely been able to leave the bathroom since I got home."

"It took? You're pregnant?" Maya repeated. She was in shock, in desperate need of confirmation. It had been such a long road to get there that Maya was worried that she was being pranked. She knew that Carina would never do that, but she wasn't quite sure that she trusted her own ears. Maybe Carina had said something else, and she had just heard what she wanted to hear. Carina smiled, lifting her hands to cup Maya's face.

"Maya, we are going to be mammas. We are going to have a little bambina or bambino of our own." As they looked into each other's eyes, they soon both began to cry. Tears of relief that the exhausting process was finally over, tears of apprehension of what was to come, but mostly tears of joy— of pure unadulterated happiness. In less than a year they were going to have a child. A child that was all their own.