Title: Reaction
Chapter Title: He
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Coupling: Mark/Lexie
Rating: PG-13/T
Words: 1,020
Author's Note: Completely ignores the events of the episode "Holidaze" and beyond.
He watches for even breathing like a hawk. The rise and fall of her chest in a steady rhythm means she's still here with them and that she's not going anywhere. So he can ignore the patch of white dressing over her tiny belly, the clump of intestines outside her belly, and the yellow tube threaded through her nose as long as her chest continues to rise and fall rhythmically.
Up. Down. Up. Down.
He abhors the NICU, especially now that she's here, because it smells like hand sanitizer, tears, and, worst of all, death. The smell alone makes him jumpy and nervous; the sight makes him nauseous. She's so tiny and frail, and when he works up the nerve to reach in and touch her, her little clinched fist barely unfurls to cover one third of his pinky. He can't tell if her little tuff of brown hair is soft under his gloved hair nor can he feel if her skin is silk smooth like her mother's.
He understands the need for a sterile environment; the incubator's plastic bubble separating father and daughter also separates her from infection and certain death. But it's hard because he wants to be a good dad, and good dads are able to hold their daughters and shield them from the world. But, most of all, he wants her to know how much he loves her because she's perfect.
Her little pursed lips, her tuff of black hair, and her nose remind him of her mother's; her cheekbones and tiny ears are all him. So despite the gastroschisis – the large and small intestine growing outside her body – she's everything and then some to him. Perfection in a bubble.
Perfection, though, that lacks a name. He wants to name for the mother he wished he had and the mother she wishes was still around. She refuses to pick one for some reason unknown to him, and therefore 'perfection in a bubble' is being called Baby Grey-Sloan.
And he longs to give her a name because he cannot bear to lose another nameless child.
He keeps repeating the ninety percent survival rate over and over again in his head, but the thought of losing her lingers in the back of his mind.
His silent mantra is broken, though, by the gasp to his right. His girlfriend hasn't seen her since she caught a peak of her slippery and slimy body being rushed from between her legs to the awaiting NICU team other than the three pictures Carolyn Shepard managed to snap of the baby before she was wheeled into surgery.
He tears his gaze away from his daughter to look at his girlfriend; he wants to see her reaction first hand. But her reaction leaves him less than satisfactory because Lexie Gray has shut her eyes, Lexie Gray is trembling, Lexie Gray has shrunken into herself and has withdrawn from her own daughter. And then she's gasping for air like she can't breathe, like she's drowning just like him. So he tears his eyes away from his daughter and looks at her – really looks at her.
She obviously hasn't had a shower since before she gave birth because her hair is stringy and shines with grease. She obviously hasn't slept because there are dark circles under her eyes and she just looks like pure exhaustion.
But he's looking at her and he doesn't understand why she's so withdrawn into herself when their daughter could die.
No, he tells himself. He won't think like that.
And she's looking at him as she gasps for air, reaching out for him with her ghostly pale fingers, and he's realizing she's in as much agony as he is because Baby Grey-Sloan may be his second chance, but she's her first and if her breathing stops being steady, she's going to fall apart just like he did.
So he reaches out to her and grasps her hand in his. Their touch feels fake and plastic through the latex gloves, but the emotion is still there.
I've got you.
He sinks down so he can look at her in the eyes so he can plead without words for her to take deep breaths. She tries to focus on him, but continues to claw at her neck with her other hand because she can't breathe and she's freaking out.
Help me.
"Lex," he tells her, "Lexie, look at me."
And he can tell she's trying desperately to focus on him, but trying isn't good enough right now so he reaches up to touch her cheek.
"Look at me," he commands, and despite her gaps for air, she finally manages to focus on him. Her eyes pled with him to help her, to make the pain and fear go away.
"One. Two. One. Two," he says slowly, deliberately. "She breathes steadily. One. Two. One. Two."
She's looking at him like he's crazy because, really, who counts out their baby's breaths? So he grabs the hand that's holding her throat, and pulls in through the hole on the incubator's side even though his hand plus hers don't really fit through the plastic sleeve. And gingerly so as to not wake the sleeping baby, he places her two fingers on their daughter's small chest right over her beating heart.
"One. Two," he says over and over again. "One. Two."
Slowly, her gasps turn to shaky breaths, and he thinks he's done well until she begins to cry. Big tears roll down her face and leave water marks on her yellow trauma gown; big tears that leave streaks on her cheeks and stain his heart.
"She's breathing," she whimpers.
"She's breathing," he repeats because the whole thing is a novel idea. She's new and exciting, and at less than a week old, she's already giving him gray hairs.
When she squirms a bit, he tries to pull back to keep from hurting her, but her mother won't let him. And then her little eyelids flutter and she looks at them with big, round eyes that remind him of her mother's. And he falls even further in love.