Title: Warm Champagne
Author: holyfork
Relationships: Mark/Arizona friendship, Calzona (as much as there can be when one person is in a coma, anyway)
Summary: It's been five days since the accident and Callie still isn't awake, so Mark and Arizona have some decisions to make for their daughter.
Rating: K+
Disclaimer: These characters aren't mine. Things would be very different if they were.
Note: Cross-posted to AO3.
Warm Champagne
It's been five days since the accident. Five days of surgeries and sympathy flowers. Five days of tears, of (not) sleeping in the 2nd floor ICU on-call room, of praying and praying and praying even more to a God she doesn't really believe in for Callie to wake up. All she does now is pray, but her pleas, her Dear Gods and her Amens and all the words in between, they're already starting to taste a bit stale.
The only time she stops praying is when she visits her tiny, tiny little girl. The smallest, but the greatest of miracles. Despite the heartache that hangs heavily in the NICU air, the parents who stare for hours on end into their babies' plastic bassinets, that room is the one Arizona can finally feel hope. Because her baby, her daughter, is alive. She's five days old, she's moving her arms, she's gained 0.2 ounces. She's not out of the woods yet, and, in fact, is still pretty deep in the forest, but the hardest part is over. What's left now is only to get better and grow.
She's just turned off the sink when Mark enters the NICU scrub room. They nod to each other as he opens his own scrub pack.
"Stark said he has to submit the birth certificate by five tonight."
Arizona nods, but may as well have not acknowledged that he's said anything at all. She makes her move toward the sliding glass door. "I'll see you in there."
Moments later, she's staring down into her own plastic bassinet. She can see every purple vein that runs just under the exposed rice-paper skin of the baby's arms and chest. Her tiny body visibly throbs as her heart tries its damnedest to keep everything going. Her arms and legs twitch with a mechanical irregularity. The touch of Arizona's fingertip against her chest does nothing to soothe her, but for Arizona herself, it brings a relief she's only truly come to understand in the past few days. It's a sensation she imagines might be akin to the high of hard drugs or the adrenaline of jumping out of an airplane, but probably stronger.
Mark appears on the other side of the bassinet a few minutes later. They say nothing for a long time, and for a while they're just like all the other parents in their bright pink gowns, staring down at their babies, on the terrible cusp of hope and overwhelming fear.
"We should really give her a name," Mark finally says, breaking their silence.
Arizona doesn't look up. "We shouldn't do that without Callie."
"I agree. But if Callie doesn't wake up in the next eight hours and we don't choose a name, they're going to end up writing Baby Girl on that birth certificate." She can feel the baby's heart beat under the pads of her fingers. "You really want to open the mailbox next month and find a social security card for Baby Girl Torres?"
She knows Mark's waiting for an answer, but it doesn't come. Not until two hundred twenty-three pulse counts later.
"We never talked about names," Arizona says, her voice quiet, but not small.
"We didn't either."
She counts another five beats before she slowly removes her hands and closes the the plastic doors of the bassinet. Her index finger reacts immediately to the temperature difference between her baby's skin and the cool NICU air.
"Well, I guess we better get started."
They reconvene fifteen minutes later in Callie's room. Mark's already sitting with his laptop in the nice armchair they'd borrowed from the nearest waiting room, leaving Arizona to the stiff hospital standard seat, but it's closer to Callie's bedside so she doesn't mind so much. Highlighter in hand, she crisscrosses her legs and opens the baby name book she's just bought from the hospital gift shop. The room isn't quiet, not with the constant beeping of Callie's monitors and the whistle of her ventilator, but it's quiet enough for a long time.
Once in a while, someone will speak up, offer a name, but they can't agree.
"What about Payton?" Mark asks, hours later. They've gone through dozens of names, and he's resorting to his conversational fail-safe: sports. On one of their few father/son outings of his childhood, Mark and his dad had gone down to Tampa for the '77 season Pro Bowl where Walter Payton was crowned game MVP, and he still has the Super Bowl Shuffle on his iPod's workout playlist.
"No," Arizona dismisses with a scrunch of her nose. "Hannah?"
"Too plain." Mark watches as she marks an 'x' in her book with her pink highlighter. He takes another stab. "Montana?"
She tries to resist an inevitable smile. "Funny," she grants begrudgingly. "No more football names."
"Jordan?"
He's pushed his luck too far. "We're not naming her after any man who plays with balls for a living," she says firmly before flipping to a dog-eared page of her already worn-out name book. "What about Bryn?"
"What does that even mean?"
"Um..." She scans the page, her eyes following her finger as it passes over pronunciation, origin, and then, finally, "It's Welsh. For hill."
Mark scoffs. "Why don't we just call her Mountaintop? Go big, right?"
"Fine. Samantha?"
"Nah. I dated a Samantha once."
Arizona tosses her head back, a snort rising from the back of her throat. "Well, if we're going by that rule, we're never going to find a name."
"Oh, please," he shoots back. "Like you've never gone out with a Sam."
She glares. "I wasn't the one who brought up my relationship history." A few moments later, "Emma?"
But he shakes his head. "Too popular. She'd be Emma T. for her entire life." He knows Arizona, of all people, probably won't be able to understand the seemingly minor annoyance, but he and Mark C. and Marc P. from his second-grade class at St. Anthony's could all vouch for choosing a name outside of the year's top ten.
Arizona's groan betrays her growing frustration. "Do you have any suggestions?"
He doesn't. Another hour and another few dozen names come and go with little fanfare.
"What about Kira?" he asks, offering up the name that's come up with his latest refresh of .
"That's not so bad," Arizona concedes. She flips to the blank pages at the back of her book, highlighter at the ready. "Should we add it to the list?"
Mark shrugs, and Arizona flips back to the middle of the book without writing a word.
"Maybe Molly?" she asks a few minutes later.
"That's Lexie's sister's name," Mark says, without missing a beat.
"Oh."
Another click. "Audrey?"
He watches Arizona's lips purse, hoping maybe this'll be it. Audrey's not a bad name. He could live with it if he had to. But Arizona shakes her head. "I don't think she looks like an Audrey."
So, Mark sets his laptop aside and decides to take a nap. In the first few minutes of closing his eyes, he can feel the heat of Arizona's glare from across the room, but in a few more, he can't feel anything.
He wakes up, God knows how long after, to a pink highlighter hitting him square between the eyebrows.
"Ow!"
Arizona ignores his yelp of pain. "Gabriela."
"What?" He's still a little hazy from his nap, and more than a little too preoccupied with massaging the spot at the top of his nose where he's sure there's a mark from that marker.
"The name, Gabriela. Do you like it?"
He takes a moment, mouths the name, lets it sit on his tongue. "With one 'L' or two?"
"One 'L'," she says, a little too quickly. "Do you like it?"
He has to take another moment. All day long, he's been picturing handmade Father's Day cards, signed in crayon with Love. He's imagined diplomas and driver's licenses and secret love letters and lab coats. And all of a sudden he can't see them reading anything other than Gabriela Torres.
"I think so."
They both smile. Arizona closes the book in her lap with a solid thunk.
But there's one person in the room who still hasn't answered.
"Do you think Callie would like it?" Arizona asks, leaning forward and taking Callie's motionless hand between both of her own.
Mark thinks she would and, obviously, Arizona does, too. But he can't say for sure, so he offers up the only assurance he can.
"We can change it later if she doesn't."
And it's true. If Callie says so, they'll just have to sign a few papers and pay a few bucks, and voilà, a name as good as new. But they both know that, at a certain point, Gabriela will become Gabriela and it will only become harder and harder to change anything about her. Hopefully, Callie will be with them before they get there.
"What about a middle name?"
Mark collapses back into his chair. "Oh, come on."
"Hey," Arizona barks, startling Mark to the point that he jumps, just a little. "Why don't you listen for a minute before you go off groaning about it?"
He wallows in his misery for a minute longer before nodding his go-ahead.
Arizona, much calmer than just a moment before, settles back into her chair. "I was going to suggest Sloan. Just to make it easier."
It takes a minute for the proposal to register completely, and when it does, he's not sure he's heard it right.
"Really? Sloan?" he asks.
"Sure," she nods. "Unless you're against that."
"No. Why would I be against it?"
Arizona shrugs. She doesn't have an answer. "So, do we have a name?"
"Gabriela Sloan Torres," Mark says for the first time.
Arizona repeats after him, slowly. "Gabriela Sloan Torres."
They pause for a moment, as if waiting for a third response.
Mark finally claps his hands together, a startling boom now that the sounds of the machines in the room have become ambient noise to them, almost unnoticeable.
"We have a name."
When they get to the peds floor, they can't find Stark, but Alex Karev is in the nursery so Arizona drags him to the nearest computer station and makes him finish their partially completed electronic paperwork. After seven hours of back and forth and back and forth on names, she wants to make sure that their hard work, their first time agreeing on pretty much anything since the kale juice smoothie debacle, does not go unrewarded.
"Okay," Karev murmurs, his index finger hitting the last 's' key with a little more force than necessary. He swivels the computer monitor so they can see the screen. "Gabriela Sloan Torres." He automatically looks up at Arizona, seeking a final confirmation before pressing 'print.' "We all set?"
But it's Mark who responds. "Wait."
Arizona's head, currently propped up with only minimal effort by her elbows on the sliver of desk space behind the monitor, falls with her exasperation. Her forehead meets the Formica as she groans. "What now, Mark?"
But Mark ignores her, looking to Karev instead. "Add Robbins in there."
Karev looks momentarily confused. "To her name?"
"Where else?"
"Okay. Where?"
"I don't care where, Karev. Just put it in there," Mark responds. He's trying to do something good, and the idiot resident can't follow a damn direction.
Karev grimaces but turns the screen back without another word.
Mark glances at Arizona. He can't quite read her face, which is a bit disconcerting in itself. That woman has an expression for anything and everything. But then he sees the corners of her mouth tip upward, her eyes soften. He feels oddly relieved.
"Thank you," she says, almost too quietly for him to hear.
He nods. "You're her parent, too."
Before they can say anything more, Karev turns the monitor again. "Alright, I put it in alphabetical order. Gabriela Robbins Sloan Torres. Everybody good?"
Mark and Arizona share a look.
"Yeah," Mark nods. "We're set."
A smile surfaces on Arizona's lips. It's the biggest one either Mark or Alex has seen from her in nearly a week. "Print it, Karev."
Karev clicks File then Print, and the printer at the nurse's station a few doors away starts whirring. "Congrats," he says with a sincerity so terse, it could only come from Alex Karev before he disappears down the hall. He only has five minutes to sign the form and get it to the records office before it closes for the night. Even if Mark's not the guy's biggest fan, he's got to admit that Karev's a good doctor. A good friend, if he wants to push it that far. But he doesn't.
When they're alone again, as alone as two people can be together in a busy hospital's children's ward, Mark turns back to Arizona. He can tell she's gunning to get back to Callie or to see the baby or to be anywhere else but with him, but he's got other plans. "We should celebrate," he says, and watches as the surprise blooms on Arizona's face, starting from the crease between her brows.
She scoffs. "Celebrate what? The fact that we managed to be in a room together for eight hours without killing each other?"
"No," Mark sighs. "We should celebrate our daughter having a name."
He gets it. They're only friends because Callie wants them to be, not because they actually like each other, and they've each said some pretty nasty things to the other in the past few days. Things that aren't easily forgotten. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't at least try to end their first official day of co-parent decision-making with some acknowledgment of their accomplishment. A little bit of positive reinforcement for the years to come. "Let's go for dinner. My treat."
Arizona seems to soften a bit at his offer, but she looks conflicted. Her eyes flicker back and forth between him and the hallway behind him, which he knows leads to the NICU. "I don't think I should leave the hospital," she finally says before instinctively looking down to check the pager on her waistband seconds later. He's noticed her doing that a lot lately. He thinks he's subconsciously picked up the habit, too.
"You haven't left the hospital since this all started, and I respect that. But you need to take a break and you need some real food. You've got to admit that all that cafeteria chicken breast is starting to taste like sawdust."
"Mark," she shakes her head. "No." She's wearing the same dolefully doubtful expression as she protests, the strain in her voice matching perfectly the tension in her face.
"Come on, Robbins. They'll be here waiting for us when we get back," he tries one last time.
But it doesn't work.
"I'm sorry," she mutters, and then brushes past him toward the NICU down the hall.
He watches as she turns the corner.
Whatever. He tried.
It's almost 8:30 pm and the NICU has emptied out, leaving Arizona alone among the tiniest humans. Shift change began a half hour ago, and technically no one is supposed to visit during that hour, but it turns out that being a damn good pediatric surgeon at the hospital where your baby is in intensive care has its perks.
Another perk is that hospital staff will usually give you things if you ask for them nicely. And if you cry.
That's something she's just learned as she walks into Callie's room in the ICU about twenty minutes later, a bottle of champagne and a couple of plastic glasses in her hands. It's the first stop on her "find Mark" tour and, luckily for her, it's a hole in one.
"Good, I found you," she says as she slides the door closed with the heel of her sneaker.
Mark looks up at her, his brow furrowing as she approaches. "What's that?"
"You were right," Arizona cedes, punctuating her sentence by setting the glass bottle and then the plastic glasses, one after the other, on the small table between Mark's armchair and Callie's bedside. "We should celebrate." She starts to peel away at the foil covering the top of the bottle.
Mark snickers. "Where'd you get that?"
"I figured they probably keep a stash on hand in the kitchen for the resident dinners, so I asked the line cook. They were getting ready to close and I think he just wanted to get me out of there." She doesn't mention the tears, and hopes her eyes are a little less red than they were in the bathroom she stopped in before making her way back upstairs. She pops the cork and pours a more than reasonable amount into each of the glasses. "It's not chilled," she warns as she hands him one of the plastic flutes.
"That's alright," he says, swirling the drink in his hand. Arizona can hear the sizzle as the disturbed carbonation bubbles to the surface. "It's probably the cheap stuff anyway."
Arizona takes her own glass, holding it with the stem in the crook of her first two fingers, and raises it in the air. "To our daughter, Gabriela Robbins Sloan Torres."
Mark follows suit. "To Gabriela."
The plastic clinks dully as they complete their toast, and the champagne is, unsurprisingly, both cheap and warm.
"Mm," Arizona hums deeply as the lukewarm liquid settles into her stomach. She chuckles at the face Mark is sending his drink. "Not the best."
"No," Mark agrees, scraping his tongue against his teeth. "Definitely not."
But at least with this toast they know they're finally on their way to something better for themselves, for Callie, and for Gabriela, most of all.