Work Text:
The bed was still warm when Maya opened her eyes.
She yawned, squinting, sleep dulling her perception. It was late judging by the dark room. Or maybe it was early? Maya tapped the phone on her bedside table and winced when the neon 4:00 AM pierced the night.
The time brought with it relief. She could sleep for another two hours. With a smile on her face, Maya closed her eyes again and rolled over, expecting to collide with Carina. Except the bed was empty. No Carina in sight.
Maya brushed her hand over Carina’s side of the bed, the temperature of the sheets indicating that her wife hadn’t been missing for long. She raised her head, frowning when she realized that the bathroom light wasn’t on, which only deepened the mystery of Carina’s absence. Her wife wasn’t one for late-night snacks, but maybe she’d had to take a call from the hospital.
She turned, burying her face in the mattress, inhaling deeply, as if pressing her nose to the imprint of Carina’s body left in the sheets was an acceptable replacement for pressing her nose to the spot between Carina’s shoulder blades. The spot Maya liked to nuzzle, where she could feel the bumps of Carina’s spine beneath her lips.
The thought inspired her to sit up. She knew Carina would likely return any second, apologetic or grumbling about interns, but Maya didn’t want to wait. She rolled her eyes at her own neediness but couldn’t keep the little smile from her lips either. Her therapist would say that when it came to Carina, Maya was allowed to be needy. That wanting her wife wasn’t neediness at all. It was healthy.
Maya mentally gave herself an A+ for her decision-making skills. Picking the healthy route and recognizing it as the healthy route felt like acing an exam. Her therapist didn’t love that particular analogy, but it worked for Maya.
She searched carefully beyond her bedroom, the cool air against her bare feet and legs enough to hurry her movements. The hallway was dark, as was the kitchen, but there was a gold sliver of light beneath the doorway of the guest bathroom, though the sight of it made Maya frown again.
Maybe Carina was sick? She’d started injections again as they prepared for their embryo transfer, maybe she was nauseas? But why would she leave the convenience of their ensuite? Especially if she needed to throw up…
Maya only paused for a moment before knocking. She didn’t want to disturb Carina, but worry swirled in her stomach. A worry born of separation and reunion, of hating the thought of Carina upset or hurting in any way at all.
“Carina?” Maya called out, waiting.
She heard the sound of water, the squeak of movement as limbs shifted in the bathtub.
“I’m okay,” came the muffled response. The shaky, uneven exhale that followed told Maya that her wife was very much not okay.
“Babe, can I come in?”
The silence grew, feeding Maya’s discomfort, gasoline on the fire. She wondered if she should go back to sleep, if she was being intrusive. But it was 4AM and Carina was in the bath instead of in their bed. Maya stood firm, her hand pressed to the doorframe.
“Okay,” Carina finally said, more of a sigh than a word.
Sure enough, Carina was in the tub, knees close to her chest. She sat folded in on herself, both arms around her legs, a frightened child hiding as best she could. Maya didn’t react because she’d been here before. They’d been here before. They would be here again too. As much as she hated it, she knew they would be here again.
Lowering herself to the bathmat, Maya poked her finger in the water, ensuring it was still warm, and then set her hand on the edge of the tub.
“Bad dream?” Maya asked, already knowing the answer. Carina’s eyes were so wide, so round, unshed tears catching in her eyelashes as she nodded and pursed her lips, struggling not to cry.
There was a time when Maya would have begged forgiveness. Where guilt would have eaten her from the inside. And the guilt was still there, it always would be. But hope dulled the sting. Hope and love and determination. The toolbox she’d built over the past year lay open and at her disposal. Wallowing in the pain wouldn’t help either of them. Acknowledging it, accepting it, and living with it was the only way through.
“Same one as always?” Maya checked, staying very still.
Carina brushed her chin against her knee. “You were screaming my name.”
“Do you want to be alone?”
“No.”
Maya gently set her hand on Carina’s head.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. No longer I’m sorry for what I did. For what I said. She’d exhausted those I’m sorries.
But I’m sorry that you can’t forget.
The night Maya unravelled was a haze in her memory. She had flashes of it – tiny bursts of lying in a hospital bed, of Teddy Altman. Of the fear, the cold, horrible fear and helplessness and rage. She couldn’t access the feelings anymore, but she could remember that she had felt them in some detached way.
Carina wasn’t so lucky.
“Is there anything I can do?” Maya tried, knowing sometimes Carina liked to be held and sometimes she didn’t want to be touched at all.
Carina sniffled, her bottom lip quivering. “You hurt your ankle. You didn’t tell me.”
Maya furrowed her brow, unsure what Carina meant.
“Last week,” Carina explained, “you were limping when you got home and you said it was nothing, but Vic asked how you were and…”
Recognition dawned on Maya.
“I stubbed my toe,” she smiled, trying to catch Carina’s eye, “getting out of the shower of all things. Honestly, I thought it was broken for a second and Theo must have heard me grumbling about it. I guess he didn’t tell Vic the whole story.”
Carina took that in. She looked so tired.
“It really is nothing,” Maya continued, “not even a bruise.”
“I get so scared, Maya,” Carina’s confession settled heavily between them, “I trust you. I do. But the dream…”
Maya understood that Carina was triggered. That Maya’s undisclosed limp had poked Carina’s subconscious, had provoked the nightmare. No matter the reality of the situation, no matter the fact that Maya would never hide an injury from her wife ever again, Carina’s mind bore a permanent scar. A scar of Maya’s making.
“Are you scared of me?” Maya voiced her deepest fear, exhaling sharply when Carina shook her head.
“Not of you,” she said, “for you.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have worked so hard, Bella, I am so proud of you. Every day I see the work you do. But…these things never fully go away…I don’t mean…I…” Carina stuttered, reaching for Maya’s hand.
Maya lowered her head. “I’m sorry, I wish…”
A wet thumb lightly pressed against the centre of her forehead. When she glanced up, she found Carina watching her with the softest hint of a smile.
“I used to think that my papa had a bean in his brain,” she said, tracing Maya’s eyebrow.
“A bean?”
“Sì. My mamma told me that papa had a sickness in his brain and that was why he would yell. But I was so young, I thought it meant that there had to be something real, something tangible in his head. I don’t know why I thought it was a bean, but I did.”
Maya leaned into Carina’s touch, understanding the metaphor.
“I wish I could remove that part of me,” she said, “I wish Amelia Shepherd could cut it out.”
She was surprised when Carina shifted, when she leaned forward and replaced her thumb with her lips.
“No,” Carina whispered, “I love this brain.”
“Even if it has a crappy bean lodged in?”
Carina moved back, taking Maya’s face in her hands. “I am not afraid of you, Maya. I am afraid of the pain you have lived through. I am afraid that it will come back, that you will be hurt. That I…”
“That you’ll be hurt again too,” Maya finished. She tried not to feel defeated, but it was hard not to. Therapy had given her an instruction manual, protocols to follow. It had helped her rewire some of the faulty connections in her head. But trauma didn’t just disappear. And depression had a way of sneaking in more easily than it ever had before. The clouds had gathered in those horrible months leading up to her fall, and while the storm had passed, while the rain had ceased, the clouds had never fully gone away. They likely never would.
Carina shrugged, dragging her wet fingertips down Maya’s cheeks.
“I don’t want you to be afraid,” Maya said in a voice so small she hardly recognized it as her own.
“I know, Bambina. But loving you comes with fear and it always has.”
“That sounds awful.”
“Loving you is the greatest joy of my life, Maya. But with love must come fear. It is how it works,” Carina’s voice wavered, her grip on Maya strong.
“What do you mean?”
“Do you remember what you said about having children? How it is like your heart outside your chest?”
Maya nodded, circling her hands around Carina’s wrists.
“I think it is the same between us, no?” Carina gestured between them.
Hurting Carina had long been Maya’s greatest fear. Seeing Carina hurt was an agony – whether it was after a phone call with her father or a hard day at work or a bad flu. Maya hated it. It made her heart ache. And knowing that her greatest fear had come true, that she’d hurt Carina so profoundly, was crippling. She’d barely survived her own descent. Grappling with her role in Carina’s pain, with the words she’d said, with the neglect and secrets, nearly destroyed her a second time.
“It is,” Maya said, “but, Carina, I don’t want you to be afraid. I don’t want you to have to live like that.”
“It is worth it.”
“I…I’m doing everything I can to stay healthy,” Maya felt the need to reassure her wife, to fight the subconscious ghosts that sometimes shrieked in Carina’s ears, “and I can’t promise that I’ll always be okay, but I want to be, Carina. For you. For us. For…”
Maya’s gaze drifted below the water, to Carina’s stomach.
“I know,” Carina smiled, “I really do, my love.”
“It’s just…the bean is still there. It will always be there.”
“It’s true, but at least now we know. Now we see it.”
Maya heard what Carina wasn’t saying. She heard it in the way Carina used we, because Carina had always seen it. Carina had pointed to it early and named it and Maya had done everything in her power to run. To deny. So to hear Carina soften the truth, to hear Carina include herself in the painful journey towards health, towards a new normal, made Maya feel like she wasn’t alone, like she didn’t need to fight the monster under the bed without Carina by her side.
“We do,” Maya affirmed, “and I’m pretty good at kicking its ass, to be honest.”
Carina laughed. When she kissed Maya, her lips were soft. Soft and warm.
Maya sensed a shift, a lightening. She leaned back, relieved to find Carina looking less shaken.
“We should really try to find a house with a bigger bathtub,” she smirked, eyeing Carina’s long legs.
Carina smirked too. “Oh? I do not need more room than this.”
“Well, if you don’t want me to climb in with you, I’ll just…”
Before Maya could finish her sentence, Carina curled her arm around her shoulders and held her close, her wet skin soaking Maya’s t-shirt. Maya didn’t complain. She had nothing to complain about. She was tucked in against Carina DeLuca and so much had almost been lost. So much more had been found.
She thought back to Carina’s nightmares. About the screaming. About Carina’s sad eyes and palpable fear.
“I love you,” Maya whispered against Carina’s neck, “and I’m okay, Carina. I’m here and I’m okay.”
It was no longer a lie. No longer a front. No longer a series of increasingly unbelievable I’m fine I’m fine I’m fine.
The arm around her squeezed, forcing Maya even closer so that the edge of the tub cut uncomfortably beneath her breasts. She didn’t care. Carina inhaled, the tip of her nose cold as she nuzzled against Maya’s cheek.
“I know you are,” she promised, “I know you are.”
Maya didn’t question Carina’s words. She didn’t doubt Carina’s honesty.
She didn’t doubt that Carina loved her.
Bean and all.