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The last 2 months had been the worst of Maya's life - and that was saying something.
It had all started on September 29th. Carina had a bad cold - at least that's what she'd said. Maya was going away for 2 weeks for a work conference and to advise on a project in New York, and she was insistent that she could still go. Maya hadn't been convinced, but she had gone anyway.
A decision she would regret, because 5 days later she received a phone call nobody ever wants to receive.
The second she'd seen Miranda's name on her screen she knew it was bad.
58 days ago
“Miranda?” she answered, having stepped outside of the meeting room to answer.
“Maya, where are you right now?”
That in itself didn't fill her with much confidence. “I've just stepped out of a meeting,” she answered, her heart now hammering in her chest.
Miranda made a small noise of acknowledgement. “Are you able to sit down somewhere?”
“Miranda just tell me what the fuck is going on,” she replied, harsher than intended, but now really panicking.
She did lean against the wall, just in case. “Carina collapsed at home this morning,” she started. “Jo was with her. Maya… we think it's sepsis.”
Suddenly she was very glad for the wall. What did she mean sepsis? Carina was fine. She’d been texting her the previous evening. They hadn’t called for a few days… Carina had been giving reasons why they couldn't. Maya hadn’t questioned it, she'd been busy herself, and they'd messaged a lot. She hadn't questioned not hearing from her this morning - it was a school day and she had kids to manage.
Carina had been hiding how unwell she was from her.
And she hadn't realised.
“How is she?” she managed to get out, already planning how quickly she could get home.
“They're working to stabilise her now. I won't keep you on the phone, I know you'll want to arrange getting home, but be sensible Maya. Get someone to take you to the airport. I'll keep sending updates as much as I can, and she won't be alone. I do need to ask one thing, however. Liam and Andrea are both in school, would you like someone to collect them early, or leave them there?” Miranda asked.
The kids. Shit, the kids.
“Leave them. The longer they don't know the better. Can you ask Jo to pick them up?”
“She’s already offered,” Miranda told her. “Maya, get here carefully, but get here quick.”
It was exactly 9 hours and 32 minutes between her getting the call and arriving at the hospital - having been picked up by Ben at the airport. She’d got lucky with there being a flight available soon after arriving at the airport, but it had been a long 5.5 hour flight. By the time she made it, Carina was in the ICU - sedated and ventilated.
Present Day
“Bambina you’re thinking again.”
Carina’s voice pulled Maya back from her thoughts immediately. She sat up in her chair, assessing her wife’s situation, having not noticed her wake up.
“I’m alright, lo prometto, were you thinking about the phone call?”
Maya nodded. “I was, but don’t apologise again, please, it’s not your fault.”
“I should have gotten seen sooner,” Carina argued.
It wasn’t the first time they’d had this conversation, and Maya was sure it wouldn’t be the last, but it was going to take some time and some therapy for them to both get through what had happened. “We can’t change what happened my love,” she lifted Carina’s hand and placed a gentle kiss on her fingers. “You deteriorated quickly. And when you knew it was bad you got Jo there, you made sure the kids were safe, you did what you could.”
“I’m a doctor, I should know better.”
“They say doctors make the worst patients for a reason,” Maya pointed out. Carina hummed in a slight agreement. She looked exhausted, which was pretty normal for her right now. “Rest my love,” she reached her other hand up, gently brushing Carina’s hair back soothingly. “You can sleep.” And it didn’t take long for her to do so.
Carina had been out of ITU for 3 weeks now. She’d been ventilated for 2 weeks, and remained on ITU for a further 3 - most of which she had remained unconscious. Her deescalation to the ward was good, but it was only the start of a journey. She was having daily physio - essentially learning to walk again, but she was also extremely tired, meaning progress was slower than hoped. They’d diagnosed her with post-sepsis syndrome, and that meant they were in for a long road to recovery. But Maya would be there every step - literally and metaphorically - she had promised that.
At the start of Carina’s ITU stay Maya had been there pretty much all day every day, but over time it became impossible. She still had two children to look after, who were both struggling with their mamma being asleep in hospital. She also had a job - one she couldn’t take endless leave from - and having pre-empted the fact she would likely need a lot of time off in the future, she had to compromise. Thankfully she could work from home a fair amount - which sometimes became working from Carina’s bedside - and she made it work. Sort of.
Their village rallied around them. One day Maya was presented with a rota of people who were going to help with the kids, provide food, tidy the house, and all sorts of other things that just lightened the load.
Carina was out of ITU now, but the rota was still going on. Even two months down the line, their friends had made sure they still had everything they needed. And when she needed to be at home, there was someone assigned to be with Carina as much as possible too.
Neither of them were alone.
Maya glanced at the clock - she still had another couple of hours before picking the kids up from school. It was Friday, and every Friday since it had happened she’d made sure to be there to take them out to dinner. A little treat, a little hint of normality, just something for them. And then they’d stop in at the hospital to give mamma a hug, before she’d inevitably have to drag them away upset at having to leave again.
There was a knock on the door, and Maya looked up to see José, one of the physio team, at the door. “She’s just dropped off again,” Maya explained.
“It’s okay, we’ve already done today’s session, it’s actually you I was looking for,” he explained.
José walked in, grabbing a spare chair and sitting down. “We’ve had a chat today with Carina’s medical and rehabilitation teams, and we don’t think it’s long before she will be well enough to be discharged from the hospital.”
Maya was simultaneously hit with relief and panic. She didn’t know what the correct response was. Thankfully, José continued. “She will of course still need multiple rehabilitation sessions a week. Those will likely be arranged as both home and hospital sessions, and we will formalise a plan for that. The main reason to speak to you today is that we need to identify if your house will be suitable for her to return to with her current mobility.”
There were stairs to their front door
Their bedroom was upstairs.
Nothing in their house was built to be wheelchair friendly, and right now Carina wasn’t mobile enough to walk everywhere.
“I don’t- we have stairs-”
Behind José, Miranda Bailey entered the room, accompanied by Amelia. “Maya, what you have is an army of people behind you.” The physio suddenly looked a little nervous. “I believe I asked you to wait for me, José?” He opened his mouth to respond, but didn’t get any further than that as Amelia jumped in.
“What I imagine our wonderful physiotherapist here will have failed to mention, is that we have already formulated our own plan,” she explained. “I’d love to take all the credit but we know my interior design skills leave a lot to be desired, however that gorgeous Jack Gibson of yours drew up some very lovely plans of how we can temporarily rearrange your house to make things more accessible, and install a ramp outside. We reckon between us we can have it sorted in about a week?” Amelia looked over to Miranda to check, and the shorter woman nodded in agreement.
Maya was a little overwhelmed with it all. Miranda walked over, practically pushing José out of the chair and sitting in it. “We know you could do this yourself, we know you would do anything for Carina, but you don’t have to handle this. You focus on the kids, focus on her, and we’ll get the house sorted.”
“She’ll be so much happier at home,” Maya finally spoke. “It might help with some of the memory problems too, right? Being in a familiar setting?”
Not that Grey-Sloan wasn’t familiar to Carina, of course, but it didn’t exactly have the same comfort as home.
Amelia nodded her agreement. “Absolutely. You’ll all be more comfortable with her at home.”
“Can you send me the plans?”
Both of the doctors smiled at her response, agreeing that they absolutely could. And that was how the plan got in motion.
45 days ago
Maya closed her laptop, having finished everything that needed doing that day. Her workload had thankfully been reduced slightly - and she was grateful to the chief for helping where she could.
It did help that the chief was her best friend, of course, and Andy was doing everything within the rules (and sometimes slightly outside of them) to allow Maya as much time as possible.
She put the laptop back in her bag and turned to her wife. Her still, small, and horribly quiet wife.
“I’m sorry I went away, my love,” she whispered. “Rest now, but keep fighting for me, okay? I need to be mad at you for hiding how sick you were, but I can’t do that while you’re still sick.”
Present day
Somehow their house looked the same and different at the same time. Maya couldn’t believe what they’d managed to do. It was mostly the Station 19 crew, plus a couple of old faces and some of the hospital people who had joined - led by Jack, who had masterminded the whole thing apparently.
Their downstairs spare room had been transformed into their temporary bedroom. Not just a little bit - it somehow almost looked like their normal bedroom. Where needed doorways had been widened, and the craziest part of it all - they’d managed to replace their kitchen island with a like for like version that had a section they could lower for Carina to use while seated.
“Guys this is… incredible,” she told them as she walked around, running her hand along the new countertop. “It’s all the changes we needed without feeling like the house is really any different.”
She knew that had been Jack’s aim all along, and he had done exactly what they required. “There is one other thing. I did keep this bit a secret.”
Maya looked up at him with a mix of concern and intrigue. As much as she loved Jack Gibson, she also knew the shit he could get up to and it did concern her a little. “Don’t worry, I approved it first,” Andy jumped in, obviously knowing what Maya was thinking.
“And I vetoed the ridiculous wallpaper,” Travis perked up. He and Vic had flown back to help - another thing on the list of how amazing their friends were.
She chuckled a little, “alright then. Where have you hidden this surprise?”
Jack stood up from where he’d been leaning and told Maya to follow, which she did. The last place she expected to be led to, however, was their garage. Jack stopped at the internal door that led to it. “You go,” he told her, moving to let Maya open the door.
Despite knowing this team well - they were her family, after all, - she could not work out what they could have done with the complete mess that was their garage. But on opening it, that became very clear.
The mess? Gone. Instead, the place had been transformed into a rehab gym. There were walking bars, steps, a rehab bike, a selection of small weights, amongst many other things. It was literally everything Carina needed for her physical therapy. “How-”
“I spoke to Amelia,” Ben answered, “asked her to get a list of anything that would be useful. She even managed to get hold of some excess stuff from the rehab department - at least that’s what she told me. I decided not to question it further.”
That was probably wise, it wasn’t always worth questioning Amelia Shepherd’s methods.
Next Vic chipped in. “The rehab bike is actually mine. It’d been in my storage unit for years, but we cleaned it up. It'll do the job. Trav got it for me after the electrocution incident.”
“Everything else we all chipped in,” Jo explained.
Maya looked around again, “this is so much…”
“And if you even try to pay us back we’ll spill all your darkest secrets,” Vic told her, grinning. “You paid for the rest of it, that’s fine, but this - it’s something we could provide. And there’s stuff in here for you too - the treadmill, some heavier weights, the bag, it’s meant to be long term. Oh, and all your stuff from here is either on the shelves at the far end if it seemed important, or it’s in my storage unit - I’ll give you access.”
She had to sit down on a chair at the edge. “I don’t know how to thank you all.”
“Thank us by looking after yourself,” Andy told her. “Keep asking for help, and take as much time off as you need.”
Maya sighed, “Andy you know we can’t afford-”
“Yes, you can,” Andy stopped her. “I managed to set aside a new fund to help people in any situation where they need to care for a loved one. Got it rushed through and approved - it will cover your pay for up to 6 months.”
“But that’s- how?”
“That’s my job to handle - you just accept it. The 6 months can be taken in one go, or in stages over up to 2 years. You take whatever you need.”
Everyone was on their side. Their village had fought for them in every way. Carina had the best possible chance ahead of her.
Carina couldn’t wait to get home. She was also terrified of going home. And when they pulled up on the drive she suddenly didn’t want to leave the car.
Maya came around to her door. “Hey, we’re just gonna go inside - okay? It’s just you and me. Let me help you into the chair?”
She nodded. While she had got to a point of being able to take a few steps, she’d already done PT before leaving the hospital and was exhausted - and thanks to her therapist she was getting better at accepting the chair was necessary for now.
With Maya’s assistance she managed to transfer into the chair, and after the car had been shut up, Maya pushed her inside.
Before they’d come home Maya had shown her pictures of what their friends had done with the house, but seeing it in person was even more remarkable. Maya was able to push her up and through the front door with no problem, and inside it barely seemed any different at first.
“Do you want to see the best bit?” Maya asked, and Carina looked up at her with confusion. “This was a surprise to me too.”
“Go on then,” she smiled, seeing the excitement in Maya’s eyes which immediately calmed any concerns.
They went towards the garage - not the expected direction - and Maya opened the door, pushing the chair inside. “This is… a gym…”
Maya put the wheelchair brake on and got down to her level, taking her hand. “It sure is. They got everything you need for PT - we’ll be able to have most of your sessions at home.”
“But how? This stuff is expensive Maya,” Carina panicked.
But Maya wasn’t panicking. She was calm, and that helped her too. “I’ve been told not to ask about the money - quite sternly, actually. This room is a gift - we truly have the best friends.”
So many people had gathered round for them, and even after Maya had told her she still couldn’t quite believe it. Their friends - their family - they were everything, and they’d really shown just how incredible they all were. “I can’t believe how lucky we are.”
“Me neither, but we have everything here we could need. However long the road is, we’re in this together.”
And Carina believed her. This was terrifying, horrible, and there was so much still unknown, but whatever her rehabilitation would look like, she wasn’t alone.