10. Chapter 10

Carina glanced back up at Maya’s vitals, happy to see that her wife’s blood pressure was edging back toward normal. She looked back at her face, standing up and pressing a gentle kiss to her forehead, brushing a piece of blonde hair back into place. Maya’s hair also probably needed to be washed, but that would be hard with the stitches so Carina decided it could wait a few more days.

Just then, there was a knock on the door, Vic stepping in.

“Hey,” the younger woman said, smiling a little at Carina before her eyes widened as she looked at Maya, “Woah.”

“Hello Victoria,” Carina said, “How are you feeling?”

“It comes and goes,” Vic said, sitting down in a chair, “Jack had been staying with us and helping out which is nice except it’s Jack, so he needs supervision and Trav was pretty much knocked out on pain pills the past few days, so I have been trying to rest but also keep him from completely destroying our place. I tried to do laundry and cook yesterday because we can only take so much grilled cheese, but by the time I finished cooking, I felt so sick I almost threw up and then I ended up going to bed at 6 pm.”

“Concussions are terrible,” Carina nodded, “I got one when I was in university, and going to class and studying was impossible for a while.”

“Yeah,” Vic said, “But I can’t complain. I am doing pretty well all things considered.”

Both Vic and Carina looked at the captain laying in the bed, machines keeping her alive.

“How are you doing?” Vic asked, drawing Carina’s attention off her wife, “I know all of this is a lot.”

“Si,” Carina nodded, “It is. I am…managing. Right now, I am ok.”

“Well, if there’s ever anything you need, I am off work for another week per Dr. Shepard’s requirements, but I am good to drive again so I can do whatever you need,” Vic said.

“Grazie,” Carina nodded, offering as much of a smile as she could muster, “How long is Jack staying with you?”

“We are kicking him out after we get home from here,” Vic said, “It was nice to have him around when Travis was high on pain pills all day and I was too sick and in too much pain to get out of bed, but now that both of us are feeling better, he needs to go. I do not know how Marsha lives with him. He is a disaster.”

“I am glad you and Travis are better enough to be on your own again,” Carina nodded, trying not to let the tears that were gathering in her eyes show.

She truly was glad her wife’s friends were getting better, but the fact that the woman she loved was lying in a hospital bed unconscious with no working kidneys and an infection raging in her blood while the other people she was in the accident with were recuperating at home and actually making strides toward getting better was hard.

“I am going to go so Travis and Jack can both have a chance to come up here,” Vic said, walking over to Carina, “I can come back though, whenever. Just let me know. Or I’ll text you.”

“Thank you,” Carina said, nodding as Vic gave her a small hug, trying hard not to flinch at the physical contact.

“Bye,” Vic said, leaving, “I’ll send one of the boys up next.”

Carina nodded, taking a deep breath as Vic left. She was getting exhausted and starting to feel overwhelmed again, but she had told Maya’s team they could come, and she knew Jack and Travis were already here so she decided she could just power through and then convince her friends to just leave her alone. She rubbed at her eyes which felt puffy and itchy from all the crying that had been going on the past few days. Just then, there was another knock, Jack coming in.

“Hey Dr. Deluca,” he said, cracking a smile. Carina had told him to call her by her first name not long after the wedding, but he was trying to make her smile.

Unfortunately, she did not pick up on his joke.

“I told you, call me Carina,” she said, looking at him with a look that screamed confused exhaustion.

“I know,” Jack said, realizing that Carina was really not herself, “Sorry. Hey Carina.”

“Hello Jack,” she said, glancing from him to Maya’s face and back again.

“How’s she doing?” he asked, standing awkwardly near the door.

“She is alive,” Carina said, nodding a little, “And things are getting better very very slowly. She had a severe infection in her blood which is why she has the breathing tube and this machine here which is acting like her kidney.”

“I thought you could live with one kidney?” Jack said, confused.

“Si,” Carina said, “You can, but the infection in her body made her remaining kidney not work properly so the machine is doing it for her.”

“Is it ever going to work again?” Jack asked, completely forgetting that Amelia had told them not to pound Carina with questions.

“No one knows,” Carina said, biting her lip, reminding herself in her head that she would not cry in front of Jack because despite the fact that there was no bad blood between them, she still swore he would never see her cry.

She mostly promised herself that because for months after Maya had cheated on her, every time she saw Jack, she wanted to cry and scream and hit him. However, she was a grown woman and would not stoop to the level of physical violence or showing him just how much what he had done with the woman she loved had killed her. She had cried about what had happened a lot but promised herself she would never let Jack know. It was mostly her pride, but a small part of it was just her wanting to have some control over that situation, and not letting him see her cry was her control.

Even now, almost three years since that had happened, she still refused to let him see her cry.

“When is she going to wake up?” Jack asked, not picking up on Carina’s struggle with these questions.

“No one knows,” Carina said again, grabbing her blanket from where it was sitting behind her on the chair, just trying to calm her body down.

“Well, what do they know?” Jack said, “Is she going to be ok? Because statistically, someone who gets sepsis has between a 28 and 50% chance of dying, but apparently the odds are better if it’s caught in the hospital.”

Just then, Miranda Bailey walked in, coming to check on Maya. She immediately saw how on edge Carina looked and had heard the end of Jack’s questions, realizing that he was being typical clueless Jack, which was hard enough for Carina to deal with on a normal day.

“Gibson,” Bailey said, looking at him, “Get out.”

“But…” he started to argue only to get a look from Bailey, “Ok. I’ll go tell Travis he can come up.”

He left, Carina letting out a small sob as soon as he was gone.

“Do I need to go beat him up?” Bailey asked, going over to Carina.

The OB shook her head, trying hard not to start sobbing again. Bailey had heard from Amelia that Carina was not doing super well with physical touch at the moment, so she just started grabbing Maya’s vitals and checking her chart.

“Her vitals are looking good,” Bailey said, “I am happy with her blood pressure and her latest labs are holding steady. Nothing has improved much, but nothing has gotten any worse which is good for now.”

“Grazie,” Carina mumbled, lacing her fingers through Maya’s, studying her wife’s hand which were rough from her work and also covered in cuts from the accident.

“Carina,” Bailey said, watching her friend and colleague start zoning out, “So you want me to go tell Montgomery that now is not a good time?”

“I can go,” Travis said, having walked in just then.

“No,” Carina said, pulling herself out of her head as best as she could as the firefighter walked in, “You can stay.”

Travis had been told by Jack that Bailey had kicked him out. Travis and Vic had asked what he did and when he said he had just been asking questions, Travis left Vic to give him a piece of her mind while he went to make sure Carina was alright.

Ben was by far the closest to the OB/GYN in the station, excluding her wife obviously, but Travis and Carina had also become fast friends as well.

He knew she might now want to see him, having heard from Andy how hard Carina was taking all of this, and from Vic just how bad the Italian was looking today, but he wanted to make sure Jack hadn’t been too big and idiot and that damage control was done if it need to/she wanted it to be.

He knew from the minute he walked in the door, his soft knock having been unnoticed by both Carina and Bailey, that Jack had done something idiotic, though probably unintentional. Carina looked like she might shatter at any moment.

Travis walked over to Carina, putting an arm around her. However, he felt the small flinch she tried to hide from him and immediately pulled back.

“Sorry,” they both said at the same time.

“Don’t apologize,” Travis said gently yet firmly, “I should have asked.”

“My whole body has just been so on edge,” Carina sighed, pulling her knees up, resting her head on then as she held the blanket close to her.

“I’m sorry,” Travis said, frowning.

Carina just shrugged, glancing back at Maya.

“How is your shoulder doing?” Carina asked, trying to get her mind off of her anxiety about her wife.

“It’s getting there,” Travis said, “I am officially off prescription pain meds as of yesterday which is nice, and I’m sure Vic told you we are kicking Jack out tonight. I have to stay in this crazy contraption full time for the next week, but after that, hopefully, Link will clear me to start light physical therapy.”

“That’s good,” Carina said.

“How are you two doing?” Travis asked gently.

“She is…holding in there,” Carina said, knowing as soon as she said it that that was not the right phrasing.

“Hanging in there,” Travis said as she looked to him to correct her.

“Hanging in there,” Carina repeated, “Her body has had a lot of trauma, but her numbers are ok. She got to have some drains removed earlier which is good. Her kidney is not working well, and her body is struggling with the infection. Only time will tell how she will do.”

“And you?” Travis asked, knowing the answer was somewhere between not well and absolutely horrible, but he wanted Carina to be able to talk about how she was if she wanted to.

“I’m…I’ll be fine,” Carina said, eyes drifting away from Travis and back to Maya, “I just need her to get better.”

“I didn’t ask how you would be,” Travis said, raising an eyebrow.

“I…it’s hard,” Carina said, still just staring at Maya as she wiped a tear from her cheek, “It just reminds me so much of Andrea and as much as I am trying not to, I am terrified that something will happen to Maya. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“That’s fine,” Travis said, knowing not to push.

The two of them just sat there for a few more minutes, both of them watching Maya, though Travis’s eye ended up drifting to Carina more than once. It was hard for Travis to see the woman he had gotten close with over the past couple of years who he was so used to seeing happy and full of life looking so fragile and anxious and terrified.

He knew that there were times she struggled because when she was, Maya was usually grumpier than normal, pushing the entire team harder and herself practically into the floor with workouts.

One night, after Maya had forced them to do drills for five hours, Travis had been walking on the elevated walkway in the barn when he spotted their captain on top of the engine, staring at the ceiling, a look on her face that he didn’t often see.

He genuinely considered just going to his bunk which had been his original plan for the night, but something about the concerned, frustrated, sad look on his boss’s face made him decide to go talk to her. He had climbed up on the engine, asking her what was wrong.

She had ended up telling him that it was almost Andrew’s birthday, and that Carina was having an extremely hard time with it. It frustrated Maya, the woman who liked to fix everything, that there was absolutely nothing she could do to help in any way that felt substantial.

Travis tried to reassure her that just her being there, making sure Carina wasn’t going through it all alone, was helping even if it didn’t seem like it did. He had told her that it wasn’t about doing or saying anything when it came to being there for someone in the kind of grief Carina was going through but just about being there.

He had told her about the weeks after Michael had died that he had a few friends who would just come over and sit on his couch while Travis was upstairs in their room grieving how he needed to, and even though there were days when he wouldn’t see them for more than 2 minutes, knowing they were there made him feel better.

It seemed to help calm some on Maya’s fears, which Travis was grateful for because his legs were so sore that he actually considered sleeping on the engine that night.

Maya had never gone into details about what it looked like when Carina was struggling, but he was pretty sure this was as bad as it got. Maya was usually the person Carina leaned on when things were hard, but without Maya, Carina was falling apart.

Travis knew there were people keeping an eye on her here at the hospital, but he made a mental note to text Bailey at least once a day just to make sure.

“I am going to head out,” Travis said quietly, wincing a little when Carina jumped as he spoke, “Is there anything I can do?”

“Can you turn off the lights?” Carina asked, absolutely exhausted and overwhelmed again.

“Sure,” Travis said, nodding, “I will text you tomorrow. And if you need anything from us, you can text me.”

“Grazie,” Carina said, too exhausted to even try to muster a smile.

Travis left, turning off the lights as he went. Carina wanted to get out her cot and lay down, but she was exhausted and achy and just couldn’t force her body up off the chair, so she just sat there, pulling off her shirt again and wrapping her blanket around herself. She had no idea how long she sat there, but eventually, the door opened, Teddy coming back in.

“Carina,” she said softly, trying hard not to startle her friend, “Hey, are you ok?”

Carina just shrugged, not moving more than that.

“Do you want me to get out your bed?” Teddy asked as she pushed meds into Maya’s IV because she had arrived back to the room just as a nurse was about to come in with everything, the cardio surgeon offering to do it instead.

Carina nodded, rubbing her eyes as she watched Teddy tapping on her tablet.

“I am going to get another round of labs for Maya, and then I’ll help you with the bed,” Teddy said, grabbing a tube to get blood from Maya.

Teddy ran the blood out to the nurses before coming back into the room, grabbing the cot. Carina uncurled herself from the chair, going to stand up. However, as she did, she felt a major headrush and suddenly, everything went black as she felt her legs buckle under her.