19. A Broken Heart Is Not Easily Fixed

Carina wakes as the sun begins to light her bedroom, creeping in through the gap in the curtains where she forgot to draw them together last night. Her eyelids are heavy and her head is fuzzy after a disturbed night’s sleep, and she squints as she tries to read the time on her cellphone. It is a little after six o’clock and she isn’t used to being up this early unless Maya disturbs her as she slips out of bed for an early morning run.

Just the passing thought of her girlfriend – ex- girlfriend – makes Carina’s stomach churn and the words that have haunted her all night flash across her mind once again.

“Well, I just slept with Jack an hour ago, so be mad at that!”

She can still hear the spite in Maya’s voice and she wonders what she did to make Maya so angry with her that she would hurt her so intently.

Carina rolls onto her back and stares at the ceiling. Her head is jumbled with thoughts and feelings that she can’t make sense of, still overwhelmed by the shock and anger that lingers from the night before. She wishes Andrew was here to listen to her pour them all out, but he still has another week at the residential facility. She thinks about calling one of her cousins, Giorgia perhaps, or Maria, but Italy has just gone into a lockdown because of a pandemic that is threatening to take over the world. Amelia is at the top of her contacts list, but she only went home from the hospital a couple of days ago and is settling into her new life as a mom. Everyone she thinks of has something else going on in their lives and they don’t need to be bothered with stories of Carina’s disastrous love life.

Loneliness creeps in and Carina feels melancholy for home, for the family and community she left behind years ago. Her heart aches to be back in the bustle of DeLuca family life – lunches on a long table set up in the garden to accommodate her aunts and uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews; open air folk festivals celebrating local artists; making her Nonna’s Pane Toscano on a Sunday morning as she is regaled with all of the family gossip. She knows it is her mind playing tricks on her, that every trip back to Italy since she left has only served to remind her that it doesn’t feel like home any more, but right now it is the only place she wants to be.

Tears prick her eyes and she wipes them away. Maya doesn’t deserve her tears, she tells herself. She cried enough last night and Carina doesn’t want to turn up to work later with red eyes and puffy cheeks. She doesn’t want anyone asking questions.

She closes her eyes, willing sleep to come so that she can escape her feelings for a little longer, but the sunlight is beaming onto her face and she grunts in annoyance. She pushes the sheets to one side and slips her legs out of bed, sitting up and stretching, feeling her muscles ‘pop’. She makes her way downstairs, her bed socks slipping along the smooth wooden floors. Her townhouse feels too big and too empty, reminding her of the regret she has that she bought it on a whim. It is a beautiful house, but she wishes she had picked something smaller.

Feeling a headache coming, Carina heads straight for the coffee machine and makes a double espresso, figuring she is going to need the extra shot of caffeine to get her through the day.

She showers and gets ready for work, her make-up and styled hair painting a very different picture on the outside from the way she is feeling on the inside. Her cell phone pings just as she is leaving the house and she wonders for a moment if it is Maya with a heartfelt apology – only it is just a reminder of the monthly department meeting at nine o’clock. She feels relieved, the last thing she wants is to listen to Maya’s excuses; but it also hurts that Maya hasn’t even said sorry for what she had done or how she treated her. Not that her apology would be accepted, the hurt too overwhelming for Carina to feel anything but anger towards her.

She acts on auto-pilot, participating in the department meeting when she is called on and making small talk with her colleagues in the corridors, but otherwise keeping to herself. She spends as much time in her office as she can, burying herself in charts. Over lunch, she flicks through the stack of unread medical journals that have piled up and thinks that now might be the time to start a new research project, something that will fill her time now that so much of it is free again.

By the end of the day, she walks wearily out to her car and drives home in silence, not even bothering with the radio. She spends a lonely evening at home, some terrible Hallmark movie on the television that plays in the background to fill her big, empty house. She tries calling her cousin, Maria, but her Uncle Eduardo has a cough and a slight fever, which isn’t unusual for this time of year, but the family are worried that he has the virus that is rapidly spreading through Italy and no-one has time to listen to her.

Carina has been through break-ups before but none have hurt like this. But then none of her relationships have been like this one, either. Maya was different; from the moment she met her, Carina had been taken with her and it hadn’t surprised her when she had fallen in love. She didn’t care how closed off Maya could be, Carina loved to watch her slowly open up. She didn’t care how ‘broken’ Maya thought she was, she was also warm and loyal and caring. At least, Carina thought she was.

Last night had shattered that illusion and Carina’s heart feels broken into tiny pieces because of the fourteen words Maya had uttered last night. She goes to bed early, crying herself to sleep again, the tears falling down her cheeks and soaking into the pillow.

The next day, she wakes up finding herself trying to rationalise what Maya did – that it was a reaction to her mother’s visit, that she was struggling to let go of her denial and accept the truth about her father’s abuse, that it was another attempt to push Carina away instead of letting her in. Except if any of that was true, Maya would have called her or come to the hospital, trying to explain and begging for forgiveness.

Every time Carina checks her cell phone, there is nothing – just more silence; and Carina finds that she hates the silence just as much as the cheating, because it tells her that Maya doesn’t care about how much she is hurting.

Carina throws herself into work and falls into a routine of work and home for a couple of days, on repeat. No messages from Maya, no-one close by to notice that she is not okay. The solitude is getting to her and, god, she misses her brother. She wonders what Andrew would say if he was here. He has always been a romantic at heart and she thinks he would probably encourage her to talk to Maya, to see if their broken relationship was capable of being fixed. Except he isn’t here to tell her that and all Carina can think is that there is nothing Maya can say or do to fix what she has done.

By Thursday, Carina wakes up with a renewed energy, determined that she won’t let this break-up destroy her. She has had enough of moping. If she makes herself think that she is moving on, then perhaps her heart will follow.

She decides to eat lunch at the hospital cafeteria, hoping that her mood will be bolstered by some company. She spots Maggie sitting alone and slips into a seat on the opposite side of the table. Maggie is glued to her cell phone, her eyes fixated on whatever it is she is reading.

“How is Doctor Webber?” Carina asks, making her presence known and genuinely interested to know he is after his hip replacement surgery.

Maggie slowly tears her eyes away from the screen. “Oh – he’s doing good. The physio is pleased with his progress. He’s happy to be home, but desperate to come back to work, of course,” Maggie says, with a small roll of her eyes.

Her eyes settle on Carina and she notices the dark circles under her eyes, which she wrongly assumes is because of her brother. “How’s Andrew doing?”

“He’s doing well,” Carina says. “He’s coming home next week.” She doesn’t say any more, aware that it is up to Andrew to share as much or as little of his journey as he wants. Instead, she changes the subject. “What are you reading? You looked engrossed.”

“It’s a Covid-19 update. This pandemic is getting scary quickly,” Maggie answers. Suddenly realising who she is talking to her, her expression changes to an even more sombre one. “How is your family doing back in Italy?”

“My uncle is sick, but so far only mild symptoms,” Carina answers, relaying what her cousin had told her yesterday in a text message. “Everyone else is okay, they’re all in lockdown. They can’t leave their homes unless it’s to get food or medicine. Shops and cafés and schools are closed, only essential services are running. My aunt and uncle have had to close their restaurant. My Papa is still working, he says the hospitals are getting busier with coronavirus cases and we should get ready for it here.”

Maggie nods sympathetically. “Meredith said the Board was meeting this morning to discuss it,” she says.

Carina feels relief that the Board is taking it seriously. She knows of some doctors who think it won’t be so bad or that it will pass them by, but everything she has read tells her that it will hit them soon – and badly.

Maggie spies Miranda walking nearby with a tray in her hand. “Bailey!” she calls the Chief over, inviting her to join them.

Miranda makes her way over to their table and takes a seat in between them. “What’s up?” she asks, as she peels open her salad bowl.

Maggie launches into a dozen questions about the pandemic, which Bailey answers patiently. Yes, they are taking preparatory measures and Bailey has already been on the phone with their PPE suppliers to order more masks and gloves. She has started a stock count of the hospital’s ventilators. Bailey assures them that she will be co-ordinating with Pac North and Seattle Presbyterian to make sure each hospital has the equipment and protective gear that they need. They have been following and will continue to follow CDC guidelines.

“What are Bishop’s plans?” Bailey asks suddenly.

Carina feels her face flush. Clearly their break-up hasn’t reached Bailey’s ears and she wonders if that means that Maya hasn’t told the team, since she is certain Ben would have told his wife if he knew.

“Hmm?”

“At the station. Has she said anything?”

“Uh, no,” Carina says. She doesn’t like the idea of keeping Bailey in the dark, so she takes a deep breath as she prepares to rip off the band aid. “We broke up.”

“Oh,” Bailey says, embarrassed by her slip up. She drops her fork into her salad bowl and curls her fingers. “Carina, I’m sorry. Ben never said.”

Carina notices a shared look between Bailey and Maggie, conscious of the uncomfortable atmosphere she has just created around the table. Bailey opens her mouth and Carina gets the feeling she is about to ask her about it, and she doesn’t want to be the subject of hospital gossip.

“It’s okay,” she says quickly, trying to shrug it off. “It just… didn’t work out.” She paints a smile on her face, despite the aching in her heart. The awkward silence is broken by her pager alerting her to an emergency in the pit. “That’s me. I have to get back to work.”

She scurries off, leaving a half-eaten sandwich on her plate. She is soon transporting a mama-to-be of thirty weeks to the labour ward, glad that she has a case that will keep her busy for the rest of the day. She can’t stop the contractions, so she plies the mama with steroids and, when the baby is born early, Doctor Hayes whips him away to the peds unit. A perineal tear threatens to cause complications, but Carina gets it under control quickly. Once she stitches up the mama and makes her comfortable, she heads to the hospital chapel. It is something she does for every premature baby born, lowering her head and saying a prayer that the baby boy stays strong.

She leaves work a little later than normal and it is already dark outside when she steps into the cool night air. She pauses for a moment to take a deep inhale of fresh air and, as she does, she hears her name being called.

“Carina!”

She turns and sees Maggie sitting on a bench, looking at her with the sympathetic eyes that Carina had been hoping to avoid. She points absently over her shoulder and into the dark sky.

“I’m just on my way home.”

Maggie stands and walks over to her. It’s a little awkward, they don’t know each other that well and yet somehow Maggie is one of only two people at the hospital who knows she is nursing a broken heart.

“If Amelia was here, you know she’d be insisting that you come home with us,” Maggie says kindly.

She knows how indebted Amelia feels to Carina – not only for being the one to diagnose her brain tumour, but also getting her through her pregnancy and stopping her from catastrophising for the last nine months. Amelia would be the first one knocking at the door if she knew she could repay just a little bit of that debt by being there for Carina when she needs a shoulder to cry on. Maggie doesn’t know much about Carina’s relationship with Maya, except what Bailey had told her earlier – that Maya was Ben’s boss and they’d been dating a couple of months – but she can recognise a broken heart when she sees one.  

“I’m fine,” Carina says, but her bravado isn’t convincing.

“Okay. But if you’re not…” Maggie says pointedly, “…you know you’re always welcome round the house, right? I mean, it’s chaos. Three kids and now a baby, the floor’s never tidy, you’ll probably step on Lego at some point, and someone’s always yelling about something. But we have the local pizza place on speed dial and there’s always a bottle of wine somewhere.” She shifts her bag up her shoulder. “We’ve all been through our fair share of heart breaks. We’ll listen if you want to talk about it – or not, if you don’t.”

Tears pool in the corners of Carina’s eyes, touched by the act of kindness being shown towards her, and she blinks them away. Suddenly the thought of being surrounded by people and chaos is a welcome one. She nods, her lips curling into a small smile.

“I could eat pizza.”

Maggie returns her smile. “Great. There might even be a dirty diaper that needs changing.”

They travel in separate cars and, when they get to the house, Carina follows Maggie inside. She has been here a couple of times but only to see Andrew. It feels strange to be here without him and she pushes aside how much she misses him. As she steps inside, Carina takes in the scene before her – toys and Lego pieces scattered across the floor, couch cushions haphazardly thrown into place, dirty cups leaving stains on the furniture.

“I told you it was chaos,” Maggie says, shooting her a rueful smile before calling out. “Hello? Amelia?”

Amelia appears from around one corner, the baby asleep in her arms. “Oh, thank God you’re home,” she says, her face lighting up when she sees Carina standing by the door. “Hey!”

“Hey,” Carina says, a little awkwardly. She feels out of place and tells herself that this was a silly idea, that she is just in the way. She turns to Maggie. “You know, maybe I should go…”

“Don’t be stupid,” Maggie objects. She ushers Carina inside, then turns back to Amelia. “Where’s Link?”

“Putting Ellis and Bailey to bed,” Amelia answers. “No Meredith?”

“Stuck in surgery,” Maggie says, kicking off her shoes and hanging her coat. Carina is still stood to one side and Maggie practically pushes her into the house. “Carina is in need of some company tonight.”

Amelia picks up on Maggie’s tone and looks at Carina with concern. “Andrew?”

Carina shakes her head. “No – no, he’s fine.”

Amelia takes a second guess. “Girl trouble?”

The way Carina’s face falls tells her she is right. Amelia has only met Maya once and very briefly as she was picking up take out from an Italian diner a few blocks away from the hospital where Carina and Maya were having dinner. It had been obvious in those few minutes how enamoured Carina was with her. Amelia had spent the next week teasing Carina about her hot firefighter girlfriend, if a little disappointed that the chance of that ménage à trois had well and truly gone.

She reaches out and tugs at Carina’s elbow, guiding her further into the house. “Well, you’ve come to the right place,” she says. She looks at Maggie. “Pizza and wine?”

Maggie nods. “Come on, the kitchen will be more comfortable.”

Carina follows them obediently into the kitchen, where she is immediately instructed to sit at the table. Within minutes, Maggie places a large glass of merlot in front of her, while Amelia places a sleeping baby into her arms.

“Please,” Amelia begs. “He hasn’t settled all day unless someone has been holding him and I’m desperate to pee.”

Carina can’t help but laugh as Amelia rushes out of the room, yelling to Maggie to order her a vegetarian pizza. She looks down at the newborn baby and smiles as he gurgles happily against her chest.

“He’s cute, right?” Maggie says, sitting across from her at the table and taking a gulp from her own glass of wine. “I mean, with parents like Amelia and Link, of course he’s gonna be cute.”

“He really is,” Carina coos. He has long eyelashes and a full head of dark hair that he gets from his mom, but his mouth is all Link’s. She slips her thumb in his hand and watches as his tiny fingers grip it loosely. All day, she has felt her body wound tightly like a coil that has been threatening to unravel, but with the baby in her arms she has no choice but to stay calm.

As Maggie calls to order their pizzas, the baby starts to fuss, so Carina stands up and walks him around the kitchen, the gentle movement sending him back into a slumber until she feels it is safe enough to place him in the small crib in one corner of the kitchen.

“You’re a natural,” Maggie observes as she hangs up the phone.

Carina smiles. “I was the oldest of ten cousins, I’ve done plenty of babysitting.”

There is a loud bang upstairs and the baby stirs a little. Carina places her hand gently on his chest, nursing him back to sleep, while Maggie winces as she waits for one of the kids to start crying.

“Don’t worry,” Amelia assures her as she appears in the kitchen. “Link’s reading Ellis a book about the circus, so of course Ellis has decided he wants to be an acrobat.”

“That’s not gonna end well,” Maggie comments.

Amelia stops in her tracks as she watches Carina sit back down at the table and lift her wine glass, her arms empty of the baby that she was holding when Amelia had left the kitchen a few moments ago.

“Where’s the baby?”

“He’s asleep,” Carina says, nodding her head towards the crib.

Amelia narrows her eyes. “Okay, how did you do that? Are you a baby whisperer or something?”

Carina laughs as Amelia huffs at her, feigning annoyance.

“Pizza’s twenty minutes out,” Maggie says.

Amelia nods as she grabs a glass of water and sits at the head of the table between them.

“Okay, spill,” she says to Carina. “What happened with Maya?”

Carina’s shoulders sag. “We got into a fight. She’s going through some stuff…” Carina starts to explain, trying to navigate how much to share. “…I was just trying to help her, to get her talk about how she was feeling. Except she pushed me away and walked out. Literally, she walked out of the apartment.” She feels the frustration building up again, letting out a disgruntled sigh. ”I spent the whole day waiting for her and it turns out she was sleeping with her ex-boyfriend.”

“Shit,” Amelia says, reaching out and covering one of Carina’s hands with her own, squeezing it gently. “Carina… wow, I’m sorry. I know you really liked her.”

Carina lets out a small, sad laugh. “Yeah.”

“Has she said why she did it?” Maggie asks. She has only come across Maya a couple of times – the first time when they were rescuing a young boy from the sewers, and again when Chief Ripley died. They have never had a conversation and Maggie doesn’t know her at all, but she has a feeling from the little that Carina has said that something had triggered Maya to act out.

Carina shakes her head. “She hasn’t said anything at all. I haven’t heard from her all week.”

She feels another stab of hurt in her chest, as Amelia and Maggie share a look of disbelief.

“Do you think she’s still sleeping with him?” Amelia asks.

The question makes Carina’s body shudder. It is a thought that has been knocking at the door over the last few days, but she has refused to entertain it. Knowing it had happened once was hard enough, to think that it might have happened again was unbearable.

“Amelia!” Maggie scolds her, her body shifting, giving away that she has just kicked Amelia’s ankle under the table. Amelia merely shrugs, never afraid to ask the hard questions.

“I don’t know,” Carina says. “I can’t get my head around it. I keep telling myself that I shouldn’t care, but I do. I trusted her. I… I loved her. I thought maybe she felt the same – and then she did this.”

“It doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you,” Maggie says.

Carina scoffs. “You don’t do that to someone you love.”

“People make mistakes,” Maggie says. “It doesn’t mean she set out to hurt you.”

Carina so desperately wants to believe it and is annoyed with herself for holding on to the smallest hope that Maya really is sorry for what she had done and that she wants to make amends – but her silence tells a different story.

“You didn’t hear her,” Carina says. “She was so cruel. She just threw it in my face, like she didn’t care how much it was going to hurt me. Like she wanted to hurt me.”

Amelia twists her lips thoughtfully. “Why do you think she did it?” she asks. “You said she was going through some stuff?”

Carina shifts awkwardly in her seat. Despite everything, she isn’t prepared to break Maya’s confidence about what had happened with her dad.

“You don’t have to tell us what the fight was about,” Amelia says, noticing Carina’s body language. “But maybe her head was messed up, maybe it was a coping mechanism for whatever it is you were fighting about?”

“You sound like you’re making excuses for her,” Carina mutters.

“I’m not,” Amelia says. “But sometimes… sometimes it’s easier to hit the self-destruct button than it is to deal with your feelings. It’s why I started to drink and get high when I was a teenager, because I just wanted to escape the pain I carried around from watching my dad get murdered. And so many times after that, when I relapsed, it was because I was trying to escape something else.”

Maggie fills Carina’s almost-empty glass with more wine, then sits back, letting Amelia lead the conversation.  

“It’s not the same,” Carina says. “You have an addiction. Maya…”

“…is scared. And hurting. And maybe she isn’t ready to confront whatever it is that’s causing that pain.”

“So destroying our relationship was better than dealing with what’s going on in her life?” Carina questions, struggling to be as sympathetic as Amelia.

“Maybe,” Amelia says. “Maybe that’s how it felt for her in the moment. Look, I’m not saying that what she did was okay. I’m on your side, Carina, we both are.” She looks at Maggie, bringing her back into the conversation. “But Maggie’s right. People do stupid things sometimes. They say hurtful things that come from a place of fear or sadness. And you have every right to be angry and upset and hurt, of course you do. But it’s also in you to forgive her, if you want to.”

Carina doesn’t say anything, letting Amelia’s words settle between them.

“Do you want to forgive her?” Maggie asks tentatively.

“I don’t know,” Carina says. “I don’t know if I can. It hurts too much. I don’t know if we can ever get back what we had.” Tears pool in her eyes again and she doesn’t bother to wipe them away this time.

“It hurts now,” Amelia says. “It might not feel like that forever.”

“Yeah well, she has to be sorry about it first,” Carina says bitterly. 

The doorbell rings and Link calls out that he’ll get it, as Carina leans back in her chair and swirls the wine around her glass, thinking about what Amelia had said. The idea of forgiveness did not come easy to her.

Link comes bowling into the kitchen and throws two pizza boxes onto the table, before settling down in the seat next to Maggie.

“So, what are we talking about?” he asks, as she opens the top box and helps himself to a slice of pepperoni pizza.

Carina’s lips twist in amusement as Amelia shoots him an incredulous look.

“What are you doing?”

Link frowns with confusion, looking from Amelia to Carina to Maggie, then back to Amelia. “Eating pizza?” he says slowly.

“No,” Amelia says, with a solemn shake of her head. “This?” she gestures around the kitchen, “… is a girls only zone.”

Link stops mid-chew and looks around the room. “The baby’s here and he’s a boy.”

“The baby doesn’t count,” Amelia says.

“The baby needs a name,” Maggie interjects.

“No boys allowed,” Amelia says, ignoring her. “Besides, Link doesn’t want hear all about the guy Maggie hooked up with at the medical conference in LA, does he?”

“Amelia!” Maggie cries.

Link takes the hint, knowing when his company is not wanted. “No, he doesn’t,” he agrees, grabbing three slices of pizza and making a quick exit.

Amelia looks at Maggie and grins. “What? Your face lights up every time he texts you. Carina’s nursing a broken heart, I’ve just pushed a six pound baby out of my…”

“Don’t!” Maggie says.

“… so come on, let’s hear it. And then you’re going to have to fill me in on what’s going on with Owen and Teddy.”

Maggie holds up one of the pizza boxes and Carina helps herself to a slice, sitting back and listening to the two sisters spar as Amelia interrogates Maggie about her conference hook up. There is something about the way Maggie’s eyes shine when she talks about this Winston guy that reminds Carina of the way she used to feel about Maya, before the fight and the cheating, and she longs to feel that way again, no matter how mad she feels at the same time.

The evening passes quickly. There is no more talk about Maya, and Carina is grateful for that, enjoying the distraction from the dull ache in her heart that she just can’t shake. She drinks almost a bottle of wine and has to abandon her car outside the house, declining the offer of the couch and calling a taxicab to get her home.

She wakes the next morning with a headache, cursing as her alarm wakes her up at seven o’clock for a full day of work. After picking up her car, she takes a diversion to stop at her favourite coffee shop on Jeremy Street on her way to the hospital, and washes down two Tylenol with her americano.

Once she is settled at her desk, she reaches into the cupboard behind her to grab a journal to read up on the latest developments in IVF in anticipation for an appointment with a patient later that day. As she does, she feels something odd underneath her fingers and pulls it out. Her heart sinks when she realises that it is the firefighter calendar that Maya brought her last week. Her fingers play with the edge of the calendar, toying with the idea of flicking through it to Maya’s page. She knows it will just make her feel sad again, but she does it anyway, looking down at the soft features that smile back at her. Her heart aches again and she shoves it back into the cupboard, closing the door, shutting away the calendar and her feelings.

By early afternoon, Carina feels herself tiring and she goes in search of coffee. The cafeteria coffee isn’t worthy of the name, but the coffee cart outside makes a decent cup, and Carina figures that the fresh air will do her good.

She spots Teddy on her way out, leaning against a nurses’ station and looking glum. Owen is across the other side of the room, barking orders at the interns over a car pile-up victim. Carina thinks about the conversation last night. No-one had thought much of the wedding being cancelled because of a last minute emergency surgery, but it hadn’t gone unnoticed that Owen and Teddy were walking on eggshells around each other but no-one knew why.

“Teddy?”

Teddy looks up from the chart she is reading, her eyes a little vacant.

“I’m heading out to get some coffee. Do you want to join me?” Carina asks. “I was just reading an article on heart complications following childbirth and I have an idea about something, if you have time to talk?”

She is still looking for a new research project and an article on obstetric cardiology in the journal she was reading had sprung an idea.

Teddy looks relieved at the excuse to get out of there and nods, smiling gratefully. “Sure.” She falls into step beside Carina as they walk out of the hospital.

“So, I’m thinking of running a campaign about preventative medicine,” Carina says. “I’ve seen three patients in the last six months who have all suffered from peripartum cardiomyopathy, which is way above average. We don’t routinely do echocardiograms because it’s not covered by insurance unless we’ve already detected it on a physical exam.”

Teddy visibly relaxes as they get into a conversation, enthusiastic about Carina’s idea, and they share patient stories as they get into line at the coffee cart.

“Do you think we could persuade Doctor Bailey to run a pro bono campaign?” Carina wonders out loud.

Teddy looks unconvinced. “I doubt it. Plus, I think the Board has other things on their mind with the pandemic. Owen…” She was about to say that Owen had been talking about it recently, but trails off as she speaks his name out loud. Carina can’t help but wonder why.

“I guess,” she says, choosing not to ask about Teddy’s personal life.

They shuffle forwards in the queue. “You know, I had to do a mitral valve surgery on a nineteen year old a couple of years ago,” Teddy says. “She’d had two babies by the time her OB diagnosed the murmur.”

Teddy starts to tell her about the argument she’d had with her patient’s obstetrician and Carina listens intently, until a flash of something familiar catches the corner of her eye. She doesn’t have time to process it before a voice calls out, grabbing her attention immediately.

“Carina.”