Archive of Our Own

Eight-year-old Maya Bishop has a lot of ideas about how the world should work, and all of them involve things staying exactly the way she likes them.

Her favorite t-shirt. Her spot on the couch. Her fishing days with her dad.

Especially those.

She kicks at a rock as they walk down the worn dirt path toward the lake, sunlight slipping through the trees like it’s trying to keep up. The tackle box knocks against Lane’s leg. He smells like aftershave and beer and the faint copper tang of old pennies and medals.

This is supposed to be their thing.

Which is why, when she sees a small girl hustling along behind them with a too-small fishing rod clutched in both hands, irritation sparks under her ribs.

“Dad,” Maya mutters, tugging on his sleeve. “Who is that?”

“New neighbors,” Lane says, not slowing. “DeLucas. Or something like that. The dad’s working late. Mom asked if we could bring their kid along.”

“Why?” Maya demands, appalled. “This is our day.”

“Because we’re being neighborly,” he says. “You remember how that works?”

“That’s not funny,” she grumbles. “Dad, no. Don’t make me take the girl.”

He huffs out a laugh. “Relax. You’ll survive an afternoon, kiddo.”

The girl catches up with them, a little out of breath but beaming. She’s about Maya’s age, maybe a year older, in a lemon-yellow dress and battered sneakers, dark hair in two messy braids. Her fishing rod is bright blue, the kind that comes in a cartoon-covered box with a plastic fish printed on it.

“Ciao,” she says, accent curling around the word like ribbon. “I'm Carina.”

Maya opens her mouth to say hello and instead blurts, “You’re gonna wreck that dress.”

Carina glances down and then back up, shrugging. “È solo stoffa,” she says. “It is just cloth. My mamma says it can be washed. Or not,” she adds, grinning. “We see.”

Lane chuckles. “I like you already,” he tells her. “Let’s go.”

The dock boards are warm under Maya’s sneakers, sun-baked and splintered with the ghosts of a hundred summers. Dragonflies skim the surface of the lake. Somewhere in the distance, a lawnmower drones. It smells like sunscreen and charcoal and water that’s been sitting still for a long time.

Maya sits at the edge, legs dangling, baseball cap pulled low. Carina drops down beside her and copies the angle of her legs like it’s part of the instructions.

“You fish a lot?” Maya asks, trying to sound bored.

“In Italia, my nonno fishes every weekend,” Carina says carefully. “He says I’m lucky. I always get something.”

“Sure you do,” Maya mutters.

They bait the hooks. Carina’s clumsy with the worm, fingers more used to turning pages than spearing anything. But she doesn’t squeal or flinch when the worm wiggles; she just bites her lip, hums in Italian under her breath, and tries again.

When the hook catches in the hem of her dress, she laughs, not embarrassed at all, twisting around like a dog chasing its tail.

“Stop moving,” Maya groans, leaning over. Her small fingers work the line free, careful not to rip the fabric. Her thumb brushes Carina’s hip, and something strange zips through her chest, electric and unfamiliar.

Carina goes very still, then looks up at her through thick lashes and smiles. “Grazie,” she says softly. “I mean… thank you.”

Maya snatches her hand back like she touched a live wire. “Whatever.”

They cast together. Lines hiss out over the water: Lane’s smooth and practiced, Maya’s efficient, Carina’s too high and too short, plopping into the shallows. It doesn’t seem to bother her; she watches the bobber like it’s the most important job in the world.

For a while, it’s quiet. The good kind. Lane throws out a story about some massive bass he caught when he was sixteen, and Maya only half believes him. The sun warms the back of her neck, the boards creak under their shifting weight, and somewhere a crow complains about something in the trees.

Then Carina starts talking.

She talks in a rush, syllables tumbling over one another. About moving from Italy. About how American cereal bowls are so big that they might be for horses. School is hard because the kids talk fast and don’t always say what they mean. About how the sky here feels bigger but also smaller, because the mountains sit closer, like they’re listening.

Her English wobbles; Italian slips in where words fail. She acts things out with her hands, animated and bright, as if she’s afraid the story will fall apart if she doesn’t keep grabbing it.

Maya wants to be annoyed. She really does.

But she’s never met anyone who sounds like this—like the whole world is a thing she’s trying to touch with her voice.

She finds herself listening. Really listening.

They compare snacks. Carina describes gelato so vividly that Maya can taste it. Maya tries, and fails, to explain the perfection of a Costco hot dog loaded with too much mustard. Carina admits she doesn’t understand peanut butter. Maya nearly drops her rod in outrage.

“You’re wrong,” Maya declares. “Peanut butter is the best food on the planet.”

Carina wrinkles her nose. “It is like someone takes peanuts and sadness and makes a paste.”

Maya snorts, laughter bursting out of her before she can stop it. “You’re so weird.”

“You still take me fishing,” Carina reminds her, smug.

Before Maya can answer, the small blue rod in Carina’s hands jerks hard.

“Ho qualcosa!” she squeaks. “I have… something!”

“Easy,” Lane calls, already standing.

Maya is on her feet in a blink, grabbing hold of the rod above Carina’s hands. Together they brace and haul, little muscles straining. The line cuts a sharp V in the water, then a flash of silver breaks the surface—fish thrashing, droplets flying.

They squeal together, voices overlapping. The fish flops onto the boards, slick and frantic. Carina leans over it, eyes huge.

“She’s beautiful,” she breathes.

“He,” Lane says automatically. “Probably.”

“She,” Carina insists. “She works hard.” She glances at Maya, urgent. “What do we do?”

“We put her back,” Maya decides, feeling strangely solemn. “She didn’t ask to be here.”

Carina nods. Together they nudge the fish gently back to the edge. Its body slips back into the water and vanishes with a flick of its tail.

“Buona fortuna,” Carina murmurs after it. Good luck.

Then she turns and holds her little rod out to Maya like an offering. “For you.”

“What? No,” Maya sputters. “It’s yours, you caught the fish.”

Carina shrugs. “I have your dad’s rod next time,” she says. “You have this one. Lucky.” She taps the handle and then taps Maya’s chest. “For you.”

Lane chuckles. “Not so bad having the girl along, huh?” he says, nudging Maya’s hat.

Maya rolls her eyes on principle, but her mouth tugs at the corner. She stares out over the lake to hide it. “She talks too much,” she mumbles.

Carina bumps her shoulder. “You listen too much,” she counters.

On the walk home, Carina hops over every crack in the sidewalk, arms stretched out. “In Italia, we say if you step on lines it’s bad luck,” she explains. “Break your mother’s back or something like this.” She lands with both feet on a big square and grins. “But I like to see what happens if I do.”

“What happens?” Maya asks despite herself.

Carina glances at her, eyes dancing. “You happen,” she says. “I meet you.”

Maya feels her cheeks burn. “You’re so dramatic.”

Carina spreads her arms like she’s showing off the whole neighborhood. “It is a dramatic day.”

At the corner, they stop. The DeLuca house is small and neat, with flower pots already crowding the porch. Carina bounces on her toes, then blurts, “We fish next weekend? Maybe? If you want?”

Maya shrugs, trying to be cool and missing by a mile. “We’ll see.”

Carina smiles like that’s a yes. “I'm lucky,” she says again. “There is always a next time.”

She runs up the path, shouting, “Mamma! I catch a fish!” in excited Italian. Her voice floats back on the warm air.

Maya watches her go, the little lemon dress flashing between the porch posts, and feels something settle inside her, low and certain. A tiny knot ties itself in her chest: quick, firm, permanent.

She will spend years tugging at that knot. She doesn’t know it yet, but this is the first day some quiet part of her starts whispering a sentence she won’t have the words for until much later.

Don’t take the girl.

Ten years later, the movie theater marquee glows against a dark Seattle sky.

The letters are half burnt out, announcing some loud summer blockbuster anyway. Couples and families loiter on the sidewalk, the air smelling like rain and popcorn butter and wet pavement.

Maya waits under the awning, hands jammed in her jacket pockets, heart doing a stupid jitter every time the door opens.

Then Carina steps out with the crowd, and the world clicks into focus.

She’s eighteen now, hair longer and loose around her shoulders, jeans and a leather jacket that makes her look older, sharper, in a way that makes something hot curl low in Maya’s stomach. Her eyes scan the sidewalk once, and when they land on Maya, they light up as the sign above them has finally fully switched on.

“There you are,” she says, breath clouding in the cool night. “I thought maybe you stand me up. I was ready to be very dramatic.”

Maya snorts, stepping forward to meet her. “I’ve been trying to get rid of you for a decade,” she says. “Clearly it’s not working.”

Carina laughs, that familiar, bubbling sound that makes Maya’s chest feel too full. “No,” she agrees. “You are stuck with me, Bishop.”

She wraps her arms around Maya’s neck without hesitation. Maya’s hands slide to her waist, jacket smooth under her palms. She breathes in the scent of citrus and shampoo and the faint hospital soap smell that clings to Carina’s sleeves from her volunteer shifts. It’s all so achingly familiar and so newly intense that Maya’s head spins.

“Hi,” she murmurs, lips brushing Carina’s temple.

“Hi,” Carina replies, and tips her chin up.

The kiss is quick, but it’s not tentative. They got past tentative ages ago—somewhere between late-night homework sessions and whispered confessions under blankets and the first time Maya realized she’d rather be caught kissing Carina than doing anything else.

They go inside, hands linked naturally. They share popcorn, fingers bumping and tangling in the tub. Carina leans close to make snarky comments about the movie, laughing into Maya’s shoulder. Maya threads their fingers together on the armrest and feels something like a future settle around her like a blanket.

For two hours, the world outside narrows to flickering light and the warmth pressed against her side.

Then the credits roll. The lights come up. People shuffle, stretch, and check their phones. Maya and Carina flow out with the crowd into the damp night.

It’s drizzling again. The pavement shines under the streetlights, neon reflected in shallow puddles. The air smells like exhaust and wet concrete.

Maya squeezes Carina’s hand, thumb sliding over bare knuckles. “You wanna come over?” she asks. “We could—”

Carina smiles, regret tugging at the edges. “I have to be at the hospital at six,” she says. “Volunteer shift. Babies need snuggles.”

“They do,” Maya agrees. “So do I.”

Carina’s smile softens. “I can give you some,” she says, stepping closer, voice dropping. “Later.”

They’re so focused on each other that they don’t see the group of men until they’re right in front of them.

Four of them. Early twenties, maybe. Hoodies, ball caps, that loose, swaggering walk that tastes like trouble. One nudges another, jerks his chin toward Maya and Carina’s joined hands.

“Look at this,” he says, loud enough to carry.

Maya feels Carina flinch, almost imperceptibly, against her side. Her own spine goes rigid.

They keep walking. There are people around. A family wrangling kids into car seats. An older couple huddled under an umbrella. This is downtown Seattle, not the middle of nowhere.

It should feel safe.

The men fan out anyway, blocking the sidewalk. The one in front steps directly into their path, forcing them to stop short.

Up close, he smells like beer and something sour. His eyes flick down to their joined hands and back up, lip curling.

“Well, would you look at that,” he drawls. “It’s date night.”

“Excuse us,” Maya says evenly. She doesn’t let go of Carina’s hand. “We’re trying to get by.”

“Oh, I bet you are,” one of his buddies snickers.

Another leans in, too close. “You know it’s a waste, right?” he says. “All that—” He gestures crudely at them both. “Wasted on each other.”

Carina stiffens. “We are not a waste,” she says, accent sharpening.

He mimics it. “‘We are not a waste,’” he parrots in a warped version of her voice. The others laugh.

Maya’s hands shake. Her heart is pounding, that familiar adrenaline starting to climb, but this isn’t a fire line, and she has nothing to aim it at except four assholes and a lifetime of anger.

“Back off,” she says, a warning buried under every word. “Last chance.”

“Or what, sweetheart?” the leader sneers. “You gonna hit me? Call the cops?”

“I will,” Carina says. “You are harassing us.”

“Oh, I’m just talking,” he says. “Can’t help it if you snowflakes can’t handle free speech.”

He reaches out and flicks a finger at Carina’s hair, at one of her braids, like she’s some kind of display.

Maya moves before she thinks. She slaps his hand away, hard enough to make a sound.

“Don’t touch her,” she snaps.

Something ugly lights behind his eyes.

“You’ll want a real man someday,” he says, voice dropping low and mean. “Can’t get that with her.”

He shoves Maya’s shoulder.

It’s not much. Just enough to tip.

Maya has been shoved harder in practice drills, tackled on the track, and thrown by fire. It’s not the force that does it. It’s the intent.

Fear flares white-hot, merging with anger.

“Leave us alone,” she says. “This is your last warning.”

“Ooh, she’s tough,” one of them jeers. “What, you gonna fight us all?”

The leader steps in like he’s going to brush past. Instead, his shoulder slams into Maya’s chest. His elbow clips her jaw.

Pain flashes. The world tilts.

She stumbles backward. Carina grabs for her, fingers catching her sleeve, pulling her in just enough that when the man swings again, the punch glances off Maya’s cheekbone instead of Carina’s.

White explodes behind her eyes. For a second, everything is sound—Carina shouting her name, the thud of her own body hitting brick, the scrape of shoes on wet pavement.

She pushes off the wall, blinking hard, and sees one of the other guys shove Carina.

Carina’s foot hits a slick patch. Her leg flies out from under her. Her temple clips the edge of a metal trash can with a sickening crack before her body hits the ground.

She goes limp.

The world goes silent.

Maya hears herself scream, raw and wordless, from somewhere very far away. She launches herself toward Carina, but hands grab her jacket, yank her backward.

“Stay down, bitch,” one snarls, shoving her.

She hits the sidewalk on her knees; pain bolts up her thighs. A boot catches her in the ribs. Another grazes off her shoulder. It’s clumsy, sloppy, fueled more by hate than skill. It doesn’t matter. Every blow widens the distance between her and Carina, and that hurts worse than anything.

She folds around it, physically and metaphorically, curling her body over itself and then forcing it up again. She claws at the wet pavement, dragging herself forward inch by inch.

“Stop!” she rasps. “Stop, stop—”

Somewhere above, a woman screams, “Hey! I’m calling 911!” A man yells, “Knock it off!” Car doors slam.

The hands fall away.

“Let’s go,” one of them mutters. “Cops are coming.”

Footsteps pound away into the night.

Maya doesn’t watch them go. She crawls the last distance to Carina and throws herself over her, hands hovering stupidly, not sure where to touch without breaking something else.

“Carina,” she gasps, voice shredded. “Rina. Hey. Look at me.”

There’s blood in Carina’s hairline, oozing down the side of her face. Her eyes are closed. Her chest rises shallowly, haltingly, but it rises.

“Come on,” Maya begs. “Please. Please, baby. Open your eyes.”

She hears sirens in the distance. They sound like they’re underwater.

She remembers, suddenly, her dad’s truck when she was small. Hot vinyl seat sticking to the backs of her legs. The radio crackling, some country singer telling a story about a boy and a girl and all the ways life tries to take her away. About a man begging whatever’s listening not to let that happen.

She hadn’t understood it then. Why you’d make the same plea over and over, in every chapter of your life.

She understands now.

“Take anything you want,” she whispers, leaning over Carina, her body a shield against everything and nothing. “Take my stupid medals, my scholarship, my pride. Take my breath. Just… don’t take her. Don’t take my girl. Please, please, don’t.”

Blue and red lights wash the alley in fractured color. Hands—gentler this time—touch her shoulders.

“Miss, we need to get to her,” a paramedic says. “Can you let us in?”

Maya nods, numb, crawling back just enough to give them room, but not so far that she loses contact. She keeps one hand on Carina’s ankle, grounding herself in the solid weight of her.

Her fingers don’t stop shaking for hours.

Later, they’ll both get patched up. Maya will get a CT and a lecture about cracked ribs and the value of not throwing herself between fists and someone else’s skull. Carina will get stitches and observation, and a migraine that lasts for days. They’ll give statements. There will be court dates and disappointments and the bitter taste of knowing the system doesn’t always love them either.

But they don’t break.

In the dim light of the hospital room, once they’re alone, Carina will reach for Maya’s injured hand, fingers threading carefully around hers.

“You protected me,” she whispers, eyes thick with sleep and painkillers. “Again.”

“Always,” Maya says hoarsely. “I’d do it every time.”

Carina’s thumb rubs over the back of her hand. “You can't fight all of them,” she murmurs. “Not every person who hates us.”

“I can try,” Maya says. “And I can stand between them and you when I have to. That’s enough.”

Carina stares at their hands, then up at her. “Promise me something,” she says.

Maya braces. “Anything.”

“If we are ever far,” Carina says, voice going quiet in the way it does when she’s afraid, “you do not let go. Not even if it is hard. Not even if we fight. Not even if everyone thinks we will be like the people in the song who lose each other and then find each other again.”

Her eyes shine. “I do not want to lose you to find you,” she confesses. “I want to… keep you. Through. Sempre.”

Maya’s throat closes. “Okay,” she says, and it feels like the simplest vow she’s ever made. “We don’t let go. No matter what.”

She presses Carina’s knuckles to her lips and thinks, as the monitor ticks on beside them, that whatever god that song man was singing to, better be listening.

Because this is her version of the chorus now, and she’s not planning to change it.

They still don’t let go.

Med school takes Carina across the country. Firefighting keeps Maya anchored in Seattle.

The day Carina leaves, they cling at the airport security line until a TSA agent coughs politely and says they really do have to move it along. There’s snot and mascara and the kind of laughter that sounds like crying.

“I will call you when I land,” Carina promises, hands cupping Maya’s face. “And then tomorrow. And the next day. Until you get sick of me.”

“That’ll never happen,” Maya says, fiercely. She leans in and kisses her like she’s trying to write something permanent into the moment. “You hear me? Never.”

She watches Carina’s small figure vanish down the security hall, braids swinging, backpack bigger than her.

On the drive home, the radio plays that same old country song from her childhood. A man begging again not to lose the girl he loves at each turn of his life. It feels less like background noise now and more like a prophecy.

Maya turns the volume down halfway through and murmurs, “That’s my line,” to herself, eyes fixed on the road.

They build a life in pixels.

They learn the math of time zones and rotations, and shifts. Carina sends texts at odd hours: photos of coffee cups, messy notes, sunsets over unfamiliar buildings. Maya sends back half-asleep selfies from the firehouse bunk room, pictures of helmets lined up like soldiers, terrible drawings on the whiteboard of the captain yelling about turnout time.

They argue about politics and medicine, and whether pineapple belongs on pizza. They fall asleep on FaceTime more nights than not, screens propped on pillows, breaths syncing across distance. Sometimes Maya wakes up to a dead battery and a kink in her neck; sometimes Carina wakes to the echo of the call ending and has to sit with the emptiness for a minute.

They fight. Of course they do.

“You said you’d be on at eight,” Carina snaps one night, eyes red from lack of sleep. "It’s ten.”

“I got held at the scene,” Maya fires back, equally frayed. “Some guy’s car went over an embankment. I can’t just leave, Rina.”

“I didn’t say you should,” Carina says, accent thickening with hurt. “I'm just… I'm tired of waiting for your face and getting a voicemail.”

“I’m tired too,” Maya says, softer, anger collapsing into exhaustion. “I miss you, and my job is chewing me up, and sometimes I don’t know how to do this.”

Carina flinches. “If you don’t want this,” she says, voice suddenly small in a way Maya hates, “you can go. I don’t want you to stay out of… pity. Or guilt.”

“No,” Maya says immediately. “No. That’s not what I said. I want this. I want you. I’m just… scared I’m not enough to make this work from a thousand miles away.”

Carina stares at the screen, breathing hard. Then her shoulders drop. “I’m scared too,” she admits. “Every siren I hear, every news alert about a fire…I see your face on the ground again. I hear you not answering. It’s like the song, you know? The man keeps asking not to lose her, but the danger keeps changing shape.”

Maya nods. “Yeah,” she says quietly. “I get that now.”

“So we be scared,” Carina says. “And we be tired. And we still do it.”

“Yeah,” Maya says again. “We still do it.”

They do.

There are missed calls and delayed flights and arguments that end only because one of them has to scrub in or respond to a three-alarm. There are also stupid memes shared at 3 a.m., and surprise food delivery orders sent cross-country, and nights when they both laugh so hard their sides hurt and the distance shrinks to the size of the screen.

Every time someone asks, “Isn’t it hard?” Carina answers, “Of course,” and Maya answers, “Yeah,” but their eyes say it’s worth it.

They never say, “if we see each other again.” It’s always when.

“When I’m done with residency,” Carina says one winter night, wrapped in a blanket, nose red from too many overnight shifts, “I come home. To Seattle. To you.”

“You sure?” Maya asks. “There are good hospitals back east.”

“So?” Carina shrugs. “My life is not a ranking chart. It is you. And some good food. And maybe, one day, a lemon tree in a pot that suffers very much in the Seattle rain.”

Maya laughs, heart aching. “Move here,” she says. “We’ll get you the most tragic lemon tree anyone’s ever seen.”

Carina’s eyes soften through the pixels. “Deal.”

When Carina does finally get the attending job at Grey Sloan, it feels less like a surprise and more like a promise made good.

“I told you I'm lucky,” she says, grinning into her phone, acceptance email pulled up in the background.

Maya presses her hand over her heart, the knot from the dock tightening and loosening all at once.

“Yeah,” she says. “You are.”

We are, she thinks, and doesn’t say, because she’s already got one foot in the doorway of the future that waits for them.

The first time Maya sees Carina walking through the halls of Grey Sloan as a doctor, not a volunteer or a visiting med student, but Dr. DeLuca, Attending OB/GYN, her chest swells so hard it hurts.

She’s just finished dropping off a patient from a car crash, helmet tucked under her arm, turnout coat half unzipped. She’s exhausted and sweaty and still half in emergency mode.

Then she hears it.

“Bishop?”

The voice lands in her spine.

She turns.

Carina stands a few yards down the corridor, white coat fluttering slightly as she walks, ID badge bouncing against her chest. Her hair is up in a messy bun that looks like it lost a fight with gravity. There are faint shadows under her eyes, but the joy there burns through everything.

Maya’s body moves before her brain; she closes the distance in eight long strides.

“You made it,” she says, slightly out of breath.

Carina’s grin is incandescent. “I told you,” she says. “You can’t get rid of me.”

Maya laughs, something loud and delighted and a little unhinged, bursting out of her. She drops her helmet without caring where it lands and wraps her arms around Carina’s waist, lifting her off the ground in a spinning hug.

Carina squeals and clutches at her shoulders, laughing into her neck. “Maya!”

She sets her down and then, because they promised themselves they wouldn’t hide anymore, she kisses her. It’s not long enough to be unprofessional, but it’s long enough that one intern walks into a door frame.

“Keep it to a PG rating in the hall,” Bailey mutters as she walks past, not slowing. “This is not a telenovela.”

“Yes, Dr. Bailey,” Carina says, but she’s glowing, hand still fisted in the front of Maya’s shirt.

They moved in together that week.

Their apartment is small and crooked, with a kitchen that tries its best and a bathroom that complains loudly when more than one faucet is on. The couch is a hand-me-down from Vic; the bed is the only new thing in the place, bought after a full day of tired bickering about mattress firmness and pillow count.

On their first night in the new bed, they lie facing each other in the dark, the sounds of the city filtering in through the thin window.

“We did it,” Maya whispers.

“Which part?” Carina asks. “The long distance? The degrees? The furniture assembly that did not end in divorce?”

“All of it,” Maya says. “We made it to the part where we get to do the boring, ordinary things together, like… fight over the laundry and argue about whether we need more plants.”

Carina smiles, reaching out to trace Maya’s jaw. “We are very lucky,” she says, voice soft. “You know this, sì?”

“Yeah,” Maya agrees, catching her hand and kissing her knuckles. “I know.”

They make love like people who have been waiting in pieces and are finally whole. It’s slow and intense and filled with all the things they didn’t get to say across distance. Hands relearn, mouths rediscover, bodies remember. They laugh when they bump noses, cry when things feel too big, whisper I love yous into skin like they’re writing them in ink.

After, they lie tangled, skin sticky, hearts thrumming, Carina’s head on Maya’s shoulder.

“Same girl,” Carina murmurs into her collarbone. “From the dock. From outside the theatre. From the stupid long flights.”

“Always the same girl,” Maya replies, fingers stroking her hair. “You’re stuck with me, DeLuca.”

“I know,” Carina says. “I picked you. On purpose.”

That becomes their refrain. Not if but on purpose.

When they get married, it’s not a grand, orchestrated production. It’s a medium-sized ceremony that feels very big to the two people in the middle of it. There are fairy lights and folding chairs and a dance floor that someone’s uncle insists on testing early.

Andy stands on Maya’s side, eyes shining. Vic cries openly. Travis offers running commentary on everyone’s fashion choices under his breath.

Carina walks down the aisle in a simple dress that fits her like a secret, curls spilling everywhere, eyes never leaving Maya’s. When they meet at the front, Maya has to swallow twice before she can speak her vows.

“I’ve spent my whole life trying to keep you,” she says, voice cracking but sure. “Even before I knew that’s what I was doing. I tried with my hands, with my bad decisions, with my better ones. Today I’m just… saying it out loud, I guess. I pick you. On purpose. Every time. Even when it’s hard. Especially then.”

Carina laughs and cries at once, mascara streaking. “You are impossible,” she says, and then, “Mi hai salvata così tante volte,” you have saved me so many times. “Outside the cinema. In my head, when I was far. Today. You are my safe place. I promise to be yours. I promise to come back to you. Always.”

“Always,” Maya echoes.

The officiant pronounces them married. They kiss, messy and delighted. Someone whoops. Someone else blasts a song from someone’s phone, the lyrics about someone begging not to lose the girl he loves. Maya laughs into Carina’s mouth, dizzy with the symmetry.

“Appropriate,” Carina murmurs when they break apart.

“Yeah,” Maya says, thinking, Not this time. You don’t get to take her this time.

They decide to try for a baby a couple of years later.

The conversation starts as a joke—Carina holding someone else’s newborn in the hospital, cooing in Italian, and saying, “We could do this. Make one of these. Maybe less wrinkly.”

Maya, watching the way her whole face softens, feels something in her chest crack. “Yeah,” she says. “We could.”

IVF is a roller coaster. Needles and ultrasounds and numbers on charts. Carina knows too much, which is both a comfort and a curse. Maya learns faster than she ever has in any class, because this is the kind of exam she refuses to fail.

The first transfer doesn’t stick. They grieve in small, quiet ways: a box of tiny socks pushed to the back of a closet, Carina lingering in the nursery section of a store, and then abruptly walking away. They hold each other and cry and rage and then, eventually, try again.

The second time, the test shows two clear lines. Solid. Unambiguous.

Carina sits on the closed toilet lid, hand over her mouth, shoulders shaking. Maya kneels between her knees, staring at the test like it might vanish if she blinks.

“We did it,” she whispers.

“We did it,” Carina echoes, then laughs, loud and astonished, as tears spill over. “Oh my God, we did it.”

Maya presses her forehead to Carina’s, breath mingling. “Hi, little one,” she says, voice rough. “You’re so wanted it’s ridiculous.”

Pregnancy does not treat Carina gently.

She’s been sick for weeks, exhausted, her usually bright energy sanded down to something quieter. Her blood pressure creeps up. She knows all the dangerous words—preeclampsia, abruption, emergency—and they hang in the room with them sometimes like ghosts.

Maya notices the way Carina’s hand lingers at her abdomen after a long day, the way she stares at the monitor a second longer at her own appointments, the way her laugh comes a beat late whenever someone says, “You must be so excited!”

One night, when thunder rolls outside and the rain drums hard against the windows, Maya lies on her side, hand spread over the small swell of Carina’s belly, and asks, “What’s going on in there?” She looks up. “In your head, not your uterus. I trust your uterus.”

Carina snorts. “My uterus is a drama queen,” she says automatically, then goes quiet.

“I’m scared,” she admits, finally. “I have seen so many things go wrong. I know too many stories where there is… a choice.”

Maya feels her stomach drop. “Between…?”

“Between the mother and the baby,” Carina says. “Between you and her. Between me and her.” Her fingers curl around Maya’s. “If it ever comes to that, you choose her, okay? You choose our child. You let me go.”

“No,” Maya says.

Carina blinks. “Maya—”

“No.” The word feels like steel in her mouth. “I’m not making that decision. I’m not putting you on some cosmic trade table and saying, ‘yeah, sure, take her instead.’ You’re not a bargaining chip.”

“This is not about bargaining,” Carina says softly. “It is about—”

“I know what it’s about,” Maya cuts in, her voice cracking. “I also know I have been asking the universe not to take you from me since I was a kid. I’m not going to suddenly flip the script because a worst-case scenario shows up.”

She swallows hard, tears stinging. “We will fight for both of you,” she says. “We will let the doctors do what they do, and I will do what I do, and we will bring her home and you home. Together. I’m not choosing who gets to live in my life. I want it all.”

Carina searches her face for a long moment. Then she sighs, cupping Maya’s cheek. “You are so stubborn,” she says, with a hint of a smile.

“Very,” Maya agrees.

“Good,” Carina decides. “We will need that.”

They go on like that: hope and fear braided together.

At thirty-four weeks, everything snaps.

It starts as a headache. Carina shrugs it off. “It is just a long day,” she says, rubbing at her temple. “Too many charts. Too many vaginas.”

Maya smirks. “Never thought I’d hear you complain about that.”

Carina swats her arm, chuckling. “Go to work,” she says. “I will call if I grow a second head.”

Maya kisses her and goes, reluctantly, heart thudding a little too hard in her chest. She checks her phone at every red light.

At the station, she’s halfway through inventory when the call comes in.

“Explosion reported at Grey Sloan East Annex,” the dispatcher crackles. “Smoke showing, possible structural damage, multiple injuries, unknown cause.”

The world narrows to a pinprick.

“Carina’s there,” Maya says aloud.

Andy looks up sharply. “Today?”

“She had clinic,” Maya says, standing so fast her chair skids. “She said it was just consults, nothing intense, so she’d be done early—”

“Okay,” Andy says, already moving. “Okay. Then we go get her.”

On the rig, Maya stares out the front windshield, leg bouncing violently, hands clenched. The siren wails; the city blurs.

Please, she thinks, not sure who she’s talking to. Please. Not again. Not her. Not them. Take the building, take the equipment, take every overtime shift for the next ten years. Just… not her.

Smoke boils out of the annex windows when they arrive. People are streaming out—staff, patients, some limping, some coughing, some helping others.

“Bishop, you’re with me,” Andy calls. “Interior search, west side. Vic, Travis, take the east.”

They go in.

Heat slams into them. The hallway is chaos: fallen ceiling tiles, debris, alarms blaring, sprinklers half working, water hissing down onto broken glass and paper.

They move methodically, room by room. Clear. Clear. Two patients in an exam room—get them out. A nurse dazed in the hallway—get her out.

Maya’s brain does the work, but her heart is elsewhere, tracking Carina’s last known location like GPS.

“Exam Two, east corridor—pregnant doctor trapped, possible head injury—conscious but fading—” Vic’s voice cracks over the radio. “We need a board and help.”

Maya’s blood runs cold.

“She’s mine,” she says, already turning.

“Bishop!” Andy barks. “You’re not going in alone. Vic, hold until we get there.”

They run.

The east corridor is worse. A support beam took out part of the ceiling; half a hallway’s worth of fluorescent lights dangle like broken bones. Smoke curls thick, visibility dropping.

Through the haze, Maya sees her.

Carina is half buried under a shallow drift of tile and a light fixture, one arm cradling her belly, the other trapped under a beam. Dust and soot streak her face and hair. Blood trickles from her scalp. Her swollen abdomen looks obscene and fragile in the wreckage.

“Carina!” Maya screams, lungs burning.

Carina’s head lolls toward the sound. Her eyes blink slowly, unfocused, but there. “Maya?” she whispers, voice shredded.

“I’m here,” Maya says, sliding to her knees at her side. Her hands shake as she braces the beam. “I’m right here. We’ve got you, okay? Stay with me.”

Andy and Vic are already on the beam with her, grunting, leveraging. Travis slips a backboard into place as soon as there’s clearance.

“We got you, Doc,” Vic says, voice tight.

“Baby?” Carina slurs.

“We’ll check her,” Maya says, because she can’t bring herself to say we don’t know.

They free her arm. The moment the weight shifts, Carina gasps and groans, hand flying to her stomach.

“Hurts,” she pants. “Maya, it— it hurts—”

“I know, I know,” Maya says, tears mixing with sweat under her mask. “I’m sorry. We’re getting you out.”

They lift her onto the board. Maya keeps one hand on her shoulder the whole time, as if the contact alone can keep her tethered.

Outside, everything is noise and color and movement. The medics descend, checking vitals, shouting numbers. There’s a flurry of activity around Carina’s abdomen—doppler, hands palpating, urgent looks exchanged.

“Fetal heart rate is dropping,” one of them says. “We need to move, now.”

Maya climbs into the rig without asking permission, helmet still on, mask hanging. No one tries to stop her.

In the tight space, she curls herself around Carina’s hand, the way she did once on the pavement years ago.

“Hey,” she whispers, voice shaking with the effort to sound calm. “Remember the fish? That ugly little dock?”

Carina’s lashes flutter. “You… did not want to take me,” she mumbles.

“I was an idiot,” Maya says, laughing wetly. The monitor shrills, then steadies. “I didn’t know yet. I didn’t get it. That song in my dad’s truck? The one where he keeps saying he’d give up anything, everything, just not her? I thought it was dramatic.” Her throat closes. “I get it now. I have for a long time.”

She squeezes Carina’s hand hard.

“Take my job,” she whispers to whoever might be listening. “Take my future promotions, my damn career. Take the house we want, the stupid lemon tree. Take everything I own. Just… don’t take her. Don’t take them. Please. I’m so tired of asking, but I’ll keep asking anyway.”

The medic calls ahead, rattling off vital signs, code words, and ETA. The siren wails.

Carina slips in and out, consciousness a choppy sea. “Maya,” she whispers once, eyes rolling. “Se… se succede qualcosa…” If something happens…

“Don’t,” Maya says, a raw edge to it. “Don’t you dare finish that sentence.”

“Take… her,” Carina manages, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. “Our… bambina. Promise.”

“No,” Maya says, clenching her jaw. “I’m not promising to let you die. I’m promising to fight like hell so you don’t have to.”

Carina makes a small, broken sound.

“Ti prego,” she breathes. Please.

Maya leans over and presses their foreheads together as the ambulance lurches. “I love you,” she says, voice rough. “In every version of my life. In every verse of this stupid song. I’m not handing you over to anything. Hold on. Just hold on.”

Carina’s fingers curl weakly around hers.

Then the doors swing open, and hospital chaos swallows her whole.

The OR waiting room is too bright and too dim all at once.

Maya sits hunched in a chair that feels like it was designed to make people suffer. Her gear is gone—she barely remembers shrugging it off in the hallway, someone taking her helmet, someone else thrusting a clean sweatshirt at her.

Her cheek throbs where a piece of ceiling clipped her. Her ribs ache. There’s dried blood under her nails.

She doesn’t care about any of it.

Andy and Vic sit nearby, quiet sentinels. They try to make her drink coffee; she ignores it. Travis texts updates; she glances at her buzzing phone and looks away.

Time stretches, warps. Every time the doors swing open, her heart lurches up into her throat and crashes back down when it’s not Bailey.

She thinks about the song again. About how the man in it keeps asking for the same thing as he gets older, as the stakes change. As a kid, she’d thought it was repetitive, almost annoying.

Now she understands that repetition is the whole point.

When Bailey finally appears, cap askew, scrub top spotted with something Maya doesn’t want to identify, Maya is on her feet so fast the room tilts.

“Is she—”

“Alive,” Bailey says, straight to the point. “For the moment.”

Maya’s knees nearly buckle.

“We had to move fast,” Bailey continues. “There was a placental abruption. The baby was in real trouble. We got her out by emergency C-section.”

“Her,” Maya echoes, dizzy.

“A girl,” Bailey confirms. A tiny, tired smile tugs at her mouth. “She’s small, but she came out fighting. Breathing on her own, crying like she owns the place. NICU has her now.”

Maya swallows a sob. “And Carina?”

Bailey’s expression shifts, something heavy in it. “It was a rough surgery,” she says. “She lost a lot of blood. Her heart stopped twice. We got it back both times, but she’s not out of the woods.”

Maya presses the heel of her hand to her mouth.

“She’s in the ICU,” Bailey says. “On a ventilator for now. Sedated. The next twenty-four hours are critical.”

“Can I—”

“See her?” Bailey nods. “Yeah. Gimme ten minutes. They’re getting her set up. In the meantime, NICU can bring you by if you want to see your daughter through the glass.”

My daughter.

The words land like a meteor.

“Yeah,” Maya whispers. “Okay.”

The NICU is dim and warm and full of soft sounds. Maya stands with her hands shoved in her pockets because she’s afraid that if she takes them out, she’ll start shaking again and never stop.

A nurse leads her to an isolette and smiles gently. “Here she is, Mom.”

Maya steps close, breath catching.

The baby is the tiniest thing she’s ever seen. Pink and furious, connected to wires and hoses that look impossibly big next to her. There’s a knit cap on her head; one of her hands has already wriggled free of the little mitten, fingers splayed like she’s making a point.

She is both impossibly vulnerable and stubbornly solid, chest rising and falling like she refuses to consider any other option.

“Hey,” Maya says, voice barely more than air. She lifts a hand and lays it against the plastic. “I’m your mom.”

The baby frowns in her sleep, as if unimpressed.

“You’ve had a rough day,” Maya continues. “Your mamma, too. She’s… she’s resting right now. She did a really hard thing to get you here. She would be yelling at me for how I look at you,” she adds, a strained laugh catching in her chest. “Like I’m going to break you. She’d tell me you are strong. That you are built of stubbornness.”

The baby’s hand twitches. One tiny finger taps the inside of the incubator wall opposite Maya’s.

Maya presses her palm there, like they’re high-fiving with a barrier between them.

“I have been asking the same thing since before you were even a thought,” she whispers. “When I was a kid on a dock. When I was a teenager, under a storm. When someone’s fist landed too close to your mamma’s head. In a fire, in an ambulance, in an OR waiting room. I keep asking for the same miracle over and over.”

Her voice cracks.

“Don’t take her,” she says, the words tasting like blood and salt and stubbornness. “Don’t take my girls. Please. Let me keep you both.”

She stays until the nurse gently suggests they should get her to the ICU, and that Carina is settled.

Carina looks too small in the bed.

The tubes and wires and machines swarm around her, fluorescents humming overhead. She’s pale, lips cracked, hair plastered damply to her forehead. There’s a bandage across her abdomen under the gown. The ventilator hisses, forcing air into lungs that—Bailey said—had stopped twice.

But there’s a pulse blipping steadily on the monitor. A line zigzagging up and down instead of being flat.

Maya drags the chair as close as she can, sits, and takes Carina’s hand carefully in both of hers.

“Hey,” she whispers. Her thumb strokes over Carina’s knuckles. “It’s me.”

The ventilator breathes for her. The machines beep. Carina doesn’t move.

“They say you did your drama queen thing in there,” Maya says, voice wobbling. “Heart-stopping. Twice. That’s enough of that, okay? We used up your quota for cliffhangers tonight.”

She shifts closer, bending over their joined hands.

“You did it,” she says. “You got her here. She’s incredible, Rina. She’s so small, but she’s already fighting everyone. They put mittens on her, and she keeps trying to rip them off. She’s totally your kid.”

She swallows hard.

“I know what you asked me in the ambulance,” she whispers. “I know what you wanted. I couldn’t say yes. I still can’t. I don’t know how to live in a world where I let you go on purpose.”

She leans her forehead against Carina’s hand.

“I have been begging whoever’s out there not to take you from me since I was eight,” she says. “I’m not stopping now. Take my career. Take my medals. Take my running speed, my lungs, my stupid ability to carry too many boxes at once. Take every apartment we might have, the car, the savings, all of it. Just… not you. Not both of you. Not now. Please.”

Her shoulders shake. She doesn’t bother hiding it.

She stays like that for a long time. Talking. Rambling. Reading out loud texts from friends. Singing quietly when she runs out of words.

At some point deep in the night, she dozes in the chair, head lolling at an awkward angle, hand still wrapped around Carina’s.

A shrill alarm yanks her awake.

The monitor above Carina’s bed is flashing. The lines wobble, then flatten, then judder. Nurses rush in. Someone hits a button. A voice calls “code” in calm tones that make Maya want to scream.

“Ma’am, you need to step back,” a nurse says, gently but firmly, steering her away even as she twists to keep Carina in view.

She watches from the doorway, fingers digging into the frame, as they push drugs, as they press on Carina’s chest, as they beg her heart in clinical, precise words to find its rhythm again.

It feels like watching that scene from the song played out in real time, except this is her life and this is Carina, and she isn’t some voice on the radio—she’s standing here, useless and too far away.

Her own words repeat in her head, mingling with the remembered chorus: take anything, everything, just not her.

The tone on the monitor holds flat for one terrible, endless second.

Then, mercifully, a blip.

Then another.

The zigzag line reappears, weak but there.

“Got it,” someone says, relief bleeding into their voice. “We’re back.”

Maya sags against the doorframe. Her knees ache from holding her own weight.

Once the room calms, the nurses step back, muttering about adjustments, about stabilizing, about keeping a close eye.

One of them glances over at Maya, sees something in her face, and nods. “You can come back in,” she says quietly.

Maya goes, legs numb, heart raw.

Carina looks much the same as before. Nothing looks different, and yet everything is. There’s a slight flush to her cheeks now, a faint warmth under the pallor.

“Hey,” Maya whispers, dragging the chair even closer. Her hand finds Carina’s again, like there was never any other place for it to be. “Don’t do that again, okay? You’re trying to give me an aneurysm, and I don’t appreciate it.”

This time, when she grips Carina’s hand, she thinks—swears—she feels the faintest answering squeeze. It might be reflex. It might be wishful thinking. She doesn’t care.

She lowers her head to the mattress and lets herself cry in earnest—quiet, exhausted sobs that don’t feel like defeat so much as release.

When she lifts her head again, the window outside the ICU room has gone from black to bruised blue. Dawn is thinking about showing up.

A nurse comes in, adjusts the ventilator settings, frowns thoughtfully, then glances at her. “She’s breathing a little on her own,” she says. “That’s good.”

“Good,” Maya repeats, clinging to the word like driftwood.

Hours pass. Somewhere, someone brings her coffee. She drinks half without tasting it. Someone else mentions going to check on the baby again; she nods, goes, stands at the glass, whispers, “We’re still here,” to the tiny form inside, then hurries back to Carina.

Eventually—so gradually that she almost misses it—things change.

The ventilator alarm is quiet. The breaths it pushes are less forceful. The numbers on the monitors settle into a calmer pattern.

A respiratory therapist arrives with a doctor, eyes scanning charts, stats. They consult quietly, then start the process of weaning.

“Her lungs are doing more work on their own,” the doctor explains to Maya. “If she tolerates this, we might be able to extubate soon.”

The word soon does heavy lifting.

Maya watches, muscles locked, as they slowly adjust settings. They turn down the support bit by bit. Carina’s chest rises and falls.

“Come on,” Maya whispers. “You can do this.”

Carina’s brows furrow faintly, as if she’s concentrating. Her fingers twitch more noticeably around Maya’s.

When they finally remove the tube, it’s both terrifying and the best thing Maya’s ever seen. Carina coughs weakly, body shuddering, monitors hiccupping.

Oxygen prongs replace the endotracheal tube. Her throat looks raw. Her lips are dry. But she’s breathing on her own.

A nurse checks her reflexes, her pupils, murmurs something encouraging, then slips out, leaving them with the hush and the slow beeping and the shadows of machines.

For a while, nothing else happens.

Then Carina’s eyelashes flutter.

Maya freezes, hardly daring to breathe.

Carina’s eyes open.

They’re glassy, confused, pupils dilated. She blinks, slow, like a camera adjusting. Her gaze drifts, unfocused, before landing on Maya.

Maya sees the exact moment recognition hits: a tiny flinch in her expression, a softening, tears pooling.

“Ehi,” Carina croaks. Her voice is rough, rasping.

Maya laughs, a broken, bright sound that feels like the first inhale after nearly drowning. “Hey,” she says. “Hi. Hi.”

She leans in, tears sliding down her face, and presses their foreheads together.

“You’re here,” she whispers. “You’re here.”

“Where else… I go?” Carina murmurs, words slurred but wry. “Your stubbornness… would pull me back from… anywhere.”

Maya lets out a wet, incredulous laugh. “You have no idea how accurate that is.”

Carina blinks again, eyes filling. “The baby?” she whispers, panic flickering.

“She’s okay,” Maya says instantly. “She’s tiny. Feisty. Already hates mittens. She’s in NICU, and she’s fighting everyone. Just like you.”

“Bene,” Carina breathes, relief flooding her features. “My brave girl.”

“Girls,” Maya corrects, choking up. “Plural. Both of you. Somehow, you both made it.”

Carina’s hand, still heavy and clumsy, squeezes hers. “You didn’t… choose,” she says, barely audible.

“No,” Maya says, voice shaking. “I didn’t. The universe got both of you or none. I refused to sign any other contract.”

Carina’s lips curve in a tiny, exhausted smile. “Always so dramatic,” she murmurs.

“Pretty sure that’s your thing,” Maya counters.

Carina’s eyes drift shut again, but this time it’s not the frightening fade of someone slipping away; it’s the soft slide of a body finally allowed to rest.

Maya stays.

Outside, the sky brightens. Nurses come and go. Phones ring in distant hallways. Somewhere on another floor, someone cries tears of joy; somewhere else, someone is breaking down with loss.

In their little room, caught between all those stories, Maya holds Carina’s hand and lays her head down on the edge of the bed.

She listens to the steady beeping of the monitor, to Carina’s breaths, to the muffled sounds of the hospital. Under it all, she hears the echo of that old song in her head—not as a curse now, or as a taunt, but as a weird, off-key kind of soundtrack to a life that keeps trying to take and sometimes, miraculously, chooses not to.

She presses a kiss to Carina’s knuckles, then to the ring on her finger.

“I’ve been asking ‘don’t take the girl’ my whole damn life,” she whispers. “Thank you, just this once, for listening.”

Carina doesn’t answer in words. She doesn’t have to. The steady pulse under Maya’s thumb and the faint pressure of her fingers curling back are answer enough.

Later, there will be so much more.

First visits to NICU, Carina’s trembling fingers reaching through a porthole to touch their daughter’s arm, whispering, “Ciao, piccola,” with tears in her eyes. Bringing her home weeks later, car seat too big, hearts too full. Middle-of-the-night feedings and bleary arguments about whose turn it is. Fights about little things and big things. Laughs that leave them both bent double. Old scars aching on rainy days and new routines that smooth out the roughest edges.

There will be fear, always. The memory of fires and fists and monitors going flat. But it will be woven through with something stronger: the choice, over and over, to stay. To keep.

For now, though, there is this.

One girl on a dock who didn’t want to share. The same girl on a sidewalk, shielding her love with her body. The same woman in an ambulance, begging whatever might listen not to take her family. The same woman in an ICU room, finally exhaling because, against the odds, she gets to keep them.

Maya closes her eyes, Carina’s hand cradled in hers, and lets herself rest in that fragile, perfect fact.

“Stay,” she whispers, not a plea this time, but an invitation.

Carina’s pulse beats steadily against her skin.

Outside, morning keeps coming.