Chapter Text
Two and a half months, at least, pass before Dr. Carina DeLuca, M.D., F.A.C.O.G. returns back to work at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital. She loses track of the exact time, however, between traveling to Italy in an attempt to helplessly ease the weight of the pandemic; her own wedding that she never entertained the idea of ever happening growing up; and, well, the ‘honeymoon’ that followed (if you could call leaving the bedroom for only essentials for over a period of maybe a week a ‘honeymoon’ — and, honestly, Carina can and does).
…perhaps it’s closer to a three month abescence, now that she thinks a bit more about it.
Her girlfriend - no, her wife (the term is still fairly new and such a foreign concept to her) - would know for certain the amount, down to the hour, minute, and second, probably, if Carina dares to ask. Maya Bishop would not leave even a moment unaccounted for.
With a completed quarantine upon return from travel and a handful of negative tests on record, her first day back Grey Sloan feels precisely like that - every single moment of her time, right down to the millisecond is accounted for and dutifully scheduled. From the moment she first steps into the hospital to the moment she leaves to find her Porsche in the employee parking lot, she has perhaps a handful of minutes to herself sprinkled throughout the course of the day. It’s time used to check her phone for any little, sweet nothing messages from a particular blonde going about her own day by herself. Being gone for so long (maybe it was three and a half months? The pandemic, along with grief, seemed to make time all melt together into one big mess), she anticipated a busy first day.
The morning begins with a socially distanced meeting with the head of the OB/GYN department per their request via email while Carina was finishing up her stay in Italy. She doesn’t mind the department head - beyond that, she doesn’t really have much to say about her direct supervisor. Carina delivers a first hand account regarding the situation in Italy within their OB departments, as well as the rest of Europe. They are always ahead of the pandemic curve, so to speak - a pretty good indicator to foresee what would come their way in a few short weeks. She helps note what to anticipate and for what to plan in the next couple of months. They both know their conversation will not solve the larger problem at hand, but feeling even the tiniest bit of preparedness in the vast uncertainty brought on by the disease gives the faintest idea of hope and readiness.
The faintest - minuscule.
It’s an amount worth clinging to these days, she believes.
The meeting - the only part of her day that would conclude on time - comes to an end with good wishes and congratulations on her marriage. It is the first, but certainly not the last she would hear throughout her work shift that day. They are the only sentiments that brought certain joy in those long hours of delivering babies and the rest of the process, a field she entered in order to help women and people with uteruses.
It has also been plagued by darkness brought upon by the pandemic that brutally leaves no space safe for anyone. Carina didn’t get out of bed all day after losing her first ever patient to something so avoidable if they would have kept to their proper screenings.
She misses the days of smiling, tired, but eager parents and happy tears upon the arrival of a much anticipated newborn; she longs for when her days no longer contain masked parents or missed appointments due to fears and uncertain safety. She hopes for their quick and swift return, but she knows it’s an unrealistic prospect. There is no use wasting time and energy to try to prove otherwise.
This is just the beginning and it would be foolish to think differently.
Immediately after the meeting concludes, Carina enters her own office - it’s a longer walk than what she remembers, but this is due part, she knows, from her colleagues briefly stopping her to offer their own congratulations upon seeing her. She is only in the office long enough to change from the outfit she put together this morning at home into her usual pink scrubs (that she strangely missed over the course of however long it’s been) and into the necessary personal protective equipment mandated by both the hospital and CDC alike.
With patients already waiting for her in their respective examination rooms, Carina does not pay much attention to anything else in the space of her office. Her day, she knows based on her projected schedule, is too busy for anything remotely frivolous and will probably already run late (of this, she already warned Maya who starts work tomorrow in order to return back to everyone on A shift).
So, the pile of mail upon her desk then goes unnoticed for now, as it nearly always does when she first enters the office. Normally, she will tackle it during her afternoon break - a break that will not happen today, unfortunately. It is a pile that Carina never really puts much attention into for she knows what it already contains - the usual items she receives at work.
A quick glance would suffice as the contents rarely change: subscription of medical journals she’s fallen behind on long ago and articles she needs to get around to reading from colleagues requesting a review before formal publication (though at this point, those are probably now a bit outdated given her leave). It’s a request she knows all too well while focused on her research project when she first arrived in Seattle (seems like a lifetime ago now - hell, everything does at this point).
So, she ends up missing it in the morning - the unusualness of the top piece of the months’ large mail pile: an envelope the size of a card, with the hospital’s address written neatly and carefully by hand. It will catch her attention later; it will cause a range of emotions, mostly of anger, while bringing forth memories long buried.
It would also go unread.
Perhaps it is best the envelope goes unnoticed until the end of the day, in that regard. The sour mood would have surely put a damper on her first day back - not that the raging pandemic wouldn’t itself on its own, regardless. Her patients, however, did not deserve a sour mood.
By the end of the day, the back-to-back appointments that Carina scheduled for the morning and early afternoons stretch well past lunch and into the late afternoon, nearly crossing into early evening. They are with both new patients and those familiar from before she left, happy to see her return, only to be interrupted every now and again by a laboring mother or a call to the emergency room (though, fortunately, there are no emergency surgeries and she considers this a win as it helps sort of contain time management).
Finishing up the last of her charts with only the necessary information for now, Carina hands in her tablet to the nurses station. She’s met with another ‘congrats.’ As if on command, Carina finds herself offering a small smile to accompany her automatic reply of ‘thank you.’
“Have a good evening, Doctor DeLuca - or rather, what is it now?” The nurse asks.
Carina pauses and then shrugs. In all honesty, the changing of their last names to whatever they decided, if they were to change them at all that is, is not something she and Maya have yet talked about. It never crossed their minds; it wasn’t the most important matter in their life to tackle at the moment. There’s a mountain of paperwork to climb for immigration- perhaps the question lies there? Perhaps they’ll discuss it then?
Who knows?
At the moment, not even them.
Nor are they in a rush to figure it out neither for that matter.
“I’m not sure,” she replies, seeing no purpose in lying or bending the truth to fit an expected narrative following a wedding. “Let’s stick with DeLuca for now.”
“Alright then, Doctor DeLuca,” the nurse acknowledges with a half nod. “Well, goodnight. See you tomorrow.”
“ Buona sera, a domani ,” Carina responds unintentionally continuing her crusade to teach all colleagues even the tiniest bit of her native language. Sometimes, she just can’t help herself. Sometimes, things just sounded better in Italian.
Dismissing herself, Carina turns to leave the nurses’ station, now empty handed. There’s still one last stop she needs to make before returning to her office to officially end her workday.
The hospital chapel.
It’s a habit she picked back up while in Italy rather unintentionally. Her walk from the hospital to her rented apartment included passing a small Catholic church. Out of muscle memory and without realizing it, she found herself making the sign of the cross whenever she passed by, twice a day.
Every day.
For nearly two months.
After a couple of weeks, with her responsibilities over for the day, she would walk just a little slower in front of the church once off of work.
After about a month, perhaps just a little bit shy of, Carina found herself stopping for a minute in front of the closed building on her way out of the hospital. She couldn’t go inside. No one could - the public was barred from entering. No gatherings. No service. No blessings. The pandemic had even shut down the house of God itself, but that didn’t stop her from saying a little silent prayer in front of the church on her way to the apartment, especially after the most grueling of shifts where the walk in question felt as though it would never come to an end.
Carina doesn’t consider herself religious and hardly a practicing Catholic by any means. She doesn’t remember the last time she attended mass willingly (a fact she would never confess to her grandmother, of all people), but attending Catholic school for most of her life and growing up in her very Catholic southern Italian family - it was embedded into their way of life.
It is also very hard to shake, she’s learned from her time away from the Mediterranean island.
But practice does help.
She’s had a lot of practice since leaving home for medical school and even beyond the confines of the country.
And yet, even to this day and even more so during these troubling times, Carina still finds a strange solace in taking the small moment to reflect - ultimately, that is what it is, isn’t it? Reflecting on events and occurrences one has encountered and asking for clarifying or help?
She tries not to think too much into it; she does not wish to ruin the little sense of comfort it brings.
Maybe there are some things that you just can’t fully shake.
That is another lesson she’s been trying to and will continue to learn.
Chef Bailey catches her in the doorway of the chapel, making her way out from the space. They acknowledge each other with a small nod, but nothing more. No words are exchanged. They know the space is technically off limits - no gatherings. Neither of them decide to mention this fact to the other. They both know why they are there and they both know it will only be for a short while anyway.
It will bring no harm.
Since being back, it’s not the first Carina sees of the chef - she was the only one from the hospital Carina and Maya invited to their wedding. The idea of taking more doctors and nurses away from the hospital in these times when trying to keep shifts covered just didn’t sit right with them. It’s a sentiment Carina shared with her colleagues and friends. They were understanding; she thinks of those conversations with every congratulations uttered her way today.
Of course, Amelia went above and beyond the typical congratulations - proposed an all out party for their first anniversary next year, inviting everyone they couldn’t due to pandemic regulations and, well, general overworkedness. Carina promises she’ll pass the idea on to Maya and maybe they’ll entertain the idea.
‘Maybe’ wasn’t a word Amelia wanted to hear. ‘Maybe’ is not good enough. They needed a party after this whole mess and this was the perfect excuse to throw one. Dean had expressed the same for their actual ceremony - no court house wedding allowed.
They still have a pandemic to survive, though. There would be time for planning anniversary parties, if wanted, in the future after all this - whether it be the first or whether it would be another.
Although it was never something she thought about, Carina’s glad that they did it - the wedding ceremony with even just a handful of their loved ones. She’s never felt more love in a singular space before that evening, or Maya looked that dolled up. It had almost been a perfect night.
Almost .
Carina steps to the side to allow for Bailey to pass and walk down the hallway. Wasting no time, Carina makes her way to the front of the empty room, the aisle larger than usual as the pews had been pushed to the sides, lining the walls, and piled onto each other to discourage any form of assembly from occurring.
The candles, however, were still in their usual place (“forgotten” to be stored away with the rest of the room). They are all Carina needs for this visit and all future visits, as well.
Well, one is all that she needs, really - for right now anyway. She lights it, just as intended, and then takes the familiar route back to the OB department, managing to not run into a single soul. Tired and drained, she is more than ready to head home to her wife for the evening.
That is precisely when the envelope catches Carina’s attention: at the end of the day when she returns to her office after disposing of the PPE gear and before she changes back into her street clothes to finally head home and rest. Still donning the pink scrubs, Carina rounds her desk and picks it up with furrowed eyebrows and a frown.
Reading the name it’s addressed to - her own name - is enough to make Carina’s lips thin as she bites down on them hard. With her heart already racing painfully against her chest, her eyes narrow and she shakes her head, overcome by a wave of disgust not experienced since storming the fire chief’s office.
So, not too long ago at this point.
Carina recognizes the handwriting, of course. She recognizes that handwriting immediately .
She hasn’t seen this damn handwriting in years, when similar envelopes would arrive at her childhood home every now and again (for certain at holidays) addressed to her mother and no one else. She never thought she would see it again, let alone in her place of employment.
Her eyes travel up to the stamp just long enough to see the date it was mailed from and guess when it approximately was delivered here. It must have arrived just after she left the States to help in Milan. The damn thing has been sitting here collecting dust ever since.
The dust didn’t deserve such a fate, she finds herself bitterly thinking. Carina shakes her head, as if trying to free herself from the growing anger and harshness.
Without a second though, Carina tosses it to the bottom of the empty waste basket next to her desk. She ensures to cover it with the older medical journals from the bottom of the haphazard mail pile sitting on her desk. The rest she would handle tomorrow, after the waste basket’s been collected (hopefully, tonight). She refuses to give that piece of mail any more attention or another thought.
That, she decides, is the end of it.
There would be no more of it.
Absolutely none.
Unfortunately, Carina would ultimately end up being wrong - that this wouldn’t be last of the handwritten envelope, but at least she spends the not-so-full-of-traffic drive home to the apartment in blissful ignorance, humming along to the streaming Italian radio and only to pause to talk-to-text Maya little updates of her route back. At least the music is distracting enough and she counts on her wife to be just as, if not more.
By the time she arrives at the apartment complex, the office’s unsolicited mail incident is already out of her mind - overtaken by the prospect of a lovely evening home with the one person she’s been thinking about all day during her very little free time.
Unlocking and pushing open the door after parking in her assigned cover spot, Carina is met with the wafting aroma of grilling and the sound of shuffling around in the kitchen. Both notes make her smile - a dinner filled with protein, she automatically assumes. She can already hear a very organized lecture about the importance of such a meal.
How very Maya, it seems: to avoid carbs as much as possible, which is exactly the opposite of possible with Carina around to help co-cook their shared meals at home. There’s nothing wrong with carbs, she’s determined to make Maya learn. There’s nothing wrong with pasta - it’s an endeavor Carina took on when they first started dating and when Maya admitted to not particularly enjoying any pasta.
“You home?” Maya calls out from the kitchen soon after the front door clicks and locks closed. It’s an answer already known. Carina did text immediately upon parking, after all.
“Yeah,” Carina calls back from the hallway, slipping out of her jacket and tossing it onto the rack near the front door haphazardly. She kicks off her shoes in roughly the same area before joining Maya, who is already plating their dishes, in the kitchen. “Just in time it seems, too,” she grins, leaning into a small welcome back kiss.
Before heading to the dining room table where their wine already awaits, Maya hands her one of the plates: chicken and roasted vegetables - a signature Maya dish Carina learned early on in their relationship. It’s one of the three dishes that Maya can make with confidence.
And yes, each of the three contain a different source of protein.
“Don’t start,” Maya warns when she sees Carina wrinkle her nose from the corner of her eye. Even if she didn’t see it, Maya knew of its presence. It makes an appearance most nights she’s left to her own devices to make them dinner. “You’ve said it yourself - I overcook the pasta every single time when you’re not here.”
“I cry for all the overcooked pasta you’ve mangled before we met,” Carina sighs heavily, overdramatically. She follows her wife and takes the seat adjacent to her. “It even tells you how long you need to cook it for on the box . It’s a rule, not a suggestion, bella. ”
“Considering that I’ve once set boiling water on fire in a very freak accident, you really shouldn’t be too surprised,” Maya points out, picking up her full wine glass. She extends it towards Carina. “To.. a good day back at work…?”
“To you not burning a house down yet with your cooking,” Carina amends, picking up her own glass to clink against Maya’s.
“I’m a firefighter - I have that part well under control. And we have at least two fire extinguishers in this place,” Maya reminds rather needlessly, taking a sip from the wine. “But seriously, how was work? Are you avoiding the question? Did something happen?”
Carina shakes her head, pauses for a second, and continues forth. No, technically, work itself was fine . She cuts into the piece of chicken perhaps a bit too roughly, but it fortunately goes unnoticed. Carina recounts her day as they eat and drink, polishing off a bottle of wine together; Maya listens, nodding along.
“Feels like you’ve never left?” Maya asks, setting her silverware down on her now empty plate.
“More or less,” Carina shrugs, finishing off her last bite of the meal. “And what about your day here? Filled with stretching, running, and training, wasn’t it?” She teases.
“Listen, jumping straight back into the field tomorrow without the proper form-“
“I know, bella ,” Carina grins, standing up and collecting the plates to carry back into the kitchen and place in the sink. “I know, but I think losing form involves stopping all forms of physical activity, no? With what we’ve been doing all week-“
“I very much doubt that counts,” Maya interrupts. “Just because it keeps the heart rate up doesn’t mean that it’s keeping one fit and ready to run into burning buildings.”
“I don’t know. I think it’s been keeping you very limber,” Carina smirks as she starts to tackle the evening’s dishes. Maya comes up beside her, ready to load the dishwasher.
“Oh,” Maya speaks up. “Before I forget: a card came in the mail for you today. At least, I think it’s for you, anyway. Who calls you Carinissima ?” She genuinely asks.
The loud clash of a dropped plate back into the sink, slipped from Carina’s hand, causes Maya to jump slightly.
“Did you open it?” Carina asks, her voice suddenly hushed and low. The anger is back, burning in the pit of her stomach and growing at the thought of a second card - one sent to their home , but she’ll be damned to allow Maya to catch on.
Or, at least, she hopes that Maya doesn’t pick up on it. Carina isn’t the best at masking her emotions, something of which they are both highly aware.
“No,” Maya answers. “The envelope is addressed just to you - not me, so not about the wedding or anything, I don’t think. Carina, who’s it from?”
Carina sighs heavily and pauses for a second, debating whether or not to answer honestly. In the end, she does. She reveals the card’s sender - the person behind the familiar handwriting that made frequent appearances during her preteen and teenage years. Carina responds, “It’s from the woman who ruined my parents’ marriage. My step-mother.”