Way Back

Maya got to the coffee shop early and ordered for herself, she didn’t get anything for Carina not wanting it to get cold before she got here. Carina was easy going about most things, but a cold coffee was a cardinal sin as far as Carina was concerned. Maya pulled out the paper that she had written some things on to guide the conversation in case it got awkward. She hated this, needing a piece of paper to have a conversation with her own wife. She took a deep breath to keep her from going down the spiral of self-hatred at the absolute mess she had made of her own life.

Twenty minutes later Carina walked in, and Maya smiled at Carina happily noting that they both had gotten here early. Carina gave Maya a tentative wave and went to order coffee. And Maya watched transfixed, she can’t believe she messed this up. If this had been in the before then they would have come in together, maybe they would have been flirty or maybe they would have been dead tired, but needing caffeine because they had plans or errands they needed to do that day. Either way they would have been hand in hand and smiles and eyes only for each other.

“Ciao, Bella,” Carina says coming to sit across from Maya.

“Hey, thanks for coming,” Maya says and winces at how stupid that sounds.

“Of course,” Carina says, and Maya couldn’t help but notice that the smile didn’t quite reach Carina’s eyes.

“I know that I messed up, and that it didn’t exactly,” Maya begins but Cairns holds up her hand.

“How are you, Maya?” Carina asks, “we’ll get to the apologies, but first how are you?”

Maya thinks about the question, before she answers, “healthy. Physically anyways. Mentally.” Maya gives a humorless laugh, “I guess I’m okay there too. I can admit it was more than just working out. I didn’t just over do it that one time.”

“That’s… I’m glad,” Carina admits relieved to hear the truth. Anything other than ‘I’m fine’ would have been a welcome relief.

“Yea, I guess it was just one thing after another and working out was better than dealing with it. And then just everything fell apart and I couldn’t make things fit like they should and the more I couldn’t fix the more I ran,” Maya explains.

“Why wouldn’t you talk to me?” Carina wonders.

Maya exhales heavily, “because I didn’t feel like you were on my side.”

“I’m always on your side,” Carina says.

“I know,” Maya allows, “but it didn’t feel that way. And the three-year-old me just felt the… it doesn’t matter. What matters is that I’m working on me and learning to rest. And learning to accept that I don’t have to win.”

Carina turned her head to the side, “the three-year-old you?”

“I…” Maya hadn’t meant to bring that up today, she wanted to fix things with her wife not dive into the mess her brain is about winning and love. But Diane did say to be honest, and Carina asked so she takes a deep breath and says, “yea, um I guess the three-year-old me realized the only way to get love was to win. I kept losing, I got demoted and then Ross didn’t give me a full hearing. Then you told me you didn’t know if you wanted to raise a baby with me and just felt like I kept losing. And I don’t lose, I won that damn medal on a sprained ankle and after the 5150 I’m still losing. I can recognize that it’s not the end of the world, I don’t know how to make things right between us. I’ve already started at work, but you and me. I don’t know how to fix. I don’t know if I can.”

“I want us to fix us,” Carina admits and her heart breaks for Maya’s young self. She had never heard Maya openly acknowledging the trauma of her childhood.

“And I know you want to see a therapist and I wanna do whatever you want us to do to be good again,” Maya says.

“But” Carina says already hearing it in Maya’s voice.

Maya looked down at the sheet of paper she had written her notes checking on what she had written, she didn’t want to mess this up too. And let Carina think she was totally against the idea.

Carina watched Maya look down at the paper in front of her noticing it for the first time, “what is that?”

Maya shuffled it around and off the table, “nothing,” and Maya hated the intense feeling of embarrassment she felt about Carina seeing her notes, she didn’t do embarrassment especially in front of Carina.

“Maya?” Carina asked gently.

Sighing Maya slid the paper over to Carina, who looked down and not sure what she was expecting to see read bullet points that Maya had made for this conversation. Carina smiled to herself when she saw the bullet points, this was such a Maya thing to do. All that was missing is the clipboard.

• Take responsibility for the mess our lives have been- promise that I am taking my session with Diane seriously. Which I am. If telling 3-year-old you that Dad was wrong about everything and that you are worthy of love with or without winning isn’t serious I don’t know how to prove it
• Tell Carina about weekly sessions with Diane
• Apologize for EVERYTHING I said in the hospital ESPECIALLY Andrew!
• Ask Carina to come home and I’ll go somewhere. I messed up she shouldn’t have to be stuck at a hotel or couch surfing- maybe ask where she’s staying. Would that be too much? Do I get to know those things? Probably not, just float the idea, and let her decide
• Tell her that you wished she had been pregnant. That having a baby with is still something I want. Focus on the us portion, tell her later about that
• Couples therapy -Just agree to it
• I don’t really want to do it
• Our problems were my fault- Carina is a saint for putting up with me
• If I can admit I have issues do we need another stranger in our lives? Telling us the Carina should save herself and leave- they wouldn’t actually say that. Would they?
• Just agree to it. Whatever gets her back. It could help. We could be stronger for it?
• Compromise? What would that look like?
• Do I tell her about how terrified I am of becoming my dad? That maybe no matter the work it’s just destined to be?
• I mean we barely lasted a week before that ‘who stole my last coke’ rage built up and what would happen if I boil over again? I can’t do this again to her and I can’t promise that I won’t fall apart again

Carina looked up and saw Maya fixedly staring at her coffee cup, pointedly not looking at anything else. Carina had to admit that Maya looked better than she had in months, still tired, but she was too, she didn’t sleep well at the hotel. Which she found exceptionally odd, she spent most of her life sleeping all over and even since getting married she spent 3-4 nights a week alone becaise Maya was on shift. But something about not being surrounded by Maya’s presence had made it impossible to sleep.

Carina was no stranger to mental health. She’d watch her father destroy their family because he couldn’t admit something was wrong and then she watched Andrea follow in his footsteps, but he’d gotten help. And Maya had too, but much like Maya’s bullet points suggested, she was worried about a time that it was too late. And Maya didn’t get help. She had mostly made her peace with the notion that something could happen to Maya at work, but the last few months watching her walk out the door for a shift had gotten harder and harder. Because she had been worried not about a fire, but Maya’s own stubborness would get her killed.

Carina was struck by an idea and grabbed her purse and took a pen out and flipped the paper over. Deciding that writing her own thoughts would be helpful as well.

• Glad that Maya is taking therapy seriously
• Worry about a spiral so bad I can’t help, that nothing will keep her alive
• Spent months terrified that she wouldn’t come home because I let her leave knowing she wasn’t okay and wasn’t in any shape to go to work
• Couples therapy
• Maybe we can try alone first. Slow
• Revisit the idea again if we can’t get past everything alone
• I’m not worried about Maya becoming her dad per say, but I do worry that next time I’ll be paged to the ER because she’s already gone.
• Maybe we could try both in the apartment. Provided Diane thinks it’s a good idea for Maya’s recovery. But separately, one in the guest room. One in our bedroom I think I would prefer all or nothing.
• If we aren’t sleeping in a bed together, I don’t care where I am sleeping- hotel.

Maya looked over at Carina who was writing on the opposite side of her notes, Carina was marking out a portion of what she had written.  Maya waited patiently and tried not to stare and try or read what Carina had written upside down.

Eventually Carina stopped writing, looked up and said, “I wasn’t sure about 5150ing you until I talked to Jack. I really thought that maybe I convince you to stay and then I could get you to listen at home. I was already making plans. Formulating. Then I found Jack in the waiting room, he thought you were dead, Bambina. He couldn’t find your pulse. I just knew that next time,” she trailed off then began again, “next time I would be planning your funeral. I can’t do that. I can’t. I won’t say I won’t survive because I will, but I’ll hate for leaving like that.”

Maya nods absorbing what Carina was saying, “I would have hated myself too. That feeling was there last thing I remember when I was on the treadmill, I couldn’t get anything to work the way it should. I was doing everything, and I couldn’t get anywhere at work. Andy pulled me off rescue because I couldn’t do it, physically it was painful. And I was mad at her, and I was texting you and I was mad or sad or both, because it hadn’t taken again, and I couldn’t do the right thing for you or us. And we still weren’t pregnant. And I just… nothing. Nothing was really going how it should and that’s just what I remember before waking up. My first thought was about you and I’m shocked at how little I’ve really thought about work. I mean I want to get back at it and finally being off desk duty feels amazing but fixing us. Fixing us. That’s what I want more than anything. Fixing the part of me that seems intent on burning my life to ground every time something happens. I want to spend my life making this up to you and I want to promise that this will be the last time I have to make that promise for something so awful. I don’t want us to end, and I don’t want things to be so bad that I have to promise to make it up to you a third time. I’m trying to fix that part of me and I just, if you can find it in your heart, let try to fix what I broke.”

Carina took one of Maya’s hands not able to not be touching the woman in front of her, we’ll go slow. You need to heal. I need to heal. We’ll do it right, no COVID for us to rush past thing for.”

“Slow,” Maya agrees and holds onto Carina’s hand like a lifeline.

Breathing in deeply, and with another squeeze Carina let go of Maya’s hand and Maya made an effort to not follow Carina’s hand across the table. Carina pushed the paper back across the table to Maya and said, “I wrote a few points of my own.”

Maya took it and looked down read what Carina had written:

• Glad that Maya is taking therapy seriously.
• Worry about a spiral so bad I can’t help, that nothing will keep her alive
• Spent months terrified that she wouldn’t come home because I let her leave knowing she wasn’t okay and wasn’t in any shape to go to work.
• Couples therapy
• Maybe we can try alone first. Slow
• Revisit the idea again if we can’t get past everything alone.
• I’m not worried about Maya becoming her dad per say, but I do worry that next time I’ll be paged to the ER because she’s already gone.
• I care about what was said about Andrea, but I am far more worried about us comparing traumas and having a tit for tat relationship. I don’t want that.
• Maybe we could try both in the apartment. Provided Diane thinks it’s a good idea for Maya’s recovery. But separately, one in the guest room. One in our bedroom I think I would prefer all or nothing.
• If we aren’t sleeping in a bed together, I don’t care where I am sleeping- hotel.

Maya looks up and asks in a small voice, “so we go slow? But there is… we can get through this?”

“I think so, I want to, Bambina,” Carina says and takes Maya’s hand again.

“Okay,” Maya smiles weakly, and breathes through the tears.

They looked at each other and Carina was smiling happy to see Maya looking so much better than she had in the hospital. And for the first time in months, she really did think that something was changing for the better between them.

“Are sure you don’t want to move back in? I can go stay with Andy. Unless… uh you prefer the hotel,” Maya says hating the idea that Carina was coming to prefer to stay in the hotel away from her. Away from the them they were before.

“I think for now, I’ll stay. You need to be surrounded by familiar things while we work on us. Too much change might not be good,” Carina says.

“Yea, no I understand,” Maya nods agreeing to try hard to keep her face neutral.

“But maybe we could go out this weekend, at that place with the chocolate dessert,” Carina suggested.

“I would like that,” Maya agrees readily. Happy that Carina wanted to go out with her in any compacity.

And they sat and talked for a while, neither letting the other’s hand out of their grasp and while neither Maya nor Carina mentioned it, they had both been reminded of that first night at Joe’s where they had spent hours just chatting. And when they got up from the table an hour later and walked out still hand in hand, Carina leaned into Maya’s space and gave her a soft kiss on the check with a soft “to amo.” With an answering, “I love you,” from Maya.