Marina One Shot (EN) - Part 2

A New Life

Maya was a young mother, her daughter was almost nine months old.
She was a lieutenant at Seattle's Station 19.
Until a year ago, she'd had the perfect life. She was on her way to becoming captain of the station where she had done all her training; her wife, Jo, was carrying their daughter, whom she would give birth to in a few weeks, although they had been married for two years, almost three, and she was happy.

The day it all came to a head, she was on a major call, a level-four alarm fire. She didn't know her wife had gone to hospital because she'd felt a sharp pain in her stomach. When she'd finally been able to look at her phone, she'd asked her current captain, Pruitt Herrera, to let her go to the hospital. She'd run all the way there, and when she'd arrived on the birthing floor, she hadn't immediately understood when a nurse had come up to her, handed her a blanket with their daughter wrapped in it and told her it was all she had left.

It took her a few seconds to realize. The nurse's phrase looped in her head as she stared at this little being so perfect in her arms.

«Wait... Where's my wife?!» Maya had replied after a few seconds, as the nurse had left. She looked up and saw that she was alone in the corridor.
Alone, in her turnout, soot everywhere, with their daughter in her arms. This was her life now, their life, the two of them alone.

Jo hadn't survived childbirth, she'd delayed going to hospital, but seeing that her wife was probably in an intervention, she'd finally called the emergency for help. She had given birth but suffered a severe hemorrhage. A death that could perhaps have been avoided had she gone to hospital at the first sign of pain.
Maya had had to take maternity leave, she had accumulated her legal three months and had asked for an extra six weeks, as she had a hundred days' leave that she had never used; and Jack had then become captain at station 19, he was the second choice, but it wasn't as Maya had been able to assume this role. Yes, it had bothered her, but Jack was part of her family and it was always better to have a family member as captain than a stranger. Besides, since Jo's death, she'd had other things on her mind, like raising her daughter alone.

She'd never imagined she'd have to raise their daughter alone, and yet for nearly nine months that had been the case.

But today, she'd had to call Jack. She'd asked him about getting her day off, her daughter, Blake, Josephine Bishop was sick. She'd been sick all night and today her mother couldn't keep Maya for her. Katherine was helping out a lot, and so much the better, because her late wife had been orphaned at birth, so she had no family to help the blonde with her parenting.

She trusted her mother, who had left her father a few years ago and never got back together.

In her woe, she'd been lucky; thanks to her good organization and foresight, she'd been able to keep the little one, as they and Jo were married and had arranged at six months pregnant to make sure Maya was declared their daughter's mother when she was born.

Jack had of course agreed to let Maya take the day off. Blake was their mascot. They all adored the little girl, and they were all the more there because the blonde had found herself the single mother of an infant overnight. She had lost much more than her wife or «job»; she had lost the mother of her daughter, the person who had shared her life for years. She had to relearn how to live on her own, learn how to look after a baby, learn how to be a mother.
Part of the reason she had Blake was because of Jo. Jo had always told her that she wanted to be a mother; that she wanted to give to a child the childhood she hadn't had herself; Maya had never thought about it, but in the end it seemed to be the normal course of life. Get married, have children. But usually one parent didn't lose the other «before» the child was born.

Maya had called the hospital, wanting an appointment with Blake's pediatrician. Today, April Kepner was absent, but the secretary had offered to block Maya an appointment with a new pediatrician at the hospital, who had started a few days ago.