The Accident

Part 31

That night went pretty well. Maya ended up knocking out almost as soon as Carina started the movie, as the Italian expected. It took Carina a bit longer to fall asleep, but after watching a movie and doing some meditation, she managed to get her mind to settle down.

That lasted until about 2 am when she woke up in a full panic from a nightmare about Maya getting hit by a car. She almost sat herself completely up but was stopped by the weight on her chest. She tried to keep herself still once she remembered Maya was sleeping on her, not wanting to disrupt the sleep her wife so desperately needed.

Instead, Carina reached her hands around, finding Maya's hands, planning to just use that to help calm her, but as soon as Maya's hands were in hers, the blonde's fingers laced into Carina's holding them tightly. The doctor thought maybe she had woken her wife, but when she checked, her eyes were still closed, her breathing steady. Even in her sleep, Maya was offering Carina the exact comfort she needed.

It took a while for Carina to calm down fully, but she did manage to do it. It shocked her that her wife slept through it, something she had never once seen happen with the typically light sleeper. However, Carina knew Maya's body was beyond exhausted from all the hard work that she had done during the day so she was glad she didn't disrupt her sleep.

Once she managed to calm down, Carina forced herself to focus on the weight of her wife on her chest, the feeling of warmth her body provided, and the smell of Maya's shampoo. It grounded her, reminded her her wife was indeed alive and did not just get hit by a car, that she, despite many injuries, was healing and getting better and was not in immediate danger. This helped keep Carina from slipping into an anxiety induced panic or flashback, keeping her grounded in the present.

Instead of focusing on her thoughts, she listened to Maya's breathing, counting each breath and allowing that to calm her body down more because each breath reminded her that Maya was alive. It took her almost an hour, but she did eventually end up falling back to sleep, her hands still intertwined with her wife's.

The next time either of them woke up was at 7 am, and shockingly, Carina was the first one up. She didn't wake up form a nightmare or a flashback, but rather just because her body was done sleeping for the night, something she was grateful for.

As she woke up, she was stunned that her wife was still asleep in her arms. Maya was never one to sleep a lot, chronic insomnia, anxiety, and just general poor sleep habits from working 24-hour shifts causing her to wake up at least once a night, if not more, sometimes from a nightmare or panic attack or sometimes just because her body didn't know how to sleep through the night. Carina could genuinely only remember a handful of times Maya had slept through the whole night, all of them either in the throes of a really bad illness or after an ungodly long five alarm fire.

However, Maya had fallen asleep the night before around 8 and here she was still sleeping at 7. This told Carina just how exhausting the day before had been for her wife, knowing that she was going to have to keep an extra close eye on her today to make sure she didn't push herself too much.

Carina just laid there, enjoying the feeling of her wife on her chest, closing her eyes and imagining they were back home in their own bed on a lazy morning when Maya didn't go for a run, neither of them had to work, no emergency pages or five-alarm fire, and no friends decided to invade their bubble of marital bliss.

Mornings like that were few and far between, but something they both made an effort to make happen at least once a month. Sometimes they made it happen more, and sometimes less, but they both knew to savor every second of it when it happened.

The last time they had gotten a morning like that had been about three days before Maya's accident. This one they hadn't exactly planned, both of them actually scheduled to work, but a massive 5 alarm fire that had Maya and her entire shift working for over 48 hours with very little downtime had required a change in schedule and meant Maya was home the night before instead of at work, and Carina had somehow ended up working three doubles to help out some of her friends and exceeding her allowed hours for the week before working her final shift of the week, meaning they were both home together on a night they had planned to spend apart. There was a thunderstorm that day, meaning Maya couldn't go for a run if she wanted to, not that she had wanted to because her body was so tired form how much she had worked.