"Alex, just take a breath.  Focus on trying to breathe."

The voice to his left was barely familiar and normally, Alex would've told someone trying to coddle him to take a hike.  But with his chest about to explode and his head pounding, the advice seemed too sound to ignore.  He did as told, focusing on trying to get in a full breath before his hyperventilation drove him to a black out.

"That's it."  The voice said again.  "Deeper every time.  You're all right."

It took several more minutes and an enormous amount of effort, but finally, Alex felt the tightness begin to subside, and though his head still ached, his senses were starting to clear.  The next time he heard the voice, Alex knew who it belonged to, and he turned his eyes toward Cooper Freedman questioningly.

"Addison was worried about you.  She asked me to check on you."

The insanity of the statement made Alex laugh even if he was gasping for breath a moment later, his strained lungs not yet ready for that much exertion.  Addison was worried about him?  She was the one who'd had to stand by with nurses holding her at bay while her infant son flat-lined in the NICU, and she was worried about him?

"It's so her, right?"  Cooper said, nearly reading Alex's mind.  "A meteor is getting ready to crash in on her head, and she's trying to make sure everyone else has run for cover."

Nodding, Alex let his eyes drop back to the ground as the strain of keeping his face turned caused his neck muscles to throb.  He had been completely exhausted already, before the alarms in the NICU had gone off, before his brain had tried to implode from the very idea of watching Ryan Montgomery die right in front of Addison.  Now he felt like he was going to drop, not from the earlier threatened black out, but from a level of energy depletion he didn't know it was possible to experience and still be conscious.

The last thirty six hours had been the longest of Alex Karev's life.  He'd slept possibly a grand total of three hours and been on his feet for upwards of twenty; that equation alone was enough to explain his frayed nerves and emotional overreaction to what had happened in the past twenty minutes.  But he didn't have the energy to lie to himself.  It was more than that.  Being on the losing end of a code with any patient was always an unacceptable outcome to him, even if it did happen, even if he'd had to make that awful walk toward anxious parents more times than he wanted to remember.  But this time...

Ryan was fighting as hard as he could.  And in truth, it wasn't an exaggeration to call his survival to this point a miracle.  The baby had flat-lined twice in the O.R., once while they were trying to put him on bypass, and then again after they'd taken him off and one of the sutures on his repaired aorta had blown.  That had extended the surgery, forcing Alex to send his newly humbled intern Susan Chester out to update Addison.

Alex had gratefully gone straight to the NICU with Ryan as Mitchell Ross headed out to give Addison the full report on the surgery.  There would be no sugarcoating things they way they did for other parents who hadn't spent hundreds of hours in operating rooms.  They were going to have to tell her about the two times his heart had stopped and about the blown sutures and about how deformed his left ventricle had truly been, which had caused the third extension in the surgery.  Alex could live without seeing her face as the reality of those details added up to a pretty accurate picture of how fragile Ryan was.

By the time Ross walked Addison in to see her son, Alex and Susan had the baby settled, but even if she knew what to expect after all her years as a surgeon, he still heard the redhead draw in a quick, shocked breath at the sight in front of her.  Ryan's small body was pumped full of medications and tubes and wires ran every which way around and through him.  It was painful for Alex to see the little boy he'd already grown close to looking so sick and frail.  He couldn't imagine what it felt like to the woman who had taken all this on because she couldn't bring herself to leave Ryan to fight for his life all alone.

So had begun the waiting for some sign of recovery, some signal from Ryan that he was coming back to them.  All the while, they had watched his blood pressure remain dangerously high, the threat of damage to his kidneys growing by the hour as the strain on his body took its toll.  Somewhere during the marathon, Alex had lost track of which Oceanside doctor was holding Addison's hand, his mind so tired, he could barely remember his own name and he'd actually drifted off sitting in one of the chairs in Ryan's room.

Admonished by Ross to go get some rest, Alex had finally snuck out for a powernap in a nearby on-call room.  When he woke up two hours later and realized no one had paged him during all that time, Alex knew it meant that things hadn't gotten any worse... but that it also meant they were no better.  He had returned to the room to find Cooper holding Ryan's hand, Addison napping in the same chair that had lulled him to sleep earlier, and Sam Bennett pacing anxiously in the corner.

Then there were the alarms and the panic and the look on Addison's face as she watched everyone else in the room try to save her baby while she was kept back, powerless to do anything but watch.

"I don't know what the hell's wrong with me," he said, finally offering some response to Cooper's caretaking.  "It's not like it was my first code."

"Well, that was obvious," Cooper replied.  "You ran the hell out of that thing."

Alex brushed off the compliment and cleared his throat.

"Thanks for the hand, by the way."

Cooper shrugged.  "One advantage to a room full of doctors, there's always an extra set of hands."

They fell silent at that, and Alex could see that Cooper was rattled as well, just covering better at the moment.  But the pediatrician with a constant joke on the tip of his tongue looked worn down and worried.

"We all keep trying to tell ourselves that we knew it could go bad, that Ryan was so sick to begin with, you know, that anything we get is a gift, but... this is Addison's kid.  It doesn't matter where he came from or who had him, now he's hers, and it's just... it's unacceptable that we might not be able to save Addison's kid.  We just can't even let that in."

Alex nodded, grateful for Cooper saying it out loud because he was honestly afraid if he acknowledged his fears outside of his own self, it would make them too real for him to function as Ryan's doctor, and right now, Ryan needed him to be a great doctor more than he needed Alex to be another person who cared about him or his mom.

"Is she okay?" he asked, worried even though he knew she'd had the coherence to send someone to check up on him.

"She's so far from okay," Cooper answered, shaking his head.  "I think... I don't know.  It's like she feels almost guilty, you know, that she can't take care of him herself.  Like, if she hadn't taken custody, she could be his doctor, but then... then he wouldn't have a mom.  And she knows it's crazy, but she still feels like she's letting him down somehow."

"I can't imagine a kid who's been less let down," Alex countered.  "God, she has to see that, right?  I mean, how many people volunteer for this kind of stuff?"

Cooper nodded.  "I hear you.  I just think she's too far in to see it now.  And I don't know what happens if..."

He sighed, leaving the dreaded "if" unspoken.  Alex nodded and drew in a deep breath, measuring his body's condition now that his nerves had eased some and he was no longer in overdrive.

"I should get back up there.  Make sure he's stabilized."

"Yeah, I'm gonna head back to the practice.  Sam's gonna stay with her today.  But look, if you need to talk or anything... I mean, I know you just met us, but we're too messed up to judge anyone.  So feel free to call."

Alex chuckled and shook his head.

"Sounds like I'll fit right in then.  And thanks."

The two men headed in opposite directions once they reached the hall, and Alex began the trek back toward the NICU, stopping to pick up some much needed caffeine.  When he reached the unit, Alex found Susan inside checking Ryan's vitals under the redhead's watchful eye.  Sam was sitting on the windowsill sipping at a cup of coffee.

"Dr. Chester is it?"

Addison's voice rang out as Alex stepped to Susan's side, peering over her shoulder to look at the updates she was posting in the chart.  But his attention was pulled away from the hand-written notes by his former mentor's questioning.

"Yes," Susan replied.  "It's Dr. Chester, Dr. Montgomery."

"How's his kidney function?"

"His BUN is at 21," the intern replied.  "So for now, it's high, but unchanged."

"You should say 'right now,' not 'for now.'  When you give a parent that kind of information, 'right now' is the better phrase."

Alex watched as Susan finished the note she was writing and then turned attentively toward Addison.

"Why is 'right now' better?"

"Keeps the parent focused on the present.  'Right now'... that's a frame of reference they can manage.  'For now' makes it seem like you expect it to change, and the implication is that for now everything is fine, but something could go wrong later."

As Sam stifled a chuckle, disguising it badly as a cough, Susan cleared her throat and closed Ryan's chart, and then she looked back over toward Addison.

"Right now, Ryan's BUN is at 21.  That's high, but we haven't seen an increase since his last test."

Addison smiled slightly and nodded.  "Much better, Dr. Chester."

Given the ridiculous comments Alex had overheard Susan and her friends making in the hallway, he half expected her to roll her eyes or say something she would live to regret for weeks to come.  But instead, she smiled back and said thank you before turning to hand him the chart on her way out of the room.  Addison watched the younger doctor leave, then her eyes dropped back down to where Ryan was lying so still.

"I remember when we got that lecture," Sam offered.  "Your version was much less bitchy than Dr. Wentworth's."

Addison nodded, but remained silent as her focus stayed on the sleeping baby.  Alex wasn't surprised that even under this kind of stress, she'd managed to find a moment to give as a teacher.  She was still the best one he'd ever had.  In fact, he remembered getting that exact same speech one day when she'd let him give a patient update and the dreaded 'for now' had slipped out of his mouth.

After taking another sip of coffee, Alex set his cup on the bedside table, and then moved closer to his patient, his hand dipping so that his index finger brushed against the baby's palm.  Ryan's tiny digits curled around his, the grip light, but definite.

"Chester's a pain in the ass," he offered, "but she's a talented doctor.  I wouldn't let just any intern on this case."

"I figured," the redhead replied, sparing him a quick glance, her hand moving up and down Ryan's arm in a gentle, comforting motion.  "She reminds me a little of Yang."

He chuckled.  "Yeah, me, too.  I hope that turns out to be a good thing."

Quiet fell over the room again, no one feeling any need to move or speak.  The monitors humming and beeping seemed to grow louder, though, in the silence, and Alex felt the muscles in his back starting to tighten.  Then the quiet broke as Sam stepped forward, his hands dropping onto Addison's shoulders.

"Alex, you gonna be here for a minute?"

The resident nodded and continued to watch as Sam placed a light kiss on the top of Addison's head.

"I'm gonna go grab something for you to eat, and you are going to eat it.  Ryan needs his mama at full strength when he wakes up."

A small smile pulled at her lips for just a moment, and then it faded away.  Her lack of argument told Alex more than any words could about how worn out she was.

With an assurance that he'd be right back, Sam made his exit, and Alex continued to stand in his place at Ryan's bedside, his finger still held in the baby's grip.  When he looked back toward Addison, though, he saw her eyes begin to pool, and he eased his hand free and quickly moved to her side, leaning down by her chair.

"I'm doing the right thing, aren't I?  Fighting this hard?  I'm not putting him through this for no reason?"

Hearing her doubt herself was hateful to him, but Alex understood.  She knew the little boy had endured a long, difficult surgery and then there had been the close call earlier today.  But there were also the days and weeks that Alex had not seen... the nights she'd spent helping to keep the baby alive and get him stable.  Ryan had been fighting for his life from the first moment he'd drawn breath, and in reality, Addison had been fighting for him since nearly the same moment.  She was exhausted and scared, and as he'd seen in so many of his patients' parents over the years, with her defenses down, the doubts and worries were starting to creep in.

"You are absolutely doing the right thing.  Ryan has a chance, a good chance of pulling through this, and he deserves his shot."

She didn't respond to his words, so Alex took hold of her hand.

"If you were his doctor and I was his father, would you have told me to do anything different than you've done?  Would there be one medication you'd change, one procedure you'd add or take out along the way?"

Addison swiped at the tears that had managed to make their way onto her cheeks and she shook her head.

"Alex, I can't possibly answer that."

"Of course you can because you've been that doctor.  You've walked this line on the other side.  Have you ever told a parent to give up when there was still a real chance that their child would survive?"

Her eyes met his and Alex squeezed her hand.

"I've seen you save babies that I thought wouldn't last 15 minutes in the O.R.  Ryan's had a tough time, but... you know how strong he is.  That kid's gonna play quarterback at USC yet, you wait and see."

Addison nodded and placed her other hand over his.

"Thank you for being here.  And don't say it's your job, because this part... this isn't your job."

Whatever response he might have made to her statement was cut off by the door opening.  Susan came in starting to speak, but she halted as her eyes fell on the rather intimate picture in front of her.  Alex looked down and saw their hands locked, noted how close he and Addison were to one another, and he realized what it could look like to the wrong person.  He stood, easing up so as not to look startled or panicked, and moved a more professional distance away from his patient's mother.

"Did you need something, Dr. Chester?"

The intern cleared her throat and had the smarts to try to act like she wasn't thinking anything she shouldn't be, though Alex could only imagine the stories he and his friends back at Seattle Grace would've concocted in the same situation.

"Dr. Ross is checking on Erica Sanders, but he wanted me to let you know he needs to see you."

"Okay, thanks.  I'm just waiting for Dr. Bennett to get back, and then I'll go find him."

Susan nodded and turned to the door making a quick exit.  Alex looked toward Addison a moment later, expecting them to resume their conversation, but instead he saw that she'd shifted her body and wiped the stray moisture off her cheeks.  She was done with vulnerable for now, and so he walked back to the opposite side of the room.

"I had messages from Callie, Sloan, Bailey and Chief Webber when I checked my voice mail," he shared.  Addison smiled as she reached out and once again began to trace a gentle, soothing pattern on her son's arm.

"They must have gotten tired of leaving messages with Dell."

He chuckled.  "Maybe.  Mostly they were calling to tell me I better be taking damn good care of you two.  Except for Bailey, who said that and told me to tell you she sent you an e-mail you should read as soon as Ryan wakes up."

Addison sighed and looked up from Ryan to meet his gaze.

"Sometimes I miss them all so much.  I mean, I have great friends here, as you've seen, but... you guys, you made Seattle more than just the longest eight months of my life."

The ease with which she included him into that group, the one that had made her difficult road in Seattle a little less awful, surprised Alex, mostly because of how awkwardly they'd ended up those last few weeks before her move.  Here in LA, it felt like they'd had a fresh start, but he still wished he'd handled things better back in Seattle if only to spare her any hurt feelings he'd caused.  But it was nice to know she grouped him among the good things she'd found in her less-than-happy time in the Pacific Northwest.

Sam returned minutes later armed with a bag of assorted foods he hoped would reveal something Addison would eat.  Alex told them he'd be back later and headed off to find Ross, but he stopped when he saw Susan Chester pacing near the nurses' station.

"Something wrong?" he asked.

Chester stopped moving and took a deep breath, squaring her shoulders, then she walked toward him.

"I wanted to say... I just wanted to tell you that I'm... I'm sorry... about the hall and us being stupid.  Some of the nurses, they'd heard some stories about Dr. Montgomery, and I heard them talking, and I wanted to be cool, so I went and shot my mouth off to the other interns.  But I'm sorry.  It was stupid, and... it seems even more stupid now that I've met her, and she's... Anyway, I just... wanted to say I was sorry."

And she meant it, he could tell, and so Alex nodded.

"Apology accepted.  Now go find Mills, tell him he's on call for Ryan, and you go and get some sleep while you can.  If we have to take him back into surgery, I want you ready."

Susan's expression morphed from shocked to thrilled in less than a second, but she bit back her excitement at being promised any future surgeries on the case and fought to keep her composure.

"I'll find him right now.  Thank you, Dr. Karev."

Alex stifled a laugh as his intern turned and walked about a third of the way down the hall before she broke into a run, no doubt intent on finding Mills, excited not to clock out for a few hours, but instead to say that she'd already been promised the next procedure in the case, if there was a next procedure.  He couldn't fault her for that.  He'd been the same way as an intern, and the truth was, on most any other case now, he'd still be that way... proud of being acknowledged, ready to brag over the surgery he'd scored.  Any other case... just not this one.

The hope was, of course, that the dramatic surgery Ryan had already endured was enough to get him healthier and stronger before perhaps some tune-up surgeries came later.  But the longer his pressure remained high, the greater the risk that one of the existing patches might fail.  That would mean more surgery for the already fatigued baby boy.

Surgery wouldn't help his kidneys, though, if his blood pressure continued to tax them, and so they were all hoping to see a decrease soon.  If they didn't get some kind of hopeful sign, the danger that Ryan might suffer permanent kidney damage continued to increase.

"Alex."

Mitchell Ross' voice grabbed his attention, snapping Alex out of his worst-case imaginings, and he headed to where his boss had stopped to make a note in a chart at the nurses' desk.

"I think I'm going to switch Ryan's medication.  At this point, the risk of treating the high blood pressure more aggressively is worth the potential side effects."

"Okay, well, Mills is about to take over, give Chester a break.  He can do in-room observation, stick close in case Ryan has any V-tach episodes."

Ross nodded, closed the chart and returned it to the organizer to his right.

"Good.  I'll go in and let Addison know.  And, uh, Karev, my family's out of town for a few days, so I'm free to do a full 24 today.  You should go get out of here, get some sleep."

"I'm fine," Alex replied, shoulders shrugging.  "I can grab a few hours in the on-call room."

"How often do you get an attending offering to cover an on-call shift?  Go home.  Seriously, before the chief starts bitching at me about your hours."

"Sir, really, I'm fine."

Alex waited as Ross stared at him for a moment before letting out a deep sigh.

"I'm trying to be slick here, Karev, but you're not helping, so here's the truth--I need you go to home for a little while because Addison is worried about you.  She can see how tired you are, and she's starting to feel guilty about it, responsible for it.  So do us all a favor and take a few hours off and let me tell her honestly that I sent you home and you're sleeping in your own bed and eating a real meal away from this place.  Can you do that for me?"

He'd have argued in almost any other circumstance, but Alex had no illusions about the weight Addison was carrying on her shoulders right now, and he couldn't add to it... not as one of the doctors treating her son and certainly not as her friend.  So he nodded reluctantly and assured his boss that as soon as he checked on a few patients and gave Mills his instructions for the day, he would head home.  And ninety minutes later, Alex was on his bike headed toward his apartment and a full 24 hours off from the hospital.

He figured it was a bad sign all around that by the time he got home, he knew without looking at his watch that he only had 23 hours and 27 minutes left to go before he could head back to Childrens and check in on Ryan and Addison.

*****

One thing Alex had adapted to well when it came to the life a medical intern was the insane sleep schedule.  He'd spent most of his childhood sleeping erratically, grabbing naps when no one would notice, lying awake for hours at night hoping to find a way to run interference if his father started shouting at his mother.  So sleeping here or there, grabbing five minutes in a chair, an hour in an on-call room, his body had learned to cope pretty quickly.

But when he couldn't sleep, not because he didn't have the time but because his brain wouldn't shut up and let him, Alex knew there was no easy solution to help him drift off to dreamland.  It didn't happen often, but when it did, he had to wait for his mind to surrender... even sleeping pills didn't help.  So when he rolled over in bed and saw that he'd been trying to sleep for three hours with little success, Alex pulled himself up and headed for the shower.

As he stood in the warm water, thoughts of what he could do to try to distract his brain from what he wasn't at the hospital to witness filled Alex's mind.  A workout would normally have been his first choice, but since he'd ridden his bike home, he'd technically already done that.  The idea of sitting in front of the TV or in a movie theater didn't hold much appeal to him, though, and most of his friends were at work and not available to just hang out.

A loud rumble in his stomach suggested some food was in order, so Alex pulled on a pair of jeans and his Iowa t-shirt and headed down to the garage for his unit.  He'd bought his '89 Accord cheap off another resident who was moving to Manhattan for a fellowship at Mount Sinai.  As much as he loved riding the bike, the reality of his job was that he got calls at all hours, and riding a bike down Hillhurst at three in the morning wasn't exactly his idea of fun.  So the car was there for late-night calls, for rain, or for the odd day when he was just too tired for the bike.

It took less than five minutes for him to make his way to Square One, his favorite breakfast place, and soon he had coffee and a plate of eggs and pancakes in front of him.  The food was amazing, and the restaurant was quiet since he'd missed the morning rush.  He grabbed a sports page and read up on the local teams and for a minute, he felt himself relax and start to unwind.  Then he flipped to the page featuring college football updates, and a story about the battle for the starting quarterback job at USC made Alex think about Ryan and their "talks" about the cardinal and gold and how someday they'd go see a game at the Coliseum together, and suddenly his mind was right back there in the NICU he'd been banned from for more hours still than he cared to think about.

With breakfast done, he had no desire to go home and drive himself nuts looking for something to do since he still didn't feel tired enough to sleep.  So Alex sat in his car trying to figure out what he could do or where he could go for a few hours, but nothing came to him.  He didn't like shopping, there was no point in going to get groceries, since he'd be back in the hospital nonstop as soon as this one-day respite was over, and while he could've called Meredith to touch base with what was going on in Seattle, he knew all she'd really want to do was ask questions about what was going on with Addison so she could filter it all back to the SGH crew.

He started the car and drove down the road a bit, making a few turns to get onto Sunset and head west.  He eyed the shops, noting a few pretty girls, wondering if maybe something somewhere would spur an idea of how he could occupy himself.  And then something did, and Alex pulled over long enough to call information and get the address he needed so he could look in his Thomas Guide and figure out where he was headed.

He'd been to the west side of LA a few times since his move, but mostly to check out routine tourist/new transplant sorts of sights... the boardwalk at Venice, the Santa Monica Pier.  It was a little too cluttered for him, too much traffic, too many people.  But once he got by the water and away from the main attractions, he understood what drew people to the beach communities.  The water was beautiful here, different from Seattle... calmer somehow.  And it made sense to him that a place with "Wellness" in its name would be positioned perfectly to have views of the horizon and the calm, blue-green ocean.

The building was fancy, which didn't surprise Alex considering the quality of doctors involved in this practice.  Inside, though he found a comfortable, welcoming feel in the lobby.  Several patients were waiting, some children playing in the special area setup for them to enjoy, and Alex wandered past them toward the reception counter.  By now, he'd met everyone who worked with Addison on their various visits to the hospital, and he recognized Dell, who smiled at him before his face fell.

"Dr. Karev, hey.  What are you, uh, doing here?"

Before he could answer, Cooper and Naomi both emerged from their offices and rushed up to the counter, their concerned questions of why he was there overlapping.

"I'm... everything's fine with Ryan.  I mean, things are status quo.  I'm sorry.  I didn't mean to--"

"No, we're sorry," Naomi said, motioning toward the kitchen.  Alex stepped that way with both doctors right behind him.  "I think we're all just suffering from frayed nerves around here.  We didn't mean to jump on you like a pack."

"I understand," Alex replied.  When Naomi went to pour a cup of coffee and offered him one, he nodded yes and gratefully took the boost of caffeine.   Cooper playfully slapped him on the arm and leaned against the counter.

"So what happened, they finally chase you of the hospital?"

"To quote my boss, Addison is worried about me, so yeah... mandatory 24 hours off.  Only even though I should be dead tired, I couldn't sleep.  And then I was driving down Sunset and I saw this baby shop.  She mentioned that she'd gotten all the stuff for Ryan's room a while back."

Naomi nodded.  "Yeah, she did, but it's all still sitting in boxes."

"Right, um, she told me.  She also mentioned this drawing she made, a layout of the nursery.  And, uh, when I saw the store, I was thinking, if I can't sleep and I can't go back to the hospital, then maybe I could, I don't know, do something with the room."

"That's a great idea."  Cooper clapped his hands and looked at Naomi.  "I only have two more patients today.  I could come and help out after that."

"Well, I'm covering for Addison, so I'm pretty booked up, but, uh, I think Pete's free for a little bit.  I can give him the keys and he could show you where the house is.  Yeah.  Why not?  Let's do it."

Half an hour later, Alex was walking up the stairs in Addison's house feeling a little bit like an intruder.  It felt strange to be there without her, especially when the place screamed "Addison" from every corner.  But Pete seemed perfectly at home, and he led Alex to the bedroom at the far end of the upstairs hall.  True to what she'd told him, there were boxes of furniture waiting to be assembled, accessories waiting to be unpacked and paint cans that had never been opened strew all over the floor.  In the far corner, a pale blue upholstered rocker was still wrapped in plastic to protect its fabric.

"I'm Addison's go to 'something's broken, come fix it' guy when Sam's not home," Pete quipped.  "So she's pretty well stocked on tools that I've left over here.  I'll go grab the kit and after I run back to take care of my early afternoon appointments, I can come back and give you a hand."

Alex nodded and Pete disappeared back down the hallway.  Approaching the mammoth pile, he decided the best plan would be to sort the boxes by what they were.  He was reaching for the first one when he saw the drawing Addison had described sitting on top of the box in the far corner of the group.  It was detailed down to the windows and where the letters that spelled out Ryan's name were meant to hang on the wall.  Seeing it, he could picture her sitting next to the isolette describing the details, urging the baby to live in order to one day see his own special space in their home.

Pete returned with the tools and he quickly helped Alex sort out the labeled boxes before running back to finish up his afternoon at Oceanside.  By the time Cooper arrived with sandwiches in hand, Alex had the walls painted the blue-green shade Addison had picked (he'd only had to do half since white wainscoting already adorned the bottom half of the walls).  It was called Refresh and it was easy to see why she'd chosen it.  Though it was near a traditional baby boy blue, it had just enough green in it to remind you of a bright, sunny morning sky at the beach.  And he could already tell from the mix of fabrics he'd seen on the rocker and in the bedding he had safely put out into the hall during painting that the mix of blue and white she'd picked was masculine without being clichéd.

After eating the pastrami sandwiches and fries Cooper had brought for lunch, the two men got to work navigating the instructions on the white maple crib he'd uncovered in the pile.  By the time Pete arrived later that afternoon, they were trying to get the top of the combination dresser and changing table into place.

To give them more room to work without pushing the furniture too close to the freshly painted walls, Alex gathered up the discarded boxes and wrapping and ran them downstairs.  He was just coming back in from the recycling bin Pete had directed him to when a wave of exhaustion made him miss a step, and Alex had to reach out and grab the kitchen counter to steady himself.

Eyeing the sofa, he walked over and sat down, deciding that a few minutes of sitting still was probably in order before he picked up any more power tools.   He chuckled and smiled as his eyes closed to rest a moment, noting that Addison's softly floral-scented perfume surrounded him on the numerous throw pillows that helped to make the sofa more than a little inviting.

When his eyes opened again, it was dark in the living room, though a light burned in the kitchen and, as Alex shot up and looked around, he could see the patio lights on behind him.  Addison's friends were all out on the deck eating and drinking, and when Naomi saw through the glass doors that he was awake, she stood and made her way back inside.

"Hey.  You were so tired, the guys decided to let you sleep.  There's plenty of Chinese left, though, if you're hungry."

Alex ran his hands over his face trying to urge himself to full wakefulness.

"What time is it?"

"A little after nine," she answered.  "I got here about seven, figuring I'd feed you guys after all your hard work."

"The room, we still had to put up the pictures and..."

Naomi waved off his concerns.  "Pete and Cooper finished up, and I checked and they followed the drawing to the letter.  I tackled the crib bedding since they both looked totally perplexed as to how to handle it, but, uh, it's all done.  It looks amazing."

Alex sighed, grateful that even if he'd fallen asleep part way through his own great idea that the work had gotten finished.  He also admired the way her friends kept coming together to help.  She really had found a family here long before Ryan had come into the picture.

He headed out to the deck with Addison's best friend and enjoyed a little of the beef and broccoli and spring rolls that were still available for the taking.  He learned that Sam had reported in two more times, each with things relatively unchanged at the hospital, but a third call had revealed a slight--very slight--decrease in Ryan's blood pressure.  Violet was already on her way to the hospital to relieve Sam and to take Addison some dinner.  And a glance at the clock told Alex that he still had about 10 hours to go before he was supposed to report back to work and check in on his patient for himself.  Hopefully it would be to see that the medication switch Ross had ordered had resulted in even more improvement.

After helping to clean up the mess from their dinner, Alex ambled upstairs to see how the rest of the room had come together.  The two floating shelves were in place now, the pictures they'd found of airplanes and rocket ships assorted between them.  The large white wooden letters that spelled out "RYAN" were just to the right of the dresser, visible from the changing table so the baby would be able to see them when Addison no doubt pointed them out as she attempted to teach him how to spell his name.

The crib was now decked out in the cotton bedding that pulled the whole room together, and Alex chuckled, grateful that Naomi had taken on that particular project.  Lord only knew what he and Pete and Cooper would've done trying to figure out how to get the solid blue ruffled bottom on, though he guessed they'd have eventually realized the padded bits with ties went around the sides from the inside.

It was a great room, everything chosen lovingly by a mother who was hoping for a long, happy life with her new son.  Alex refused to believe that they'd have anything less.  Cooper had been spot on earlier after the nightmarish code that they couldn't even let the thought in that this story might end in any way other than the one they were praying for.  He didn't want to see what that would do to his friend.  He was also starting to get a little worried about what it would do to him.

"This turned out great," Pete said as he walked in with a digital camera in his hand.  "I'm glad you thought of it.  I thought maybe we could take some pictures, show Addison and Ryan what they have to look forward to.  Maybe it'll help."

"Sounds like a plan," Alex replied, and he stepped out of the way so the other man could go to work snapping different angles in the now finished nursery.

The sound of a pager going off surprised him, and it took Alex a moment to realize it was his.  Glancing down, he saw that it was from Chester, and that it was coded 9-1-1.

"It's the hospital, 9-1-1," he offered quickly before turning his back on Pete to rush down the stairs.  When he got there, he found Cooper and Dell staring anxiously at Naomi, who was on her cell.  She pointed at Alex.

"No, Violet, tell Dr. Chester Alex is here with me, and we're both on our way.  We'll be there as fast as we can."

She hung up and started to grab for her purse as everyone converged on her.

"Did he code again?" Alex asked, a lump in his throat as the words forced their way out.  But quickly, the other doctor shook her head.

"He's awake.  He's awake and his pressure is down and his BUN is 18."

Alex let out a deep breath and he felt his shoulders release the enormous tension they had held for days now.  Ryan awake was fantastic, but his lowered pressure and new BUN results were the real cause for celebration.  His heart was working better and the strain on his kidneys had finally eased.

Somehow they all made it outside and over to their assorted cars, throwing them into gear.  Pete was the first out, his motorcycle leading the way toward the freeway as the caravan of friends headed toward Addison to celebrate what was hopefully the first big step to Ryan coming home.