oh i believe in yesterday
Alex sings to the babies in the NICU and thinks nobody knows when in reality, everyone knows.
PAST
He’s not really sure he picked it up from because Arizona can’t sing for shit and neither could Addison, but Alex started singing to the babies almost as soon as he joined the vagina squad. He didn’t do it often so not a lot of people knew about it at first, but when Alex finally sets his heart on peds, it becomes something he does a lot more frequently. So much, that every kid he sings to gets a different song because they're special and there’s something different they each need to hear.
He’s especially fond of the babies that their mom is in the hospital due to health issues or babies that don’t have anyone looking out for them. Part of it is because one of the very few memories that he has as a child we’re those of his mom singing to him. She didn’t have the best voice, but every word was sung with so much love and sometimes singing to her was the only way he’d be able to calm her down. So when he heard a crying baby in the NICU, he would pull up a chair and sing a song to the little one struggling to survive. He’d like to think that they know he’s there for them.
That practice didn’t end when he finished his residency and became a fellow. If anything, it increased now that he didn’t have to split his time between other specialties and got to spend his days around kids all day.
The first time Jo heard it is after the teen mom abandon’s her baby. They had reached a silent understanding earlier but she was still a little annoyed with how casually he treated the whole situation, as if he had seen it a hundred times before—which Jo was sure he had. But she couldn’t shake how indifferent he sounded to the baby’s newfound loneliness. Deciding that she couldn’t ignore it any longer, Jo makes her way over to the NICU to keep the baby some company overnight only to find that Alex is already by his bedside singing him a song.
Alex is singing “Yesterday” by the Beatles to the little boy and Jo’s heart just about melts. Suddenly all of the leftover bitterness in her heart dissipates and she finds herself seeing him in a whole new light.
Later in the future, Jo reveals that she first started falling in love with him that day. When Alex asks in surprise how she knew he did that, she just laughs because literally everyone knows he sings to the babies. He asks why she never said anything and she says, “because we all find it so sweet and we knew if we said something, you’d stop.”
“Who’s we?”
“The better question is who isn't 'we.'"
——————
PRESENT
Jo avoids the NICU and peds ward pretty much at all costs after Alex leaves. It’s too much for her. It full of the memories of major moments in their relationship. It’s where they became friends. It’s where they fell in love. It’s where they’d spend hours together. It’s when they had their first kiss, etc. It used to be her favorite place in the hospital but now it’s just full of pain. When Alex left it lost it’s magic and it became what it was: a room full of kids that are sick or dying.
When Luna is born, Jo goes to the NICU solely out of love for Val. She wants Val to be able to know her daughter and hopes that seeing Luna through the screen would motivate her to get better quicker. When Val dies, Jo continues going to the NICU because she feels responsible for this baby somehow.
One night, she pulls up a chair text to Luna’s incubator and sighs at how quiet everything is around her. Due to covid, not as many people were allowed up there as before and right now, it’s just her and Luna. Something about the silence doesn’t feel right and she can’t quite put her finger on it until Hayes pops in to say goodbye for the night. She realizes what’s missing. Alex.
If Alex were here, he would’ve already sang Luna about a dozen songs. Jo would struggle having to drag him out of the NICU every night to go home and get some rest since he’d want to dote on her and give her all the love she was missing out on. Hayes is a great peds surgeon but he wasn’t Alex. He didn’t sing to sick babies in his free time.
Jo looks back down at Luna and feels her heart flutter. Well, if Alex wasn’t here to sing a sick baby to sleep, she could do it. So Jo starts singing to Luna and for the first time, she feels like a mom. And despite all the pain she feels over alex leaving her, jo finds herself amazed at the things he taught her. Because even in his absence, he still keeps changing her life.
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