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Alex was tired, upset and ashamed, but he was finally back home and willing to make things right. Or at least try. He was looking worse for wear, but, truth was, he needed quite a bit of support himself. He didn’t want to be invasive, though, so he decided to stay in a hotel until he asked Meredith if he could stay at her house for a few days. Because he was sure that Jo wouldn’t want him back in her life. Not after what he did. Not after abandoning her out of the blue for two and a half months after telling her time and time again that he would never do that. Oh, how he missed her, though. He missed every single thing about her. How could he have done that to her? At the same time, how could he not? He could have told her, but he was weak. That was a fact. He just couldn’t wrap his mind around doing it.
He missed their home too. Alex really wanted to take a shower in his own bathroom and grab some new clothes. He couldn’t stand the clothes he had packed anymore. They carried such heavy memories, he didn’t even bring most of them back home, so he had no other option but to go to the loft before going to the hotel. He chose to go there in the evening, because he knew Jo was usually still at the hospital. Not because he didn’t want to see Jo. He just didn’t want to invade her privacy.
Walking into the building made his heart a bit calmer. Alex couldn’t help but close his eyes and let himself feel okay for a couple seconds. Let himself feel at home. He then walked to their front door and, just as he was grabbing his keys to open it, he heard the creaky sound of it sliding open . And then he saw her. She looked a bit different. More tired and sad. Somehow, though, she looked a bit more enlightened, in the textbook definition of the word.
He could tell that Jo was taking him in too. Maybe it was the lighting, or lack thereof, but he looked older. He could see that every time he saw himself in the mirror lately. His under eye circles were darker and bigger than he had ever seen them. His hair was longer and messier, and so was his beard, he hadn’t had time to think about it with what he’d been through. Alex and Jo stared at each other for a couple seconds in silence in utter shock.
“Jo,” Alex let out a deep breath he didn’t know he had been holding in.
“You’re alive,” was all that Jo could get out.
He could tell that she was mad at him, but she also looked relieved to see him there. Finally, she let her feelings show. Even though she had been concerned, Alex could see that she was mad. He didn’t know where to begin, and she looked like she was on her way out, so he just apologized.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make this uncomfortable for you. I’m just in to grab some clothes because I don’t have any and then I’ll head out to a hotel. I’m sorry,” Alex blurted out.
“I’m just in to grab some clothes as well,” Jo answered.
“I don’t know what to say to you right now. I mean. I do, but you look like you’re on your way out,” Alex ran his hand across his forehead. He was so ashamed he didn’t even know where to start. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see your car. If I had, I’d have waited a bit until you were out”.
“Link gave me a ride on his way home,” Jo said, eyes shining with tears. “I was gonna grab an Uber back to the hospital, but I think I deserve to listen to whatever it is you have to say. I think you owe me that much.”
“You do deserve that. But I don’t wanna bother you, if you need to go to work I can drop you off” Alex suggested, eyeing Jo warily.
“No. I’m done for the day. I was on my way back because I’ve been sleeping there. I haven’t been sleeping here for a while”. Jo’s words made Alex’s heart ache a bit more. He really put her through more suffering than he realized. After working for her entire life and finally building herself a home, she wasn’t even able to sleep there.
Jo walked back into the loft and dropped the bag she had packed on the floor. Drying her tears, she sat on the couch, as Alex entered their home and joined her as if he was entering the place as a guest.
“Are you okay?” Jo asked as soon as he sat down. She really had been worried about him.
“Honestly, not really. There is too much going on inside my head right now, but I’m no victim in this situation,” Alex muttered, looking down at his hands. “I really wanna try and make things right by you. What I did to you was really unfair, and I’ll never be able to apologize enough for it”.
Jo dried her tears and took her shoes off, cuddling up to a throw pillow while covering her body with a blanket. The heating hadn’t been turned on for at least a month, and the February weather didn’t let her forget that.
“Are you cold? Do you want me to grab you another blanket?” Alex asked when he noticed Jo shivering. It sounded like he was trying to make up for the news he was about to break to her, but it came out almost instinctively. He missed taking care of her, he had done it for so long it had become second nature.
“Don’t worry, I’m good” Jo shook her head. Alex stood up anyway and grabbed another blanket, putting it over her feet and sitting down on the far end of the couch.
“Thank you,” Jo gave him a half smile, as if telling Alex she was ready to listen.
“I honestly don’t even know where to start, but I have to, so I’ll just figure this out as I go,” Alex sighed as he shifted nervously in his seat. He hadn’t told anyone what had happened yet, knowing that his wife deserved to be the first to hear his story. “Two days before I left, I got a call from a doctor from Kansas” he took a deep breath. “This doctor is a palliative care doctor who said one of his patient’s last wishes was to talk to me. She had a complicated family, and he thought it would do her good to talk about whatever it was that had been bothering her with me. He didn’t really get too much into it, but he did tell me the patient was Izzie.” Alex looked to Jo before continuing his story, watching the shock and dread that played out on her face.
“I thought about not going. I’ve already made peace with the things that happened between us, but she hurt me too much. I couldn’t not go, though. She was kind of like us, you know? Grew up in the shittiest environment,” Alex looked to Jo, watching the sympathy flash across her face as he continued to talk. “And if Izzie was reaching out to me in a time like this, it meant she didn’t have anyone else to stay by her side, so I went. I saw her, we talked a little bit, she asked me about everything and everyone from here. I told her about you, about us” Alex smiled.
“I gave her updates on everyone, we laughed a bit, and I asked her about her life. She told me she was a surgical oncologist, that she lived on a farm, that she had lived a happy life and that she had a huge request to ask me”Alex paused before continuing, knowing that if he stopped now he’d never be able to continue. “Jo, she had my kid”.
Alex eyed Jo, watching as tears began to fall down her face. She looked broken, he knew this wasn’t what she was expecting, but it was Alex’s reality now and he knew he couldn’t have dropped this big a bomb over the phone.
“She used the embryos and she had a son and she was dying. She said her mother promised her she would take care of him once she was gone, but as things were coming to an end, she just took a step back and said it would be better for him to go into the foster system, because she was getting old and needed quite a bit of help herself” Alex’s eyes were filling up with tears as he spoke. He wanted to hold Jo close so bad. He kept going, though.
“She passed away three weeks ago, and, in the end, her mother really did leave her grandson behind. But he is my son, Jo. I couldn’t let him go through that,” Alex lifted his eyes to look at Jo, almost done relaying what had happened and looking for her support. “The previous weeks had been hell, but the last three were just plain torture. I went to court pretty much every single day to try to keep him away from all the filth that is the system. He had no fault at all in this whole entire mess. And I won. He is mine, but now I don’t know what to do”.
Finally finishing, Alex collapsed into tears, letting the past few weeks wash over him. He hadn’t wanted to cry in front of Izzie or their son, but he couldn’t hold back his tears as he sat across from Jo.
“Oh my god, Alex,” Jo said, not really knowing which words to use. They were both crying in a desperate manner now.
“Say something. Please. Anything.” Alex begged her, after a long moment of silence filled only by the sound of their sniffles.
“Alex, I’m pregnant,” Jo blurted out, making Alex’s tears stop almost right away. At least one of them wasn’t crying anymore.
“What?” he asked after a few moments of staring into nothing.
“Yeah. I thought about telling you in one of the voice notes I sent you when I found out, but it just didn’t fell right. And then you were gone for so long, I didn’t think you were going to come back home”
Jo got up from the couch and picked her bag, grabbing a pair of pajamas from it and heading to the bathroom. Alex could hear her brushing her teeth as he sat in silence with his thoughts. It didn’t take long for her to come out dressed in her pajamas, but Alex felt a bit calmer when she did.
He wanted to look at her again, really look at her. Doing the math, there was no way she was early on. She must have been at least in the end of the first trimester, and he thought that she could be showing a bit. She was glowing, after all. He noticed that as soon as he saw her, but he couldn’t spot anything particularly different besides that. If anything, she looked a bit thinner than she did when he left. But, then again, the loft was pretty cold, so he doubted he would be able to see anything that could potentially be hiding under all the layers of clothes she had on.
“I don’t know if you need to do something or what, but I’m going to bed. I woke up at 3 this morning puking my guts out and had back to back surgeries” Jo sighed as she dried her tears. “I can’t do this anymore, not today. But it’s cold, late, and you look like shit. Be reasonable and don’t go out looking for a place to stay”
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He couldn’t move. Alex was stuck on that couch, just waiting for his body to react, to do something. Jo had crawled into bed but he was in the same position for god knows how long. His mind was taking shifts between being completely blank and active as if he was about to have a seizure. He had no idea how long it took him to get out of that trance, but he must have been like that for quite a while because Jo was sound asleep when he stood up.
Looking at her calmed him, making him realize that she was his peace and quiet. Sure, he still had bursts of anger every now and then, but overall, since she came into his life, he became a different person. In this moment of peace, he thought for a second that, maybe, just maybe, things would be okay.
Alex finally managed to drag his body into the shower. He could feel how healing it was to be back home. Because really, the loft with the woman that was fast asleep was exactly that: his home. He remembered a promise he made to himself when they moved in together. The loft was going to be their home, but they were gonna raise their babies in a real house. One with their own rooms with walls and a yard they could run across while he pretended to know what he was doing making burgers on Sundays. He realized that their days in the loft were counted.
Getting out of the shower, though, he couldn’t just get into bed with her. Not after doing what he did.
Alex still wanted to keep a close eye on her, just in case she needed something. She’d mentioned she was throwing up last night, so he wanted to be there to help if it happened again. He pulled up a chair, grabbed a blanket and sat down next to the bed. He appreciated every inch of her and was able to push the negative thought away. For the first time, he processed what she told him. Realizing that he was going to have a baby with Jo, even in the middle of this enormous mess, filled his heart with love and pride. For a few moments, he wanted to pick her up and spin her around and kiss her endlessly and love on her and their baby, but he couldn’t. Not when things were still so rough between them and especially not when she was sound asleep. He knew she needed her rest.
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Throughout the night, he wasn’t able to fully sleep, but he was able to snooze a few times here and there. Alex’s mind was too busy to rest, though. Knowing that his wife was okay gave him the opportunity to stop worrying so much about her, but he still had to think about Eli, his son, who was all alone with one of Izzie’s neighbors. That wasn’t fair to the boy, and Alex beat himself up so much for it. He wasn’t even three years old yet. He felt like he was just sitting back, doing nothing to change that, just letting history repeat itself once again. He knew he had to change that.
One of the times Alex stood up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, he opened a drawer to grab some toilet paper and saw something in the back. He blindly reached in and grabbed two plastic sticks. Pregnant, they read. Picking the sticks up, he smiled for the first time in what felt like forever. In the middle of all that mess, there was a baby who might not have been planned, but was so deeply wanted. He was going to do things right for them. Jo and the tiny person who was now growing in her womb, as well as his son, were the only people that mattered in his life in that moment. He was going to fix things and guarantee they had the happiest life. He grabbed his phone and took a picture of the sticks. He wanted to make sure he remembered what it felt like to see the light at the end of a long and dark tunnel.