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“Edwards, Wilson, you’re on plastics again tomorrow. Deluca, you're free to join us in the burn center?”
“Sorry Dr. Avery, I'm with Dr. Kepner in the ER all day again tomorrow.”
Jackson nods to show he's heard the resident’s answer and starts reviewing the paperwork for the procedures he’s done today. The burn center, once Mark Sloan's brainchild, is something he's very attached to, and perhaps the only department for which he doesn't mind managing the admin side, even after a long day of gruesome surgeries, which mobilized most of the residents and several attendings.
Next to him, at the nurses' counter, Deluca stops where Jo and Stephanie are charting and where Arizona, who operated on a 10-year-old burn victim with him, is reviewing a file. Deep in his paperwork, Jackson hears them more than he listens to their conversation.
“If you're too busy to help us, go away,” Stephanie grumbles.
“I’m just waiting for some lab results, and then I’m back in the pit. I still have to log more hours in trauma. Which is great, because something cool always happens when you're on Dr Kepner's shift in the ER. She has the coolest cases,” Deluca gushes, and Jackson thinks to himself while signing a form, what is it with Deluca that he always sounds like an enthusiastic golden retriever?
“Cooler than helping a third-degree burn victim? ‘Cause that's what we do here,” Jo boasts.
He doesn't remember Wilson being that into plastics, but then recalls his own time as a resident. Competition and bragging were a constant, especially when your class included one Cristina Yang (and one perpetually pissed Alex Karev), and he fights a smile. He would have bragged about any case if he had the chance to annoy either of them, and from the corner of his eye, he sees Arizona shake her head, probably reliving her own residency days.
“Well, yeah,” Deluca retorts. “There's this little boy that came this morning, with a broken arm, and–”
“A broken arm? That's your cool case?” Stephanie scoffs, and Jackson kind of agrees. Trauma can be cool, but in this instance, point for Plastics.
“Well, it is when the boy has Osteogenesis Imperfecta.”
All the air seems to be sucked out of the room, and four heads suddenly snap up to stare at Deluca.
“Dr. Kepner is treating a little boy with OI?” Stephanie asks in a small voice.
“Yeah, but he’s fine, she's going to discharge him tonig... What?”
Stephanie, Jo and Arizona all turn their heads, this time in Jackson’s direction, and Deluca follows suit, confused by the change of atmosphere. Jackson’s mouth is so dry he can’t seem to swallow, and he freezes for a few seconds. It’s Arizona who brings him back to reality, her panicked gaze asking him a thousand questions at once. He sees her open her mouth, but quickly snaps out of it and shakes his head, as if to prevent her from speaking, from making the situation more real than it is. Her eyes don’t leave his, clearly asking him what he’s going to do, so he nods, and she nods right back, their own version of “I'm on it” and “Okay, go”.
Turning on his heels, he walks (doesn’t run, though he really wants to). His back is turned, so as he leaves, he doesn't see Stephanie smack Deluca on the back of the head, Jo roll her eyes or Arizona pinch her nose, sigh and open her mouth to give a very perplexed Deluca an explanation.
After his pages to her are ignored, his quest to find her takes him all over the hospital. He starts by the chapel, which is strangely empty, and he’s reminded of the last time he was in there, praying for a miracle, praying for her. It would have been too easy, he thinks, to find her on his first try, as if he still knows her by heart, so he turns back and tries the attendings lounge, then the tunnels in the basement where they used to come to breathe in the middle of a difficult shift, or to eat lunch with the other residents.
No April.
He then hurries to the daycare floor, which should have been his first stop if he were thinking rationally, and if his heart weren’t in his throat (or whatever the stupid expression is). When he doesn't find her there, he allows himself to stop for a few seconds to watch Harriet play through the window, and tries to breathe and to center himself. He doesn’t often let himself think of Samuel, of the panic and sadness and devastation. He’s a master at repressing feelings, burying them like the most skilled undertaker, keeping everything under a lid so he can function. It’s a necessity, because he doesn’t want to think about what would happen if he would just stop and let himself feel all the pain that has been festering for so long. He’s afraid the grief would eat him alive, like it almost did April, and so he doesn’t let it. He buries it, then gets up and goes to work, as if everything is fine. Even now, he does everything in his power to avoid looking at his pain too closely. Now is not the time to spiral, not when he still has to find how April is doing.
He reluctantly decides to walk to the OB floor, the very place where Samuel’s existence was confirmed, where he first saw his son through a black-and-white sonogram. The place where Samuel was diagnosed, the place where he was born. The place where he spent his entire life, and the place where he died. Jackson hadn’t been able to bring himself to come back there ever since, going so far as to give some consults to one of his fellow plastics attendings, just so he wouldn’t have to set foot in the room where one life stopped and two others were put on hold. His footsteps are slow, cautious, and he only stays for a few seconds to make sure April’s not hiding here before bolting out of there.
As his search goes on, the anger in his chest is taking a stronger and stronger hold. Anger towards April for being so difficult to find, for getting that case instead of any other doctor, for making him replay the worst day of his life on a loop in his brain. He knows his anger is misdirected, that April is not really at fault here, but his fists are clenched a little too tightly, and his heart is beating too fast. He’s not even sure he wants to find her, except that he needs to.
When even the pit and the trauma rooms are a bust, he starts to wonder if she’s even in the hospital still. If she hasn’t just given up and gone back home. But he remembers an overflowing ER department the day after he told her about Samuel’s condition, her manic energy and her waiting until every patient was treated to finally crumble. April Kepner doesn’t bury her feelings; she goes to work to avoid thinking about them for a while, and then she either runs away or goes to war. So it makes sense that when his steps finally take him outside the hospital, he finds her on a dimly-lit bench near the ambulance bay, a bench that has seen happier days, just like them.
Cautiously, he sits beside her and stays silent. They've been so distant these past weeks, haven't shared more than a few sentences ever since she moved out of his place, that he knows better than trying to touch her to comfort her. He even wonders if she would be comforted by him, and the thought makes him sick. He used to be her protector, even when they were just friends, constantly in contact with each other, and now he’s thinking that she may bolt if he so much as scoots closer towards her. But he’s Jackson, she’s April, and in every universe, if he sees her in pain, he has to do something.
Minutes pass, and when she starts speaking, she stares straight ahead, not looking at him.
“Max Aldrich, seven, came because of a radius and ulna fracture. I called an ortho consult, they came to reduce it and put a cast that may postpone his next surgery. He'll be home by the end of the night.”
She recites the litany of facts in a flat voice, as if she were presenting a random case to another doctor.
“He's already had forty-three surgeries, the forty-fourth is planned for next month. His mother is with him, the dad is working three jobs so they can afford whatever medical bills not covered by their insurance.”
He swallows, hating her robotic voice.
“April…”
She shows no signs of having heard him.
“He got injured because his little sister, who is three, grabbed him by the arm while they were playing, and it just snapped. She's feeling so guilty that she hasn't stopped crying ever since they came here, and he's tried to console her. He said to her that he's so used to the pain that he doesn't feel it anymore. Have you ever heard anything more messed up than that?”
“April, you shouldn'–”
“Don't.”
Her breathing speeds, he finally hears some emotion in her voice, and he almost wishes he weren’t, because the pain seeping through that one word is unbearable.
“I'm a professional. I'm not comparing him to, to him, and imagining what-ifs in my head, or looking back. It's just a case.”
They both know that's a blatant lie, that these two letters still hold so much power over them all these years later, but he doesn’t call her out on it. Not when pictures of Samuel’s face have been dancing in front of his eyes ever since Deluca opened his mouth.
“You didn’t have to treat him, you could have called anyone, or–”
“You sound like Owen. I’m perfectly capable of treating him without turning into a puddle of tears.”
“April, I didn’t say th–”
“You didn’t need to. It’s all you and everyone else see when you look at me. Poor little April, too fragile to handle this.”
“Stop. It’s not like that.”
“And even if that were the case, I don't need you consoling me. We've barely said two dozen words to each other since I moved out, and you’ve been ignoring me for months before that. I don't know what we are, but we're not friends anymore, I think that's clear, so why are you even here?”
Is she serious?
She gets up and avoids looking at him, and he follows suit, because he’s not done with this conversation. It’s like his anger has been patiently waiting to finally burst out of him, and he’s almost glad to have the occasion to unleash it.
“Why am I here? Why am I here?? I don’t know, April, maybe because I wanted to make sure you were alright? Because I almost threw up when I heard from Deluca about that case, and I don’t know how I would have had the strength to talk to his parents and treat him? Or maybe because we both lost a child to this horrible disease, and never speak about it?”
April shakes her head, but Jackson is not done.
“So yeah, I am here, just like I’m pretty sure you would be if I had been the one getting that case. I’m here so you can talk about it if you need to, and I think you do.”
“Oh, so now you want to talk about things? About feelings and family and all the hard stuff?”
If looks could kill, April’s would have done serious damage, and he swallows, because she has a point there. She may have run away from him and everyone else when she left for Jordan, but he’s also a master at emotional avoidance, even (especially) when he shares a son, a daughter, a house and an eventful past with her.
“Maybe it’s time, yeah.” He looks her in the eyes, only to be met with incredulity.
“Well, it’s a little bit too late for that, isn’t it? You can’t pick and choose when you want to care.”
It’s never going to be too late with you, is what he wants to say, but he doesn’t let the words pass his lips and be uttered out loud. Instead, he chooses to say something else.
“So it’s better to run away, like you always do?”
April groans with frustration, and he thinks she’s going to do just that, turn her heels and leave, again. Instead, she takes a step closer, and he can almost see her gear up. For a quick, precious second, he actually feels better, because as much as he hates arguing with her, fighting is still better than the silence and the avoidance they’ve both become used to. Fighting is communicating and can lead to something. Anything would be better than her becoming a stranger.
“You’re just– I don’t want to do this now, thi–”
“See? You’re clamming up again. I’m trying to–”
“Oh, I’M clamming up? Looked in the mirror lately, Jackson?”
“At least I’m trying–”
“It’s ‘do as I say, not as I do’ with you, I guess? You shut me off when I tried to bri–”
“Oh that’s not even–”
“But nooo, now Jackson has decided we should talk, so we have to talk, and–”
“Can you please stop for just one minute and listen–”
But just when he thinks that maybe, they’ll go somewhere, she takes a step back.
“I– I can’t. I have to go discharge Max. Goodnight, Jackson.”
He watches her as she grabs her bag and all but flees towards the hospital. He doesn’t follow her, stays for a few more seconds where he is, seething. She’s the only one he’s supposed to be able to talk about the anger, and the pain, the only one who would get it, and yet she’s apparently the one he can’t talk to. They’re always moving at a different speed, processing in their own way, and he’s close to believe their timing will always be slightly off.
And yet, in the middle of his anger, and annoyance, and weariness, he remembers the light in the eyes, the indifference in her voice giving way to pain, the way she was ready to battle with him, and he can’t help it. Deep down, he can feel something new emerge, something he has no real reason to feel, that would make no sense to anyone else, something that gives him the energy to walk back to the burn center and carry on, like he’s become used to.
Something that would mean that somewhere, somehow, tomorrow or way ahead, there's still hope for them after all.