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It’s a quiet, persistent chirping that rouses her. Something like a smoke detector missing its battery in the distance that grows progressively louder until it’s all she can do to block it out. Rolling her head incrementally to the right, her eyelids flutter open as if consciousness will ease the disturbance.
Memories filter in like fragments of dust through a beam of sunlight.
Parker’s surgery, Millin, a blast of fire that knocked them off their feet.
The world takes a hazy, blue shape before her–the same pastel color plastered over walls, curtains and blankets. Only the sharp contrast of a dark, freeform shape breaks up the monotony of it and her mind, slow as it is, recognizes the texture in an instant.
Amelia.
Grey-Sloan’s Head of Neurosurgery lies hunched over a few feet away, head angled towards the center of the ICU in a way that fanned brunette waves out across the pale hospital sheets. With all the strength she can muster, Monica reaches for the locks, disappointed to discover that the movement becomes no more than a twitch in her fingers of the hand closest.
Still, as if sensing a change in the room’s energy, Dr. Amelia Shepard stirs at her side and shifts to face her, neck and shoulders creaking as she turns with sleep still fresh in her mind and head millimeters from the mattress.
Monica feels it in her soul the second that their eyes connect; a shift in the axis as if the whole world suddenly felt right-side up again. Amelia’s alert in an instant but it’s Monica who breaks through first, saying the first thing that comes to mind with a deep rasp that makes her cringe.
“You look like shit.”
And it’s true. Amelia appears as if she hasn’t seen the outside of this hospital in God knows how long. Her scrubs are pressed with wrinkles and the heaviness she’s clearly carrying wears on every single feature, dragging at her eyes and cheeks with a tiredness that no coffee can cure.
But the soft laugh Amelia lets out, perhaps the first one she’s allowed herself since this whole ordeal began what felt like a lifetime ago, is a salve over both of their wounds and the neurosurgeon props her head up on an elbow and raises her eyebrows.
“Pretty rich coming from you, Beltran.”
Monica can do little more than smile good-naturedly and Amelia rises in one fluid movement, suddenly all action and moving with an intensity that’s far too much for her delayed reaction time to keep up with.
“I’m getting Altman,” Amelia says, already halfway across the room to the sliding glass door. “We’ll need to re-check your incision sites and order new scans now that you’re awake.”
“Wait…wait.”
The brunette freezes halfway out into the hallway, concern and the rush of adrenaline replacing the weariness on her face now. Monica tries again to move her hand, her fingers twitching unsatisfactorily at her side.
“C’mere,” she makes out, the sudden change in activity level too much for her to keep up with and the tendrils of sleep suddenly tickling the back of her brain.
Amelia relents and softens, gliding the door shut behind her to melt back to Monica’s bedside where suddenly the mood feels a touch too intimate. Monica’s fingers jump a third time and without a second thought, Amelia gathers them in her own with a reassuring squeeze.
“I’ll go out with you.”
Monica’s words are so quiet now that they barely break out over the incessant beeping of the machines tracking her vitals but they strike Amelia like a bullet.
“...what?”
That conversation in the lounge felt like a lifetime ago. They were different women now. Different doctors. Monica pushes on.
“I know the timing wasn’t perfect but I never should’ve made you wait.”
Tears spring to Amelia’s eyes and she can’t hold Monica’s half-lidded gaze, dropping down to stare absently at where their intertwined fingers rest on the side of the bed.
“I wasn’t going anywhere,” Amelia manages a whisper, risking a glance back to where Monica rests propped up on the pillow.
“No… but I nearly did.”
The realization of how close to death Monica had gotten was a dry pill to swallow and Amelia choked back that fear as best she could. Keeping her left hand wrapped around Monica’s, she reached up with the right to tuck a loose strand of unruly hair back behind the peds surgeon’s ear.
“You’re not going anywhere. Not on my watch.”
The moment felt too big, too serious. It was too soon after everything had nearly crumbled to the ground to be making proclamations.
“I don’t care if I have to go into that beautiful brain of yours and Frankenstein your ass.”
Amelia couldn’t help but try and lighten the mood and it earned her a small huff of a laugh from Monica which was about as much as she could manage.
Giving her hand another featherlight squeeze, Amelia rose again, smoothing the blanket out where she’d been sleeping just minutes earlier. Not exactly how she’d imagined her first time sleeping with Monica. A blush rose across her chest and Amelia made sure to tug up her scrub top even as Monica’s eyes began to flutter shut again.
“Get some rest Beltran…”