A story I started last night because I just got the idea and absolutely could not get rid of it. And, just to let you all know, I have NOT abandoned 'A Hazy Shade of Winter.' I'm actually just finishing up the chapter, but I want to get it all perfected before I post it! This story is set in the future, six-ish years after season five?
Izzie and her autistic four year old son Jamie are movine to Newport, California, to get away from the past, and to try and obtain a fresh start. Two nights before they move, and the night before Jamie's fourth birthday, Izzie remembers the past. It might be tearjerking at parts, I don't even know yet! But I'm very excited about this, and I hope you like it!
Disclaimer: whatever, I don't own anything.
He is going to be four years old tomorrow, and then the day after, they're moving. They're having a party. Nothing big, because he gets upset when there are too many people around. Meredith and Derek are coming, and bringing Lucy and Ella. Cristina will bring Sean, because Owen has to take Taylor to a dance competition, and apparantly there is just no way she can miss it (or so she told Izzie over the phone last night.) George will be there. It will be a small party, but it's probably better that way and besides, the ones coming are the people that really matter. All of them and then, of course, Jamie.
She is sitting at the kitchen table, finishing up the card for him. It doesn't matter to her that he cannot read. When he is older, he can read it, and know how much he mattered to her, even at that age. I love you, Jamie, more than anything. Daddy too, even though he isn't with us anymore. He still loves you, and he's watching over you. Happy birthdy, baby. She puts the pen down and slides the bright card into the envelope, licking it shut.
He is asleep, so she has the baby monitor on. Izzie can remember that Meredith stopped using the baby monitor with Lucy when she was fourteen months old, and with Ella when she was only ten months. Izzie doesn't know how long it will be until she can turn the monitor off with Jamie, it's one of the few things that all the websites, doctors, handbooks, meetings and therapists have not yet covered.
Izzie gets up to go and get a glass of water from the fridge. The house feels empty lately. It has not felt like a real home since Alex died, but it had not exactly felt empty. There always seemed to be people with her, bringing her food or watching Jamie for her, trying to get her to go have coffee or go sit at the park. Slowly but surely, people are beginning to leave her alone, and although she's happy to finally, finally have her house to herself, it doesn't feel right when it's only her and Jamie.
She remembers the nights when Alex was at the hospital, in the OR, or on call. Jamie had never been a sound sleeper; so she used to get him out of his crib. She'd bring him downstairs and cradle him. They'd watch late night TV, she would sing him lullabies, and they'd both wait for Alex to get home, because it just doesn't feel like home without him there.
Now, it feels like a picture in one of those books she used to play with when she was younger, with the two pictures, of the little kids at the ice cream diner or whatever. The caption was always "Find the Ten Differences in These Pictures!" At first, it takes a while to find out exactly what is wrong, but once you see the missing stripe on Sally's shoe, or the lack of a third scoop in the cone, all the other differences start flying out at you, as noticeable as a pebble in your shoe, or that itch on your back.
At first glance, their house does not look much different, from Before Alex, to Now (those are the ways she seems to categorize time; Lucy was born Before Alex, Lexie and Mark got married Now.) The walls in the kitchen are still that bright yellow, from the weekend they spent painting it, the pictures of Jamie after he was born, Alex holding him proudly, like a prize he's waited so long for, are still on the fridge, all their books (Izzie's tattered copies of Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, Rosen's Emergency Medicine, Bonica's Management of Pain, Widman's Clinical Interpretation of Labratory Tests, Jamie's Cars, Toy Story, Batman and Spiderman books) stacked up on their shelves, the couch in front of the TV, with the fuzzy Pooh blanket thrown over the back.
But if you stand still for just a few minutes, you can tell. The wedding photo, the beautiful one that Meredith said should be in a magazine, is hidden behind a picture of Jamie and Izzie at a water park last summer, Taylor standing behind Izzie, flashing her toothy grin. It's not that Izzie doesn't want people to think she has a husband anymore (although she doesn't) it's just that every time she looks at it, her heart feels like it's going to break in two. Another thing you could notice was the lack of beer in the fridge and old Jackass tapes under the TV. There are a million things you could notice about the house, a million things that have changed since Alex left.
When Izzie closes the fridge door, she sees the picture taken a few days after Jamie was born; she is sitting on the hospital bed, holding him closely. Alex is sitting beside her, Jamie's tiny finger wrapped around Alex's big one, Izzie's head is resting on Alex's shoulder. Izzie loves this picture, because they don't have that look on their face. That look that seemed to be etched permanantly on their faces when Jamie was around thirteen months, when he wouldn't respond to the sound of his name, when he started rocking his body back and forth all the time, and flapping his hands around. The way he would never play with the whole Tonka truck Alex brought home for him one day after work; he would only play with the wheels, spinning them around with his tiny little finger. Izzie would sit down, cross legged with him on the floor and jiggle the car in front of him. "Jamie, look! Vroom!" But he was never interested.
It was the look that they both got simultaneously, when they had sat with Doctor Bailey, and she told them. Even though it was nearly three years ago, and the whole meeting only took ten minutes, Izzie can still remember the words as though it was simply a few hours ago. "Izzie, Alex.. it looks like Jamie has autism."
Izzie studies the picture again, for half a second, and then goes back into the living room. She fluffs up the yellow tissue paper that is sitting, brightly arranged on top of the blue gift bag, that holds Jamie's birthday presents. Izzie knows she has gone a little over the top on birthday presents this year and the doctor inside of her says, "Why would you buy him that hundred and fifty dollar easel? Do you really think it's going to help him?" The mother inside of her ties her apron and says, "For God's sakes, it's to help with his motor skills." She bought a new tub of Play Doh, and the Play Doh fun factory, to improve his sensory skills. And then there's the other things, the usual things; the trucks and the stuffed giraffe (because he has taken to bringing in sticks from outside and dragging them around the house, and the huge giraffe, with it's long neck, is the only substitue she can think of.) There's the big, tall Rescue Heroes book, the block letters and the Go Diego Go! DVD's.
The house looks empty, because most of their boxes are packed up. Aside from the couch, Jamie's bed, the fridge and a few chairs, everything's ready to be moved the day after tomorrow. Izzie has anticipated moving for a long time; saying goodbye, leaving the hospital, driving to the new house, moving into the new house. Getting Jamie set up in school, finding new friends.
And now, it's all actually happening. In two days, they're leaving Seattle. Izzie guesses they'll come back sometimes, to see Meredith and the kids, and George. They'll come for Christmas, maybe, and when Lexie has the baby, in six months. And Izzie supposes that, in a lot of ways, Seattle will always be her first home. The place where she has always felt most comfortable, most loved, most happy. Everything, and everyone, that matter to her, leave in Seattle.
But, as of Thursday, Newport, California, is going to be their new home. Fresh from all the memories. A fresh start for Jamie. He probably won't remember Seattle much. He is going to remember Newport. Maybe he will remember driving there, the big burly men moving the entire contents of their house into the moving truck. Maybe Jamie won't remember Alex, as his Daddy, maybe he won't even remember his Aunt Meredith, or his Uncle Mark. But Newport is going to be the place Jamie remembers growing up in. And that, for him, is the most important thing.
It's going to be hard. She knows that, with every part of her, she knows how hard it will be. It takes all the strength she has, and then a lot of it borrowed from her friends, to keep her going most days. Some mornings, when her alarm clock goes off at four thirty for rounds, or when Jamie rocks back and forth and cries, refusing to put his coat on, when he won't listen to her, when she throws her hand across the bed, expecting Alex to be there, she feels like she is going to die. But she doesn't. She gets up, and she keeps going.
A lot of it has been thanks to the people that love her and know that they need to get her going. She can remember how, after it all happened, Meredith more or less lived with them for nearly two months. She remembers the sobbing phone calls to George in the middle of the night, the mornings when she's called in sick to work and spent the whole day looking at old photos.
She doesn't want to be like that anymore, doesn't want to be remembered as 'poor Izzie, with her autistic kid and the dead husband.' In Newport, she decides, things are going to be different.
And so, she is going to take this last night in their house (because tomorrow night, they're staying at Meredith's) and she is going to remember. Without fear or regret, trying not to get overly weepy or too nostalgic. She will remember it all. No matter how much it hurts.