Disclaimer: I don't own Grey's Anatomy.
Summary: Christopher turned his head so that his pair of icy blue eyes would meet hers as his small lips uttered the question that shattered her heart into pieces: "Mommy, can you fix my brain?" ONESHOT
Christopher
Brain: The portion of the central nervous system that is located within the skull. It functions as a primary receiver, organizer, and distributor of information for the body. It has a right half and a left half, each of which is called a hemisphere.*
Amelia sprawled on the bed with her 4-year old son safely snuggled into her side and tightening her grip on his small body she started to read: "As humans age, memory and many other cognitive functions often decline. When a neuropsychologist evaluates an older adult, "normal" performance is substantially lower than that of a younger adult." She paused for a moment and looked down at her youngest and smiled as she saw his bright blue eyes focused on the content of the journal in her hands, his ears latching onto his mother's every word. There used to be a time where her twin daughters would also join this little party, but in recent months they had turned their attention to fairytales and would much rather listen to their father's tales of princesses and dragons. Not her little boy though. Christopher seemed to share her passion for the human brain even at such an early age. She smiled before continuing: "For example, on the California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT), an average 25-year-old remembers 14 words, while an average 75 year-old remembers 9 words, more than 2 SDs lower (Delis et al., 1987). Nevertheless, there is substantial variation in the degree of cognitive decline with age. Some older adults—"**
She broke off as the door opened and her husband popped his head into the room.
"Hi," she greeted him warmly.
"Hello," he replied "What are you reading?"
Amelia laughed: "What do you think?...The Journal of Neuroscience of course..."
The smile on Owen's face died but he didn't say anything.
Christopher, completely disregarding his father, tugged at the sleeve of his mother's pajamas propelling her to continue reading. She went on with the article, fighting against the yawns which were threatening to escape, soldiering on until she could feel her little one's breaths slow down under her grip. Once she was certain Christopher was fully asleep, she closed the journal and carried him to the bed in his room. She tucked him in and moving away the brown curls placed a soft kiss on his forehead.
Later she returned back to her and Owen's room and lied down to sleep. Before she could fully close her eyes, Owen joined her in the bed.
"Amelia," he started, his voice uncharacteristically insecure and uneven: "we should talk about Christopher."
She pursed her lips and breathed out sharply: "There's nothing to talk about."
"Amy...,"
"Just let me sleep, Owen. I have a long surgery early tomorrow."
She rolled onto her side away from her husband and tried to ignore the frustrated sigh that escaped him. Sleep would not find her easily that night, as she blankly starred into the dark, secretly terrified for the future that lay ahead for her baby boy.
Amelia stretched her legs, trying to fight with the ache that was overtaking her body from her back down. The complicated surgery originally planned for six hours, which had unexpectedly turned into nine had her pregnant body almost at her limits. Had it taken one more hour, she might even concede that Owen and Robbins were right and it was time for the head of neurosurgery and for the mother of soon-to-be-four to slow down. Just for a bit. But she and Edwards had finally managed to clear out all of the tumor and it would seem that the patient would have great chances for recovery with little to no effects, albeit she knew that they still needed a few days for that to be confirmed. She was about to start closing as the door to the OR were blasted and in came one of the interns panting from running.
"Doctor Shepherd, you have to come to the ER."
She didn't as much as look up from her patient as she answered: "Can't Nelson take it?"
"No." the intern shook his head. "Doctor Hunt is asking for you. It's your son, Doctor Shepherd...he's in the ER."
Amelia's hands froze above the patient's head and her fingers trembled as all sorts of nightmare scenarios ran through her head.
"You've got this?" she turned to Edwards.
"Of course," the younger doctor told her once mentor. "Just go."
Only as she was running down the stairs, taking them two at a time did she realize that she had completely forgotten to ask the intern whom Owen had sent what had actually happened to her son. Maybe he could have given her some peace, confirming that Christopher had just suffered a minor injury. Instead she had images of his bloodied and battered body running through her head now.
As she entered the ER she almost had her worst fear confirmed as she saw almost a dozen of doctors and nurses crowded amongst one of the beds. Aside from others she recognized Owen amongst them, together with one of the teachers from the hospital's nursery, Anne, who was visibly small and appeared to be covering herself from the onslaught on angry words that had poured on her from Amelia's husband. But when the teacher moved aside for a bit, she revealed the body of the youngest Shepherd-Hunt on the bed, rocking back and forth on the bed, small wails escaping his mouth as he hugged some kind of square object to his chest so tightly that his knuckles had turned completely white. There was a small cut on his forehead, but otherwise he appeared to be unscathed.
Amelia approached the group and as she caught some of her husband's yelling, she was practically seething, but buried her emotions deep inside, at least for the moment, for the sake of her son.
"Ok," she addressed the group. "Everyone but Karev leave."
"Now!" she yelled as none of the doctors and nurses made any kind of movement after her original comment. Afterwards the group reluctantly dispersed, leaving only Amelia, Karev, Owen and the daycare teacher present.
"That includes you as well, Owen" she turned to her husband.
"What?" he started, a confused and hurt expression crossing his face.
"You're upsetting him," Amelia explained motioning towards their son.
Owen hung his head in defeat and walked away but not before throwing one last look at Amelia. This conversation wasn't over just yet, she knew.
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," Anne squeaked, tears trailing down her young face.
Amelia fought with the urge to slap this woman who had allowed her baby to get hurt. Owen had obviously already given the poor woman his fair share of parental anger, so she might as well try to calmly listen to what the teacher had to say.
"What happened?" she asked, trying to keep her voice even.
"It all happened so quickly. I turned away for like a minute," the woman started recounting the events. "One of the younger girls started crying, I went to comfort her. Suddenly I heard some shouting and when I turned back, Christopher was on the ground, he cut his forehead on one of the cabinets and Hunter was standing over him. I'm so sorry. It was just a minute. And I didn't realize I needed to worry about Christopher."
"What do you mean you didn't realize you had to worry about him?" Amelia interrupted, furry finding its way into her voice.
"I just mean...he's so well behaved all the time. Keeps to himself all the time, especially since his sisters started school. Just keeps playing with that book of his. But today Hunter came to him, he wanted to have a look at the book, but Christopher wouldn't let him. So Hunter pushed him and took the book from him and tore some of the pages out and drew all over it. Christopher was really upset about it. He didn't cry when he fell down, only when he saw what happened to the book."
Amelia made a mental note that she and Owen would probably need to talk to the parents of this bully kid Hunter at some point later, but for now the pieces of the puzzle finally started falling into place for her as she recognized the object that her son was gripping so tightly to his chest. The book had been the subject of many a fight between her and Owen when she planned to buy it for Christopher's birthday. In the end Maggie ended up to be the one to give it to him as she argued that as the aunt who got to spoil her godchild rotten she could get him anything he wanted, Owen's opinion be damned. Ever since that day Christopher had carried the book with himself everywhere and his mother had read 'The Human Brain' to him so many times that he knew everything written in it by heart. He could not actually read the book himself, as the only word he had learned to read and write so far was the word brain (and while he knew all the letters he could not even wrap his head around the word rain) but he would flick through the pages most of his days in the hospital nursery, looking at the pictures, memorizing every little detail.
"Ok, you can go," Amelia told Anne before turning to Karev: "Is he alright asides from that nasty cut?"
Alex shrugged his shoulders: "It's not like he will let me check him out."
"I see," she nodded as an idea crossed her mind. "I've got this."
She climbed onto the bed, hugging her boy to herself with her left hand and stroking his curls with the other as she whispered into his ear: "It's okay, baby. I tell you what. Doctor Alex will look at that cut you've got and take care of it and then we'll go to that little bookstore you love so much and we will buy a new one, ok? And when we come home, I will read it to you from the beginning all the way to the end. Will you let Doctor Alex look at you now?"
Amelia smiled at Alex providing him with encouragement to examine the little patient as she felt Christopher slowly nodding against her chest.
"So is everything okay with him?" she asked her colleague after the examination.
"Well, physically yeah."
"What do you mean physically?"
"Shepherd...Amelia," Alex started reluctantly.
"Oh," Amelia let out a breath as she realized what he was getting at. "Karev, I've grown up with four siblings who over the years have combined for twenty-five nephews and nieces amongst them, I have two other kids of my own and I happen to be a brain doctor. So contrary to the popular opinion that my husband and my sister-in-law happen to share I'm neither blind nor dumb. I know that Christopher's a bit...," she broke off trying to find the right word.
As she finall settled on "special", Alex blurted out: "Different."
Amelia considered the board, finally somewhat satisfied with the schedule. Well technically she was annoyed as Edwards' name had overtaken much of the places where hers should have been, but it wasn't to be helped she supposed. If she had to choose between delegating some of her surgeries to her once star pupil and spending the rest of her pregnancy on bed rest, she would choose the sooner rather than the latter. Her thoughts were interrupted as she heard tiny feet thumping against the floor and when she turned around she was surprised to see her four year old son running towards her, crocodile tears streaming down his face, his confused father trailing behind him. Christopher didn't stop until he was holding tightly onto his mother's legs, his face buried in one of her trousers, hyperventilating trying to catch his next breath but failing. Amelia pried his hands away from her legs as she scooped him up and hugged him tightly to her chest.
"What happened?" she mouthed into Owen's direction.
"I'm not sure," he shook his head. "I just wanted to take him to that football party at Hunter's."
"Owen," Amelia growled dangerously, but stopped herself. She and her husband could argue later, she needed to sort Christopher out first.
As she walked into CT, Edwards was just discussing the plan for a surgery with one of her residents.
"Leave," Amelia told the resident.
"Doctor Shepherd," Edwards tried to protest. "We need to finish this. And he shouldn't even be here."
"Shut up, Edwards!" Amelia said, her tone a bit sharper than she originally intended.
When the younger doctor noticed the young boys' distress, she relented and instead of protesting the matter further followed her student out of the room.
Amelia felt her son relax slightly in her arms, but his chest was still rising and falling too fast for comfort. It was in that moment that she noticed a pair of scans, which Edwards had probably used for teaching purposes, lying on the table. She adjusted her hold of her son and grabbed the pictures.
"See this?"
Christopher slowly looked at the picture, his breath evening out as he took comfort in the familiar image of a brain.
"This man had a huge brain tumor that was making him deaf," she pointed to the first picture. "But me and Doctor Steph operated last month and now he no longer has a tumor and he can hear."
"Mommy fixed his brain?" her son asked softly.
"That's right, buddy."
Christopher turned his head so that his pair of icy blue eyes would meet hers as his small lips uttered the question that shattered her heart into pieces: "Mommy, can you fix my brain?"
Immediately afterwards she had picked up the girls from the after school programme and she had managed to pack some of the life's necessities into a suitcase before Owen managed to arrive home from the hospital.
"Addie, Char, we're leaving. Get your stuff and bring Chris with you," she yelled to her daughters just as her husband opened the door.
"Amelia, what are you doing?" he asked.
"What does it look like I'm doing? We're leaving."
"You can't just take the kids and leave, Amelia," he argued.
"I'm not fighting wit you today," she said resolutely, crossing her arms on her chest.
"Then we won't. Let's just talk about this."
"I don't want to talk about it with you, Owen. Not right now."
"So you're just going to leave?"
"Just for a bit. To catch some breath and to give you space to think about what you have done today."
"But...," he tried to protest.
"No buts. I am a drug addict, Owen. And an alcoholic. Every single day is a fight for me. I'm completely beat and worn out right now because my body is very busy growing a tiny human inside me, I'm running a department and trying to be a good mother to our children. The point is that it's exhausting, I'm almost at my limits. It's hard enough most days, but today...today was especially hard, because today my four year old asked me whether I could fix his brain. Because of you. Because he's not the perfect little boy you wish him to be and he can feel your disappointment over that. He can feel it, Owen. And it's tearing him apart because he really wants to try to be what you want him to be but he just can't. All this time you thought that I was in denial when it came to Chris. The truth is that the one in denial is you. Just think about that while we're gone, Owen."
Meredith was surprised to say the least when she opened the door and found her sister-in-law and her three kids on the other side.
"Amelia," she breathed out. "What happened?"
"Nothing," the other woman would not give a straight answer. "It's just...can we stay here for a bit?"
Recognizing how unusual it was for Derek's sister not to want to talk everything to death, Meredith realized that she definitely needed to open her doors for Amelia.
"Of course. You can stay in your old room."
Amelia nodded her head in thanks.
Later that evening, Addie was playing with Ellis while Bailey was helping Christopher read his encyclopedia, Amelia curled up under a blanket on the sofa with a warm tea in her hands watching the children play. Her other daughter Charlotte climbed up to her and joined her.
"Mommy, can I ask you something?"
"Of course, darling," Amelia said, secretly hoping that her oldest would not come up with a question that would twist the knife she felt like someone had plunged into her heart these past few months even deeper.
"What's wrong with Christopher?"
And there it was.
"Nothing's wrong with your brother, Charlie. It's just that his brain works a bit different than yours or Addie's or Bailey's."
Her daughter's brow furrowed in confusion. "What does that mean?"
"Well, do you remember last year when you were so scared on your first day of school? And when Bailey held your hand as you walked inside so that you wouldn't be?"
The girl nodded enthusiastically.
"Yes. He said that he did it because that's what his daddy would have done."
"That's right. But do you remember how terrified you were?"
"Yes, it was sooo scary."
"Ok, and now imagine that Christopher feels a bit like that every day, anytime when he goes out of the house."
The little girls' eyes widened in shock as she whispered: "Every day?"
"Yes," her mother affirmed.
Charlotte bit on her bottom lip, a clear sign that she was deep in thought before she decided: "Well then I will hold his hand anytime he needs me to."
"I know you will, baby," Amelia smiled as she placed a kiss on her daughters' curls, which carried the typical Shepherd texture but were ginger just as her twin sisters and her fathers.
Back at the Shepherd-Hunt house Owen had just opened the third can of beer. After his wife had left with their children, he made a quick trip to the store buying a six pack. Not long after they had moved in together, they had decided not to have alcohol at their house as long as they weren't expecting guests. It wasn't even that he didn't trust Amelia, after all he had seen her walk the halls of the hospital surrounded by pills each day without succumbing to the calling, he was more worried about himself and that he would screw everything up. That memory of the night when he got drunk at the trailer because of Riggs still lingered, that moment could have meant that he would have lost Amelia and his future family. Tasting the beer on his tongue now felt so good, only now did he realize that he hadn't had a drink in months. But dealing with Christopher had always been a challenge for him. When he was born Owen had thought that he would be even more of a natural at being a good father to his son than he was to his daughters if the experience with Bailey was anything to go by. Alas in the end he was completely at a loss when it came to understanding his youngest and albeit he would hardly admit it, jealousy was eating at him when he saw how easily it came to Amelia to say or do the exact right thing when it came to their son. All he wanted for Christopher was to be healthy and have friends and do things other kids his age did, but any time he tried it seemed like he made things even worse. At the same time he couldn't help but feel like Amelia was sheltering Christopher from the real world. And once the time came when she could no longer hold his hand, it would all backfire.
Owen finished the third can and put it down onto the table next to the first two. He groaned as he realized what he was doing. Although he had not done this for years, once again he was running away from his troubles and trying to find the solution for his problems at the bottom of a bottle or well a can. If he kept going like this, he might find himself at an AA meeting at the side of his wife one day. He threw the rest of the cans away and took out his cell before settling on a name.
"Hi, it's Owen, Listen, Kepner, I need a ride."
Meredith contemplated for a bit whether she should let Owen inside the house, but having found an opened cabinet door in her kitchen just minutes earlier, she had decided that the sooner her sister-in-law and her ensemble of kids left her house the better.
"She's in the living room," she told him.
Owen thanked her as he made way to his wife who was still curled on the sofa talking to Maggie.
"Hi," he announced his presence.
"Hey," Amelia answered, not meeting his eyes.
"Could we...uh...talk?" he tried before adding: "Please?"
"Ok," the neurosurgeon finally agreed. "But not here. Can you?" she turned to Maggie motioning towards the children.
"Of course," her sister answered.
She and Owen silently made their way up the stairs to Amelia's old room.
"You were drinking," she observed.
"Just a bit. I'm not drunk," he said decisively.
"Did you drive?"
"No, Kepner gave me a ride."
"Oh."
"I'm sorry. It's just...I don't know how to deal with all this."
A hollow laugh escaped Amelia's lips: "Ha, well, welcome to Christopher's world."
"What?"
"He doesn't know how to deal either. With the world, with people, with you. But especially you. Every single day he wakes up to a world which he doesn't understand and which in turn doesn't understand him. It's a constant struggle. Just think about that, Owen."
"I'm sorry. I didn't realize. It just all comes so natural to you when it comes to him, I'm at a loss here, Amelia."
"Did it ever occur to that stupid old brain of yours that the reason why it all comes so natural to me is because I know what it feels like? I know what it's like to be the odd one out, I know what it's like to have to struggle through every damn day in a world where you feel out of place. And I'm scared, so scared. I'm terrified for him, Owen with every little breath he takes. Cause I know what feeling like that can do to a person. I know you think that I'm sheltering him from the world. But I'm not. Truth is I can't shield him away from the world and he's hurting all the damn time, so excuse me if I'm trying to give him something he can understand and hold on to. He doesn't understand pain or love or hate or the worlds, but he comprehends brains, brains make complete sense to him."
"I...I didn't realize...I really messed all this up, I'm sorry."
"Owen, our baby is four years old and he's already hurting sooo much and I'm his mother and I can't take his pain away. And it's killing me. I haven't felt like such a failure as a mother in years...not since..." she confessed as a sob escaped her.
"Mia, you are a wonderful mother and you take his pain away every day." he told her as he hugged her to his chest. He let her cry until she had no more tears left and then he asked: "What can I do to..." he stopped himself before saying 'to fix' and then corrected himself: "to make this better?"
"Just show him that you're trying," she murmured.
As they came down the stairs later, Owen and Amelia sat down together on the floor next to Christopher and Bailey.
"Hi buddy," Owen greeted his son who gave no impression of noticing his father. "That's an interesting new book you've got there. Could I please have a look?"
Christopher looked at his mother first in surprise and only as she gave him an encouraging smile did he nod his approval at his father.
Owen took the book into his hands and flicked through the first few pages until he stopped on one with a very detailed picture of the human brain.
"Whoa, that's a rather cool picture. How about tonight I read you this bit before you go to sleep?" he asked pointing to the text under the picture.
"Really?" Christopher asked shyly, astonishment clear on his face.
"Really," Owen reaffirmed.
Christopher nodded furiously as his tiny face lit up with the brightest smile Amelia had ever seen on his face.
For moments like these the everyday struggle was worth it.
*Definition of brain from medicinnet
**An excerpt from the article 'Youthful Brains in Older Adults: Preserved Neuroanatomy in the Default Mode and Salience Networks Contributes to Youthful Memory in Superaging' from the Journal of Neuroscience (the article is a free access article on their website)