From a prompt I recieved on tumblr. This will be in four parts.

When the automatic glass doors pulled apart and dispersed harsh wintry air inside the hospital, she trudged through them and finally took a deep, steadying breath. She stood in the doorway with her hands buried wrist-deep in the pockets of her windbreaker, her head held up and her eyes roaming. Water droplets from the most recent torrential downpour of rain clung to the nylon fabric of her jacket. Eventually, they rolled off and collected on the rug beneath her feet, which was soaked from the traffic of hundreds of people tracking in and out through the doors she just came through.

She was in the way, preventing the influx of people from walking a smooth path, but she didn't realize. Most of the people that she blocked shook their heads, sucked their teeth and just went around her, mumbling profanities under their breath at the way she seemed to stand without purpose. But she did have purpose. This was not at all what she was expecting and for that reason, she needed a moment to stare and take it in.

She wasn't expecting the rain to be as heavy as it was. She had heard about the weather in Seattle on more than one occasion, so she did prepare by packing a waterproof jacket, but it was nothing like the image she had in her mind. She wasn't expecting clear skies and murky sidewalks, but she was expecting there to be a sense of depression around so much rain. She wasn't expecting to be absolutely enchanted by the weather. She wasn't expecting to love it. Seattle weather was something she had to see to believe and now that she had finally seen it, she didn't know how she would go back to where she was more accustomed.

The weather sure was a pleasant surprise as it wasn't quite what she was expecting, but more than anything, she wasn't expecting the hospital to look quite like this. It was...nice, which was a surprise to her. Countless times before, when she thought about the fact that he worked in a hospital, she had imagined what it would look like and never did once did an image match the one that stood before her. She thought maybe the walls would be made of cinderblock with cheap paint peeling here and there, maybe faulty wiring making the lights flicker and dirty tiled floors. That was what she thought Grey-Sloan Memorial Hospital would be. It was a hospital, after all. Every hospital she had been in looked that way.

"Excuse me," croaked an elderly man as he stepped around her while shoving a dark brown baseball cap on his head.

Ripped from her thoughts of astonishment, she quickly stepped aside and let the man pass her without anything more than a mumbled but polite, "I'm sorry."

Brought back to reality, she looked down to find that she was, in fact, standing on a rug and grinned when she saw the hospital's logo. This is really it, she thought to herself. When she left her house at 10:00 this morning, she wasn't sure about a lot of things. She wasn't sure if coming to Seattle was a good idea, she wasn't sure if showing up unexpected was the right thing to do and she wasn't sure if a call before coming would've changed anything. She wasn't sure of a lot of things when she left this morning, but looking down at the logo was like a fresh breath, a burst of confidence.

She nodded her head out of her hood, took her hands out of her pockets and combed her fingers through the lengths of her damp, sandy brown hair just to ensure that it laid down properly before she took a few uncertain steps to the front reception desk. Nerves rocketed all through her body, but above every other emotion, she was riddled with anxiety. Realizing that she probably should have called first, she swallowed her pride and took yet another deep breath.

Approaching the desk with her head held high to feign confidence, she glossed over the busy looking woman dressed in light colored scrubs, typing away on a desktop computer. She didn't want to interrupt the woman and distract her from doing her job, but she was almost certain that if she needed to see someone, she was the person to ask. She cleared her throat and put her hands back into her pockets, a sign of apprehension.

"Excuse me," she started, voice laced with uncertainty. The nurse behind the computer immediately stopped typing and looked up, annoyance written clear in her expression. "Can you tell me where I would find a doctor?" The woman raised her eyebrows, which made her burst into a fit of nervous laughter. "Dr. Karev," she clarified, still smiling. "Alex Karev."

"Do you have an appointment?"

"No, ma'am."

"Do you need to make one?"

"No, but-," she sighed. "Can't you just like...tell him to come here? Or something like that?"

"I can't page a surgeon unless it's an absolute emergency or unless you work here, which neither seem to be the case for you. You can take a seat in the waiting area over there and wait for him to come down if you'd like, but I can't page him if there's nothing to page him about."

"So he does work here?" she asked. For some reason, just hearing her confirm that he was indeed a doctor at this hospital made it all the more real to her. She couldn't believe that after over ten years, she was actually in the same building as he was. The feeling truly was bittersweet. "Are you sure you can't just tell him to come here? It'll be quick, I promise. I know him."

"I'm sorry, but I can't…"

"I understand you're recommending amputation, but what I'm saying is that he's only fifteen years old and you and I both know that kids are more resilient," Jo urged, struggling to keep up with the pace that Callie walked at. "He's got a chance, doesn't he? We could do a few rounds of chemo and radiation to shrink the tumors and then we can go in and remove them if they don't metastasize anymore. It's less invasive and he might actually get to keep his leg."

Irritated, Callie stopped walking dead in her tracks and glared at Jo with her pager still clenched firmly in her hand. Jo had been bucking her on the course of treatment for one of her osteosarcoma patients all day and she was getting sick of it. She was prepared to tell Jo that she was amputating the leg and that was the end of it, but the way she looked at her threw her for a bit of a loop. She was hopeful, she could see that in her eyes. And she couldn't deny that it was a valid treatment plan. She bit her lip and tried to find any sign of faltering in Jo's eyes, but she couldn't. She was persistent and it was, perhaps, one of the things she liked the most about her.

"...Get me an Oncology consult," she said through clenched teeth. A satisfied smile broke across Jo's face, which made Callie harden again. "I'm serious, Wilson. Go get me an Oncology consult and if I'm not convinced after this consult that chemo and radiation will shrink the tumors to the point where he will be completely cured then the leg is coming off. Got that?"

"Yes," Jo nodded, still smiling. "Absolutely. I'll get you that consult, Dr. Torres...You won't be disappointed."

Leaving Callie alone to think on her own about the new treatment plan, Jo turned completely around and enthusiastically walked down the hallway to get the consult from the oncologist. She didn't like to go against Dr. Torres' treatment plans, but this time she really felt that she was right. Back when she was still just a fellow and learning, she used to think that Callie was the god of all doctors. She jumped at any and every opportunity to learn from her and secretly, she hoped to become as good a surgeon as she was. But one of the things she disliked about her mentor was that she was always too eager to cut. As a doctor, Jo always tried to step back and find other alternatives before jumping to surgery, and that was something that she wasn't taught.

She wrapped her hand around the pager that hung from her neck to keep it from flinging too wildly and lightly jogged down the staircase to get to the main nurses' station.

"I know you have protocol and I'm sure it's for a very good reason, but you can just tell him to come down here for five minutes!"

"Dr. Karev is a busy man and I'm not sure he has five minutes to spare! Now I'll leave him a message if you tell me your name and-"

"I already told you, if he knew it was me, he wouldn't-"

"And I already told you that I'm sorry but I cannot page a doctor when there is no emergency!"

"I know him though! How do you think I knew to come here? What do you think, I'm asking to see a Dr. Karev for my health?!"

Still standing beside the landing of the staircase, Jo watched the entire exchange in utter confusion. She examined the girl from a distance in an attempt to see if she recognized who she might be, but she was stuck. She eyed the slender legs that were stuffed inside a tight pair of jeans, the thick golden hair that rested in the middle of her back. Her stomach began to ache. She knew who she was. Deep in her gut, she knew exactly who this woman was. It made entirely too much sense for her to be wrong. She couldn't see her face, but she didn't need to.

What was she doing here? What did she want with Alex? She knew that technically, it wasn't any of her business if someone was there to see Alex, but she couldn't help but feel nauseous anyway. She thought for sure that Alex put her behind him for good. Hell, she actually believed him every time he gave her the "Izzie was my past, you're my future" speech. But here she was, standing in the hospital to see him… What did she want?

Feeling tears prick at the corners of her eyes and a tiny bit of white-hot rage bubbling in the pit of her stomach, Jo fingered the necklace around her neck and sighed. Alex had given it to her for Christmas. It was their "engagement necklace." He didn't want to re-propose with a ring since they already had rings from their first shot at marriage, so he bought a necklace with the help of Lyla. She smiled to herself at the thought of the necklace and what it signified. He wouldn't just throw that away. He would've never asked her to remarry him if he wasn't serious. She knew Alex.

So, feeling as confident as she possibly could, she tucked the necklace under the collar of her shirt and sauntered over to the nurses' station. She didn't know what she was going to say or what she was going to do, but she figured that she could be professional. She wasn't going to throw down and have a fist fight with Alex's ex-wife, but she was going to let her know that anything she had to say to him, she could say to her. She thought that was fair. Firm, but understanding. She could do it.

"I'm telling you, I know him! I know him personally!" the blonde pleaded.

Jo swallowed a lump in the back of her throat and licked her lips as she inched closer and closer to her. Her voice wasn't at all what she was expecting it to be. When she first learned that Alex was married to a magazine model, she spent countless hours imagining what her voice might sound like and it was nothing like the sweet, nasally tone she was hearing.

"And I'm telling you that doesn't matter!" the nurse barked back at her. "You need to leave now or I'm calling se-"

"Pardon me," Jo interrupted the nurse, standing two or three paces behind the blonde. She didn't want to stand beside her. She didn't even want to look her in her eye. "Is...somebody looking for Alex?" she asked, sheepishly. "Are you looking for Alex?"

The blonde spun around and sighed in both exasperation and relief. Finally, she was going to get somebody to help her and not this bitchy receptionist who wasn't in the least bit hospitable. She quickly brushed off her bad mood and took a step towards the brunette that clearly knew who she was looking for.

"Yes," she nodded her head. "Do you know him? Can you page him, or whatever it is you guys do? Please?"

As soon as she came face to face with her, instinctively, Jo's hand flew up to her stomach. She felt empty. Like a canon had been shot clean through her stomach. She truly had to touch herself, to feel and make sure there wasn't a hole through the middle of her body. She was stunned, taken aback by her face. She even licked at her lip to see if she tasted blood, because the felt like she had been slapped by the cold, hard hands of reality. Then, the nausea came. She felt sick and the only thing that calmed her was the ice cold bead of sweat that trickled down her back.

She felt as if she was in another universe. Like something had come and taken her away, like time travel was a thing and she had been transported several years into the future. She knew her face. Her face was eerily familiar...and not because she was the woman that had been married to her fiancé.

She had never seen her a day in her life. Not even in pictures. But she knew her face. Her face belonged to someone that Jo knew all too well. She knew the haunting turquoise eyes that stared back at her, as they were the same eyes that filled with tears when the bottle was late. She knew the lips that were so pink that it looked like she eternally wore lipstick, as they were the same lips that curled up into a smile when they tasted their first birthday cake. She knew the nose that was spread across her face, as it was the same nose that she had wiped snot from when it ran. Her hair, so light brown that it teetered on the brink of blonde...she could've sworn that she brushed that hair before. And the distinctively high cheekbones...she had kissed those cheeks before, she knew it. This face had been one she looked at every day for six years straight, but she never even met the woman that wore it.

She didn't know who she was, but she had a name. Only in brief passing, in side conversations had she been mentioned but she knew her name. There was no one else in the world that this could be.

She couldn't blink. She couldn't even think. She couldn't breathe. All she could do was stare. She wanted Alex, didn't want her. Probably didn't even know who she was. Maybe heard about her over the phone or through letters but definitely didn't know her face. Probably didn't even know her name, if she left it up to Alex.

"Amber?" she whispered her name, testing it out to see if it held weight. It didn't feel real.

The blonde wrinkled her eyebrows in confusion and took a step away from the friendly brunette that swooped in as her savior. How did she know her name? Matter of a fact, who was she? She tried to file through her mind for a name to put to the face that clearly knew who she was, but she couldn't. Had they met before? She didn't think so.

"Have we...met?" she wondered aloud.