"Do you really want this?"
Silence answered my question. There was a haunting emptiness inside of Jackson's eyes as he stared back at me from across the table in the lawyer's room. I could feel the gaze of both of our attorneys on me as well, waiting for me to pick up the pen and give in. He had said it was the simplest divorce he had never seen. The prenup had cleared up financial questions and there were no living children in the picture to complicate matters in that way. Yet nothing about this felt simple. Especially when he didn't know.
But I knew that I couldn't change him. Not right now. He wouldn't go through with it if he knew, and his signature needed to be on those papers in the same way that mine did. I had to give him what he wanted. It would save both of us down the road, I hoped.
"Okay."
The pen scribbled my signature across the page, once then twice. It dropped loudly against the table with a clatter and I let out the breath that I was holding onto, blinking back my tears quickly so I don't have to cry in front of him. I look at each of our lawyer's expectantly. That's it. We're divorced. We're over.
I am too.
Arizona is the first person that I fell. The night of the divorce, she comes over with enough alcohol to keep me drunk for a month. I indulge more than I should have. The words come out. She's the one who cries over it. I don't know if the alcohol managed to keep me from reacting like that or if I'm just not ready to entirely face the fact that I'm dying. Both seemed likely. I'm only thirty-four. There was so much in my life still left to do. So many goals that I wanted to accomplish, places that I wanted to see. All of those things that I had always assumed I would have time to do one day. Now if I did them, I would be doing it all alone.
It took begging and pleading the next morning to ask her not to tell anyone. No one else knew yet, except for my primary physician and the dermatologist that she had sent me to. It had started as a simple mole. I'd pushed off taking care of it. That decision had come back to hurt.
Somehow, it was painfully fitting that the results for the biopsy that she had taken would come back the morning before the two of us had to sit down with the lawyers and the divorce papers. It was perhaps the only thing that could make me willing to go with it. I didn't want him to want me because I was dying, to stay with me out of some kind of obligation. I wanted him to want me for me. It was clear that was no longer the case between us.
Another appointment is made to deal with the results of the biopsy, but this time, it's with an oncologist. Sitting in a patient gown stripped me of everything that I felt I was. It hurt to sit there and allow her to examine me, to feel up my lymph nodes. I have to go in for more scans. Melanoma may not have been the most common type of skin cancer, but it was the most dangerous. I was sure there were circumstances in my childhood where I should have worn sunscreen, and I didn't. I had plenty of sunburns as a kid. Most of the time I had worn sunscreen with the reminders from my mother, but not every time. I hadn't been perfectly vigilant in the way that I should have been. Now, that was painfully clear.
Sitting in the noisy machines and trying to stay still is difficult. Most people were scared of cancer because they don't know all the details and the mechanisms behind it, not until they have to. Knowing it only made it more terrifying.
But I have to put on a brave face and go to work while I still can. Everything was going to change soon. So much of that change I wasn't ready to face. I had to cling onto all of it just a little bit longer while I still had the chance.
"You haven't told him yet?" Arizona whispered harshly to me.
"No," I answered with a shake of my head. "This is hard enough, Arizona. I will when I'm ready."
That was the most that it had been discussed inside the hallways of the hospital, and that was the most that I wanted it to be. There was a reason that I went to a doctor and an oncologist outside of the hospital. I knew how quick gossip could spread. It seemed like HIPPA was more often than not completely thrown out the window when it came to what was going on with the staff.
Of course, I knew that I couldn't avoid telling him forever.
But I needed to tell him on my own terms. Somewhere private. I had thought that maybe heading across the street to Joe's after work might be good, private enough but at the same time not terribly intimate, but something about it still didn't settle right. I was waiting around for the perfect moment but it seemed like there wasn't one. How could there be? There was nothing perfect about any of this. I had helped people through this conversation before and yet now that I was the one who needed to have it, I was lost.
Two weeks had passed since I found out. Two weeks had passed since the divorce. Our last phone bill together had come and gone. He had moved out of what had been our apartment. I'd been sleeping on the couch. The bed was too big without him.
The couch had started. My first symptom had really gone unnoticed, for the most part. A smaller appetite. Given all of the stress of the fighting and arguing in the weeks before the divorce, it hadn't seemed like a big deal. I'd lost a little bit of weight. Fatigue was normal for most doctors and surgeons until, well, it wasn't. Melanoma was one of those cancers that often ran undetected until it had spread. That was true in my case. The scans made it clear that it had infected both my lymph nodes and my lungs. It couldn't be cured. My life could only be prolonged, and it wouldn't necessarily be pleasant.
Cancer patients had come into the E.R. before from side effects of the treatment that they were receiving to try and save or extend their life, whether it was chemotherapy, radiation, or something else. It was a brutal beast to fight against. Hair loss was only the beginning and didn't begin to account for everything else that a patient had to go through to fight it.
Immunotherapy would be my torture of choice. It seemed like the best bet because it was metastatic. It could stop it from spreading. Surgery wouldn't work. I'd already signed myself up for a clinical trial.
Which was why I needed to tell him now. All of it had been finalized and I knew that he needed to know before everyone else did. Once I started receiving treatment, the side effects would be hard. I'd have to stop working. Webber was next on my list to tell to hand in my resignation, then Hunt. From there, the word could travel as it would naturally. I wouldn't be able to control it. I would just have to let it happen. But this, telling Jackson, that I could take control of.
Or so I thought.
"Jackson, can we–" I started as I walked in, stunned to see Arizona with him.
"Why is she telling me this?"
Oh.
"Why is she telling me this?" Jackson repeated harshly.
Betrayal sunk harshly in the pit of my stomach. The one thing I had asked her to do, she had thrown out the window completely. Arizona stared at me with an apologetic look and all I could do is shake my head, trying to figure out the words to say. The one thing that I had wanted to be able to control, that I had spent literal weeks trying to figure out to do, and it was gone.
"I should go…" Arizona muttered after a few tense seconds of silent, walking out of the lab. I stood there for a moment, trying to gather myself. All of my plans were gone.
"When were you going to tell me this?" Jackson asked, snapping me back out of it.
"Now. Right now I was coming up to tell you–"
"And I'm supposed to believe that?"
"Yes! I can't believe that Arizona would say–"
"When did you know?" This time, the anger was impossible to ignore. My phone buzzed in my pocket and I tried to ignore it, reaching into my pocket to turn it off. "When did you know? Did you know before the divorce?" His questions continued.
I fumbled with my phone a moment, hands shaking. "I–"
"April." It felt like a slap in the face.
"Yes." I looked up at him. "I knew before."
"Why?" My phone continued to beep with messages as he questioned me. "Why would you do that?"
"I–I have to go.." I breathed out with a shake of my head.
"No, you don't." He disagreed.
"I am being paged to the E.R." I looked up at him, tightening my jaw and trying to find the strength that I had wanted to approach this conversation with. Surely if I could have nothing else, I could still have that.
"Go give it to Grey or Hunt!" He yelled, hand moving out to emphasize his point. "Or literally anybody else but you're not going to walk away from this right now." Yet the more that he told me to give it to anyone else, the less that I wanted to.
I took a deep breath. "I want to talk about this, Jackson. I know we need to talk about it." God knew that I had planned it out in my head over and over again. "But right now is not a good time."
"Don't you walk away." There was nearly something threatening in his voice.
"I cannot talk about this right now!" I yelled back at him, quickly grabbing the door to get the hell out there and down to the emergency room.
This could be one of my last cases. The weight of that isn't something that I can forget as I quickly run downstairs to get changed back into a pair of scrubs and get to the emergency room to set up for the patient that was coming in. I checked my watch quickly, making sure there was still time as I moved to the trauma room to help give instructions for getting it set up. Blake was assisting. She would do fine but I knew that Hunt and Riggs were both on their way, too. It was a big case.
Turning around to go grab more supplies, I nearly come face first into Arizona as she walked into the room. She had the same sad expression that she had worn on her face earlier when she'd been caught in the middle of spilling out everything to Jackson.
"April, I am so sorry. I just thought that I–"
"I really don't give a crap what you thought." I interrupted, walking past her. I could hear her words as she followed me and I kept walking without looking back behind my shoulder, getting on a trauma gown and grabbing a pair of gloves. She kept talking and I kept ignoring her. I couldn't do this. I didn't want her spilling it out to anyone else, either.
Riggs is a welcomed distraction. The patient was just about to be here and I needed out of this conversation, away from her and anyone else who could try to tear me down. I wanted to deal with this myself, how I wanted to.
But there's not the same silence that I wanted in the elevator. Riggs had overheard enough of Arizona rambling in apology to ask questions. I knew they were coming. I knew him. I trusted him – probably more than I could trust Arizona, at this point. He had been with me through Hell and back overseas. Sometimes it seemed like he was the only person who was still looking out for me without some kind of sick bias in him.
"What was that all about?" He asked.
"I'm dying," I stated it bluntly. "I have stage four melanoma and I'm dying. And before I had the chance to tell Jackson about it, Arizona decided that she was going to be the one to tell him."
"You didn't tell him?" Riggs questioned for my confirmation. I sighed, folding my arms. "C'mon, Keps, what were you thinking?"
"Shut up."
"Of course he had a right to know!"
"Shut up!" I repeated.
"I'm just saying – hey, I'm just saying, he's justified. I'd be pissed too. I'd be really pissed." He explained.
The elevator doors open and I let out a sigh, shaking my head to myself. The sound of the helicopter blades spinning was loud and it was a welcomed distraction. It was a bad case – a huge fall, she was lucky to be alive.
By the time that we were in the operating room, it was enough to distract me. Hunt came in to assist, and the constant back and forth between him and Riggs was enough to keep my mind off me. They fought like cats and dogs no matter what was going on. Most of the time, it was infuriating. It drove me crazy having to listen to them go at it like a bunch of kids, but at least now, having to hear it kept me from being stuck inside of my head. I let them bite back and forth at each other without interrupting like I normally would. As long as it wasn't affecting the patient, that was what mattered. They were still good surgeons together, even if they acted like kids.
When the nurse called with Dr. Avery wondering how much l longer I was going to be in the O.R., it doesn't take long to realize from my snappy answer that their attention was off of fighting with each other and back on me again. The last thing I wanted. I could feel Hunt's concerned gaze practically burning a hole inside of me.
"Everything alright?" Owen asked.
"I–" God, I knew that he was hard to lie to. "Everything's fine." I give it a try regardless, turning slightly to the nurse next to me with a distracting request. "Medium clips."
"April." His voice was more serious this time, not giving up.
"She said it's fine." Riggs interrupted.
Thank god for him.
Except then, well, the patient coded. It didn't take long to realize that she had become a lost cause. Her brain had been deprived of oxygen too long and it was clear that there was no way that she was getting off of that bed.
After instructions are given to Blake, the three of us all scrub out together. Hunt seemed to forget all about the little spat over the phone that had been had, and for that, I'm grateful. A patient like that – none of it was fair and it never would be, really. She was young and healthy yet she had been through something terrible. Even if her situation wasn't comparable to mine, it certainly seemed that way for just a moment.
Pushing past the doors out of the hallway of O.R. suites between the two of them, Riggs reached for my hand for just a minute. A small little handshake that we had done in Jordan. I return it with a sad smile before he left me be.
"Robbins?" Jackson was already there. Crap. "You told Robbins and you didn't tell me?"
"I don't– I don't have time for this right now." There were too many people. I was already too fragile from that case. I tried to step around him but he didn't give me the chance to go anywhere, grabbing onto my arm. His grip was tighter than I would have expected from him.
"You've taken more than enough time, don't you think?" I snatched my arm away from him as he spoke. "The time was before I signed the friggin' divorce papers." Of course, now he regretted it.
"Jackson, I'm not doing this! Not here, not now." I insisted.
"Oh, excuse me, is there a more convenient time to catch you lying to me?" He snapped.
"Jackson!" I yelled.
"You don't think cancer would have affected my decision to go through with a divorce?" Jackson's voice was loud. I could feel everyone's eyes on the two of us. Everyone knew. This was the last way that I had wanted it to play out. Hunt was still there, Bailey and Webber – all of them were having this bomb dropped on them in the middle of a hallway fight between me and Jackson. I could feel the tears burning in my eyes but I refused to let them fall. Not in front of him, or anyone else. I had to have control over myself.
"I knew it would!" Yet despite my urge for control, I still shout back at him. "But you didn't want to stay with me. You think I want you to stay because I'm dying and have you hating me for the short rest of my life?" I lashed right back at him.
"Well, you already got a pretty good start on that–"
"Wow, that didn't take any time at all."
I hadn't even realized that Webber was there until he was speaking, nearly standing just between Jackson and me.
"Alright, that's enough," Webber said.
"Nah, you know what? It's fine. Screw this. You want to play the martyr? Go for it. I'm out. I'm done." Jackson was looking at me with such hatred in my eyes. I had never seen that from him before. I thought when I told him, there would be tears – from the both of us, more than likely. But that wasn't happening. No, that much was clear.
"I said that's enough," Webber repeated himself.
I stood there like a statue as Jackson walked away from me. Only a few seconds passed before Webber was following him. I stiffened, trying to fight back the sob that wanted so desperately to escape. I knew that people were still watching me. I couldn't do this out here, not where everyone could see. I needed to be alone.
I made my way to an empty operating room, pacing the length from it and letting my tears fall. There was no stopping them now. I could try and keep them quiet, but it seemed like a waste of energy. Back and forth I went, hands swinging and trying to let it all out now before I could go back where anyone could see me. I just needed a moment of privacy. I leaned forward, gripping onto the bed for patients and hunched at the waist. My lungs heaved. Crying hurt now more than it ever had before.
The door opened and caught my attention immediately, glancing to see Owen coming in and quickly turning away. My hand came up to try and dry my tears as if it wasn't obvious exactly what I had been doing.
"Um, please I just–I just need a minute, okay?" I pleaded.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Owen asked.
"I, um," I turned back to face him. I could barely see him past the tears in my eyes. "I didn't want to tell anyone."
Fortunately, Owen doesn't say another word. It was still too hard to talk about. Instead, he stepped forward and enveloped me in a strong embrace, holding me against him. I let myself sob freely against his chest and he doesn't stay a word, squeezing me tight and rubbing my back, giving me the opportunity to just let it out without having to worry about conversation or explanations or anything else. It was exactly what I needed, perhaps the only thing that could offer been the slightest bit of peace after the screaming fit that Jackson and I had had in front of everyone else.
There was no point in trying to stick around the hospital any longer. I would come in again tomorrow, talk to Webber about it properly and get everything taken care of as an employee. But I knew if I tried to stick around and find another case to work on, then there would have to be more conversation about it. I needed to avoid that a little longer.
It was going to be another sleepless night. I already knew there. No amount of fatigue in the world could stop the thoughts that continued to turn over and over in my head. There was no relief from any of it. I wanted to lay down and sleep, to turn it off. Stretched across the couch with my pillow and a soft blanket, there's still nothing that could wind it down. I couldn't shake seeing the hate in Jackson's eyes.
A knock on the door pulled me momentarily out of my thoughts and I blinked in surprise. Whoever was there, I didn't want to see them. Arizona with her apologies or Jackson with anything. Yet I still get up, opening the door slowly.
Jackson.
I barely open the door, my frame fitting inside of the few inches that it does open. He doesn't look angry anymore. He doesn't look happy, either, but that would have been asking too much.
"Hey," he started. "I just wanted to apologize." I open the door a little wider. "I reacted badly today and… you're dying. You do not deserve to be arguing with me and having a rough time when you're already…" He doesn't finish his sentence. I can't blame him.
"That's what I was trying to avoid." I let go of the breath that I was holding onto.
"I get that." A pause. "I mean, I'm trying to get that. We can figure this out, alright?"
There's a pause. I know I should say something but I don't know what to say. I stop holding onto the door for a moment, debating whether or not I should invite him. I don't know if he wanted to stay, or if he was doing this out of obligation or something else. But I have to say something. Silence isn't doing me any me favors.
"Look, I just… I honestly… I waited to tell you because I didn't know how to tell you. And Samuel… he uh, he tore us apart. Neither of us could help each other and we both get hurt and I didn't want that. I wanted to wait until I knew how to tell you. Because I know that it's not going to be okay. It's not going to be easy." I began to explain. "I already signed up for a clinical trial. I hadn't told Arizona that or anyone that, for that matter. Immunotherapy. I'm sure that it's going to be hell but it's what I want to do."
Jackson blinked at me in surprise as I let forth more details about everything I was going to. I knew there were different ways to go about it – perhaps less painful ones. Definitely less painful ones. But just because I couldn't be cured, didn't mean that there was no hope for a cure one day. I had to have hope for someone else and their family, that they wouldn't have to go through the same thing. That there could still be a little bit of beauty from pain.
"I'm sure that there are other options with less severe side effects," Jackson started, his brow furrowed.
"Yes," I nodded. "But I'm going to die. I can't avoid that. But maybe someone else won't die because of this clinical trial. Maybe it'll push research one step forward. It's metastatic, Jackson. It's in my lungs and my lymph nodes already."
He stared at me for a long, silent moment. This time there wasn't hate in his eyes, though, just sadness and a little bit of confusion. I know some people said that they would kick cancer's ass, that they wouldn't go down without a fight, but this wasn't that. There was no chance of curing me. I would do what I could, and then I would go to be with God. That was all there was to it.
"I haven't told my family yet. But now everyone in the hospital nows since, well…"
"Yeah. I know. I'm sorry about that, April." Jackson apologized again. "I wasn't thinking."
"It's okay. You kind of saved me from a painful conversation with Webber, actually." I try to lighten the words, giving a slight shrug of my shoulders. "Would you like to come in, Jackson?"
"I would."
For the first time in a long time, the two of us sit on the couch and talk things out without fighting. I cry again. I can't stop it and I don't try to. Jackson held me as the tears release and I'm sure that some of his own spill from the weight of them falling into my hair. This wasn't going to be easy and it wasn't going to get easier. But maybe a little acceptance of the situation could delude the both of us into thinking that it wasn't quite so awful.
We sleep in the same bed together for the first time since the divorce that night, but I'm sure it won't be the last time. It's not sexy or romantic, but it's intimate. He held onto me tightly, tighter than he ever had before, and I know exactly why. He's worried it might be the last. But I'm still not.
"I'm going to be by your side for this, April, I promise," Jackson whispered to me. We had laid down a few minutes ago and I had still. I'm almost positive that he thought I was asleep.
"I know." It's all that I had to say.