Okay so after last nights episode I couldn't help but to write this. I'm not sure how long its going to be yet, but the idea of this story won't leave my head after watching Jesse and Sarah's performance in 14:23 Cold as Ice. The whole episode was breath taking and was beyond fantastic acting from both of them!
The scene with Jackson praying over April... oh my gosh...my heart cannot handle it! Before you go into reading this story no matter if it is a 2 chapter story or if the words continue to flow and it becomes a multi chapter fic please be aware that I am a Christian and I am very proud of that. So my faith will absolutely be shown through the characters that I am borrowing from Shonda Rimes.
So if my faith offends you please feel free to pass this story up and move on to the next Japril fic. If you are okay with this please feel free to give any advice, love, or comment that you would like to leave through the review button.
With that being said I do not own any Greys Anatomy characters or story lines. That is all Shonda Rimes, because if I did there would be no way I could give up Sarah Drew!.
Please read and enjoy!
"You prayed for me.." April smiled at him while reaching out to touch his face.
He had prayed. It was something he hadn't done since.. well since Samuel. Since he prayed to April's God not to take their son from them for her sake. He knew at the time that Samuel dying would change April in a way that would alter who she was has a person. He had no idea just how right he would be, over the past few years he had seen a completely new April. An April that could only be the result that a tragedy could have caused. Not just a bad day, but a life altering tragedy something like the death of their son. A tragedy which had also resulted in the death of their marriage.
He had so much to say to her. So much to ask her, but they were surrounded by their friends. No not their friends, but their family and it wasn't the time for the words that he needed to say to her. So he would wait. He would go get Harriet and take her home and give April time with the other people in her life. He would give her time to rest after the traumatizing day that she had had and he would come back tomorrow morning with their daughter and have the conversation that he was aching to have.
"and it worked" He smiled at her with a shy smile as she finished her sentence.
"It did. You are here with us now just like you are meant to be. However, you need your rest so I am going to go get Harriet and take her home for the night. I'll come back first thing in the morning with her so you can see her. Spend some time with everyone else tonight and you can have all the time you want with her tomorrow. I'll reschedule my surgeries so I can spend the day with you and her."
After waiting for her nod of approval Jackson kissed the top of her forehead softly and left the room to go get their daughter.
Harriet was always an easy baby, but tonight she had been especially good. Maybe she could sense Jackson's emotional distress but she had gone straight to sleep without any kind of fight and he was extremely grateful for that. The few hours that he had spent waiting for April to wake up after watching Maggie go above and beyond to save her had been excruciating. He was exhausted, but he wasn't ready to go to sleep just yet. There was one thing he wanted to do before he went to lay down and end this horrible day.
After watching Harriet sleep in her crib for a few moments he felt calmer than he had since seeing April open her eyes and smile at him. He needed to hold on to that because he knew what he was about to do next would make him feel anything but calm. For most people it wouldn't have been a problem but for him it was beyond nerve wrecking.
He walked from Harriet's nursery to the living room and went to the book shelf that April had set up while she had shared his penthouse apartment with him. He had never been an avid reader but she insisted that every home need to have a book shelf with the essential books on it. She said that it promoted a healthy balance between watching mindless television and stimulating your brain with books such as Why You Do the Things You Do by Gary Sibcy and Tim Clinton, The Harry Potter series by J. K Rowling, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and of course several translations of The Bible. There were many other books on the shelf but these were the ones that April had said were essential to every persons book shelf.
He had read several of the books that she had recommended because he knew it was important for her that they both teach Harriet to love to read. Even after she had moved out of the apartment when they had come back from Montana he had still found himself going to the shelf from time to time to look for a new book that would hold his attention in the silence that lingered in the space on nights that she had Harriet and he was alone. Most of the time it was a book with action or a book that explained some time in history that captured his attention, but tonight it was the book that he had never thought to pick up that was drawing him in.
The Bible. He had no clue which translation to pick up in order to get the answers he desperately needed tonight. Would it be the Kings James Version? The NIV? The NASB? Or The Message version, which was Aprils favorite version to talk to him about. She said that it was the easiest version for nonbelievers to understand. She said that it set up the stories and words in an easy to understand way that everyone could relate to.
Yes, that would be the version he would go to tonight. He grabbed it and moved to sit on the couch and opened the book.
He had no idea where to even begin. He didn't even know what he was looking for but something about what had happened today was making him feel the overwhelming need to get some kind of explanation for the day he had had. He had questions and he needed the answers. Answers that he felt he could only problem get in the pages of the book that April cherished so much.
April was right tonight when she had said he had prayed for her and it had worked. But how had it worked? He was a doctor. A scientist. This meant that everything that happened had an explanation. There were test and numbers that could back up anything that happened in the walls of the hospital that involved a patient. But today there was no explanation.
There was no way that April should have woken up and been completely healthy besides her exhaustion and the cosmetic cuts and bruises. She should have had significant brain damage! Her brain had been deprived of oxygen for more time than anyone even knew! Hell they had done compressions on her for over 3 hours, this should have at least resulted in a few broken ribs or bruised muscles. But she didn't have any of these symptoms. None of this made any sense to him.
When he thought about everything though his brain when straight to what April would tell him when he asked her. God had healed her in a way that medicine and science could not explain. God had protected her and brought her back to give her a second chance at life.
This is why he was sitting in the middle of his living room with a bible open in front of him staring at the pages like it might set him on fire. He was afraid of what the words on the pages would tell him. He knew that by the Christian standard of living he wasn't doing to well. According to the rules that went with Christianity he was a sinner, and a big one at that. He liked to do what pleased him, of course he thought of other people to. The people that he cared about and that mattered to him, but in the end his decisions were based off of what made him happy and what was best for his daughter only. He was selfish, plain and simple. Which he knew from hearing April talk was a sin. He liked sex and didn't agree that it was only meant for marriage, hell after what had happened with him and April he wasn't even sure that marriage was in the cards for him again. But that didn't mean that he was going to go without sex. So yes, according to the book in front of him he was a bad person, or that's what he assumed.
He flipped through the pages of the bible in front of him without reading anything, just looking over the pages. He noticed that April had highlighted several different passages among the pages. Some had notes scribbled out beside the highlighted words. Some were highlighted in pink, others in blue, and others in several different colors ranging from green to purple. He knew April well enough to know that he would find the answer to the different colors on the first page of the book. He remembered from when they were studying for their boards that she always made a key for herself on the first page of any textbook and figured her bible would be the same.
As he flipped to the beginning of the book he found that he was right. He saw her key written in her messy handwriting just on the inside of the book. It wrote:
Love (highlighted in pink)
Redemption (highlighted in blue)
New believers (highlighted in purple)
Forgiveness for sin (highlighted in green)
Miracles (highlighted in orange)
Commitment (highlighted in yellow)
By the key she had made he new that the answers he was looking for would be highlighted in orange. He needed to know what 'God' said about miracles in the book that His believers clung so tightly to. He needed to see if he would find answers in the book that April loved so much.
Hopefully he would and then he would talk to April tomorrow about what he had found for further explanation.
