Title: Redemption
Disclaimer: I don't own anything from Grey's Anatomy – no plot lines, no characters, nothing. Some of the lines from this fic are taken from episode 2 of season 2, entitled "Enough Is Enough", also known as "No More Tears" (screenplay written by James D. Parriott). I only own the flashbacks of this fic and some of the dialogue.
Rating: PG-13 (or T) for some violence
Pairing: No major pairing, but a little underlying Alex/Izzie
Summary: [ONE SHOT Set in episode 2 ("Enough Is Enough) of season 2 of Grey's, Alex forms a bond with a car crash victim whose abusive father, driven by his road rage caused the accident. Little did we know that details from Scott's past dredged up unwanted memories for Alex.
Dedication: This one-shot was written for lily268 for her birthday (I'm sorry it's so late!). I know Grey's isn't your number one show, but it's pretty much the only thing I can write semi-properly. ;)
"They've been fighting at breakfast," Scott explains, all emotion completely vacant from his voice. He's lying in a hospital bed with a neck brace, letting the doctors poke and prod him to see what's broken and what's intact. Alex listens out of respect for this boy, who couldn't have been older than seventeen, but at the same time fights not to relive the things he'd experienced at that very same age.
"Dad…it's ugly when it gets like that," he continues. "He ran three stop lights before we even got on the freeway."
---
"Dad…Dad!"
Alex's father barely kept his eyes on the road. He was too focused on being the biggest asshole in the entire universe, shouting so loudly and forcefully that spit was constantly hitting the windshield, and Alex's mother was cowering in the passenger seat, trying desperately to resist the blows that were inevitably coming her way, even though she knew.
Resistance was futile.
"Dad, come on, please!" Twelve-year-old Alex's voice rang throughout the car desperately as he tried to knock some reason into his father's head. "You can argue about this when we get home, just—"
"What the hell were you thinking?" A growl escaped Alex's father as he blew through one, two, three stop lights. Honks and infuriated voices pelted the car, but Alex's father took no notice as he continued to drive like a complete maniac, swerving every few seconds for no good reason and honking furiously at cars that were driving at a completely normal pace who were unfortunate enough to be in his raging path.
There was an earsplitting crash, and Alex felt himself being hurled across the seat to the opposite end of the car, his head pounding. He blinked once, twice, three times, and then everything went black.
---
"Some guy in a pickup cut us off," Scott carries on, and Alex finds himself trying not to become emotionally involved with what's happened to him—he's only a kid.
"And then my dad just lost it." His voice cracks a little as the full reality of his father's actions hits him. "He started chasing the guy, and we were just blasting through traffic, and I was yelling, Mom was screaming at him…he'd said all of these awful things. The next thing I know, we're upside down on the other side of the freeway." He blinks, as if trying to focus his vision.
"My dad?"
The question prompts Alex to try and forget the memory he's just lived through for the hundredth time.
"He's in surgery," Alex answers. "It's pretty serious." He tries to stop himself from saying, "It sounds like he got what he deserved", but he doesn't have to. Scott says it for him.
"Yeah, well. At least the son of a bitch got what he deserved."
Alex is almost surprised by this, and he begins to realize just how similar the two of them are.
---
Ding.
The elevator door slides open, and Alex wheels Scott in smoothly.
"I got it," he says to the accompanying doctor.
Scott is hitting the railing of his hospital bed in a quick rhythm. One short rap, two rapid ones.
One.
Two, three.
One.
Two, three.
Scott's face is so goddamn pale and serious that Alex feels like he's got to say something, anything, to make that kid crack a smile.
"This guy came in this morning with ten Judy Doll heads in his abdomen," he starts off conversationally. "Is that some kind of sick or what?"
There's no response, except for the pattern that Scott seems to be stuck on.
One.
Two, three.
"I mean, when you think about it," Alex kept going, kept trying. "Those things can't be that easy to swallow. They've still got their hair on them. That's some bad spaghetti. Dude's crapping toys."
Almost. The corners of Scott's mouth are twitching, but it's not enough.
He decides to take a different approach.
"You know…when you're little, you can hide." Scott keeps his eyes trained on the elevator lights that announce what floors they're passing. "You can ignore the shouting, the screaming, you can pretend like you're someplace else." Scott's eyes dart back and forth, never focusing for more than a few seconds on one thing, but Alex knows he's listening. "Then when you get older, bigger, you feel like you should be doing something. Something to stop it…you know, to protect her. When you can't, you don't know who to be angrier at. Your old man, or yourself. Usually, it's yourself. But there's nothing you can do, and there's nothing he can do that will ever redeem himself."
Scott blinks, and anyone else would have thought that he just didn't understand, but Alex knew that he understood far better than most people ever would.
"You feel like you should be the one who's being beaten. She doesn't deserve it, and hell, you don't either, but if you can just take a few blows for her, you'll feel less guilty." Alex shifts away from the hospital bed, aiming his gaze at the buttons on the elevator wall so that Scott won't see that Alex is almost crying. He heaves a great breath, pulls himself together. "But your mom's just so innocent. She never recognizes what's coming to her. Never figures out that time after time, it's the same damn thing over and over."
---
Piercing screams struck Alex's ears, ringing in his head, despite the fact that he'd holed himself up in his closet, locked the door, and covered his head with layers and layers of blankets, hoping to temporarily deafen himself. He was seventeen years old now, and it had been five long years since the accident on the road. The abusive qualities of Alex's father had only heightened, and he had become infinitely more intimidating now that he'd resorted to alcohol for his comfort zone.
The usual sounds of his mother being beaten were present—echoing slaps, furniture crashing, whimpers of pain, growls of fury. No matter how many times Alex heard the cruel, expletive-laced words of his father mixed in with the begging pleads of his mother, he never got used to the sound. Each time was like he'd received a hit to the stomach—it was just as painful, just as unbearable.
He'd tried to stop his father, to save his mother so many times, each ending as a pitiful, failed attempt. It was time for him to do something for god's sake! He couldn't pretend he was somewhere else for the rest of his life, couldn't pretend that he was still twelve years old, oblivious to what new word his father had come up with to describe his mother, couldn't ignore what new piece of furniture had been broken in their living room.
It was time to take action. He'd been waiting years for this moment, and it had finally come.
---
"Did she tell you?" Scott's voice pulls Alex forcefully out of his memory.
"She didn't have to," Alex scoffs, turning away. "It's all over her films." A sudden realization struck him. "He isn't beating you too, is he?"
"No. Just her." These words caus Alex to relax a little, anger whooshing out of his lungs along with his last breath.
"So, what do you do about the anger?"
Alex gives a little flinch. He isn't about to tell Scott what his solution had been , so he gives a smart-aleck answer, trying to lighten them both up.
"Me, I think about the guy who has doll heads," Alex says as the elevator dinged and he wheels Scott out. "He's got problems."
---
"It has to be today?"
"Yeah," Izzie says, murmuring a thanks to the male nurse beside her as he made to exit the room. "Your father's not going to make it off the table with his own liver. He's…he's been bleeding a lot."
"When you get counseling, they tell you not to force it," Scott says in response, looking down at his hospital bedsheets. Izzie doesn't seem to realize it, but Alex can tell that he is sending her a message. Don't make me do this. She is pushing him too far too fast. "The decision, you know. One moment, one day, you'll just know the right thing to do."
He gives a short, bitter laugh.
"I mean, it should be easy, right? He's my father." Scott chokes on the last word like it disgusts him, but Izzie still doesn't hear it. She opens her mouth to speak, but Alex quickly cuts her off.
"Well, it's a tough operation," he inserts carefully. "It'll be a big change in your life."
"The upside is that the liver is the only organ that regenerates itself," Izzie says cheerfully. "I mean, they'll only take half of yours and it'll be back to normal size in about two months. You probably won't be running any marathons any time soon, but—"
"Dr. Stevens," Alex hisses, grabbing Izzie's arm in an almost painful grip. She looks at him, a surprised and slightly annoyed expression flitting across her features.
Still a little stunned, she follows Alex without another word out of the room and into the bustling hall.
"What is your problem?" she asks him, confused.
"You're doing a sales pitch!" Alex says, glaring at her. "The recipient is your patient. You shouldn't even be talking to the donor."
"The recipient is his father," Izzie argues, glaring right back, "who he's going to lose if he doesn't make a decision!"
"And he understands that, all right?" Alex isn't afraid to get right up in her face. She always thinks that everyone is made of sunshine and rainbows, loving each other unconditionally. She's always seen the bright side of things, never noticing the pain and suffering that comes along with loving someone. "Believe me, he understands that."
She still looks dumbfounded (though the expression is slowly being overpowered by one of irritation), so he makes an effort to clear things up a little for her.
"You have no idea what is going on in that kid's head," he continues. "None."
He returns to Scott's room and looks at him. He's completely lost in a world of anger and guilt, and it's not healthy for him to remain sitting here in this room with nothing to think about except for his dying father.
"Come on," Alex says. Let's go get some air."
---
"What if he keeps hitting her?" Scott asks as soon as they step outside of the hospital, Alex steering him in a borrowed wheelchair.
"You can't make that call, Scott," Alex says, addressing the kid directly for the first time while using his name. He's trying to be as unbiased and objective as possible, but it's a little hard, considering how big of an asshole Scott's father is.
"Alex!"
The female voice calling his name is familiar, and at any other time, the speaker's presence would be appreciated. However, at the moment, she remains unwanted.
"So what do you do with it? The anger?" Scott repeats his earlier question, ignoring the voice as well. "What did you do with yours?"
The last question throws Alex a bit. Scott seems to realize that he's finally hit home
"Hey," comes Izzie's voice again, louder this time as she quickly closes the distance between them. "You shouldn't be out here. Dr. Burke needs a—"
"Can you just back off? Please?"
Izzie looks stunned once more—Alex has never been harsh with her before, just a little suggestive, maybe—and Alex takes this as an opportunity to wheel Scott a little farther away. He turns and kneels next to him, talking quietly.
"My anger had a life of its own," he explains, trying not to let Izzie overhear, but he knows she can, loud and clear – the expressions on her face completely give her away. "I walked off, became a wrestler, and the next time he laid a hand on my mother, I beat the living crap out of him."
Alex pauses, chancing a look over his shoulder. Izzie is staring at him with her oh-god-I'm-so-sorry-I-feel-so-guilty expression, but it seems sincere, so he lets it go.
"When he got out of the hospital, he took off. Just took off, and never came back." Scott's face hardens a little at this—Alex knows that the idea of his father doing the same is incredibly appealing. "He was a cold, mean-tempered bastard, but he was still my old man, you know?" Scott nods; he understands the feeling all too well. "But now…I can't stop wishing that I'd never—never laid a hand on him. I can't stop wishing that somehow, we could've worked through it."
Scott's eyes finally meet Alex's; he gives the kid a quick wink, to let him know that eventually, everything will be okay. But for now, he has a decision to make.
---
"Scotty. Scotty."
Her voice is pleading, imploring, begging, Scott to make the decision that will save his father's life and possibly end theirs.
Alex watches Scott patiently, knowing that the gears in his mind are working furiously as he hits the armrest of the wheelchair in that same pattern. On the one hand, Scott can refuse to donate his liver—his father will undoubtedly die, and he and his mother will be safe from him forever. But she'd never forgive him, because as much pain as Scott's father inflicts on her, she'll always love him. On the other hand, he can donate his liver, but most likely at the cost of his health and happiness, not to mention his mother's
Dr. Burke and Mrs. Seibert continue to discuss the surgery, not once asking Scott what he thinks about it, but Alex knows Scott isn't really hearing them anyway—either decision he makes will cause him to lose something.
One.
Two, three.
Then he stops.
He has decided.
"Yeah, okay. I want to do it."
His mother is crying, and not just from happiness—she knows her son has just sacrificed much more than his liver. "Thank you," she whispers.
"Let's get him to pre-op then," Dr. Burke says in his usual brisk manner. "I'll call the sur—"
"I have a couple of conditions."
Scott's words cause his mother to abruptly stop crying.
"You're going to tell the cops the truth about what happened in this accident, Mom." Her shocked expression only propels him to keep talking. "And as soon as we get back home, you and I are moving out. Enough is enough."
Alex looks at Scott, and Scott gives Alex a quick nod.
Thank you.
---
A/N: Whew, that was incredibly depressing, and it took a long of time to write. :) What do you think? Too over-the-top? Please let me know—and review!