Can't find you- Chapter 1
Hey Japril fans. I know some of you were shaken by that Maggie thing. I know i was. However, have Shakespear here to steady me. Japril for ever. I hope you like and review.
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Let me not to the marriage of true minds, Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark ,That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks, Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.- Shakespear
...
Flash forward.
Jackson stood on the podium as he demonstrated his newest achievement. It was nothing short of a miracle really, what he had managed to do this time. How he had completely restructured and recreated a car wreck victim's face. There were no scares left. None at all. He had been working on this project for the longest time and his first human dummy came out perfect. He had just reinvented plastics. And he could not help but brag as he demonstrated in front of all the renowned surgeons and the media. No one will think, ever again, that he had got here because if his family name. No way. Not after this. He was now officially the best Plastic surgeon in the country if not the world. This was the moment. He smiled to the audience as he finished his demonstration and he took in the cheers and applause like a breath of sunshine, basking in it. His mother was there smiling so proudly at him. His friends, Alex, Mer; even Christina was there. Maggie was also there smiling and clapping, she looked so proud. They had become closer these past weeks. He smiled back at her and nodded.
He searched the crowd, not finding what he was really looking for. Until this moment he had not realized what it was exactly, rather who it was he was looking for. Who he was missing.
Because there was a level his heart could reach when that person was there. A level of pride, of achievement, of happiness that only that person alone could bring out in him. A level of completion which he could not quite reach at that moment. This was the biggest moment in his carrier and still...he couldn't quite get there. He looked again in the crowd, knowing as he looked that he would not find what he was looking for.
"If we were back home we'd have a full Gallery, a webcam. I can't believe nobody is gonna see this." He had said when he was scrubbing with April for a surgery to put a valve into a little girl's voice box. To give her her voice back. It had been another one of his best inventions and he had been so bummed to know that his friends were not going to see him being a bad ass again.
"I'll see it." April had said it so simply and he had looked at her and realized at that moment that that's all he needed. She would see it. And he'd take her instead of a whole gallery full of surgeons in awe. Anytime. He sighed now as he stood on the podium. Camera's on him, people cheering but somehow...it wasn't quite...
Maggie came onto the podium to give him a quick hug. She was so proud of him.
He was ushered forward so he could give his speech and he was ready. He had prepared it for just as long. As he walked forward he realized he didn't feel as confident anymore. Something, someone was missing. He smiled at the cameras again, at the same time looking for that sheen of red hair. It would be hard to miss if it was there.
It wasn't.
He could not curb the disappointment he felt in the pit of his stomach. He looked down at his written speech and started to speak. He was speaking; he did all the right things considering the attention he was getting from his audience.
'I'll see it." She had said with that little shrug of her shoulder and a look that made his heart soar.
'I'll see it."
"I want to thank you all for coming. As you can all imagine, this is the biggest day in my life..., in my carrier life and I'm so glad to have you share it with me." He was saying and it sounded empty even to his own ears. He kept on talking though, smiling.
He remembered the kid from Jordan with Ollier's disease. April had had so much faith in him she had sold him to all her peers as the best guy for the job. When he had seen the boy he had blown the gasket. He'd thought April had set him up. The tumors were so severe, so advanced it was impossible. The boy had no hands.
"Why did you even bring him to me? You saw the scans, you're a good surgeon you should have known this was hopeless..."
"I wasn't hopeless. I don't know why you are."
"Because there's nothing here to save!"
He had been miffed. He also did know that they were also talking about their marriage. Her friendship with Riggs was not helping matters either. He had been jealous. And competitive. He had seen April with the kid. He saw the hope, her belief in him and he couldn't let her down. He had to reconstruct everything on those hands with Callie. He had done the impossible. The obvious thing would have been to amputate that kid's hands. The whole gallery had cheered when the surgery was coming out successful but his only audience, the only audience that had mattered to him was April. The whole surgery was his own version of a pickup line for April. She had believed in him and he had not let her down. That's when he had started doing the impossible.
He loved taking surgeries with her. Scrubbing in with her. Because though she was herself a bad ass Trauma Surgeon, she always managed to make him feel like he was the star of the show. She had that about her. He remembered complaining about the amount of work he had been dumped with after he became the new owner of the hospital. Everyone seemed to want him to fail, his own friends even. And he had felt like he was in over his head.
"You're holding this place together Jackson. That's pretty miraculous." And that was all the confidence boost he had needed.
She made him better. She was his person. His favorite person in the world.
"This person, who wrote this? Signed this? She was my best friend. You were my best friend April. My favorite person." He remembered saying that when they were fighting about custody of their unborn baby. Then at that moment she had let him feel their baby kick.
She was his best friend. He would look for that sheen of red hair in a crowd and it'd be hard to miss. He would sport her somewhere in the ER organizing and making order of everything. He would gravitate towards her like magnate to metal. Because once he saw her he would want to hang out just a little bit more.
He remembered when he was a kid, he had this coin. It was gold and like nothing else he had ever owned. He grew up in money, he lacked for anything. But it was his favorite coin, his treasure. Maybe because his grandfather had given it to him or because he had never seen anything else like it. He had buttloads of money but when he had lost that coin in the drainage he would not give up until he found it. He went down the drain to get it.
He looked again in the crowd, searching for that special dimpled smile and those eyes that told him without words that he was the world to her. That sheen of red hair. It wasn't there.
He had stood up in front of the whole crowd in a barn on her wedding to another man to proclaim his love to her.
"If you love someone, you tell them. Even if you're scared that it's not the right thing. Even if you're scared that it'll cause problems. Even if you're scared that it will burn your life to the ground, you say it, and you say it loud and you go from there." Mark Sloan had said that to him. And again he had done the impossible. Ruining April's wedding to Mathew, standing up in that barn had been the hardest, most impossible thing he had ever done. It trumped any surgical inventions he had come up with to this day. Nothing stood close. If he'd ever laid his heart on the line, it was then. He wondered how he had lost so easily. How he had let go so easily what he had fought for with all his heart. What was he so afraid of now? April loved him. He knew that much. At least he hoped she still did.
He could hear Mark Sloan saying that to him again now. "If you love someone, you tell them. Even if you're scared that it's not the right thing. Even if you're scared that it'll cause problems. Even if you're scared that it will burn your life to the ground, you say it, and you say it loud and you go from there."
He shook himself into reality and realized that he was still speaking, and not missing a step.
"How could you?"He remembered his mother had been livid about what he had done. Running away with someone else's bride.
"I love her mom. She's the one." He had said it resignedly, helpless.
He wondered now as he stood there. The cheers and applause as he finished his speech becoming a resounding noise in his ears. How had he managed to lose all that? When and how did it happen? He had to go find her. He had to go find his best friend, favorite person. His very heart.
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So let me know what you think. And maybe i'll see you in a bit.