I feel like I owe you an explanation about what you heard last week. I had a pill problem. I got clean. Two years ago, I relapsed, and for a brief time, I got into oxy... and then shooting oxy. I lost someone. Um, that was rock bottom, and I have been clean ever since.

- Amelia Shepherd, Grey's Anatomy, 11x08

...

"Why did you leave Los Angeles?"

Sunlight is seeping in through the thin curtains that line the windows of the trailer. She's so relaxed between his arms and the sheets that she almost doesn't hear the question.

"Derek asked me to," she responds with a small hmmm and rolls so she's no longer facing away from him. She rests her head on his shoulder and places a hand on his chest.

"Derek jumped and you said how high?" he sounds slightly incredulous. Since he's known her, professionally at the very least, she hasn't been one to take orders without consideration. Especially from Derek Shepherd.

"No," she rolls around a little more, growing pissed at the direction of the conversation. "It wasn't like that."

She's in a bed. A warm, comfy bed. She's in a warm, comfy bed with a man that she might even love but somehow, just because this conversation always, always finds her, her dead brother has made it here with her.

"I had a best friend in L.A. Have. I still have a best friend in L.A. Charlotte. And a sister, Addison. I had a family at work, and a boyfriend. James."

"That's a lot to leave behind," he runs a finger up and down her arm.

"Everyone was moving forward, and I wasn't ready to. Addison's married to this amazing guy, and Charlotte has four kids. Three girls, triplets, and a boy. And James..." she stops and crinkles her nose before pulling the sheets above her head. "This is not good pillow talk."

"Amelia," he tugs on the sheets a little bit and she sits up a little bit. "I want to know this stuff."

"I was engaged when I came here, to James. But then, after a long day, I just, I just didn't want to leave. Derek was here, and there were surgeries. A lot of surgeries. Bigger surgeries and better surgeries and not like anything you see in a sleepy Santa Monica ER. And I thought back to my friends and their husbands and their kids and it just hit me. I'd been sober for a hot second, and I wasn't ready for any of that, especially not with a guy whose biggest tragedy was the death of his golden retriever."

"So you stayed."

"So I stayed. But now... Derek is dead and Meredith is - "

"Protective,"

"I was going to say awful." she sighs. She combs through her hair with her fingers and stares up at the ceiling.

It's starting to drizzle and the rain drops make a steady tin tin tin sound on the trailer roof.

"Would you get engaged again?" he changes gears a little bit, back peddling to the fiancé bit of the conversation.

"To the right person, maybe. I think I'd like to. I want to be in that place, the right place for that."

"You want kids?"

To him, this is the most important question. After everything he went through with Cristina, everything she put him through, he's ready for someone with the same answer that he has to the burning question. He's ready for the life she never wanted.

But for her, this is the question that makes her jump. She feels her heart beating louder and faster in her chest.

"Did you hear that?" she sits up.

"I didn't - "

"My pager, that was definitely my pager." she pulls her phone from the charger on the bedside table and hunches over it to make sure he doesn't see that the vibration wasn't a signal for a page, but for an email with a Famous Footwear coupon. "I need to get to the hospital,"

"I'll drive you,"

"No, no, no, you're not on call, don't worry about it." bra, panties, jeans, shirt, shoes, and she's out the door before he can say anything else.