A/N: Thank you to all of you reading, reviewing and following this story – I truly appreciate the time you take out of your busy lives to follow this fic. Thank you too to all the anons and guest reviewers who I'm unable to thank personally. I sincerely apologize for the time lag between updates, I know how it feels being on the receiving end, lol, but anyway you know real life intervenes…So, I've taken a bit more creative license with this chapter in that I've moved an arrival from an episode prior to 9.23 here, but it will not strain credulity I assure you. Read on and see what I mean…;-) As before all characters belong to Grey's Anatomy and the awesome Shonda Rhimes. Hope you enjoy it!

Chapter 3

He strode briskly down the corridor, so intent on his telephone conversation that he was oblivious to all the staring and whispering.

"I don't care how much it costs, I want it delivered today" he negotiates. He listens to the protests on the other end of the line but firmly maintains his stance, "Yes, I know there's a super storm approaching but this is Seattle, when is it never raining". As he doesn't seem to be making much headway, he appeals to the guys humanity, "Come on man, please, it's a matter of urgency – life and death if you will, it has to be here today" and when even that appeal falls on deaf ears he knows there's only one surefire way to get it here, appeal to the mercenary, "Okay, what will it take for me to get it here today? I'm willing to pay you extra…double your transport costs, but it has to be here today, no later, or no bonus." Receiving his confirmation he happily ends his call – mission 1 accomplished, or at least partly realized. Next, Mission "Almost" Impossible. He needs to find Hunt and convene a meeting of the Board, which is tantamount to herding a flock of recalcitrant sheep to where they don't want to go.

Chief Hunt surprises him. He was very cold at first, it seems that the chief has a soft spot for his Soldier and obviously would approve an Emergency First Responder as a suitable lifetime companion for her. It also explains why April was evicted from the Shishkabob Surgery – Hunt was apparently in cahoots with Matthew on the whole flash mob proposal and his contribution was keeping April available to "Incoming Trauma" and out of the OR. However, history does trump commonality and Jackson has, albeit slowly, managed to earn the Trauma Attendings trust – well enough to get him to listen to him and thereafter corral the Grey-Sloan Board Members into a meeting where he confidently gets their unanimous approval. Although to be perfectly frank he doesn't really need their endorsement, being that he represents The Harper Avery Foundation and 51% of the Board, but he wants it…and he wants to know where each one of them stands on the issue and most importantly he wants them to know the what, why, how and especially the for whom this is being done.

Onward and upward, he's not looking forward to the next task for the simple reason that it makes him feel like a douche – it's something that he should have done when he saw how much it hurt April but at that moment in time a tiny part of himself reveled in her misery, he was just so angry with her for what he perceived as her scorn. He couldn't measure up to the high levels required to be an equal partner in her life, he was only good enough to be her sex buddy – or so he felt that was how she viewed him – so he decided to show her that someone else wanted him, desperately so and to the extent of practically worshipping him. Someone she had set him up with, someone so easy that he never had to expand an ounce of effort on her, someone with whom he would never know the lows that April was capable of bringing him down too, but also with whom he never experienced any of the wonderful highs. Physically he was just scratching an itch and because he hated that he had become THAT Attending he consciously decided not to BE that Attending. So he continued to 'see' Stephanie and he convinced himself that he was a good man. But through it all he missed her, they were so physically in tune to each other and April shed all her inhibitions when she was with him, she rocked his world whenever they came together intimately and he'd never come close, before or after her, to that euphoria. It killed him to imagine her with anyone else and after their talk his guilt knew no bounds – he'd been so successful in projecting that image of moving on from her that he'd hurt her tremendously. It was time now to step-up, and even though Matthew might not know it yet he was in for the fight of his life, he was not letting go of April, but first he had to break-up with Stephanie.

Why is it that when you look for someone you can never find them, he thought. He'd just about given up hope when he heard Alex's intern Jo talking to someone, so he stopped to listen. When he realized that it was Stephanie she was talking to, he felt relieved – finally he could get this over with. Not to be rude or to embarrass her, Jackson decided to wait out their conversation but his inadvertent eavesdropping garnered him some unexpected information.

"Yeah, so I finally managed to convince Matthew that it was nothing, he had to rush away but he'll be coming back soon and that proposal can finally happen and that dud can stop being such a thorn in my side!" words uttered with such vitriol that the voice was almost unrecognizable as Stephanie's.

"Come on Steph, that's mean, I thought you said that she was bitchin', she showed you how to run the ER, and she was an excellent teacher to both you and Shane – you even took back the dud nickname and…"

"That was before she stole my man, Jo!" Stephanie rudely interrupts, "and anyway what do you know about it, your judgment sucks, I mean Chest Peckwell Jo, really? And Jackson isn't like Peckwell or even Karev, skanks will totally try and steal him from me and that's what she is Jo, a dud and a skank" she oh so virtuously surmises, so self-absorbed that she's totally oblivious to the sleeping ass-kicking giant she's just awoken – the "don't mess with me" intern who just rearranged the pretty face of Jason Myers, the predator…

"Really Steph, you're gonna go there with me, you forget I know who's the REAL skank, I've been there from when you first started stalking him and I know everything you did, and are still doing, so you really don't want to bring up my behavior and choices," utters Jo in a low, dangerous voice but Stephanie doesn't heed the apparent warning in her words and tone. "I'm nothing like you Jo, I'm not that girl, the girl who gets pitied, the girl who's not good enough or smart enough or pretty enough or not deserving. I'm not THAT girl," she arrogantly exclaims.

A thoroughly pissed-off Jo gets right into her face and starts enumerating to Stephanie exactly how much worse she is then the girl who gets pitied, punctuating each point with a sharp finger jab to the chest. "Let's see how you're not THAT girl," she begins, verbally listing all the moves that Stephanie has pulled, trying to bag herself the attending – the influential, wealthy, gorgeous attending, grandson of the Legendary Harper Avery and more recently Chairman of the Board of Grey-Sloan Memorial Hospital. "Firstly, you were throwing yourself at him from when we got here, although props to him for not noticing coz you were never subtle, though you did let up when she returned but you kept abreast of hospital gossip, waiting for your opening. I mean anyone could see that they were doing the horizontal mumbo just by how they looked at each other and you yourself told me that you were in that surgery when they had that lovers spat and even though they were trying to be cryptic, you obviously got that they were together," she starts.

"Second, I know you fed into the hospital gossip mill, you were even depressed that they seemed to be all over each other, all over the hospital."

"Thirdly, you befriended her even while calling her 'the dud' behind her back, ensuring that she chose you to be his 'date' to Bailey's wedding, when they were making whatever point they were making with each other – and boy were you classy, you had sex with him in the back of his car for God's sake, at a wedding where you knew she was present – you got your hooks into him good and tight, counting on his good guy persona to get him to treat you as more than just a one-time sexual encounter. You didn't give him a chance to work it out with her, even though anyone could see that they were miserable apart," physically she punctuates some of her words with air quotes.

"Next, I don't know if it was to assuage your guilt or to totally get her out of the picture, you started pushing Matthew towards her when you noticed his interest – to the extent that you got the guy to propose to her publically today, but you didn't foresee what 'Your Boyfriend' was gonna do, huh ?" Barely taking a breath in between, she jumps to her most important point, "And let's not forget how you rubbed it in her face that you were having sex with him in on-call rooms all over the hospital, knowing that she would never take him back after that, oh and by the way how many times did you two have sex at the hospital? Not even ONCE, because he stopped it, right?" she exclaims.

Stephanie is quick to interject here, "I never did that!" she utters.

"Oh, so fixing your hair and your clothes coming out of on-call rooms, essentially only when you saw her, was not your subtle cue, you forget I know how you operate Steph," responds Jo.

"She never deserved him, white bread girl trying to steal all the best black men out there, can't even leave that for us," Stephanie mumbles to herself, but Jo doesn't let up on her, "Stop talking like you're from the ghetto Steph, you're more white bread then I am and then she is," she harshly interjects.

Jackson, standing outside the staff lounge, is meanwhile struck dumb by all that he's overheard. My God, his mother was right, he just never thought that Stephanie was that intern, the one intent on bagging someone who could not only advance her career but who came from money and privilege and had the added advantage of being eye-candy. But then he never thought much at all about Stephanie or her motives, even to the extent of being clueless to her pursuit of him. It hits him in the gut – the only person who never put any labels on him was April. All his life he's been either 'Pretty Boy', 'Trust Fund Baby', 'Harper Avery's Grandson', 'Privileged Son of Famous Surgeons' or even 'Wealthy Black Man' but to April he was always just unequivocally, unconditionally her best friend. Finding out that not only has Stephanie been bad mouthing April but that she's been systematically undermining and deliberately hurting her brings out his primal instincts – he's not going to allow anyone to ever cause her another moments pain and that goes for him too. Just then his beeper goes off, Hunt just came through, it's now time to deliver….

Stephanie and Jo both pop their heads through the doorway of the Interns Lounge, but fail to see anyone there.

"I'm telling you Jo I heard a beeper, someone overheard us!" she hyperventilates.

Jo, coolly and calmly responds "It was our beepers Steph, we're all required to immediately present ourselves in the GSM foyer, let's go" she instructs.

Detouring through the ER, Jackson notices Matthew, who's obviously on the hunt for someone, either the beautiful redhead to declare himself or the conniving brunette for advice on how to declare himself to the redhead, he acerbically reflects. He tries a quick get-away but is spotted.

"Dr Avery, I've been looking all over for you!" exclaims Matthew.

Well he obviously misread that one, thinks Jackson. "What can I do for you Taylor?" he inquires.

"Well you did walk off with my fiancé over your shoulder, did you think I wouldn't be looking for you," answers Matthew.

"Your fiancé?" asks Jackson, more concerned with that title and when that could have occurred then Matthew flexing his muscles.

"No, not yet," he replies "but soon". He continues, surprising Jackson with his next words, "I want to apologize to you Dr Avery, your girlfriend explained to me that you're very protective of April, like a father figure to her and I'm sorry that I never made an attempt to get to know you, to allay any doubts you may have about my suitability as a husband and provider for her and in the absence of her father to ask you for her hand in marriage," Matthew seriously remarks.

Jackson stands there with his mouth agape, "Seriously Dude?" he asks and before he can even contemplate saying more his beeper goes off again and he just turns and walks away, leaving a very confused Matthew following in his wake like a lost puppy.

Since all staff (and one bewildered Paramedic) appear to be present in the foyer Chief Hunt, standing halfway down the staircase, begins his meeting.

"Thank you all for coming, I know you're all busy so this won't take long," he begins. "The focus of this hospital has and always will be providing the best patient care possible and along with our newly revamped ER the Board has just approved the immediate implementation of Trauma Protocol Checklists. The workstations at every bed in the ER have already been integrated with the new charting system and have since this morning been upgraded to include the New Admissions Checklist, the author and inventor of which is our very own Dr April Kepner. NAC is a vital tool in our arsenal, combating the fight against unnecessary, negligent patient death and incorporates, amongst others, the ABC's of patient care. NAC is clear-cut and unambiguous and implementation of the protocol is non-negotiable. The Board has instituted a clear zero-tolerance policy regarding non-conformance of NAC – any non-adherence to these protocols can and will result in disciplinary action towards anyone willfully ignoring these procedures and protocols. I'd like to lead you all in a round of applause for Dr Kepner, whose name will be synonymous with NAC Protocol and to whom the protocols legally belong." Once the applause has died down he continues, speaking directly to April, "Dr Kepner, the Board has unanimously agreed that the protocols belong to you totally and you have permission to share it with any other hospitals and trauma centers, " he finishes but then pulls April aside for a personal acknowledgement. Hand on her shoulder he declares "I'm proud of you soldier".

April is in shock, this emotionally laden day has turned out very strange indeed. Receiving pats on the back, handshakes and sincere congratulations from her colleagues, nurses and attendings and not so sincere felicitations from the residents, she notices the two men in her life, past and present, both watching her intently. Matthew approaches her with a definite objective, to continue where he left of earlier, he even manages to remove a tiny, square jeweler's box from his pocket, but once again he is thwarted by Dr Jackson Avery.

Jackson grabs her hand and drags her to the ER.

"Jackson, wh..at?" she stumbles.

"I have one more thing to give to you April," he replies.

"You mean, the NAC Protocols…" she disjointedly asks.

"Yeah, but all I did was present it to the Board – it was a unanimous decision to implement your protocols," he confirms, "but this" he continues switching on the light to the X-ray room adjacent to the ER nurses station, "this is for you," he whispers.

"Is that a…" she begins

"LODOX, yeah," he responds, "A …"

"Low Dose Radiation X-Ray Stat Scan, takes 13 seconds for a low exposure, high resolution, full body X-ray, provides full body anterior and lateral views and the low radiation makes imaging safer for children and pregnant women, it's a cutting edge tool in diagnostic technology – you can completely evaluate a patient for GSW's, stab wounds, crush injuries all with this one machine in JUST 13 SECONDS" she excitedly counters.

"I take it you like it," he laughs at her enthusiastic response, and proceeds to drop another bomb-shell on her, "all the budget was spent to revamp and open the ER, for you, so that you wouldn't leave GSM, so that you could practice the specialty that you love, so that you wouldn't leave me…" he softly voices, just gazing into her eyes.

April gazes back at him, stunned. She understands. He knows her so well, how important her career is to her, how important it is to her to help others but to also be the best at it – she's competitive by nature and he's always pushed her to be her best. Oh what a magnificent grand gesture but was it too little too late?

He sees the dawning of comprehension in her eyes but then they cloud over, looking at Matthew holding a different future in his hands. She has a choice to make and he's afraid that she can't get past all the hurt they've, and more specifically him, caused.

She opens her mouth to respond but both of their eyes are drawn to a terrible screeching sound from outside the ER. Jackson protectively covers her head with his arms and they both watch in horror as a bus veers into cars in the parking lot outside the hospital and flips onto its side….