"That was…" she said, her chest heaving. She turned her head to face him and found him equally lost for words. "Uhm, how are you?"
The two of them were sweaty and latching on to the bedsheet. They were both trying to catch their breath, but with little or no sense of accomplishment as the exertion-to-payout ratio was weighing them down.
"I'm fine. Did you…" he started, and she realized what he meant.
"No… No, sorry. I didn't," she said, shifting herself and crashing the back of her head onto her pillow to gaze at the ceiling. Her wavy red locks danced beautifully in the air before resting on her pale rosy shoulders with some lazy sections of hair masking parts of her face.
"No, no. Don't apologize. This is… this is good. At least now we're talking about it. Comparing notes," he breathed, then he followed suit and they both found themselves staring at the bland ceiling of their bedroom as though something interesting was pasted onto its surface.
"I mean we're both medical professionals, right? We know the anatomy…and stuff," she said between pants and she raised her eyebrows. "We can figure this out…" Then her eyebrows scrunched up ever so slightly to return his question. "By the way, did you?"
"I think you would've noticed."
"Riiight… " she said. It would've been more noticeable on his end. She was a medical professional after all. She let out a small sigh. "Right."
"Okay. So, let's try to process this," he managed, trying to turn it into something productive. He propped himself up on one elbow to look at her. "Is there something… you didn't like with what I was doing?" he asked as he gently stroked away the strands of soft hair that were on her face.
"I wouldn't say I disliked anything," she said, still staring upward, still trapped in a haze. "Maybe… I don't know…. Maybe something's lacking?"
"Well how do you like it then?" he said, moving that same hand to lightly scratch his stubble. Then his eyebrows pulled together. "Wait. Do you… do you like it… rough?" He whispered that last word as though they'd get in trouble if anymore overheard them, which was highly unlikely anyway.
"Hmm what?" she stalled, pretending not to hear him and looking aimlessly to the night light on her side of the bed to hide the fact that she was blinking almost a mile a minute.
"April… you'd like me to be… rougher with you?" he repeated, completely flustered. It wasn't the most comfortable question for him to ask, and of course she knew that the adorkable, straight arrow, law-abiding, Never Got a Parking Ticket hunk of a man she now called her husband, albeit unofficially, was feeling just a little bit shy about getting to know her kinks.
"W – because… I mean… You're awfully gentle," she stammered, widening her eyes at the word.
"I'm awfully gentle?" he said humorously with raised eyebrows. Then he took a moment to think about it. "…Well how rough are we talking here?"
She let off a tiny whine in protest before grabbing the pillow from under her head, smothering her face in to suppress her impending laughter. "I can't look you in the eye and tell you that with a straight face," she said shaking her head under the pillow, trying to get it together.
"Then tell me with a not straight face," he proposed.
"No."
"Goody-goody church girl April Kepner… liking it rough in the sheets… wow," he said, thoroughly amused.
"Doesn't that appeal to you at all? Being in control?" she asked, peeping her face through the pillow.
"Not really? I don't know. I guess I just don't like the feeling that I might be hurting you," he said innocently.
"You… you are so precious," she said sympathetically.
"So… is that how he… is that how you guys –"
The pillow immediately flew away from her blushing face.
"Ohhhh my gosh! Can we not?!" she exclaimed, trying particularly hard to keep her laughter from breaking through the cracks and messing with how serious she was trying to be.
"I mean I get it, he was your first… and…and maybe you just got used to how… uhm," he said, his words trailing off until a painful wince poked his face and left him frowning. Matthew fell silent for a moment and April knew that something about what he said made him uneasy.
"Hey, hey, what's wrong?" she said, and she sat up in concern to face him and hold his arm.
"Hmm? Oh, no, nothing I just, uughm" he said clearing his throat in a groan that men seem to use all the time to suppress their feelings. "I think I just need some water."
He feigned a smile and kissed her on the forehead before getting up to put on his boxer shorts.
"Matthew, wha –"
"Don't worry about it."
Within seconds, he was dressed and out of the room – presumably getting that water he used as a lame excuse to dodge whatever it was about that conversation that made him uncomfortable, leaving her totally stunned and confused as to what the hell just happened.
"Jackson! Jackson, wait up! Where are you going?"
"Where do you think I'm going?!" he bellowed, as he kept frantically pushing the elevator buttons. "You just told me my mom has cancer, Maggie. And not just any garden variety tumor but a freaking monstrous spinal chondrosarcoma of all things so if you can't give me a reason why I shouldn't get on the first flight out to see her, I'm pushing all my surgeries and heading there now."
The power has been down for quite a while, but now some sections of the hospital were already beginning to function by way of the backup generator. Unfortunately for him, the elevators weren't one of them.
"Damn the elevators are still down," he said, kicking angrily at one of the metal doors.
"I can. Give you a reason. And you won't like it, but there is a very big reason you can't go out there right now. Jackson, the windstorm has barely passed and I'm pretty sure all the terminals are delaying outward flights."
"Then I'm calling our plane," he said insistently and pulled out his phone. Before he could make his way to take the stairs, Maggie grabbed him by the shoulders to try to calm him down.
"Jackson, look at me," she said. "It's too dangerous out there. And we can't risk giving your mom another devastating thing to worry about if your flight on the way there goes haywire. Which it might."
He fidgeted for a moment, his face pained with panic. His brilliant light eyes were glowing with desperation and all he could do was let out a frustrated little whimper as tears started glazing his eyes. This gaze drifted to the phone in his hand, and almost instantly, he went on to dial his mother.
No answer.
He tried it a couple more times to no avail.
"Where's Grey?" he asked, remembering that Maggie's sister was appointed as Catherine's surgeon.
"Last I heard from her, she was paging me for a heart transplant in fifteen minutes," she said. "They found a donor here for Cece. I think she's on her way to the OR now."
Jackson hurriedly dialed Meredith. He needed answers. He need them badly.
Just when the call to Meredith failed, the hospital PA system blasted an announcement enumerating all staff members who were confined in the elevators, letting everyone know they were momentarily unavailable for surgery and consults. Meredith was one of them.
"Well that explains why I can't reach her phone. Cell service is absolute crap in the elevators. Damnit!" he yelled, his neurons ablaze. "Wait… the lockdown protocol!" he said and started sprinting toward one of the halls leading to the nurses' station. Maggie was trailing close behind, unsure of where he was going with this.
"Where are we going?" she asked him.
"There's a two-way communication device installed in every elevator in case of emergency. At Grey Sloan, nurses check in on who gets stuck to help with the headcount during a lockdown or a power-out like this one. That's how they got that info," he said as he called the attention of one of the nurses manning the PA desk.
"Hi, I need to speak with Meredith Grey. It's urgent. Can you link me to the elevator she's in?"
"Of course, Dr. Avery," said the nurse, and without much time in between, Meredith answered the emergency call button.
"Yup, me and the resident are still stuck in here; It's not like we're going anywhere," said the general surgeon.
"Mer, it's Jackson," he said. "Please. I need you to fill me in on my mother's case… Please."
"Maggie told you?" she asked.
"I couldn't not tell him!" answered Maggie.
"Well we'll deal with that later. Jackson…"
"Yeah, I'm here."
"I know we've broken a lot of HIPAA here already, but I'm still compelled to tell you that Dr. DeLuca is standing right next to me. And I can't shove him out of this steel box, so unless you want me to physically incapacitate his ability to tune into this conversation, he'll be privy to anything I tell you right now."
A terrified look grew on DeLuca's face. "Are you serious?" he mouthed over to Meredith while they waited for Jackson's reply.
"That's fine. I just need to know," said Jackson.
"Okay," said Meredith, taking a deep breath. "Let's buckle up, then."
April made her way out of their bedroom in her sweatpants and a thin shirt. She had just begun to put on a sweater when she reached the living room, where she found Matthew. He was holding a glass of water, staring out the window.
Wow so he was really sticking to this glass-of-water idea, she thought.
"Hey," she said, hugging herself to get warm. "Still pretty windy out."
"Yeah… Want some water? – "
"Matthew…," she said instantly. "Are we going to talk about what just happened in there?"
"I don't think I can."
"Okay," she said, but instead of leaving him be and retreating to their bedroom, she took the spot beside him on the couch. If there's one thing he's learned about her, it was that the word retreat never sat well with her. Unless it was a spiritual retreat. "We're in this thing for a pretty long time," she began. "Don't you think it's a good idea to be honest with each other?"
Silence. She could tell he was in his head. It was that moment that she decided to propose something that might help them along. "Hey do you wanna try something?"
"What's that?" he asked curiously.
"Look, I think this is good. Conversations like this… they're good," she said. "And you said it before. You value honesty… like so much." Her eyes rolled upward for emphasis and he knew she was referencing their first breakup, when she lied about her virginity. They shared a chuckle before she continued.
"So why don't we just… spill everything. In serious conversations like this. Let's really just lay it all out there, feel what we need to feel, and suck it all up even if it hurts sometimes. Then deal with it. God knows how much we've been through. I think we can handle this."
"Just… everything?"
"Everything. What's bothering us, what excites us… what's holding us back…" she said, looking away for a moment before looking back. "Uhm, is it Jackson? Are you… I don't know, are you jealous or something?"
He shook his head.
"Babe, you gotta help me out here," she urged.
"No, I'm not jealous. I meant it when I said that I forgave him. And that I was okay with him calling you. But Jackson and I are two very different people –"
"If you think I'm actively comparing sex between you and –"
"No, see, that's the thing. I think we both are. I don't know, subconsciously, unintentionally, maybe?" He looked at her earnestly. "…I think we both are."
Her expression relaxed. It clicked. She moved her mouth to form words. She knew that she knew how. But in this moment, she didn't. Jackson was her first time in much the same way that Karin was his, and she and Matthew were two people who held such a reverence for the people they truly believed would be their spouses for life. Until they weren't.
The night before her board exams flashed before her eyes – her and Jackson lying side by side on a hotel bed in San Francisco, two crazy kids laughing their heads off at how mind-blowing and life-changing that night was for both of them.
She could only imagine what memories of his late wife Matthew was holding fondly in his head at the moment, too.
They sat in silence until the words came to her.
"So, you think of Karin… whenever we…"
"I think about her all the time. But to answer your question… I…I don't know if she's the reason why... I'm just starting to name those feelings now. I know that it's not strictly practical or fair to either of us," he said, tears starting to form in his eyes. "But the more we talk and open up to each other about it, the more I associate her with our problem."
She nodded but her eyes were looking down on the floor.
"Did you ever think of Jackson? Whenever we…" he said to return her question.
She blew out all the air in her lungs and took a deep breath. She took his hand, looked him straight in the eye, and whispered, "Honesty?"
"Honesty," he whispered back.
"A few times. Once or twice, he crossed my mind. Uhm… it's not often. It's not malicious. They come in flashes I can't control. Uhh…," she said, her voice shaky and her eyes wet. "I think about him when I look at our daughter. His eyes look back at me through the perfect little face I only get to see for parts of the week. It still haunts me. How things ended up this way." She blinked a couple of times and it sent tears trickling down her face.
"April, these people… they changed us," he said staring at a random piece of furniture. His voice went soft. Vulnerable. He shifted his gaze to her. "You are so much like her. Which is why I'm having such a hard time with this conversation. You two are so alike… but so different, too."
"Do I… do I feel like... like some inadequate replacement?" she asked, clearly hurt. She stood up.
His expression fell. "No. No, that's not what I meant."
"Please. Enlighten me," she challenged.
"I don't know. I guess what I'm trying to say is… Maybe it's easier for you since you and Jackson have been divorced for a while before we happened. That, and him and I couldn't be more different. On my end… everything's still pretty fresh and it's just… you remind me of her so much that it hurts sometimes."
"Except when we're in bed and you're reminded that I'm not her."
"No. That's not… no!"
"I'm not discounting the fact that you still love her, Matthew, because you should! When I met her, I could see why. What happened to Karin was horrible and my heart broke for you..." Her voice cracked a little at the thought of that trying time, eyes laden with tears. "I don't expect us to pretend that what happened didn't happen but… what are we doing?"
His eyes said it all. He was lost. But he was trying.
April relaxed her shoulders and willed herself to sit back next to him. They locked eyes and took a breath to reset.
"I'm sorry. What you're feeling is valid," she said, and in that moment, she realized just how much she's outgrown the dismissive and tunnel-sighted person who was too busy trying everything to save her marriage that she forgot to take a breath and accept that what Jackson was feeling was valid. Great. Another lesson learned a little too late, she thought.
"If you need space or time," she said, her arms crossed and tucked into herself, "to clear your mind and think things through, it's yours. I wanna help."
He let out a shaky puff of air before offering her a grateful look, then wrapped a hand around the back of his neck.
"Man, honesty sucks," he exhaled.
"Yeah, tell me about it."
