Alex – December 10th 5:30 AM
My alarm starts to go off, but it stops before I even have the chance to react to it. I force my eyes open, finding the source that stopped it and see Izzie, sitting up against the headboard with a medical book propped against her drawn up knees and a flashlight in her hand. I stare at her, confused. Even when we were both healthy we never woke up before the alarm. Now she was sick and worn down and she was sitting around at five in the morning reading a book.
"Iz?" I ask when she says nothing. Her eyes are bloodshot and bags are beneath them. She gives me this pathetic smile and I pull the flashlight out of her hands, shutting it off and setting it down, taking the book too. "Couldn't sleep?" I question, though it seemed awfully obvious to me. She nods so I pull her down beneath the covers, letting her tuck her head against my shoulder.
"I kept dreaming," she sighs. "First it was just stupid stuff, like dancing trees and such."
"Did you do cocaine before going to bed again?" I joke and she smiles.
"But then it turned into different stuff. Like George being eaten by a bear and Cristina attacking me with a scalpel."
"Uh-huh," I say skeptically. "No wonder you weren't sleeping," I mutter as I consider how terrifying Cristina with a scalpel would be. "You should stop reading and try to now, though." I pull the covers up around trying, to keep them away from myself so I didn't end up just falling back to sleep with her. "And if this keeps up maybe we should do something..." I suggest it because, even if it had only been one night so far, she of all people needed her sleep.
"I'm fine," she deflects as she kisses my shoulder. "I'm sick of you going to work though."
I sigh, pulling her in a little closer. "Six more days," I remind her. We lay there for a short while longer, my mind endlessly going on if I got up now and took this long to get ready I could be to work at this hour. Eventually her breathing evens out and I extract myself from her grip, covering her before going to get ready for my day ahead.
11:38 AM
I drum my fingers on the surface of the table in the cafeteria as the phone rings, looking around to see who might be close enough to overhear. I find a group of interns at the next table over and decide to hang up and just call later when a confused "Hello?" comes out of the phone.
"Hey," I try to say as calmly as possible. "Amber? It's me, uh, Alex, your brother." I pause, waiting to hear her response, or if she even had one. After a couple of seconds of silence I pull the phone away from my ear to check and see if I'm even still connected. "Hello?"
And then she laughs. Not just a chuckle, but a real, long, loud laugh. She sounds amused, which I'm sure to a point she is but I know better than to assume we'd sit here and laugh together. "Are you kidding me?" she asks.
"Er, no?" I respond, because it was obviously a rhetorical question but I had nothing else to say instead. "Listen, I know it's been a while-"
"A while?" she asks, her voice dry. "A while is a month or two, not six years. I really thought that whole wife deal was a prank call."
I'm not sure what to say, because it should have been a prank call, in comparison to the truth, it would have been better were it a prank call. But in my head, Amber was still ten years old in her polka dot rain boots. She didn't need lengthy explanations or have bitter feelings. I obviously missed that transition.
"So it's true then, huh?" She sounds like she'd pondering the idea herself, one of having her big brother married. It would be an easier image to process had I shown any inclination toward relationships and families when she'd last seen me. "And what? You actually expect me and mom to hop on a plane tomorrow and come visit you and your happy little family for Christmas?"
"Not tomorrow, exactly." I sigh, I know I shouldn't ask her to come, and especially not my mom, in fact, I should be asking them not to come. Izzie wanted this though, and I couldn't lie, after sitting around talking about my messed up family for a night I had the first, minimal desire to see them in a pretty long time. I remembered my blue eyed, curly haired little sister, hardened too early by the crap in our lives but still somehow happy. I never did get that growing up. How our parents could be screaming and fighting in the other with dad falling over drunk and mom hysterical crying, and she would just go on playing, blocking everything out around her. It was freaking weird. "More like on the 17th."
"Six years, Alex," is her response. It's not nice to hear. I'd always intended to go back. First it was supposed to be on breaks from school but I was busy studying. Next I just needed to get through my internship and then I'd take some time off and go visit. Then I entered my residency and I realized just how important those years were. I was sure once I got a fellowship as an attending somewhere there'd be some other excuse too. That kid's too sick for me to leave right now, or Izzie was too sick to travel. I could always find a reason, and I still kind of wanted to have them. I didn't want to face the mother who abandoned me anymore than I wanted to face the guilt of being the one to abandon my mother as well as my sister. "I haven't even had a phone conversation with you in two."
"I know," I admit. "Six years is better than seven though, isn't it?" I remember Izzie's silver lining moment from a few mornings ago. I didn't know if it would really apply here though.
"I don't know if Mom should travel," she says quietly, like our mom might be in the next room and could overhear. "Why don't you just come home?" Her voice is small and sad, like the ten year old asking me not to move away and go to college. It was amazing how quick the edge vanished entirely from her tone.
I suddenly wanted to, if for no other reason than to take care of Amber for a little while. I'd grown up resenting the responsibilities of a family being thrust upon me, and now I'd done the same thing to her. "I can't," I answer, which sounds pretty cheap. "Izzie, she can't travel."
"You know how Mom can get on planes though." I did. I'd been there when we'd flown to Illinois for my father's burial eight years ago. She'd made it halfway through with simple muttering and glancing around before she lost it all together and screamed for the remainder of the ride. Amber had been six. That time she wasn't able to block it out.
"I can send her something to take before," I suggest. I didn't know why I was advocating it so much, them coming and all. I started to question when it stopped being for Izzie and started being something I wanted, because after talking to my sister for the first time in two years, it was something I did want, sorta.
"Why?" is her question, all open to possibilities and right and wrong answers. It wasn't the sort of question I answered well. Even Izzie knew not to ask me "why?" too often. I didn't always get why, just went with it. It worked pretty well most of the time.
"Just 'cause," I answer vaguely. "It's Christmas, or whatever." Izzie would have the right answer to that. She would know why they should come and why I should want them to. I wondered if it would be cheating if I asked her.
"What about Aaron?"
"He didn't answer my call," I lie, because I wasn't ready for that much yet. "I need to ask you something important though, Amber."
"Yeah?" she asks, not really sounding like she considered my claim legitimate.
"Can Mom handle this?" I wasn't bringing her here, to my house and wife, only for her to be admitted over Christmas. I didn't know if I could still handle the episodes like I'd had when I was younger. I had been an expert then, as she had them very often and I became the only one able to calm her down. I wasn't good enough to take back from foster care though, apparently.
"Traveling?" she asks, and I want that to be the big issue, that she had to travel, and get on a plane and stay in an unfamiliar place. I wish that that could be my biggest concern. It wasn't though, because I didn't know if she could handle how different everything was, or the fact that I was married to an obviously sick woman. Izzie had more fire in her than most healthy people, but she was still sick, with advanced, dangerous cancer. There were days even I wasn't sure I could handle it.
"Yeah," I say instead. "Traveling." Because I didn't want to explain over the phone that she was sick. God knows why, but it didn't seem right to me.
"I think. Can you?" she asks, and that's the real question I guess. I had a hard time getting out of bed in the morning, or leaving my wife for the day. How would I handle it if Mom had one of her episodes or Izzie got a bad prognosis right in the middle? Things went wrong, shit happens, but it was time I saw my family, or whatever they were, and so it's with that I answer as confidently as I can.
"Yeah, I can handle it."
12:57 PM
"That's where Dr. Shepherd will then place the shunt in order to flush out all the extra fluid." I'm sitting in a patient's room, twelve year old Mark Miller, with his mom and dad, trying to explain the procedure the son had scheduled in a few hours today. I glance outside the room and find Izzie looking back at me. I try to keep my heart from jumping into my throat as she waves and smiles at me. If anything were seriously wrong she wouldn't be standing there right now, would she? At least, that's the reasoning I give. I swear to god if Denny was hanging around again...
"Is it gonna hurt?" the boy asks, fiddling with his Nintendo system.
"Well yeah," I answer truthfully. "But the good part about being in the hospital is we can give you all the good drugs so you won't even feel your head anymore."
"Cool!" the kid exclaims, obviously excited for some, phantom head experience or whatever. "Can I keep a piece of my brain?" he asks next and his dad rolls his eyes.
"Don't ask stupid questions, Mark." The son retaliates in a short glare toward his father before looking back to me. Kids did like to ask to keep stuff. This was hardly anything new.
"I'm afraid you kind of need to keep your brain in your head," I tell him and stand, needing to get out of there and to Izzie who was still staring expectantly at me. "Someone will be in around three to start getting you prepped for surgery. Did you have anymore questions?" I ask Mark directly before addressing the parents, just like I'd seen Dr. Robins do. It helped with keeping them involved and calm.
"I think we're all set," the father says before anyone else has a chance to speak. No one says otherwise though, and I had a wife waiting for me not too far away so I scribble a note in his chart about fluids and then walk out to Izzie.
"Are you okay?" I ask immediately. It was easy to tell just how much some sleep from earlier had helped. Her eyes had lost their red tint but her face was still a pale shade. It commonly was these days, though. I had momentary thought of if her dreams from earlier could be an indication of returning hallucinations and my stomach sunk at the thought. If the chemo wasn't work there wasn't much more that could be done. You can only filet her open so many times before something became inoperable. The oncologist had said everything was okay though, she was supposed to be-
"Alex!" she yells, looking between irritated and confused with me. "I just came by with lunch from Joe's." Her voice is cheery and upbeat as she holds up her bag in example. I could tell she wasn't really herself by the fake chirp to her voice. Did she have something to tell me maybe? "I'm fine," she accentuates the last word heavily, taking my hand and placing it on her forehead. It was kind of clammy but not at all hot. "See?"
I take my hand away and kiss her. "You're tired," I point out and she shrugs.
"But also hungry," she says with a smile and a suggestive glint in her eye. "And that's why you, should come eat with me."
"Of course," I say, knowing my patients could make it a half hour without me. None of my cases were emergent today, all of them were regular, scheduled surgeries. I was in peds again, having been requested by Dr. Robins for the third time, and I was pretty grateful for the easy day I'd been given because of it. "You get something you won't upchuck today?"
She curls her nose up in memory of yesterday's incident. I wish I could say it was something we weren't used to, but it definitely was. Still, I'd hate to be puking my guts out for a week every month. "I'd hope not," she answers with a shake of her head. "We can decorate the tree tonight, right?" We enter the elevator, pressing the button to go down to the cafeteria. She leans against the wall as it begins to descend.
"If you want, sure," I shrug my shoulders, rather indifferent of the idea. I'd just need to make it home at some point in order to do that. I couldn't remember the last time I'd set a tree up and put decorations all over it. My mom used to attempt to make some sort of tree every year, but it generally failed due to it being three feet tall and my dad having stuck a beer bottle in place of the star one year. I think eventually she just gave up, especially as she got sicker. I couldn't remember if Amber had ever had a Christmas tree.
"I called my mom," she says as we exit the elevator and walk the short distance to the cafeteria. I hold the door open for her as she enters and walks to the back of the room with our bag of food. She sits on one side of the booth and I take the other as she begins unpacking the bags. "She's sending over some of my ornaments."
"I don't get it..." I say, taking the cheeseburger that was clearly mine and beginning to devour it. It was the first time I'd eaten all day. I never made it up early enough to eat breakfast anymore. I had this annoying tendency to get distracted. Usually by a certain woman who often lay in my bed. I laugh slightly as Izzie pulls out our own, new cutlery instead of whatever Joe probably had. I look up to say something but decide against it as I see a very condescending, "I told you so" look directed at me. So I just take the fork and shut up.
"Some of my special ornaments from when I was a kid," she tries to clarify for me. "Like baby ornaments and stuff? I've just never gotten around to asking her until now."
"There are baby ornaments?" I ask, mildly disdainful. Was it really necessary? I was kind of glad my family hadn't bothered with crap like that. I wouldn't say so to Izzie though, knowing her there was some weird sentimental value to them.
"You know, like "Baby's First Christmas"? I used to get the new barbie ones every year too." I try really hard to suppress my eyebrow raise and just nod kindly instead. I focus on my burger instead of her love of ornaments. I loved her, I really did, but this was one of those things I just knew I wasn't going to be getting.
She rubs at her eye, suppressing a yawn as she picks around a rather wilted looking salad. I wouldn't want to eat that even if my stomach felt good, let alone if it was unsteady. "Maybe you should have Bailey look at you," I say warily. She didn't look herself, better than this morning when I'd seen her, but still not herself. She shakes her head though, immediately denying my suggestion. "At least take a nap or something."
"I just need to shower," she deflects as she takes a bite of her unattractive lettuce. "Do you think you'll be home early again?" We were residents, we hardly ever got home early. Last night had been a deal between me and O'Malley as I handed him my craniotomy in exchange of going home early. I didn't think I could swing it again, or even that I necessarily should go and try. She had a hopeful look in her eyes though, like she knew the answer but was hoping her Christmas magic might be able to change it.
I sigh, pretty much entirely unable to just ignore that look. Especially when I knew she felt so bad and wasn't right across the hall from me like she usually was when she felt crappy. I hated feeling like I'd stranded her as I went off and lived my life like usual at Seattle Grace. Call it a conscience, survivor's guilt, love, whatever label you wanted to stick on it didn't really matter. I just knew it affected me every morning as I left and throughout the day whenever she crossed my mind. "I can try," I answer. My last surgery of the day was scheduled at five, for just a basic bowel obstruction. Nothing that would take more than a couple hours at most. If I could just hand my nightly rounds off to someone I'd be free to leave after that. I might be able to swing it if I just played the cancer card on someone.
"Great," she says and smiles brightly. It wasn't her usual smile though, lacking the general vividness that she commonly carried around in her.
I watched her worriedly, my burger now less interesting than before. "Bad day?" I ask simply, and she gives me this small, sad smile that quickly confirms it. "Can I do anything?"
"No," she answers simply as she gives up on fake eating her salad and instead twiddles with her engagement ring. I cringed at the look of it. I could hardly let her wear that thing for much longer. I'd gotten it out of a gumball machines for Christ's sake. She needed something proper. Even my mother had a legitimate ring. What kind of husband would the two of them see me as with that crap on her finger? "Except help me decorate the tree when you get home later."
My pager begins to beep, a 911 flashing across the screen for Mark. "Damn it," I mutter, knowing I'd probably get in there to find the kid seizing. I quickly toss my trash back in the paper bag and kiss the top of Izzie's head. "I'll be home later tonight," I promise as I begin to run toward the doors. "Call me if you need anything!" I yell as an afterthought, probably garnering the attention of many others in the room.
I run, skipping the elevator and taking the stairs two at a time as I sprint toward his room. I burst out in the peds hallway, twisting around the smaller patients as necessary as I continued to run toward his room. I can hear the beeping of the machine as I approach and waste no time in assessing. He was obviously seizing, his entire body writhing and his pupils rolled to the back of his head.
"He's tachycardic!" a nurse shouts as she holds him on his side. His heart rate just keeps increasing, and I know we only have moments before he flat lines out.
"Someone page Shepherd!" I call out just as the kid ceases his violent spasms and falls still. "V-fib, someone get me a crash cart!" I begin compression, not wasting anytime as the paddles are being prepared. Someone hold them out to me and I rub the gel between them. "Charge to 200," I command as I set them in place and yell the customary "Clear!"
"What happened?" Arizona questions as she comes running into the room, stethoscope falling from her neck as she breathes heavily.
"He needs to get to an OR now. The pressure's too much on his brain. His right pupil's blown already," I report as I nod to the nurse to charge again, this time to 300. "Clear!" I hold my breath for a second until his heart rate returns, slow but present.
"OR 2 is open, Dr. Karev," an intern says and I nod in his general direction.
"Tell them we're coming up," I instruct as I pull up the bars on the bed and start to roll it, other people following my lead and helping me out. "Any word on Shepherd?"
"Right here," he says and follows as we rush to an OR, ready to go save this boy's life.
2:38 PM
"Would you like to drill the burr holes, Dr. Karev?" Shepherd asks me as he holds out the drill. I take it cautiously, holding it in my hand like I'd done a thousand times in the skills lab. I wasn't a neuro guy. I knew that from the get go, but it didn't mean the accomplishments of neuro surgery weren't terrifying and rewarding anyhow. "Just like that, perfect."
I line the drill up with the black dot, not having time for hesitation as I begin to drill. The whirring was unnerving as I listened to the bone crack apart. I feel the release as I break all the way through and pull back.
"Very good," he praises as I hand the drill over to the technician. I breathe a sigh of relief, grateful I didn't freeze right in the middle of drilling. It'd be just the sort of thing I would end up doing, screwing it all up because the pressure crushed me like a brick wall. It didn't matter now though, I'd done it and done it well. I sometimes forgot I wasn't a total failure, here was my reminder as blood leaked from the hole in this boy's skull.
"Ready to give him a more permanent fix?" he asks as he hands me another tool and we set to work, installing the shunt as originally planned.
3:32 PM
"I got paged?" I question as I walk into Hannah's room, who was still in the pediatric oncology unit. I hardly could see where I, a surgical resident, would be playing a roll unless more tumors needed resection. Considering there was no one but the thirteen year old girl and a nurse sitting there, I doubted that was the case though.
"The patient was asking for you," Nurse Mary answers, handing me her chart. "Shouldn't have made friends," she mutters as she exits the room.
"Look, Hannah," I start, looking from my watch and back to her, who appeared perfectly healthy. Well, as healthy as any thirteen year old cancer patient could appear.
"I know what you're going to say," she says, and holds up a hand to stop me. "You're busy, I'm not your problem any more, page your actual doctor, right?"
"I mean, kinda. I do have a job you know?" I resign though, sitting myself down in the armchair next to her bed. It wasn't like I hadn't done this hundreds of times before. Only, that had been my wife.
"Oh, you know I'm your favorite patient." She smiles at me, raising her eyebrows as if to provoke a positive answer.
"Technically, you're not my patient at all," I point out as I prop my feet up on her bed. I check my phone, something I only really paid attention to when Izzie was at home instead of in the hospital. No missed calls.
"Exactly, so I'm your favorite...non-patient." I roll my eyes, staring her down to get out of her whatever she wanted to say. "Let's do our sharing thing," she suggests.
"Uh-uh, I'm done explaining my life to a thirteen year old." I hardly was about to talk to her on matters like lack of sex and my wife's seeming secret keeping.
"I'll go first," she prompts in a singsong voice. "Please?"
"Shoot," I relent. "You have thirty minutes."
"Okay, so here's the deal," she says, pulling herself into a sitting position as opposed to laying slumped against her pillows. I'd gathered that she liked talking, a lot. Reminded me of someone else I knew. "I'm new to Seattle, like bright and shiny new, and I was in school for a total of two weeks, two freaking weeks, before ending up here. And even then I was just the new, freaky cancer kid. Hardly giving prime opportunity to make friends to talk to. And I know, I know, you're past the stage of trifling teen problems, but I'm so...bored." She finally finishes, her hands laying to rest after their use of expressive communication.
"So I'm what now? Your BFF?" I ask, a sneer undoubtedly on my face.
"Oh, definitely," she answers in a joking tone. "Look on the bright side, you can get a matching necklace now. Good birthday present opportunity considering I'll be fourteen in a few days." I exhale heavily, knowing what part came next. "Okay, your turn."
"My mom and sister are coming for Christmas," I say, going with a safer PG option. I'd stay away from the abusive sob story and stick to more, trivial, issues for the sake of the kid. No need to scar her.
"And you totally can't stand them, is that it?" She pulls forward her tray, picking up one of the cookies I'd given her earlier and nibbling on it.
"Something to that effect, yeah." I didn't actually know, now that I thought about it. The last I'd really talked to my sister she still watched Barbie movies and wore candy necklaces. For all I knew she could be some punk ass kid I couldn't stand. "My wife thought it'd be a good idea to 'surprise me' with their visit."
She laughs in response. "What'd you do to deserve that?"
"I wish I knew," I answer. "Really she was trying to do me a favor, feeling guilty over the whole, deadly cancer deal."
"It does instill an interesting guilt complex."
Her mother walks in then, looking as tired as I felt most days. She gives Hannah a weak smile and then the same to me. I stand as she walks in, I'm sure this was usually her seat. "It's lovely to see you Dr. Karev," she says and actually gives me a hug in greeting. It was weird. "How nice of you to still take an interest in Hannah's case."
"She's good company," I say, not about to tattle on her that she'd called me here myself. "I might have to stop by another day." I pat her on the shoulder and then glance at my watch again. "I have to go prep a patient for surgery, but I'll see you around." She smiles and waves as I go, walking at warp speed to try and make up for the time lost in conversation.
7:34 PM
Yang was the only left here for the night, of course. Meredith had run off with Shepherd for some early dinner and I hadn't seen O'Malley for hours. Not that I exactly looked for the guy, but he generally showed up every once in a while across my path throughout the day. I knew the odds of getting Cristina Yang, of all people, to finish my nightly rounds in peds were about as likely as being hit by an asteroid at the same second I had won the lottery. Plus, I didn't know if I wanted to submit my kids to that sort of torture.
I wasn't going to bother even asking, for that very reason, but then I remember Izzie's exhausted expression and hopeful glimmer at the idea of me being home before she was ready to crash into bed. It was tiring, trying to be two places and two people all at the same time, but I kept doing it. Another week and she'd be much stronger, plus there was only six more days before I was off for days at a time. I held onto that, just as I did every time exhaustion seemed to be gripping me and guilt pulling me under.
"Yang," I say as I approach the severe surgeon. She gives me a kind of glare, but at the same time manages to utterly ignore me, somehow.
"What?" she asks impatiently as she scribbles on the chart in her arms. "Did you forget how to do an IV or something?"
"Haha," I answer even though I'm pretty sure she didn't hear anything as she wrote furiously. "I wanted a favor." She looks at me now, eyebrows raised in surprise for a brief second before she bursts into laughter like I'd just told a joke. Great, this was going to go well. "I gave you enough surgeries in the past few days to earn this, I'd think."
"You gave me surgeries to take care of your precious wife," she calls me out, well aware that I hadn't given her the surgeries because I was sitting around trying to think of good deeds to do and considered Cristina and her need for all things surgical.
"Whatever," I say, giving up as I go to walk away from her, deciding it was entirely not worth the effort.
She makes this odd scoffing noise that causes me to turn around in question. "What do you want?" she asks, highly begrudgingly. "And I'm not doing any rectal exams."
"I just need someone to do my night rounds for me. I only have three patients." I hold my charts out hopefully. There wasn't much that even had to be done for them. It was time consuming, going from one room to the next, looking over charts and applying the proper dosage for medicine as well as any other service they might need. I was already an hour later than I had wanted to be with getting home. Doing all of that would have made me at least another hour late, probably more.
"Fine," she says and snatches the charts from my hand. "But this is the only time I'm doing this and you better not mention it to anyone else," she threatens and I nod complacently.
"Thanks, Cristina," I say sincerely. She rolls her eyes and walks away, ignoring anything else I might have had to say. I waste no time, running to the locker room and trading out my scrubs for my regular clothes and grabbing my other things. I check my phone for the hundredth time, still thinking Izzie might have called and I missed it. I wasn't sure if a lack of contact from her was a good sign or not. In one way it meant she wasn't feeling bad enough to call me for help, but from a different perspective it could also mean that she was just too sick or too stubborn to call me back. It's for that reason that I might mildly speed on my way home.
8:02 PM
"Iz?" I call out as I walk through the door.
"In the kitchen!" she shouts. I walk in to find her in the same position I had two nights ago. "You're late," she comments, sticking her cheek out slightly for me to kiss as she lays out cookies in the shapes of reindeer and snowmen on a cookie sheet in order to be baked.
"You're baking," I reply, taking one look at her to determine that she was completely fooling herself if she thought she had any energy. "Why are you baking?"
"I was sitting around," she begins as she opens the oven and pulls out two trays of finished molasses cookies and slides in two different ones of sugar cookies. "Feeling useless as usual, when I realized, I'm an excellent baker."
"You knew that already," I point out as I try to grab one of the molasses, getting my hand swatted away.
"True, but I forgot that I could feed them to hand out Christmas cheer where they may not be enough," she suggests with an eyebrow raise, obviously waiting for me to fill the rest in.
"Er, Africa?" She rolls her eyes, batting my hand away again as I tried to take another cookie.
"The hospital, Alex," she answers like I should have known all along. "I'm going to take them to the pediatrics unit and hand them out to cheer some of the kids up. Who doesn't love holiday cookies and cupcakes?" She takes her pot holder and smacks me across the head as I try one more time to take a cookie. "You're going to burn your hand. Here," she says, finally relenting and handing me one of the cooled cookies. "You can help me hand them out, if you want."
"No thanks," I answer through a mouth full of cookie. "It's kind of weird for a twenty seven year old man to be a candy striper."
"Not candy stripers," she corrects. "Elves."
"Oh well in that case," I answer sarcastically, but a little to indulged in my cookie to be too rude in response. "You feed them, I'll cut them open."
"What a team," she replies, smiling broadly. "Like...Batman and Robin."
"Sure, whatever you say." I flip through the mail sitting on the counter as she returns to her baking. My eyes land on a red envelope, addressed to me and Izzie, from an unfamiliar address. I didn't know a single person in Kansas. I begin opening it when I hear running water, I turn to find Izzie beginning to wash the dishes. "I got it," I say, tossing the letter back on the counter for later.
"I can do it," she insists, refusing to budge as I stood closely next to her.
"Or, you can go pull out the decorations that we need to start the tree," I entice, knowing they mostly sat in plastic Target bags in our bedroom. Although, she did have some impulse ornaments she'd gotten at Kohl's laying around somewhere. That gets her to go, instructing me on cookie removal before she fully leaves the kitchen to walk down the hallway. It was going to be a long night.
10:57 PM
I climb into bed after having just gotten out of the shower, and cautiously check to see if she's still awake before pulling her to me. "Mm," she murmurs, reaching up and kissing all along my jaw line. "Your after shave smells good. Not that I'm sure I understand why you're shaving at night."
"Someone's developed a tendency to keep me in bed in the morning," I explain, kissing her temple as she lays her head back down.
"Oh really, who's that?" she questions with a smile. I roll my eyes and she smiles more brightly. The light her eyes was so very tired though. She almost looked like a zombie with her weary, bloodshot eyes. Were it not for the smile she might be mildly frightening.
"Oh, some girl I met at work." I go along for her sake, really just hoping she'd fall asleep while we went back and forth. I knew I wouldn't be sleeping until she was tonight.
"Is your mom going to hate me?" she asks out of the blue. I sigh, not sure if I really wanted to answer that or not.
"She won't hate you," I say honestly. Because, she wouldn't. She would worry, and mutter to herself, and maybe even have an angry outburst, but she wouldn't hate Izzie. How many people in the world even could hate Izzie? She was far too consistently pleasant. It was kind of annoying the rest of us.
"But?" She knows there's more to it.
"But she's sick, and she doesn't process things well, and I haven't seen her in six years. There's the but."
She sighs, kissing a bare spot on the top of my chest. "I had a daughter," she says quietly, almost so quietly I'm not sure I hear her. "When I was fifteen, I had a daughter."
"Okay," I answer calmly. We all had our skeletons in the closet, right? Mine was my crazy messed up family. Her's was a clandestine kid. It happens.
"I put her up for adoption, which probably seems selfish, and irresponsible, and-"
"Iz, that makes total sense," I interrupt before she can go on any longer. "This is coming from a guy who was born to an eighteen year old woman who married the father out of financial obligation. I grew up with no money and in a messed up place. You did the right damn thing."
"Really?" she asks. It's like she knows it, she really does, but just like we do with so much shit in our lives, she was second guessing herself. I guess that was a pretty life altering thing that you might rethink from time to time. Couldn't blame her. "She was adopted by this really nice couple. They named her Hannah. George said she has my eyes."
"George," I ask. "How the hell does George know what she looks like."
"Oh," she says simply. "About two years ago her parents came to me, all the way from California Hannah had leukemia, and they needed some bone marrow for a transplant. They said I was their best hope," she shrugs her shoulders like it's this common thing. It was funny how much she was alike to my patient now. The time line was pretty exact. There were hundreds of bone marrow transplants done every week. It was hardly remarkable. "She, um, she didn't want anything to do with me," Izzie mutters quietly and I feel water falling onto my tank top. "And it's just, her birthday is in a few days, she's gonna be fourteen and I..."
My mind cancels out anything Izzie says after that. Her name was Hannah, she has leukemia and had a bone marrow transplant two years ago and had lived in California then. Also, her birthday was in a few days. The likenesses were getting to be too much, the similarities becoming conclusive evidence of something I would have never considered before. I mean sure, their eyes were the same, but how many people in the world had expressive brown eyes? Then there was the way she talked with her hands, how she seemed to love food, it was all adding up to a pretty basic, nauseating conclusion.
My patient of the last week and a half, the girl who had today deemed me her best friend, was actually the daughter my wife had given up for adoption fourteen years ago. "Who adopted her?" I ask out of the blue.
"Um, Rachel and Harry Roberts?" she says it like a question, her tired eyes looking up at me strangely.
Damn it, I think to myself because I can't say anything. Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. Where did I go from here? Did I tell her? Could I tell her? I doubted it would be breaking any doctor/patient confidentiality issues. But would Izzie be able to handle it? What if she wanted to try and talk to her again, only to be shot down for the second time? And how would she feel about knowing her kid was fighting the same disease she was? What did I do? This time it wasn't just a situation I didn't know how to handle. I hardly doubted anyone would know the protocol for this one.
"Alex?" Izzie asks. I'm sure I'd essentially just missed the second half of her soul bearing, and, had I not been so freaked out at the moment, I'd feel worse about it.
"I'm sorry, Iz," I say and kiss the top of her head. "I'm literally falling asleep here. Do you mind if we talk in the morning?"
"Yeah, sure." She sounds sad or disappointed as she says it, which makes me feel guilty, but my mind needed time to process things before I went and blurted anything out. Maybe I could talk to someone, get some advice. Girls did it all the time, I could too. My mind reeled at the thought that all this time I'd actually been treating Izzie's long lost daughter, the one she gave up but still wanted. How do you explain that? It was hard enough believing it in the first place.
I sigh as Izzie wraps herself around me, kind of just wanting to get up and be alone in order to process, but knowing she needed me here if she was ever going to sleep. So I try and relax as I hold her to me, knowing with a high amount of certainty that I wouldn't be sleeping tonight.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I know I'm late with updating again, but keep in mind that it's the Christmas season for more than just Izzie and Alex, and I'm pretty busy myself. So, I need another night of forgiveness and tomorrow I'll be sure to upload earlier. Your silver lining is that you got a longer update since I did some last minute revisions at one in the morning.
Now, some of you have left reviews asking about Hannah, and George as well. I don't want to give my story away but, as you can see, they aren't just minimal plot points and will come to fully develop over time. Trust me, they aren't just going to disappear even if they do seem to only get minor mentions. As you can see, the Hannah plot line is carrying on. However, the outcome of it may not be as some of you envision. Remember, this is a girl who wanted nothing to do with Izzie the first time around.
Alright, that's all I think. Thank you to everyone who has reviewed. You all earn some of Izzie's home baked cookies. I'm sorry I'm not really replying to many of you right now, but I'm sure you prefer I just work at this instead. I'll see you tomorrow!