I AM SO TERRIBLY SORRY. It's been a rough time for me, but I've had time to write a lot during this summer, so… Here you go !

I was so glad that everything went well that morning with Mateo's surgery. I don't think I've ever felt as nervous as I was with him. It's weird to think that I've been doing this job for at least ten years now and some cases can still make me shiver this way. I believe it was because of who he is, though.. I don't think a simple splenectomy can make me tremble and fear for a little child's life.

I felt genuinely scared.

I couldn't lose him. I couldn't.

"So, about your position here." Owen began. "I obviously cannot give you your hold benefits, as you might imagine."

I was aware that he wasn't going to give me my old job back and I also didn't want to take it away from Alex. "Yes, of course. I wasn't asking for my old job.. I would never feel okay with myself by taking it away from Alex."

"Well, then if you agree, I'll have you back full time from tomorrow morning !" He smiled at me, a genuine smile, that made me feel somehow back into this huge family.

"That'd be great, thank you." I smiled back at him and got up.

I left Owen's office and slowly walked to the cafeteria, to have lunch. I didn't want to bother neither Callie nor Mateo, but the nurses knew that they had to page me the moment he woke up. I ate a sandwich by myself, while thinking about Mateo's surgery. Everything looked good, it was a severe case of JMML, but I was positive we'd find a way to actually help him. I felt so sorry for Callie, having to go through her son's illness by herself, while raising two other kids.. I knew that Mark was there for her, but when you're suffering for something yourself, it's not always easy to help other people. I silently promised both myself and Callie that I was never going to leave again and that I was going to fight for her.

I was going to fight for us.

My pager went off and woke me from my thoughts, I quickly got up and ran upstairs, to the peds ward.

"The kid's awake." A nurse told me.

I nodded, thanked her and walked to Mateo's room. I stood on the door for a couple of seconds, watching Callie hold his hand while crying. I opened the door, trying not to startle Mateo.

"Hey." I said, softly. Callie turned around and smiled at me through the tears. "How is it going ?"

I looked at Mateo's vitals and tried talking to him, but he wasn't very responsive. He looked extremely tired, but I perfectly knew that it was normal to be exhausted.

"Hi, handsome." I said. I handed him the little stuffed bear that I had in my pocket, but he wouldn't take it. "Are you tired ?"

He nodded and tried smiling at me. "It's okay, don't worry. You can sleep for the whole day if you feel like it."

He finally managed to smile at me and I felt great. I turned to Callie, who was looking apprehensively at us. "Everything looks good, don't worry about tiredness. I'll see him back in a couple of hours and I think I'll have the compatibility results back by then."

She nodded and thanked me.

"I'll see you later, then." I said. Mateo grabbed my hand and I immediately turned back to him

"Stay ?" He whispered and it was almost impossible for me to hear him.

"I can stay here if you want me to." I said. He nodded, so I sat next to his bed, in front of Callie. After a couple of minutes, he went back to sleep and Callie went back to crying.

"Hey, hey ,hey. There's no need to worry now !" I said, softly. I didn't want to wake Mateo up, but I also wanted to take care of Callie.

"How can you tell ?" Her voice was broken and it felt like a thousand blades through my chest. "This one was like the first step of a hundred. It went well, but what if the other 99 are a failure ? What if we can't find a match for the bone marrow transplant ? What if we do find one, but it's not enough ? What if he goes in remission and then relapses ? What are the statistics ? Is there actually a chance for him to survive this ?" She broke down right in front of me and got up and left the room. I immediately followed her into the on-call room, where she sat on the floor and started crying so hard I thought her eyes were going to explode. I sat next to her and put my arm around her shoulders, trying to hold her as tight as I possibly could.

"I can't tell you that everything's going to be alright and I can't even tell you that there's a 100% rate of survival, because there's not. What I can tell you is that bone marrow transplant is very effective in the treatment of JMML. We're going to find a match and you're going to see Mateo grow up to be the handsome man he deserves to be. You need to remember that Mateo has a twin sister, which makes everything kinda easier. I know that you don't want Emma to feel like she is important to you just because she can save her brother, but she's a smart little kid, I'm sure she'll understand how important she actually is."

For a second, I thought she'd stopped crying. She hadn't, she was only crying in a less violent way. I knew that the actual rate of survival in children with JMML was about 50%, but I wasn't sure how she would have taken it. We stayed in the on-call room for about one hour, then she suddenly got up and wiped away her tears.

"Time to be a mother." She said. "There's no time for me to break down, I need to be my son's strength right now."

I hugged her again. She looked at me for a second and then kissed me. "I'm glad you're here." She said. "Not only because I know that you're the best doctor I could possibly get Mateo, but also because you're being my strength." She kissed me again and I smiled, on the edge of tears.

"I promised myself I would never leave again." I said. "I promised myself I'd fight for you and for us. I… I feel like shit because you had to go through everything on your own, but now I'm here. And I won't ever leave."

"I know you won't. I love you."

When you are a child, you love a lot of things. You love flowers, candies, running, cakes, your parents, your dog, toys… You love everything. Then you grow up and the things you love get fewer and fewer and, sometimes, you feel like you are a stranger to that feeling.
Love.
What is it again ? Can I actually love something ? Or someone ? You are in your lonely, grey apartment thinking about everything that's ever happened to you and you realize that your heart is not like the one you had as a child. You loved everything when you were little, you didn't like stuff. You loved it. When you grow up, you feel like that ability fades away as you get older, it feels almost as if being an adult means not being able to love.
The truth is that when you get older, you love in a deeper way. You don't waste your love on pointless things, but you save it for a small amount of things, that you can love immensely.

That's what I felt in that moment. I felt like six years of knowing how lost I was without her had made me love her even more. I felt like my whole heart belonged to her, I felt like my whole life belonged to her.

"I love you too." I whispered. She grabbed my hand and opened the door. We walked back to Mateo's room, still holding hands. In that moment, I felt like I had regained all her trust. She wasn't trying to hide whatever was going on between us, not anymore. She knew that what we had was never going to go away and she was cherishing it. My life was there, with her, with her kids and I wasn't going to give it up.

We sat in Mateo's room for about a half hour talking about me starting to work there again full time before my pager went off. Mateo was still asleep and I excused myself to go see if they were paging me because of the results. I went down to the lab to get the results myself and I feel immediately relieved when I see that Emma is actually a perfect match for Mateo. I knew that having a twin made everything a little bit easier for Mateo's condition, but there was always that cloud of terror that made me think that we weren't going to find a suitable match for the transplant. When I got back to Mateo's room, I found both Callie and Mark sitting near his bed.

"Emma's a perfect match." I said, before they even noticed that I was there. "We can start with the transplant as soon as he recovers."

Mark and Callie looked at me and then at each other and started crying almost at the same time.

"This is not going to be easy, neither for Mateo, nor for Emma… But I need to be honest here, this is his best chance."

They both nodded and I decided to leave them alone to talk for a while. There was nothing to decide, because not doing it meant basically killing Mateo, but I wanted to give them some space to decide what to tell Emma and how to prepare her. I went looking for Alex, to tell him about my new job and getting to know some of my new patients. I had a huge smile on my face that wasn't going to go away easily.