I wasn't told?!



Two days later, Jesse took Ally to the hospital in the morning.

"Right, you remember Amanda?" Jesse asked as they walked into the lobby.

"Yeah," Ally replied. "She works here?"

"She's a top pathologist here," Jesse informed her.

"What's a pathologist?" Ally asked.

"Oh, well," Jesse hesitated. "A pathologist is someone who finds out how people died."

"So we're gonna see how Dad died?"

"Hopefully, if Amanda isn't busy," Jesse replied.

Jesse got to the outside of Amanda's lab, and led her inside. "Okay Ally, I gotta go now. Find me later, when you're done, okay?"

"Sure," Ally replied, waving at him as he left.

Amanda came over to Ally. "Good morning, Ally," she greeted. "How are you?"

"I'm fine thank you, Amanda," Ally replied.

"Good. What can I do for you?" Amanda already knew the answer, because she had received a phone call from Jesse the previous day. She still asked anyway, to make sure Ally was sure.

"I think that maybe my father needs to be checked out again," Ally replied.

"Okay Ally," Amanda said. "I'll just make a couple of calls, and I'll get it checked out."

Almost an hour later, Amanda found Ally talking to a child in the paediatrics unit.

"Ally," Amanda called softly. Ally looked up, and said goodbye to her new friend.

"Did you find anything?"

"Ally, your father was cremated," Amanda told her.

The young girl's eyes became wide. "Cremated? Someone cremated my father and I wasn't told?!"

"I'm sorry, Ally," Amanda sighed.

"Who arranged for that to happen? And why? I mean, there must have been some kind papers and authorisation for it?"

"Apparently, your father had a brother who arranged it," Amanda explained.

"My father never told me about him having a brother," Ally shot back. She softened before saying, "but then again, he never told me about Jesse until he needed to. He could have had any amount of relatives that I never knew about."

Amanda nodded. "Do you want to go and find Jesse now?"

"Yeah," Ally agreed. She bid farewell to Amanda, and set off on her search in the hospital.

Not much later, Ally passed the door that led to Mark's office. She wondered if he would be in there, and if he would know where Jesse was. She decided to try it, and knocked on the door.

"Come in," a call from inside met her ears.

"Ally, hi," Mark greeted, getting up from his desk. "What brings you here? Does Jesse know you're here?"

"He knows that I am in the hospital, but he doesn't know I am standing on this particular bit of carpet in your office."

Mark laughed, and Ally continued. "I'm actually looking for Jesse. Do you know where he is?"

"He's just gone into surgery," Mark told him. "Could be a while before he comes out of it."

"By gone into surgery, you mean he's doing the surgery, and he's not the one that's laying down on the bed with body organs hanging open, right?" Ally asked hopefully.

"Don't worry," Mark replied, chuckling. "He's the one performing the surgery. It was emergency surgery, so it could be a while before he finishes. Would you like to wait here for him?"

"If it's no bother to you, then I'd like to stay here, thank you."

"Of course it's no problem," Mark told her.

Mark showed her to a couch. She sat down, and gazed around the room.

Mark was going to start a tactful conversation. "You enjoying it here in LA?"

"I haven't seen a lot," Ally admitted, "but what I have seen is great. Better than where I used to live."

"Really?" Mark asked.

"Yeah, really."

"Was it the place or the company?"

"Both, I guess. I saw too much of the place and not enough of the company."

Mark understood, and nodded. "Was your father away that much?"

After a pause, Ally said, "I only really noticed it from when I was eight years old and onwards."

"Why was that?"

Ally swallowed. She had never talked about her mother. It was a subject that rarely came up. When it did, she tried to push it away. Maybe now it was time to open up.

"My mom died when I was eight."

Mark's eyes became sensitive and gentle. "What happened?"

This was hard for Ally, and Mark knew it. "In your own time," he gave her confidence.

Ally wasn't ready. She couldn't tell someone who was near enough a stranger to her. The truth was that she couldn't tell anyone.

"If you don't mind, I'd like it if I could tell Jesse first, before I tell anyone else," Ally stammered.

Mark nodded his head. "Okay, I understand. You don't want to talk about your mom, talk about your father."

"What's to talk about?" Ally asked.

"You tell me."

"I don't think he wanted me around." Ally surprised herself as she said the words. She had always thought it, but she had never admitted it out loud.

"What makes you think that?" Mark asked.

"Well, he never really knew I was around. He was never there. He was always out here and there, doing business with someone or other. There was only one time he noticed me."

"When?"

"When I was doing something bad."

"What bad things did you do?" Mark asked her.

"When I was ten, I took his car."

Mark drew an inward breath. "What happened when he found out?"

"He got very angry, and said that the cops would come to our house and get him. He said that he would be taken to jail because the cops didn't like him."

Mark was beginning to take a disliking Ally's father. "Do you know why the police would have taken your father to jail? Had he done something wrong?"

"Dad had doing things wrong down to a fine art," Ally said. "When I was younger, I didn't notice it as much, but he was always conning and buying and selling illegal stuff. He wasn't too bad at it either."

"Did he teach you any of his illegal trades?" Mark asked.

"Little stuff. He taught me to pick a lock at six years old."

Mark decided to revert back to the original conversation. "So, he only noticed you when you were bad. Did that make you do bad stuff a lot?"

"I wanted him to notice me," Ally replied shamefacedly, knowing that Mark knew the answer.

"So, why is it that you don't do bad stuff anymore, now that you are living with Jesse?"

"Well, Jesse notices me all the time, not just when I'm doing bad stuff."

"Jesse is turning out to be a good father," Mark murmured.

"But really, my father did care about me a bit," Ally said proudly. She explained everything that she had told to Jesse, including that she thought her father's death was foul play. Mark listened intently to all of her words.

"It sounds like we've got quite a mystery on our hands here," Mark responded to Ally's story.

"Yep," Ally agreed. At that moment, there was a knock on the door and Jesse walked in.

"I thought I'd find you here," he grinned. "I'll take you home for lunch now."

Ally stood up to leave and Jesse said to Mark, "thanks for looking after her."

"No problem," Mark replied. "All distractions from paperwork are welcome, especially this particular distraction."

Jesse laughed, and he and Ally said goodbye to the wise doctor.

Jesse escorted Ally to the underground parking lot.

"I know why you've got a lot of respect for Mark Sloan," Ally told Jesse. "He is a great person."

Jesse nodded as he unlocked the car. At that moment, Jesse heard a faint beep. "Did you hear that?"

"What?" Ally asked, stepping down a little way from the car to tie her shoe.

"It sounded like a beep, just as I unlocked the car."

Ally looked up, and from her level on the ground she could see a lot of wires running under the car. Her mind raced. "Jesse!"

"What?" Jesse asked, running over to her, thinking she was hurt. Two seconds later, an explosion rocked the parking lot. Ally and Jesse were thrown by the blast, and landed in a crumpled heap a little way from the burning wreck.

"That," Ally wheezed an answer to the question before blackness overtook and she passed out.















Finally, some action, right? More to come!