A/N: So for those of you that stopped watching Grey's when Alex left, I need to give a little background on Hayes. His wife Abigail died from uterine cancer almost two years before he moved to Seattle. She had a hysterectomy using a morcellator for presumed fibroids that turned out to be cancerous cells. This caused her cancer to spread rapidly. She did clinical trials and in the end had to convince Hayes it was time to stop because he was in denial about how grave her condition was. Just FYI for this.

This is the last chapter where Alex and Jo don't interact with each other for a while :)

The hospital room was mostly dark, the only light filtering in was from the hallway and exterior lights shining softly from the outside. Jo looked at the cards in her hands, taking a couple out and putting them down on the small table, "Give me two."

Link dealt the requested cards mindlessly while looking at his hand, "And I'll take three."

Her eyes narrowed in suspicion, "Stop throwing your hands on purpose, it's annoying."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Jo stared at him for a moment as he tried to hide his guilt before snatching up the discards despite Link's attempt to stop her. "You tossed a king? Let me see your cards."

Link looked at her for a moment before mixing all the cards together with what he had in his hand as Jo glared at him, "Oopsie. Guess we'll just have to deal another hand."

This caused Jo to smile slightly, "I love that you think throwing a poker game will help my feelings."

"It got a smile out of you," this caused Jo to laugh lightly and shake her head. "How are you today? Really?"

Jo sat quietly for a moment, seemingly mesmerized by him shuffling the cards, "How do you wish your parents would have told you they were getting divorced?"

"Woah, Alex's first day back and we're already talking divorce?" He watched as Jo closed her eyes for a moment then seemed to be glaring through his soul as anger flashed in her eyes, "Oh, we're not kidding about that?"

"He didn't fight me on the PCA pump. And I can't help but think it's because he sees that as a sign that I'm more accepting of palliative care. We just…it's not like we were doing great before all this and now…" She sighed deeply looking over at Mattie and feeling herself get emotional, "I get that he has some deep regrets about pushing Abigail too hard and subjecting her to more than she may have needed, but I need him to fight harder for Mattie and to stop fighting me."

"Have you tried talking to him about it?" Link asked pointedly as he put the cards back in the pack. "Maybe having a heart to heart outside of screaming at each other in the therapist's office?"

Jo leaned back in the chair and pulled the throw tighter around her, "When would we do that? I haven't been home in weeks, he doesn't try to see me outside of this room." They sat in silence for a bit before Jo began rubbing her forehead, "I worry so much about Ian. What this is doing to him…what a divorce on top of it all will do to him…" She looked over at Link with tears in her eyes, "It kills me that I can't protect any of them from all of this." She looked at Mattie asleep in the bed, "If this resection doesn't go as smoothly as we are all hoping…"

"It will."

Jo looked back at him with tears now streaming down her face, "I think we both know how this is going to end." She pulled the sleeve of her shirt over her fist to use it to dry her face, "We both know she's in too much pain for it to just be the primary tumor."

"The scans don't show that."

"I don't need scans to tell me what's going on with my baby." She leaned back to rest her head on the back of the chair, "Maybe Mac's been right all along."

"And if he has?"

Jo rubbed her face as she looked over at Mattie, "Then I get to sleep at night knowing I did everything I possibly could to save her." She looked back over at Link, "And Ian, Liam and Austin will know that I fought for her and I hope that makes them sure that I will fight for them just as hard when needed." She rolled her lips in while rubbing her head, a sob escaping, "I don't think I can lose my baby, Link."

He nodded solemnly, "I know." They sat in silence as the clock on the wall slowly ticked off the seconds, "I wish my parents hadn't pretended everything was okay at the end." Link leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs trying his best to answer her question as delicately as he could, "You expect your parents to be honest with you. They were about my cancer, but they weren't about each other."

"They probably weren't purposefully lying." Link raised an eyebrow, wanting her to continue as Jo turned to observe Mattie's vitals, "Mac and I try so hard to support each other. No one else knows what we're going through and we try to be there for each other. But the longer this goes on the more we tear each other down. I just….I do love him, I do. But so much has been said, so many hurtful things that I don't know if we can go back. It's like our whole world we created was just an idealist fantasy for both of us. Like we were playing house with these unresolved and unaddressed traumas just below the surface and now all of this has exposed it all." She ran her hand through her hair and leaned back in the chair, seemingly exhausted at putting her thoughts into words, "Does that make any sense?"

Link nodded, slowly taking in just how deep their issues had become, "It does, but I still think you should talk to him about how you're feeling." Jo hummed in acknowledgement, her eyes heavy. "On that note, how was it seeing Alex face to face?"

Jo sighed, not opening her eyes, "One minute it feels like he never even left and the next I want to rip his eyeballs out and feed them to the rats outside the cafeteria."

"So about as you expected?"

Jo still didn't open her eyes but smiled softly, "Yeah. Close to it I think." Link sat silently for a few moments and when she seemed to have really nodded off, he stood and made his way over to check on Mattie, softly kissing her forehead after approving of her set up. He then went back to Jo and put her phone on the charger before slowly tip-toeing out of the room, more worried for his friend than ever.