APRIL
Given that I had lived alone and paid rent by myself for the past three months, it was a welcome change of pace to have a roommate living with me again. At least, that was what I had thought for about the first four days of having Jackson sharing the apartment with me.
Then the clothes had started appearing.
That's how it had started. A jacket left on the back of the counter, then it was clothes left in the washer for twelve hours – I had slipped them after a while and put them in the dryer for him, thinking that he would be bashful about his forgetfulness and promise to correct the mistake going forward. But instead, the clothes had then been left in the dryer for another twenty-four hours. I hadn't been doing laundry myself but it hadn't gone past my attention. I didn't consider myself to be anal about cleaning, but I did like to maintain a nice environment and keep thins at least mostly straightened. Dishes weren't left in the sink, always put in the dishwasher to be run once it was full. Jackson didn't feel that way, apparently. Maybe it was my fault for not establishing ground rules right off the bat.
A few comments had been made about it but I was almost positive that they were too nice given that he hadn't seemed to pick up on the fact that it was bothering me. Boys will be boys. That's what my mother had always said about my father being a bit messier than she was, and she had put up with it throughout their entire marriage without complaint. I'd never understood then why that it was an excuse and I still didn't know.
Maybe this was why I had always had female roommates, consciously or subconsciously. Women just tended to take better care of their stuff than men did, or at least, had more of a guilty conscious about making other people's spaces messy.
Of course, I knew that enabling him and picking up after him wasn't going to fix the problem. I wanted to be his friend, his best friend, and even if friends helped each other out with that kind of thing… they also helped each other grow as a person. Which meant making sure that they made sure each other was acting like a grown adult and not taking advantage of each other's kindness. I was sure that he wasn't doing it consciously – he wasn't like Nathan. He'd always been a good guy, even if I knew his money occasionally made him oblivious to things.
"Hey, Jackson?" I called out from the living room, refolding the blanket I kept on the back of the couch. I could handle a lot of things. But dirty docks were just a pet peeve.
"What's up?" His voice called out down the hallway.
"Can you come here?" I requested.
There was silence for a moment and I took a deep breath before I could hear him shuffling down the hallway. He was shirtless which caught me off guard and I blinked in surprise, staring at him for a long moment as he waited for me to speak. Jackson was clearly comfortable around me. I certainly wasn't the type to walk around in my underwear for anyone and it always surprised me just a little bit when people were so comfortable with their body. But I guess when you were that attractive, it was probably hard not to be.
"Uh– you left your socks on the floor." I pointed at them crumbled on the floor as I spoke.
"Oh, sorry," Jackson responded nonchalantly as he bent down to pick them up, balling them up in his hand. I stared at him for a few more seconds as I waited for him to say something more.
Before I can help it, I blurt it out. "You're a little messy, you know?"
"Huh?" He stuttered out, blinking in surprise as he turned to look at me.
"You're messy. You leave stuff laying around and dishes in the sink and your clothes in the dryer." It'd only been two weeks living together and I felt guilty that I already had something to complain about. "When you leave stuff on the floor, the cat's going to get to it."
"Oh, sorry," he repeated his previous words. "Guess I got a little too used to living with Sydney."
Something about the words stung and my nose turned up slightly, taking a deep breath and trying to push off the negativity that it stirred up. I'd bumped into her a few times and she seemed perfectly pleasant, always friendly to me. There was nothing wrong with her. It was just a little weird to think that Jackson had been in a relationship with her for a while, lived with her, and then broken it off so… easily.
Maybe it was something that I envied.
Nathan had attempted to talk me a few days ago and I had pushed it off, all too relieved when his pager went off and pulled him into surgery. It was hard to decide how I felt about him cheating on me. The reasons seemed so trivial. Why was everything with men about sex?
But I couldn't keep dragging him on forever. Even though him cheating on me with someone that we both worked with was unfair and had certainly made things uncomfortable, it was unfair to continue dragging things along. I knew what Jackson thought about it. He had made his opinion on Nathan pretty clear from the beginning and he wanted me to break up with him. He thought that I was too good him and it's hard to decide if he was right. Truthfully, he had been surprisingly pushy about it.
The good thing about working as much as our residency required all of us to was that it was somewhat of a good distraction from it. As long as it wasn't putting me in a position where I was stuck with Cristina. She didn't show any remorse and… I wasn't sure whether she had to. After all, it was Nathan's fault more than it was her. But being with her made it hard to try to forget what was going on.
"Solo surgeries today!" If Bailey's words were supposed to show her excitement in the way that it would grab our attention, they don't. Instead, she's staring at all of us with a critical gaze as she handed out our new charts for the day.
"Septal myectomy, yes!" Yang celebrated. I wondered if Nathan was giving her good surgeries intentionally.
"What did you get?" I looked up at Jackson.
"Esophagectomy," he answered. That was a hard one. "What about you?"
"Whatever big trauma comes into the emergency room, apparently." That was all that it said, which meant that I needed to be prepared for anything. I wondered if it meant Hunt had accepted my presence in trauma. "It could be anything."
"Well, that's what you want, right?" Jackson asked and I nodded my head.
Another voice interjected. "Hah!" Alex. "Kepner didn't even get a real surgery."
"Back off, Alex," Izzie spoke. "You got a proctocolectomy. She might end up with the coolest one out of all of us."
A small smile tugged at the corners of my lips at the affirmation offered by the blonde. I didn't know her that well, but she had been kinder to me than anyone else in the group besides Jackson. It was nice to know that maybe I wasn't completely alone among the people that I was working with.
"Why are you all still standing around?" Bailey barked out at us. "You have work to do!"
Everyone scattered in differing directions immediately after her words, heading down to the E.R. with my assignment in mind. There was no way for me to prepare for surgery like the others would get to, but that was the point of being a trauma surgeon. I didn't get the luxury of sitting back and planning out what I was going to do. I had to think and act fast, I had to be the best. Otherwise, I wasn't going to be cut out for it. Keeping up for the past two weeks had been manageable but this was going to be the make it or break it kind of chance. I couldn't screw it up.
When chaos was brought in by paramedics, I'm prepared as I can be. It was an MVC, a family and a drunk driver rolling in. I'm a little grateful that it's the dad that I have to work on and not the cause of the accident. It makes it easier to pray for him as I scrub into surgery.
Blood was everywhere, no incisions necessary. There was damage both to the kidneys and the upper intestinal tract that had to be fixed, bleeders almost everywhere. Unit after unit of blood had to be hung. It's weird to be in charge and bossing everyone in the operating room around. It doesn't feel natural to me. But the rest of it did. Saving lives just felt right. It was what I was meant to do.
He lives.
It's a mixture of normal, human relief to hear that someone had pulled through a horrendous accident and just a little bit of ego that comes with being a doctor and surgeon in training. Even if I normally wasn't a proud person, it was something that was required for this job. You had to think highly of yourself to hold a human life in yours hands willingly.
"Yes!" I fist pumped to myself once I was clear of the O.R. and scrub room.
"Successful surgery?" Izzie's voice scared me and I jumped. "Sorry," she apologized.
"It's okay," I smiled. "Yeah, it was really good. How did yours go?"
"Good, so far," she answered. "Hopefully there won't be any kind of post-op complications but that's mostly what I have to worry about with mine. I'll have to wait and see."
The smile remained on my lips as I looked back at her, unsure what to say. I still didn't know her that well other than she was by far the nicest of the group. She was the only one who had been kind to me without a reason to be.
"Mer's patient died on the table and Cristina's still in there. Dr. Riggs is observing," she remarked slowly.
Chewing at the flesh on the inside of my cheek, I took a deep breath. Everyone knew now. I wasn't sure if it was Cristina or Jackson or someone else who had allowed the truth to come out and for the humiliation that had quickly followed, but the news was out there. I couldn't be embarrassed that she knew. Or at least, I couldn't act that way. I had to keep it together. I didn't want anyone to think that I was crazy.
"Things are still weird between you and him, huh?" Izzie observed.
"Yeah," I admitted, staring down at the ground. "I don't know what to do. Maybe it would be different if they didn't still work together. I couldn't bring myself to ask if it was a one-time thing."
"It wasn't." She answered. "Which is why I would break up with him. It's not fair to you."
Sighing, I shook my head to myself. "Really?" I asked.
"Yeah," Izzie nodded. "No one deserves to be treated that way by anyone, no matter how good they might seem on the outside. If they can do that to you not just one time, but multiple times… they do not need to be in a relationship with you and you don't need to lower yourself to them." Her words were admittedly similar to Jackson's, but it sounded different from an outside female perspective. "I would have dumped him right off the bat and made sure he knew what he had lost."
"You might be right," I sighed out. "It just feels like a very... I don't know. It makes feel mean." As if him cheating on me hadn't been enough to earn that. "He told me loved me when we fought about it."
"It sounds like he was trying to cover his own ass," she pointed out. "Listen, you seem like a good and nice person… I'm sure you'll do the right thing. Just don't let being a good person get you into more trouble."
"Thanks," I smiled at her.
I watched her blonde ponytail swish from side to side as she walked away from me to get back to work. I needed to do the same yet hesitated, eyes scanning the O.R. board. Karev was already done with his surgery and so was Meredith based on what Izzie had said. That meant it was Jackson and Cristina left inside of the O.R.s still. Cristina with Nathan.
Maybe Izzie was right and I was going too easy on him. I knew that if I told most people about what he had done, they probably would have given similar advice. No one else in the resident group had brought it up beside her and Jackson, probably to prevent too much blatant fighting. They seemed to not mind picking on me that much, but I don't think they wanted an opportunity for me to fight back against them and this would have been a pretty easy one. I sighed. Izzie and Jackson were both right. I was being too nice.
Fate seemed to be pressing forward, one way or another.
The door to OR 1 swung open and I glanced up as Nathan walked out the other side. My gaze dropped to the floor as he looked at me and I let out a sigh. Life was offering me a chance to get it out of the way while it was on my mind and I needed to handle it.
"Hey, Keps," he greeted as he walked up to me.
"Hi." I shifted my weight from side to side. "Can we talk? Uh, privately, please?"
"Of course, c'mere," he nodded and grabbed my arm by the elbow, guiding me over to one of the empty supply rooms just down the hallway. "What's up?" He asked once the door was shut behind me.
My stomach sank.
"I want to break up. I… we're breaking up." Trying not to stutter, I took a deep breath after forcing the words out of my mouth. "You cheated on me and I thought that I could forgive you, but I can't. Not while we're all here, working under the same building, I cannot get past that. So it's over between us." There's not the amount of strength behind the words that I would like there to be, but the words manage to come out all the same. That was the important part. I watched his expression sink as the words settled upon him.
"Seriously?" Nathan questioned as he stepped forward. "After making me wait around, you want to break up?" His brows furrowed. "I thought that just meant that you needed time to get over it."
"I–I thought that too at the beginning, and for that, I'm sorry." The apology came out with a stutter and I cringed internally, taking a step back and reaching for the knob on the door. I didn't want this to be a long conversation. I didn't know how to make it one other than just… saying it. "But it's over."
"April–" he grabbed my arm as I tried to step out of the room and I turned back to face him.
"Wha–" I don't get a chance to get my question out.
Lips pressed against mine and I tensed in surprise. Nathan had bent down to meet me before I could run away from him and his hand cupped my face to hold me in place. I didn't return the kiss, but I was too stunned to pull away from his initially. His mouth assaulted mine for a moment longer before I placed my hands on his chest and tried to push him away from me with little success.
"Hey!"
Jackson's loud shout carried down the hallway and turned heads from everyone.
"Let go of her!" He continued.
There was a small pause before Nathan finally pulled back and away from me to look at Jackson. I had never seen him look so angry before as he stormed toward the both of us with absolute fury in his eyes, daggers directed. Nathan's hands were still on me, one of my waist and one of my face.
Then neither hand is.
Nathan hit the wall seconds after Jackson threw a punch, nailing him square in the jaw. I gasped out, both hands flying up to cover my mouth. The anger was palpable and yet I had never seen that coming. Jackson hadn't struck me as the violent type and yet Nathan hadn't struck me as the type to kiss me without permission, let alone while I was trying to push him away from me. Nothing in the past sixty seconds made any sense to me.
"Jackson!" I screamed at him, unsure what else to do.
"He can't do that to you!" He countered.
Before I had a chance to say anything else, Nathan staggered forward and swung back at Jackson, clipping the bottom of his jaw with his fist. I watched in horror at the quick turn of Jackson's head from the brute force of the hit before pushing myself between the two of them, shoving my hands at their chest and trying to force them apart.
"No, no!" I yelled.
"Dr. Riggs, Dr. Avery!" Dr. Webber's voice boomed down the hallway to command everyone's attention. "What the hell do you two think that you're doing? Starting a damn fight, in my hospital?"
"Riggs was forcing himself upon April." Jackson defended himself quickly.
"I–" Nathan began and Webber cut him off without any hesitation.
"April, is this true?" He asked.
I froze with the spotlight suddenly turned upon me and I could feel my cheeks burning red, hands shaking. All of the confidence that had been gifted to me in the operating room after a successful surgery had disappeared completely, stuck like a deer in headlights. My mouth opened but no noise came out at first.
"April?" Webber questioned again, still staring down at me. "Is it true?"
"I–" Technically, yes. The way Jackson worded it made it sound worse than I thought it really was. "I don't think this is a good place to talk about it." I stuttered.
"April," Jackson stand my name defensively. "Just tell the truth."
"She's my girlfriend," Nathan interrupted. "And this is none of your business, Dr. Avery, it doesn't matter if the two of you are living together now."
"I am not your girlfriend." Something about his words triggered something inside of me that was a little more willing to stand up for myself. "I tried to break up with Dr. Riggs and he didn't respond to it very… fondly." I explained, looking up at Dr. Webber. "And yes, he did kiss me and I tried to push him away. Jackson yelled and stopped him. I'm… I'm sure there's a video that corroborates it." Drifting my gaze along the hallway, I could stop the cameras there. Proof, beyond my word. I knew the world had a bad habit of not listening to its women.
Dr. Webber sighed. "I wish you people would learn to keep your personal lives at home instead of bringing it into the workplace," he complained. "We'll review for the video. For now, I think it's a good idea for all three of you to go home."
"You have got to be kidding me," Nathan complained.
"Not even a little," Webber replied. "All three of you, go home and get here early in the morning. We'll review the tapes today and go over the consequences tomorrow."
Consequences?
"Let's go," Jackson murmured, placing his hand on my shoulder gently.
Nodding my head gently, I walked with Jackson down the hallway and tried to ignore the fact that there were still people staring at us. Really, both of them should have gotten checked out to make sure that there was nothing wrong with either one of them, but I just wanted to get out of there as soon as possible.
His arm was around my shoulders and keeping me close to him, and I don't pull away, holding onto the hand that was resting on my shoulder. So much for hearing about how everyone's solo surgeries got to go, and maybe even getting to brag a little about how successful my own had gone. I had felt so good about it and now I wanted nothing more than to hide away from everyone who worked in the hospital. I had already learned how quickly word could travel around here, and I was sure that this was no exception.
"I should drive. Just in case…" I murmured as we reached his car, holding out my hand for his keys.
"Might still be safer with me behind the wheel," he remarked but handed them over to me.
"That's not funny." I pointed out, shaking my head slightly.
Other than the quiet radio station playing in the background, the two of us were both completely silent as we drove home. Without any early morning or rush hour traffic, it was a quick drive back to the apartment complex that I lived in. I parked and got out, watching him walk carefully to make sure that nothing seemed off with the way that he was carrying himself.
The apartment door slammed shut behind both of us. It's my fault. I put just a little too much force into it, my frustration with what had just happened in the hospital coming out in a much more physical form than I expected. I wasn't the type of person who got physically angry. I cried or maybe yelled, but I didn't take it out on other people physically. I didn't throw punches in the hospital hallway. Not like Jackson, or Nathan, apparently. Jackson had been defending my honor. Nathan had been defending himself. Maybe that was where the difference between the two of them laid.
"I… I can't believe what you did." Or could I?
"I wasn't going to let him treat you like that, April." Jackson defended as he turned back to face me, his arms folding in front of his chest. "You can't let him do that, either."
"Well, I wasn't trying to, but pushing him away isn't quite the same as yelling and punching him in the face." Granted, it hadn't worked. That shouldn't have been some kind of buttress for his point, not my own. I wasn't sure what point I was trying to make.
"I'm sorry if I scared you, April, but you have to learn to stand up for yourself. You didn't know how to then and… I hoped by now maybe you would." He had a much clearer one than I did.
"You could get in trouble, Jackson." I reminded him, biting at my lower lip.
A noisy sigh escaped from his lips. I could tell that he was frustrated that I was avoiding the point and maybe he had a right to be. He certainly would if he ended up getting in trouble over this. He had been defending me but he had punched a superior in the face. I wasn't sure how that was going to fly over with Dr. Webber and the others. I didn't know any of them well enough to be able to predict how that was going to go. Jackson probably had a better idea of it than I did.
"I doubt it," he disagreed with a shake of his head. "But even if I do, it's worth it to protect you." Jackson pointed out.
"I don't want you getting in trouble because of me," I shook my head.
"Did you really break up with him?" He asked with his eyebrows raising.
I nodded my head. "Yeah," I breathed out. "I… I talked to Izzie some and she helped me be able to wrap my head around everything. She was right. You both were, I mean. What she said wasn't all that different from the stuff that you had already told me but I guess I needed an objective third party to be able to really hear it," I explained.
"Then it's worth it, even if I got in trouble," Jackson concluded simply. "He was acting like a pissed off teenager and I'm not going to let him take that out on you."
"I appreciate that, but…" I shook my head, not sure where I was going with this. "I'm gonna go lay down, okay? I just need to think."
Silence. I needed silence.
"Okay," he agreed with a nod of his head. "I uh, I'll figure out dinner tonight, alright?"
"Thank you." I murmured.
Retreating back to the solitude of my bedroom, I shut the door behind me. Toeing off my sneakers and sliding my jacket off my shoulders, I collapsed on top of my duvet and shut my eyes, taking a few deep breaths.
It was too easy to replay the incident in my mind. Jackson yelling and the sound of his fist hitting Nathan in the face, my own gasp. The shock on Nathan's face was predictable but even the anger that resulted from being hit didn't compare to the utter rage that Jackson had come at him with. I can hear the same sound again when he swung back at my best friend and hit him. It was a good thing that Webber's voice and presence were as commanding as they were. Things could have gotten a lot worse.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried to force the image away from my head. I reached over to grab my headphones and plugged them into my phone, quickly pressing play on the last song that I had paused. It was in the middle of one of Taylor Swift's album and I turned it up, effectively blocking out the rest of the world and trying to mute some of my other senses for the moment so I could lose focus. Guys didn't fight over girls like me. I was always a bit of a plain Jane, the girl next door, nothing fancy. Good but not the best. I didn't even know if this qualified as being fought over, but it certainly felt like it in a weird way. Jackson had some short-lived girlfriends in high school if you could even call them that, but he had never done anything like that before.
I wondered what it really meant.
It was hard to say. I didn't want to make too much of it, but he was also the same person who constantly reminded me that I usually had the opposite problem. I undervalued myself habitually.
Falling asleep doesn't occur to me consciously, nor is it my intention. It's not until my room was darker than it had been before and I could hear the rain over the music playing in my ears – no longer Taylor Swift, but instead, some random related artist that Spotify had queued up once the album I was listening to have been finished completely. An hour had passed without me even realizing it.
"Ugh…" I groaned as I pulled the headphones out of my ears and paused the music, sitting up slowly and rubbing some of the sleep out of my eyes. Rain had begun to fall outside. Typical Seattle.
Getting up and moving to the bathroom, I splash some water on my face to freshen myself up. It was still a little early for dinner, but Jackson and I hadn't quite finished talking about what had happened earlier with Nathan. It wasn't that he had done something wrong. He hadn't, not really. I just couldn't determine how I felt about it, or why it was so hard for me to wrap my head around what had happened. He had always been protective over me, telling people to back off in high school, keeping an eye out for me with other girls. That was normal for him. It just felt different this time and I couldn't place why.
Opening up my bedroom door, I could hear the television in the living room on some football game. I reflexively rolled my eyes. He had loved playing football in high school. I'd gone and learned how to understand the game just because of him. And of course, every time he got hit hard, I had freaked out. Like today.
"Hey…" I started, my voice coming out quieter than I intended as I looked around.
The entire apartment was spotless. There was no sign of dirty clothes or random items left about, the kitchen counters had clearly been wiped down and there were no dishes in the sink, and I could hear the quiet sound of the dishwasher running – near the end of its cycle, likely. Everything had been dusted or wiped down and straightened up. I blinked in surprise as I took in how clean our apartment suddenly was, and honestly, the fact that I had nothing to do with it. It was a bit cleaner than how I would have straightened up on the weekends, everything that needed to be done already done.
I guess he hadn't blown off what I had said.
"You cleaned up." I smiled at him fondly, arms folding in front of my ribcages. It's not shyness this time, just trying to contain a little bit of happiness.
"I did," Jackson looked over his shoulder and smiled up at me.
"Thank you…" I wondered over to him from behind the couch and bent down to wrap my arms around his shoulders and hug him just like that, my chin resting on top of his head. "I appreciate it."
"I thought you would," he admitted and patted my forearm. "I wanted to apologize for earlier and figured this might be a good way to soften you up a bit. I forgot how anal you could be to live around," he teased.
"I'm not anal," I replied. "But you did soften me up."
Jackson placed a kiss on one of the freckles on my arm and caught me by surprise. I could feel my cheeks warm with the same blush that they had earlier, but this time it's the good kind, the kind that I don't mind feeling. It ran more than just on my cheeks, warming my heart in a special way that I hadn't felt in a long time.
"I'm sorry about earlier. I didn't mean to get you into any trouble or any more drama or gossip around the hospital," he apologized. His hand continued to rub along my arm soothingly.
"It's okay." I murmured. "I get it. Or at least, I'm… trying to get it." I blinked a few times, lips twisting in a frown.
"There's not a whole lot that I wouldn't do for you," he reminded me.
"Why'd you do it?" I asked.
"I saw you pushing him away. Or try to," Jackson began to explain, taking a deep breath. "But it just set something off in me, seeing that. You know, all those years, I worried… a girl like you going into the rest of the world. Soft, kind, beautiful. I worried that there were going to be guys who wanted to take advantage of that and that part of me just came rearing back to the surface when I saw it. I didn't want it to happen to you in high school or college, and I don't want it anymore now."
Falling silent for a few seconds, I swallowed his words. Beautiful. He'd never called me that before. When we were young, he had always told me that I was pretty and never let me insult my own appearance despite the many times that I had tried. But this felt different. A much fuller compliment.
"I'm not going to let them get you in any kind of trouble. I won't." I assured him. "I promise."