JACKSON
I do my best to not complain about my own lack of sleep.
Laying in bed at night, there was one of two things that could wake me up at any given moment. One was fairly predictable – the sound of our baby crying whether she's hungry or in need of a dirty diaper or merely just woke up alone. Most of the time, April has to get up whether it's her first choice or whether it's because she doesn't want to have to use the bottle. With her starting back at work, it wasn't going to be much of an option and adjustments would have to be made, but it was something that she was stubborn about. I wondered if she would have been this stubborn with a different baby, or if it was specific to Quinn.
The other frequent alternative was the sound of my wife snoring loudly. It had started when she was a few months pregnant and I thought that it might go away after she had the baby, but three months later, and she still has that same ability to sound like a freight train. It wasn't nonstop but it came and went in a couple of loud doses.
Turning my head toward her, I can see the outline of her chest rising and falling in the darkness of our bedroom with each snore, just a little moonlight managing to stream in through the curtains that had been left half open. She looked peaceful, even with her mouth hanging wide open. She had gotten up less than half an hour ago to feed Quinn and fell right back asleep within seconds of laying down again. I don't know what it was, but there was something keeping me up.
Sliding out of the bed slowly as to not wake up April, I inhaled deeply through my nose and left her in the bedroom. The nursery door was cracked open from the last feeding still. I pushed it open, grateful for the greased hinges that make it open silently. The nightlight makes it easy to see our daughter even in the middle of the night and she was sleeping soundly. I stepped up to the edge of her crib, resting my hand on the side and looking down at her. Her tongue was sticking out as she slept, not snoring like either one of us did. Part of me wanted to pick her up, but I don't. I don't want to wake her up. She's fussy when she doesn't wake up on her own accord, and sometimes still fussy when she did. It was better to just leave her in her crib where she was peaceful.
"Hi, sweetheart," I murmured softly. "I love you."
There was no reason for me to stay there. I needed to get rest, too, especially with April going back to work. It was going to be more of a team effort than ever.
Never had I wanted to turn into my father with the threat of being absent and putting the burden of raising our child on April. I couldn't think of anything worse. I worried that the unexpectedness of the diagnosis, even in having months to prepare, had thrown me a step back with being the man and the father that I wanted to be. That Quinn deserved for me to be. I didn't want that for her, or for April. It wasn't fair to either one of them.
No matter how I try to push the thought away from my mind, it doesn't go away. Every time I look at our daughter, beautiful in her own distinct way, the question comes there. The doubt there made me feel unprepared to be a father. I couldn't have been more grateful for April, I didn't know what I would do without her.
But I knew it was unreasonable to depend entirely on her. Parenting was a two-person job, in our situation, at least. I'd picked up with taking care of the house and food so she didn't have to worry about much else beyond Quinn, and do typical diaper changes and dressing. It wasn't like I was a bad or neglectful father. I knew that I wasn't. But this was a challenge for me.
"Are you okay?"
I should have seen the question coming from a mile away.
"Yeah," I lied with a nod. "I'm fine."
"Are you sure?" April continued. "You're just making that face. That miles away face. You have been for a few days now and at first, I thought it was just the sleep deprivation, but now I'm not so sure…"
"What is there for me not to be fine about?" Lashing out isn't my intention but I don't correct myself.
"I don't know." Her voice raised. "But it just seems like there's something not right with you."
"Everything in our life is perfect." True enough, on the surface. We were married and happy, we had a daughter, we were now board-certified surgeons. "What is there for me to possibly be bothered by?"
"There could be something more. I don't know." She threw up her hands defensively. "I'm just asking. You don't have to act like there's something wrong with me asking."
"I'm just tired." I sighed out, running my hand over my face. "That's it."
"Okay." Her brows remained knitted together as she stared at me. "Coffee's almost ready. I need to finish my hair. Can you get Quinn ready to go to daycare?"
I nodded. "Sure."
It doesn't take long to get Quinn ready for daycare. She was likely to make a scene once she was actually being passed off to the daycare workers, but there was little to be done to try and prevent that. She was just a baby. She didn't like being held by many people outside of her parents, it had taken her a long time to get used to my mother. This was going to be a huge adjustment for all of us.
"Are you ready to do?" Two mugs of coffee were waiting on the countertop for us.
"Ready as can be." April smiled weakly. "I'm so glad to be back at work. Gimme my coffee."
The two of us head to work without discussing it. Maybe it was one of those things that a little time would make easier but I didn't have any real interest in discussing it. There was nothing that I could say to her that would make her feel better, or get her off my back, apparently. She was worried and she was set in being worried.
April was eager to get back to work. It seemed to push her past the little spat. She was nearly in a run to get back to the emergency room after months at home. It was my job to get Quinn settled into daycare.
"Come on, Queenie." I held her closely. "We can do this."
Daycare was the first floor of the hospital and a relatively short walk from the entrance. There were plenty of other workers coming to drop off their kids, most without a fuss. A couple of clingy toddlers here and there, clutching onto their parents' legs, with other kids running in and some asleep in their strollers. Quinn was already clutched onto my jacket as best that she could inside of her tiny hands.
"Hi, Dr. Avery." One of the daycare workers, Nico, greeted me. "This must be Quinn."
"Hey," I nodded at him, shifting my daughter. "I expect it's not going to be an easy day for her."
"First days rarely are," he empathized.
Looking at Quinn, I pressed a kiss into her forehead. I can't help but be relieved to pass her off, for a moment. We would get a normal day. No worrying about our daughter and her difficulties for just a few hours, able to focus on our job. She'd be just downstairs if anything did happen. April had wanted to try and get Catherine to watch her for the first day or two while we were both working, but she was here on a case of her own. Daycare had been the best and only option.
"Time to go." I stepped toward Nico to hand her over to him. "You'll be alright. Promise."
The second that I place her down in Nico's arms, she begins to cry. Her arms stretch out haphazardly as she tried to reach for me, looking at me with wide eyes. Guilt slapped me hard. How could I ever be grateful to pass her on to a daycare waker when she wanted me so desperately? I was terrible.
"I'm so sorry," I whispered and nuzzled my nose against hers. "But you're going to be okay. A couple of hours and Mommy and Daddy will be back to get you."
"She'll be alright," Nico said as he took her. "She just needs some time to adjust."
I watched him take my daughter inside of the daycare and stood in the hallway for a moment, letting out a heavy sigh. This was for the best. She would have to be able to go to daycare at one point or another. April and I wanted to keep working. We had done research – there were plenty of parents that continued to work even while meeting the extra demands that a child with Down Syndrome had.
But it doesn't feel that way right now.
Sighing, I turn on my head and made my way down to the elevator. I can't stand outside of the daycare and lurk. If she saw me standing there, it would only make things worse. And I still had a day full of work to get my way through. Now that I was a fellow here, I had more work to do independently than I had as a resident.
The second surgery in a facial reconstruction that I was working on was scheduled for today. Mark and I had started the first surgery together and he had passed on the rest of it to me as a present for passing the boards. There had been no real doubt about me getting a job here at Seattle Grace Mercy West, or passing my boards. Honestly, I hadn't doubted April either, even though she had. She had spent every conscious processing moments preparing for the boards even if she hadn't been inside of an operating room.
Jonah, the nurse currently sitting at the station, handed me the chart that I needed without asking. I already knew pretty much everything that was on it. This case had been in my head for a while now.
"Both of the Averys back at work, huh?" Mark came up behind me, clapping my shoulder. "Big day."
"Yeah," I huffed out.
"Thought you'd be a little more cheery about it," he remarked.
"I'm happy." I forced a smile, glancing back at him. "I just took Quinn to daycare and she wasn't particularly happy about having to go, that's all. It's going to be a hard adjustment. How are things with you and Lexie?" Hopefully, it'd distract him enough.
He chuckled. "Really well. I think I might propose soon." He beamed with a toothy smile. "I'm sure that you guys are going to get it all figured out soon. You always do."
"Hopefully."
"Seems like there's some kind of tension going on there…" he said slowly, eyeing me.
"There's not." I shook my head.
"You're a pretty terrible liar, has anyone ever told you that?" Even if the concern there was serious, Mark gave a laugh that lightened the gravity of his words. "I can tell that there's something more going on there, Avery. You've got it written all over your face even if you don't want to say it." Now, he was starting to sound just like April had this morning.
My lips tightened. "I don't know what you're going on about," I sighed out and ran my hand over the back of my head. "There's nothing going on. Just tired. Once you have kids, you'll understand."
"This is something different," he pointed out with a raise of his brows. "I can see it."
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. "It's just simple exhaustion. There's nothing more complicated than that."
"Alright. Jackson, I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but I've been thinking it for a long time. You've been just a little bit different ever since you and April got the news about your girl having Down Syndrome. You just have. I haven't wanted to say anything but I think it's been long enough that it's about time that someone does." That was unexpected. I wasn't even sure if it was honesty or just… something else.
"What the hell are you talking about?" I barked. "I love my daughter more than anything. The diagnosis didn't change that."
"I'm not doubting that." He threw his hands up defensively. "That's not what I'm getting at."
"Then what are you getting at?"
"It seems like you're maybe not bonding with her in the way you should." He shrugged his shoulders. "You're doing everything that you can to take care of her and to make sure that she and April have everything they need, but are you really being there?" He asked.
An annoyed breath escaped, my jaw clenching. "Of course I am, Mark. You're not in my house. Just because I've been working doesn't mean that I'm not spending time with my daughter. I have a patient to get to."
"I'm just sayin', man…"
Walking away without saying another word for him, I make my way the patient's room so I can check in on him myself. I want to make sure that everything was going to go perfect and prove myself. This was my first facial reconstruction all on my own, now that Mark was out of the picture for this case. I had to make sure that it was going to go smoothly.
The surgery itself takes hours.
With the bright lights of the operating room making sure that I can see absolutely every detail of what I'm doing, repairing the face to the most normal aesthetic possible from the damage that had been done in the patient's initial accident, I operate. I'm assisted by an intern, Ross, though there's not much for him to really do in such an important surgery like this one. I have to make sure that all of it is perfect. There was no room for any error or mishap that might happen from inexperience.
But after spending a massive amount of time in the sterile environment, the surgery is complete. There are no complications, much to my relief, so as long as he healed correctly, he should be fine to move forward with the surgeries that remained in the process. A few months and he would be back on the table again.
Scrubbing my hands as the nurses and Ross moved him away to be taken to one o the post-op rooms, I take my time. I don't particularly want to have another conversation with Sloan at the moment, even if the surgery had been a success. There was just a little bit of safety in hiding out in here but I know that I can't do it for long. There's still a little bit of time left in my workday, even if that surgery had been long enough to take up most of it.
Of course, that didn't mean I was any more prepared to see my mother now.
Exiting the scrub room, I immediately spotted her shorter form down the hallway in her own pair of navy blue scrubs and making her way toward me. She must have just finished up with her own surgery from the day. I didn't manage to hold back the sigh.
"Jackson!" Mom exclaimed, clasping her hands together. "There you are."
"Hi Mom," I smiled.
"I was hoping to see little Queenie with you." There was the smile I expected from her. "Oh, well. I'm sure that she must be having a great time sleeping down in daycare."
"Hopefully," I nodded. "She didn't have a great time going there this morning."
Uneasiness quelled in my stomach and I clenched my jaw to make sure that it just stayed there. I knew it was the guilt again about leaving here there. I could have rescheduled my surgery. I could have made her transition a little easier and take a day off to be with my daughter instead of throwing her straight into the daycare.
"You were not an easy baby to get to go to daycare," Mom started. "There was a reason that I had to hire a nanny for you because you hated being brought to work with me and then saying goodbye. It was easier to just leave you at home with a nanny during the day."
"Really?" I questioned.
"Mmhm," she nodded her head. "You were a difficult baby. I've learned a thing or two about raising them."
"Is that why Dad left?" The question escaped before I could process that I even asked it.
"What?" Her eyes widened. "No. Jackson, sweetheart, I know I've told you this story before and that has nothing to do with it. He left because he could not handle being an Avery. It had nothing to do with you, baby. As difficult as you were, that had nothing to do with any of it."
I glanced away, chewing at the inside of my cheek. "Alright." It had been a long shot, anyway. Her story had always made sense. Being an Avery wasn't an easy task.
"There's something on your mind."
For the first time, the word being thrown at me doesn't annoy me like it had the other times. I could feel this time that she was right. That something did have to do with my father. The question hadn't come entirely out of nowhere. I'd never been able to get over my fear that I might one day end up just like him.
"Yeah, I guess there is." My shoulders shrugged and I slipped my hands into the pockets of my lab coat. "Things are different now than they were before. Being a father."
"It's hard for you." She murmured sympathetically. "You don't have one to look up to."
I nodded. "April's done so much for her, and I just…" I wet my lips, not wanting to open up too much. We were still at my workplace. "I don't want to end up like him, that's all. Letting her do all the work just because things aren't what I expected them to be."
"Jackson Avery." It was like a sharp gasp. I'd heard her say my name like that so rarely in my life. "I can't believe I have to hear those words come out of your mouth. You are nothing like the man that your father was. That was not the way that I raised you to be and you are never going to be anything like him. I can guarantee you that much. You are a good man. I raised you to be nothing less. You're still adjusting, just like your daughter is. You learn just as much parenting as you could ever hope to teach your child."
"I want you to be right," I admitted and wet my lips. "I don't know. It's just this doubt in my mind. Then it seems like the more that I doubt all of it, the truer it is. I don't want to mess things up or mess her up so I put it off to April and I'm not as present as I should be."
"You love April. And you love little Quinn. You just need to get your head screwed on straight again, Jackson. You are not your father. You never have been and that's not going to start now." She reaffirmed. "You go get that girl from daycare and love on her, for the both of us."
She was right.
Mark, and anyone else whom might be affected, would be fine with me taking the rest of the day off and be more than understanding given the fact that it was April's first day back at work. Everyone had always been as accommodating as possible for both of us. Honestly, we couldn't have asked for anything more from the people that we worked with. We had gotten lucky in so many ways with all of them.
Daycare was not as busy as it had been when I had gone down there in the morning. It wasn't a shift change, of course. All of the kids are settled in. It's noisy between all of the toddlers and younger ones. It was a good thing they kept the babies in a separate room.
I stood outside of the daycare for a moment, peering through the clear windows. I knew that Quinn wasn't going to be out with the other kids given her age. I recognized Zola running around, a couple of the kids from the nurse's that worked on the burn unit floor. Tuck was there too, playing with some of the blocks at one of the tables. A few years and Quinn, hopefully, would be doing the same thing. It would be nice if we could keep her at the hospital daycare. A privilege, really. But she might need more attention than that. We wouldn't know until that time came.
A wave caught my attention. It was Nico from earlier, offering me a smile and waving me in.
Pushing open the door to the daycare, I lifted up my hand and gave him a small wave in return. I wasn't sure if he had some kind of sixth sense about parents having issues with everything going on, with everything that was going on, but I didn't want to talk to him about it. I was just glad that he didn't ask.
"She's sleeping." He informed me. "But you have good timing. It's just about time for a bottle."
"Thanks," I nodded at him.
He showed me where they held the bottles and I got one warmed for her. I wondered just how difficult all of this was going to make April's feedings, but I rarely got to hold her and feed her because of how adamant she had been about breastfeeding. Now was a rare opportunity.
"Hi, sweetheart." I cooed gently, using my empty hand to rub her stomach and wake her up gently. She stirred slowly, spitting up slightly as her eyes blinked awake. "It's Daddy."
A little cry escaped her, but it doesn't sound particularly upset. Scooping her up carefully, I held her against my chest.
"Hi there." I kept speaking to her. "I told you that I'd come back for you, didn't I?"
One arm curling around her back, I kept her against my chest and eased the tip of the bottle against her lips. She responded to it almost immediately, a little taste of milk on her lips before she took it properly. I let out a breath and made sure that my grip on her was secure without being too tight. Moving to sit down, I keep her cuddled against my chest as she drank from the bottle easily. I felt bad that she did it without any kind of struggle, knowing that April had spent a lot of time troubled with getting her to take a nipple.
Looking at her suck down the milk, suddenly no longer an ounce of sleepiness in her eyes, I can't help but see myself. She had my eyes, of course, that had been obvious since the day I was born. Her nose was wide like mine, too, tiny ears like her mom. But right now, she just looked like my little girl.
"You were hungry, huh?" My voice remained soft as I spoke to her. "I can tell."
It doesn't take her long to drain the bottle of breastmilk that April had stored and prepped for days like this. She was hungry. She had been growing a lot in the last few months, making up for the fact that she had come out a little small even though she had been fully cooked. Now, she was hardly behind the growth curve.
Maybe I had been too scared of her diagnosis.
What Mark had said, compiled with my fears, wasn't out of place entirely. I had been scared of it. Scared because I didn't understand. April had been so loving and accepting from the front, so blindly hopeful, and I had hit the opposite end of the spectrum – maybe together, it was balancing one another out, but in the moments alone, it was terrifying. But this was my daughter. There was nothing more to figure out. She was my little girl and even if I was filled with terror at all of the complications, nothing changed the simple fact that this was my baby girl.
Once she was finished with her bottle, I stayed where I was in the rocking chair and burped her. There was likely to be a diaper change in the near future, but maybe it could wait until we got home with April. She should have been showing up here any minute.
"Atta girl," I encouraged her and placed another kiss on top of her head. "We'll be home soon."
A few minutes of holding and rocking her passed before I heard my wife's voice. "Hey, you two."
"Hey," I said as I gave a small glance over my shoulder.
"I didn't think that I would find you down here," she started. "Figured you would be waiting for me out in the parking lot." I'm not entirely sure what she meant by that, if it was some kind of reference the tension from this morning or something else.
"Just needed to come down here." Explaining here would be too difficult. "Ready to go home?"
"Yeah."
April took Quinn from me and I stood up, wrapping my arms around her shoulders as we headed out of the daycare. She seemed surprised by the sudden display of affection and I can't help but cringe with guilt. I'd screwed up this morning – but it'd been longer than that, really. This morning had just been the first time that she had confronted me directly about how I had been pulling away from everything. That wasn't her fault. It was mine.
Even with a bit of rush hour traffic to combat against, it doesn't take us long to get to our home. I pull into the driveway and park, helping get Quinn out of her car seat. She cried the same that she had this morning as if she was worried we were dropping her off again.
"Come here, Queenie," April cooed to our daughter, swaying from side to side as she held her tight in her chest. I just watched her for a moment, smiling. She was a natural. "You're my tired girl, aren't you?"
"Do you want to put her down for a nap?" I suggested. "Then maybe we can talk."
"Sure," she agreed with a nod.
While April went into the nursery to try and get Quinn down for another nap, I went into the kitchen. It was falling back on an old habit, but this time, it was just for the sake of keeping busy. I'd put some meat in the fridge to thaw yesterday to make burgers tonight, grabbing it and setting it out on the counter. It wouldn't take long to make. Beginning to prep the rest of what I needed and grabbing the sweet potato fries from the freezer, I tried not to get restless waiting for her. I knew our girl wasn't always easy to get down, no matter how tired she was.
Content to just pan fry the meat, I turn on the stove and get started. It was taking a bit of time for her to get Quinn down, longer than usual, but that was likely because of how we had disrupted her day by going to daycare. It would just be the first of many days. Hopefully, it wouldn't be quite so dramatic in a few days or weeks.
A flash of red hair caught my eye and I lifted my head up with a smile, flipping both burgers in the pan as the pink slowly began to turn to a healthy brown. "What kind of cheese do you want?"
"Pepperjack," she answered.
I slapped down a slice of pepper jack on her patty and my own. "Can we talk now?"
"Sure." There was an ounce of skepticism in her voice.
"I'm sorry about this morning." The apology was the first thing. "You're just… trying to help and I get that, I do. I was being an ass."
"I forgive you." April doesn't hesitate to give me that.
"I guess I've been going through something that… I haven't really been ready to admit to myself so I didn't want to open up about it to you or anyone else. I don't know. My mom kind of forced me into looking at a few things today." I chewed at my bottom lip, moving to check on the sweet potato fries baking in the oven. "I don't know. It's a lot to put into words but I don't want to push you out. I think I've been so worried about becoming my father that I've gotten inside of my head and pushed…. myself into the possibility even if it's not really there." That was the best that I could do to try and explain it. "I don't know if I'm making any sense."
"You're making plenty of sense, Jackson." She gravitated toward me and her arms slipped around my waist, hugging my backside and pressing into me. "Becoming a parent is a huge thing and it makes you reevaluate anything. But you're still here. You do so much for me and Quinn, even if it's not breastfeeding her, you know? You make sure that the house is still functioning and running every day. I definitely haven't been the one doing that."
My eyes shut a moment, letting out a content sigh. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me." I could feel her head shake against my back. "We all need a reminder sometimes."
"You know I love you more than anything in the world, right?" I can't twist around to kiss her like I want to. "Because I do. There's not a thing that I wouldn't do for you, April Kepner Avery."
"I know." I could hear her smile as she stepped back. "I'm kind of depending on that, actually."
"Oh?" Pressing down the cheeseburgers once more to make sure they're cooked, I scooped them off of the pan and placed them down on the plate I had set aside for them. I put the buns on for just a moment to warm them. "It sounds like you've already got something up your sleeve."
Her tongue clucked. "I do."
"Uh-huh?" I questioned a moment, finishing up our dinner before I turned to face her and handed her a plate. "What exactly is it that you have up your sleeve then?"
"I…" She was nervous. I could hear it in the pause between her words. "I kind of want to see my mom again. Talk to her. I don't know. I'm not… worried about turning into her like you are with your father because after what she put me through, what she put us through, I would die before I let myself turn into her. But she wanted to meet the baby. And I think that I want some kind of closure."
Huh.
"You want to let your mom come here?" I questioned as we made our plates, glancing at her for confirmation. I knew that there was nothing that her mom had left to hold over us, but I didn't want her coming around only to upset April further. She was happy now. "Are you sure?"
"I've been thinking about it a lot." She admitted. "I… I have never gotten to forgive her for what she did to me. I don't think that she needs it or wants it, but I think that I need t do it. Face to face. It's not the kind of thing that I can just do over the phone."
"If it's what you want." I wouldn't deny her that. "Then we can do it."
"Are you sure?" April questioned as she sat down at the table. I sat down across from her.
"I am, strawberry." I gave her a smile, pressing down on my burger and flattening it slightly. "If this is something that you feel like you need to do, then I support that. It's your mom. So it's your decision. I'm just here to support you. We can bring her here whenever you want. Just let me know when, and I can take care of all the arrangements."
"Thank you."
We sat down and ate our dinner without any kind of interruption from our girl or anything else. It felt nice to have that conversation out of the way, the explanation that I owed her out in the air. Even if it wasn't something that was easy to put into words, it felt nice to have it out of my system. The discussion of her mother was unexpected, but it was good of her to forgive him. She was a bigger person than I was. I would never be able to forgive Karen for everything that she had done to us, the way that she had nearly ruined our lives and kept us apart forever, nothing more than a trick of fate spinning us back together again. But she wasn't my mother. Somehow, mine was the better one in the situation. I didn't have to forgive her in the same way.
Laying down in bed together that night, both of my arms were around her and kept her close against me. I can smell the fresh fruit of her shampoo from her shower, hair still wet and cool pressed into my shoulder. She was sweet in every way, as always. I pressed a kiss on top of her head.
"I love you," April murmured as she snuggled up against me and I rubbed her back.
"I love you too."