Amelia tread along the tile floor of the bathroom, carefully pacing her steps with the tick of the timer on her phone outside the door as she waited. Outside the door was Meredith and Maggie, despite Amelia not wanting Maggie to know right away because she would then hover over her if she was pregnant. But after careful consideration she let Maggie know too, because after all she was family, and also the first to know when Amelia had a brain tumor. She wasn't over dramatic or over bearing then, so she decided having Maggie there would be for the best, especially if or when she had to tell Owen.

"Maggie? What does the time say?" Meredith whispers, careful not for Amelia to hear in attempt not to panic her.

"Two minutes." She informs her in a whisper, pausing to see if she could still hear Amelia's footsteps on the linoleum. They had paused.

"Two minutes?!" Amelia remarked stressfully, clearly able to hear everything despite not wanting to.

Meredith and Maggie weren't sure whether or not to comfort her, talk about other things, or just keep quiet. Meredith opted to keep quiet while all Maggie wanted to do was her thing: Hover.

"You know Amelia, this might be for the best."

"Getting pregnant at forty-two is what's best? For who Maggie?" She snaps, not buying it.

"I don't know, maybe because children are blessings and God handmade this one for you! Aren't you excited to watch him or her grow up with their cousins? And babies are squishy and tiny and…" Maggie goes on, only to be cut off.

"Okay Maggie, that's enough." Meredith gently tells her, taking over. "I think what sunshine and rainbows over here is saying, if you are pregnant, it's going to be okay, whatever you decide. If you put them up for adoption to pursue your career, or choose to keep them, you'll have all the support you'll need, here."

Maggie nods in silent agreement, but also feels a wave of guilt rush over her. Somedays it felt like Meredith knew everything, the answers to your problems, what was going on in your life. But the fact that she still didn't know about Zola wanting to leave her school killed her because without her mom and Amelia knowing, Maggie felt like Zola wouldn't get all the support she needed either.

"If you need to, you can move back in with us. But only if you and Owen absolutely can't work things out. No running away from this, do you hear me, Amelia Shepherd?" Meredith chastens in her 'mom' voice.

"Um Mer- I think there's something we also need to talk about." Maggie interrupts again.

Suddenly the timer goes off and scares Maggie out of her thoughts, forgetting the well rehearsed conversation she had constructed in her head, only to miss out on the right time. She hears nothing from the other side of the door, wondering if Amelia had looked or not.

"Amy? What does it say?" Meredith hesitantly nags, waiting for her to be ready.

The door creaks open, Amelia shakily holding the test in one hand while wiping tears with her other. Maggie and Meredith scoot over, leaving a space for her between them. Maggie instinctively puts her arm around Amelia, staring down at the test with her, as the digital loading bar continues to flash.

"Invalid?" Amelia asks, when she was really hoping for 'not pregnant' to appear on the screen.

"These are usually pretty accurate; Maybe you just did it wrong?" Maggie suggests, a little too cheerful and hopeful for the others.

Amelia looks up and begins to respond angrily, an array of built up and frustrated emotions suddenly pouring out.

"You're trying to tell me, a neurosurgeon, that I used a pee sick wrong?!" Her exasperation boils over into laughter of disbelief, then hysteria.

"Why don't you go to bed and take another in the morning; Your morning urine should have the strongest levels of hormones if you're pregnant." Meredith intervenes the sudden blown of rage in an attempt to calm her, gesturing for her take the test to her room as if she was a child being sent to timeout.

Meredith turns to Maggie who just watches Amelia walk away, saddened by her failed attempt at calming her sister. Meredith then stands, but before walking away, shakes her head at her.

"No offense Maggie, but you're most certainly the wrong person for this moment." She laughs in defeat, turning on her heels to walk away.

-XXX-

"Aunt Maggie?" A tearful and frantic Zola flies through the front door after school, searching frantically for her around the house.

"Zola? Don't you have practice until seven?" Amelia walks in, toothbrush in hand and sweatpants replacing her scrubs.

Amelia looked extremely comfortable and laid back, not to mention that as she looked barely put together she still was absolutely beautiful, something Zola secretly envied of her aunt. But despite Amelia looking stunning, the house did not. Amelia's boxes were scattered amongst the counters and couch, ripped open with clothes hanging limply out the sides.

"Are you moving back in? What about Owen?"

"It would appear so," Amelia looks around, noting her boxes. "Owen and I had a little fallout, but we're working on it. So for the time being, I'll be living here, if that's okay with you." Amelia reassures her, not really looking for Zola's opinion on her current living situation.

"But you can't just run away when things get tough; You've got to wait it out, and find ways to resolve conflict." Zola pleas.

"Big words from a little miss who ran away the day of her piano recital and never wanted to go back." Amelia laughs, her back facing towards Zola as she unpacked some more.

"I'm not a quitter." She quietly sulked in defense.

Amelia turns around and hands Zola a box to begin, and Zola takes it happily, hoping the unpacking will fill the silence. But it was eating her alive, the guilt, and also the curiosity what her aunt could be going through. It brought her comfort knowing that they could talk about anything, and they could use the hard time to be there for each other, but she knew Amelia's problems with Owen were far too adult for her.

"So Zo Zo, what's been up with you lately?" Amelia breaks the silence, smirking to herself as Zola jumps.

"Nothing's wrong. Why would you assume that?" She stutters.

"No one's giving you a hard time? No friends or specific boys?" She hints and Zola jokingly shoves her, relief flooding over her.

"Arnice dumped me; He wasn't ready to handle the responsibilities of our relationship and stuff. Total loser."

"Sounds like that to me." Amelia laughs, pulling Zola into a side hug. "You know, high school is a tough time for discovering who you are. You have hours of homework, extracurriculars, worrying about colleges! You really don't need to worry about boyfriends and taking care of his needs when he can't take care of himself and that huge ego of his."

Maggie had told her the same thing about house school, and the conversations about grades and how important school was on a constant loop in this house, Zola and her siblings knowing from a young age how important it was to finish. They were by no means expected to be surgeons or whatever, they could do what they dreamed, they were encouraged to pursue their own things.

So when she decided to drop out of a school and go to another as an attempt for a clean slate where no one knew her and didn't have high expectations like every other one of her classmates seemed to have. She wasn't 'Harper Avery winning', Meredith Grey's kid, she was just another one of them. Except she wasn't, and they all would eventually know that. But she hoped that they would like her for who she was and not her mother before making any other judgements.

"For starters, aunt Amelia, I don't want to be a legacy. I don't want to be just "award winning- Meredith Grey's" kid, I want a clean slate where people can get to know me and love me for me, before they make any judgement about my current situations."

Amelia raises a brow at the her use of Situations, and gestures for her niece to sit down, but Zola refuses.

"Z, what do you mean 'situations' ?"

Zola sat down on the couch, folding and unfolding again and again one of Amelia's shirts. She creased the folds, then un-did it again, starting the process over. Amelia could see the worry and unusual hesitancy and sadness on her face.

"Amelia, I've messed up." Zola mumbled in one breath, looking as if that was all she was gonna say.

"What did you do? I'm sure whatever it is, we can work through it." She encourages, suddenly more invested into the conversation.

Zola just begins to cry again and Amelia throws an arm around her, pulling her boy-crazed, overly emotional niece into her. She was only sixteen after all, and these mood-swings and whatever were expected. Zola's attitude was that of a normal teenager, and the women in the house worked at keeping respect to each other as a must despite her raging hormones. She fought with her siblings like anyone else, but she never reached a point where she began shutting people out completely until now.

"Aunt Amelia, with all due respect, I'm not going to talk to you about this."

"C'mon Zo, we both know how messed up my life's been. Hit me with whatever you've got because I've got no room to judge.

Zola begins to stand, setting the shirt neatly on the couch and walks away, pausing on the landing before the steps.

"Thanks anyways, Aunt Amy." She politely smiles before continuing up the stairs.

"You're more than just a legacy kid. You're your own person, and their expectations shouldn't be just that you're automatically perfect because you're some legacy's kid."

Zola kicks off her converse, flopping back on her bed before pulling out her phone to text Sofia.

'Have you talked to Arizona yet?' Zola writes, tapping her fingers impatiently on her phone screen before sending.

Her phone buzzes almost immediately and she jumps, scrabbling to unlock it and sits up.

'Yes, she can get you in tom. nine? Don't worry, your secret is safe with my mom.' She replies and Zola sighs in relief, her only obstacle now figuring out how to enter the hospital without making her mom suspicious.

Zola thanks her and jumps out of bed, tiptoeing down the hall to make sure Amelia didn't know she was out of her room in fear that she would try talking again and into the bathroom. She locked the door behind her and rummaged through the bottom cabinet, looking for the box of tampons she had pushed towards the back.

Typically she had hid things she didn't want her siblings to find, like candy or things from Arnice. This same box had been under her side of the cabinet for years, and for years she would by the same brand and box to place in front because that's where all the women would grab from. But today was different; It wasn't a tampon or candy or whatever she was looking for. She found the object almost immediately and pulling it out, unfolding the flyer on STI's and unplanned pregnancy and sighed.

Tomorrow Arizona would find out who Zola felt she really was after all this, and it guilted her. Arizona would look for diseases and thought on the outside she was a kind blue-eyed soul, she worried her friends mom wouldn't allow Sofia over anymore. It was completely irrational, but her anxiety was getting the best of her thoughts and mind. She felt ashamed, scared, fearful, dirty, only for starters.

Where was her common sense? The one she should be equipped with because her family members are or were doctors and everyone would see that too. A girl with this many resources should know better. She should be more careful. She shouldn't be…

"Pregnant." She whispers before shaking the test and throwing it against the shower wall. "I should've known better."

-XXX-

Maggie called Zola into school the next day, agreeing to bring her siblings to school first then sneaking her off to the hospital for what her mom would only hear as a gynecology appointment when the bill came. But Zola knew it was much more.

"Are you positive you don't want your mom here?" Arizona asks for reassurance just as Maggie had, and she only shook her head profusely, adamant about it. "Okay, I'll start by taking some blood- It'll only pinch a little." Arizona laughs as she sees the sudden fearful look painted on Zola's face.

Zola subconsciously curls her free hand into a fist before feeling a warm hand try to pry her fingers apart, Zola feeling the sudden warmth and comfort of Maggie's hand in hers, a reassuring smile on her face. She felt her body become less tense and some relief wash over her, remember that Maggie had been her person.

She never could find a friend that she could call her Cristina, she had always been too busy in the books, or with Arnice. She had friends, she wasn't completely lonely, but after she started dating Arnice, they started to slowly fade and he become the consumer of more and more of her time. Maggie was her Cristina, she could after all, tell her aunt almost anything and Maggie was alway the first to know. Zola hadn't inherited her mother's dark, twisted personality, she was much more bubbly and optimistic just like Maggie in result of all the time they spent together.

"I wanna be a brain surgeon just like my daddy." Zola recalls telling her the day her mother won her first Harper Avery, after having spent all day at the hospital shadowing her aunt.

Maggie was the first to know when Zola had even started her first period, got her first boyfriend, and first to know which colleges she applied to and which schools wanted her, not because her mother was a brilliant surgeon, but because she had applied and was not recruited. Don't get her wrong, she loved and appreciated it, but she wanted to get into a college because she worked hard, not just because her mother was an amazing surgeon. She wanted to earn what she worked for, not what was handed to her.

"Maggie," Zola flinches as the needle goes in, squeezing her eyes tightly and feeling as Maggie's hand had held more firmly to hers in response.

"We're almost done, Zola." Arizona reassures her. "It could be while before the labs come so do you two want a call when they come back, or would you rather wait here?"

Zola wanted her aunt to be there when she found out whether or not the pregnancy tests were truly accurate, after all, the blood test was the closest for sure thing next to an ultrasound. She wanted to confirm it and then set up an appointment with a doctor as soon as possible. Also she didn't want her mom to know.

Arizona looks at her phone, her face suddenly dropping with worry and looks to her intern, handing him the vile of blood and apologizing as she was preparing to leave in a hurry.

"Karev just paged me a 911 on Karen Randall's baby boy. I'm so sorry; I'll let you know as soon as anything comes back from the labs." Arizona then turns to her intern, giving him a set of instructions and he jots them down as quickly as she gives them.

"And I have another woman who came in earlier, so grab a resident when her results come back. Do you get that, Jameson?" She finishes, him nodding in understanding.

"Thanks Arizona." Maggie smiles as she brushes Zola's curls from her fearful face.

Zola nervously shakes her leg up and down, darting her shameful eyes away from her aunt's as she neglected to even try to make conversation. Maggie wanted so desperately to help her, but in the angsty teenage years where all she wanted to do is push others away, Maggie knew better not to push back too hard in fear that Zola would shut down all together.

"Hey," Maggie whispers with a reassuring smile, "I'm not going anywhere, no matter what happens or comes of this."

"How could I mess up this badly? Especially when both my aunts, my mom, and my grandmother were surgeons? This is like sex ed 101, and you think I'd know a little something about the human body!" Zola exclaims in frustration.

"Zo, us being surgeons had nothing to do with this. Because even as doctors we're human and not immune from mistakes, and so are you. You did one thing you regret, but you can't beat yourself up over it. It's how you take this mistake and learn from it that you'll grow and begin to forgive yourself."

Zola shakes her head through a face full of tears pouring down her face, making her feel sweaty, gross, and sticky, a human trainwreck. But she knew that even if Maggie didn't want to believe it, that everyone would judge her for this because of her background. They would shake their heads with their high expectations, mumbling how she should had known better, even her teachers.

She wanted a fresh start where she felt she was more than just the kid of Meredith Grey, because she knew she wouldn't be able to live it down at her own high school now. She wanted to move, she wanted to go to Boston, because that's where it seemed everyone in her family ran off to when things got bad. Maggie could see that she was thinking hard, that she did have the same tendency to run away like her mother had with Ellis.

"You are your own person, your family all being surgeons doesn't reflect on you, it just means everyone has the same expectations, and that really not fair. But I'm sure your sister and brother feel that way too."

"I want to move to Boston, go to that school for pregnant girls." Zola informs her firmly, her mind on a set track of how she wanted to go about this."

"We don't know anything yet, but when we do, then we'll worry about it. But I can't tell you whether you can or not. That's a conversation for you and your mother."

Zola hated hearing that; She wished that Maggie could make the decision for her because she didn't want to have to discuss it with her mom. She loved her mom, her mom was caring and driven and selfless. It reflected over into her parenting, but unlike patients who did dumb things that she had to help resolve, when she got home, Meredith had actual jurisdiction over the things her kids did, and had the right to tell them exactly what she was thinking and how to go about things. Ultimately, she had the upper hand.

Zola had thought the most embarrassing thing she had to go through was getting her first period, but aunt Maggie had made that slightly less cringy and turned it into a bonding experience. If only she could do the same thing now; Take something that felt shameful and made it new and fun and exciting. But she had felt hopeless and foolish. She felt like there was no coming back.

Zola woke up early in the morning, a sudden discomfort in her stomach and wet feeling between her legs. Upon pulling her pants and underwear down she had felt surprised at the blood stain that had formed and knew immediately that she had just received her right of passage into womanhood that her mother and aunts would often groan about. She felt sudden panic in her chest and her cheeks flush with embarrassment. No matter how many times they would tell her not to be ashamed because it was natural, it only made it worse.

"Zo? What are you doing up? You don't have to be to school for another three hours!" Maggie sleepily brushes past Zo in the hall as she scrambles back to her room, pads and tampons tucked into the band of her underwear.

"Shoot!" She exclaims as they fall out upon impact, and Maggie raises a sleepy brow, her confusion turning into a grin as she lightly chuckled.

Maggie helped gather Zola's things and hurried her back to her room, sitting next to the blushing and sheepish teen seated cross-legged beside her. Zola stared horrified and inquisitively at the tampons, too afraid to ask for help, but she knew that Maggie was there.

"Zola, you have nothing to be embarrassed about, as cliche as that sounds. It's just our body's way of releasing the lining of our uterus, when you don't conceive a baby that month. The sole purpose of that lining is for if we get pregnant, then there's no need. But if…"

"Aunt Maggie!" She detests, begging her silently to stop the rambling. "I'm not planning on getting pregnant anytime soon! This feels so pointless." Zola sighs.

"I know sweetie," Maggie brushes Zola's hair back, taking note of her rosy cheeks and decided she wanted to make this easier. "We don't understand why necessarily we need to have a cycle when we're not even looking for reproduction, but it's something that happens to every woman. The best we can do is accept that it means we're growing, and taking good care of our bodies while we do."

"Why can't God just send us a postcard that exclaims 'not pregnant!', on it?!" Zola half-heartedly laughs.

Maggie grabs her niece's hand, pulling her back into the bathroom and holding out a pad in one hand and a tampon in the other, offering it for her to choose.

"Personally, I find it easier to start with pads your first time, until you get more comfortable with your body. It will never be all glittery, especially not on your period, but eventually you'll feel more confident about using them." Maggie suggests.

Maggie then lays out a pair of Zola's underwear, removing the pad from its wrapper and demonstrating how to put it on without removing the adhesive wrapper. She then hands it to Zola, watching the nervousness and horror on her face.

"It takes practice to make it feel comfortable. But soon you'll see that maybe your brand was definitely not comfortable or convenient, and might decide to use tampons, and that's okay too. Or maybe you'll want the kind with wings, or overnight kind for heavier flow."

Maggie stopped rambling when she noticed Zola had stopped taking in what she was saying. She laughed nervously and pulled determined Zola's eyes to meet hers.

"Sweetheart, there's nothing to be ashamed of. You're a woman now! You should be proud! And also, if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask them! And please, don't use the internet for goodness' sake, when you have three women right here!" She finishes before leaving Zola to do her thing.

Maggie closes the door behind her, startled when she runs into Meredith. Meredith tries to peer around Maggie who was guarding the door, hating to break Zola's trust already. She knew she couldn't keep it from Zola's mother, that wasn't her job as her aunt, but to help advise her and guide her as another mother figure when Mer couldn't be there.

"Maggie, what's going on?" Meredith interrogates, suddenly interested.

"Nothing; Zola was just cleaning the bathroom and didn't want to us to see until she was done. It's a surprise." She whispers the last part and Meredith raises a brow.

"Zola's cleaning the bathroom? At six in the morning?" She sips her coffee, still glancing at Maggie above the rim of her coffee cup.

"Yup. So I guess we should go back to bed so we can be surprised when she's finished."

"We have a shift that starts in two hours." Meredith reminds her. "Hopefully you'll have your act together by then?" She smarts off, before continuing down the hall to her bedroom.

She hears Zola on the other side of the door, unclicking the knob and peering out of the crack.

"Well thanks for that, aunt Maggie. Now I gotta clean the bathroom so it didn't look like you lied to mom." She adds sarcastically to the conversation she had just witnessed.

"Don't worry Sweetie, I think she already knows. Sorry." She grimaces, wincing at her poor attempt at lying.

"Ms. Shepherd?" Intern, Andrew Jameson suddenly knocks on the door before coming through, finding Maggie with Zola in her arms, tears running down their faces'.

Zola wipes the tears streaming from her eyes and nuzzles her head against the crease between Maggie's neck and shoulder, bracing herself for the results, not that she didn't have an intuition on how this was going. She could feel it in her body, the sore breasts, the nauseousness upon waking up, and the obvious sign of a missed cycle. It was all there in front of her, so when he began to speak, she only half listened.

"Your blood test came back and upon reading them, we can conclude that you are definitely, not pregnant." He announces and she suddenly shoots up, glaring from the surprised expression painted on her aunt's face, to the confusion in the interns.

"Not pregnant? As in, no baby, no parenthood, and definitely no school transfer? I'm not gonna lose my friends?" She suddenly becomes optimistic despite the initial first reaction that came off as nothing less than disappointed.

Maggie smiles, wrapping Zola into a hug as quick as she could before Zola jumped to her feet, thanking the intern while subconsciously planning how she would hide the bill later. But she knew Aunt Maggie would help her, already planning to tell Meredith it was a routine exam.

"Well Zozo, I hope you learned from this." Maggie chastens, preparing to leave to take Zola back to school.

"Congrats, ladies." Dr. Jameson smiles, shaking their hands before taking off.

Jameson heads down the hall, seeing Arizona from afar, speed walking in her OR scrubs and cap. He could see that she wore a distraught and sober expression and realized immediately that it couldn't be good news. Something had to have happened to the baby and he wanted to make her happy with the news that her friend and co-workers teenage daughter was in fact, not having a baby.

"Dr. Robbins," He addresses her, following her quickened pace down the hall with her.

"How's Zola Shepherd?" She asks, hopeful that at least one of her patients had been delivered good news.

"She's not pregnant!" He exclaims, hoping to share the joy with Arizona too.

Arizona stops at the front desk, grabbing labs and paperwork from one of the nurses, listening to the intern rave about how he delivered the news as she filled out the papers. He was boasting how he had delivered the labs by himself and successfully delivered news to all of her patients in the time that she was gone.

"Wait, Jameson. I gave you clear instructions on grabbing a resident to help you. You better have not been able to find one. Because otherwise if your intent was to so badly impress me by doing it on your own, you need an ego check for that overconfidence." Arizona firmly tells him.

"No Doctor Robbins; My intent was never that."

Arizona looks up exasperated with the barely three day old intern, taking the paperwork from his hands for documentation in the computers when she looked back to him in surprise.

"Was one of our patients, Amelia Shepherd?"

"No, Dr. Grey was taking care of her and asked me for help delivering things to the labs for her because she was paged. I told her I would since I was already on my way and she's my superior. Is there a problem, Dr. Robbins? Should I not help others when I'm not on their service?"

"No Jameson, it's not that! Of course you should help." She assures him, anger held in her voice.

"That's great. So what's the problem then?" He asks innocently, not picking up on the clear problem.

"Because Jameson, this is the other Shepherd! Amelia Shepherd! She must have been one of Meredith's patients! Did you know that?"

"No, but can you elaborate on how you've concluded this?" He pushes.

"You gave the test results to the wrong Shepherd! The paper clearly says 'Shepherd, Amelia' on it!"

"They gave me the results for 'Shepherd', so I naturally assumed it was for Zola! I never realized that the ones I got were for Dr. Shepherd!" His eyes widened with understanding, fear in his hardened voice.

"Okay Andrew, let me tell you what you're going to do: You are going to apologize to this teenage Shepherd to whom you just gave false hope and tell her that she's pregnant and now her life just got a thousand times harder. And then you will go to Dr. Shepherd without disclosing the other patient and tell her you're sorry for screwing up your one job because you can't take clear instructions from your attending in charge."

Andrew froze, staring at Arizona in disbelief and fear, wishing that she could cover for his mistake. He knew this was a rookie mistake, he wished that he could have gone back and read the work despite not even thinking he would have to. He wanted to apologize profusely, work harder, make up for the fact he was now the intern responsible for messing up for not only a fellow, but also their niece. He would be known as the intern that couldn't follow simple directions that even a dog could have obeyed.

"Dr. Robbins, if I may…" He began before getting cut off.

"GO!" She snaps, turning her back to him.

"Crap." He mumbled under his breath, trudging back towards the exam rooms, secretly praying that both of them had already left.