Jogging was something very new to Stiles. He didn't like exercising. The most exercise he liked to participate in came from binge watching multiple seasons of a television show for hours without a bathroom break. But when Lydia had insisted that he'd feel a lot better if he went for a jog with her, she didn't really leave a whole lot of room for him to refuse. So he was jogging with her early in the morning before both of their shifts at work started. And Stiles was hating every minute of it.
Lydia was completely into it, so when he took a second to rest his hands on his knees, she just waited by running around him in a lopsided circle.
"I hate you."
"You love me for making you more fit so you can get a different guy than Derek and finally move on."
"And if I don't want another guy?" He asked, slightly out of breath.
"When was your last orgasm?" Lydia said, no use in holding back when it came to sex as far as she was concerned.
"With someone other than myself or in general?" Stiles stopped his rest and started running alongside Lydia as they pounded the pavement of as local park's running track. "And are you saying that you've already had sex without someone else besides Peter?"
"Well…no."
"Okay then. Shut up."
They kept running in the park, Stiles going off the track to run in the grass so it would be a little easier on his legs and feet as their workout continued. Stiles was in his Dartmouth t-shirt while Lydia donned her Stanford one. It hadn't been planned for them to both wear their alma mater's logos this morning, but the two were pretty much in sync in every other aspect of their lives, so it only made sense that their wardrobe would take note and follow as well. Their shorts weren't matching though. They weren't that far in. Yet.
"This is awful. Why did I agree to this?"
Lydia rolled her eyes. "Working out creates endorphins which in turn makes us feel better about the chaos that is our lives."
"Do you feel better?"
"Do you?"
They had stopped running then, taking a place in the middle of the park and just standing around each other. Or more accurately, Stiles was once again resting his hands on his knees and Lydia spun around him once more in a tangle of continued jogging.
"I feel stupid. Sleeping with our bosses was...we're stupid. And I'm a mistress."
"Stupid mistress." Lydia nodded, still running around him to keep her workout going.
"If I'm a stupid mistress, that makes you a pregnant whore."
Lydia stopped her jogging, taking a moment to join Stiles in resting, her breath hitching up and down as her lungs retracted over and over. Having already regained control over his breathing, Stiles looked over at his friend, his emotions welling to the surface of his thoughts and ready to overflow out of his mouth.
"You know what I'm going to hate now? Fricken ferry boats. Derek has grown to love ferry boats so now everytime I'm out running errands and see a damn ferry boat…"
"Aortic aneurysms are ruined for me." Lydia countered. "Peter taught me this amazing technique and..oh, and coronary artery bypass grafts. I used to fucking breathe coronary artery bypass grafts."
He crouched down on the ground, laying in the grass so he could get his breathing back to one hundred percent normal. Lydia took it upon herself to do the same until they were laying side by side, glancing up at the vibrant blue sky hovering above them. The clouds flitted across the open sky like their thoughts knocked into everything within their heads, threatening to explode out by any available orifice.
"Should we cry?" she proposed, her breathing starting to slow. "Just let everything play itself out and get it over with."
"Probably. Yeah, that's something we should get out of our systems." Stiles agreed.
Their collective breathing started to match, much like their previously mentioned clothing. Glancing over at her friend, Lydia asked, "Should we...like, cry now?"
"No, definitely not."
"Yeah, right. Let's just...keep jogging."
x
Once their bff gaff-in had been established and the jogging had been ran out of their systems, both Lydia and Stiles were in the locker room getting ready, with Isaac by their side. During their attempts to get ready, they had been stalled by gawking at Scott and Allison, who were standing just outside the interns' locker room, laughing over coffee that they had gotten together.
"What's happening?" Lydia asked in utter disbelief.
"I...think she's hanging out with Scott." Isaac answered.
"But why? I thought after he found out she liked him, but then she rejected him, that they would...I don't know, create some space from one another."
"Maybe they're just friends, trying to go back to being friends." He told Lydia.
"Well, they should stop." Stiles said as he grabbed his coat from his locker. "It's freaking me out."
They all started walking in the hallway together, trailing a little ways behind Dr. Ramsey as they started to walk across the skywalk of the hospital. And Allison was pleading to her friends that everything between her and Scott was fine, and strictly professional while he walked much closer to Ramsey.
"It's good, I promise." Allison smiled. "Scott and I are mature enough to move past...everything and just be friends and co-workers."
"Right." said Lydia, though it was clear in her tone and delivery that belief was the furthest from her choice of emotions on the topic.
"Seriously."
"You have a thing for Scott." Isaac stated, shifting his eyebrows to give her a sharp look. "I give it a week before he gives you the low-hard thrust."
"Okay, gross." Allison contorted her nose in disgust, but a smile stained her lips as she shoved past him and continued to saunter across the skywalk with her friends.
"Yeah, ETA a week before you're throwing back your head and yelling Scott's name in ecstasy." Lydia argued.
"Not true!"
"Allison," Stiles looked at her warmly. "You should visit Egypt. You'd fit in perfectly."
"Egypt? Why Egypt?"
"Because you're already the perfect representation of denial."
Their friends cackled explosively, but Allison just stood in front of Stiles while their friends walked on.
"Oh, we're pretending like you still aren't harboring a huge flame for Derek?"
Not willing to trust his rebuttal, Stiles just rolled his eyes and pushed past her, both of them struggling to keep up with their friends and with Ramsey. All of them wondering just what kind of surgeries were going to be in their grasp today.
x
Entering the elevator, ready to start his shift for the day, Derek glanced over and was surprised to see Deaton standing in the empty elevator by himself.
"Why are you in this hospital?" Derek asked.
"I work here?" Deaton cut him down for size with the intense heat in his dark eyes.
As they talked, the elevator shut and started to move. "Funny, I forget the part where I happened to clear you for surgery."
"I've been addicted to The Real Housewives of Atlanta. I'm in love with Bravo, Derek. You're going to clear me for surgery or the next surgery you'll be in will be your own." Deaton said.
"I was thinking about it," admitted Derek. "But that was also before you made the idiotic decision to not only award Chief to Peter, but also sending a personal VIP invitation to allow Satan to parade around Seattle."
The elevator slid open again, stopping on a separate floor. And who should be waiting to ascend on the elevator than the very ex-wife Derek had just been bashing.
"Hi, Alan. I didn't know you were cleared already." Julia sauntered in in her way, ignoring Derek and deciding to stand next to the Chief in the elevator.
Derek cooed. "Ah, Satan speaks English."
"You know, I will answer to Satan, but I have to admit I'd much rather be referred to as Commander Of Darkness."
"Why is she still here, Alan?"
"There's a pediatric attending on maternity leave, so I asked her to stay."
Julia slithered over to Derek. "Actually, I need a neuro consult."
"Fine. Whatever."
x
"Mr. Merlan did well overnight, but has remained afebrile. He's scheduled for a resection non-small cell carcinoma. Unremarkable pre-op labs, chest x-rays haven't changed since his previous scans."
All the interns were doing rounds, in a patient's room with both Ramsey and Peter, with Lydia uttering her best recap for the cardiothoracic surgeon.
"I don't want you to worry, Mr. Merlan." Peter laid a hand on the patient's shoulder. "I'm very good, and I'm going to do my best to reverse everything that your dry cleaning chemicals have done to you, okay?" The patient nodded, not risking his voice for fear or furthering damaging his already weak ENT tissues. "Has oncology seen Mr. Merlan?"
"They're waiting for a surgical path." explained Lydia.
"Wonderful," Peter smiled. "Thank you, Dr. Martin."
"You're welcome, Dr. Hale."
Leaving the room and walking in the hall onto the next patient they were going to round on, Stiles got Lydia alone and away from the others so he could comment on the prior interaction between his friend and her former flame.
"I still think you should tell him about the baby, Lydia." Stiles nodded. "He has some responsibilities to-"
"No, stop." Lydia rolled her eyes, scoffing as they took a corner together, huddled close so that no one would overhear them. "Okay, this isn't your decision. I appreciate your input because we're actually becoming quite good friends, but I don't need you for this, okay? It'll be taken care of and then all of my ties to Peter Hale will be severed for good."
"Yeah, okay."
"And don't do that." Lydia smiled. "Sarcasm is my thing."
Stiles just stood there for a second, giving Lydia what little room she needed to brush off the conversation. As he did, he started to walk when he locked eyes with Derek, who had apparently already been staring at him. There were words exchanged between their silent glances, something that only they could hear. Stiles heard the pleading in Derek's eyes, the begging to be understood. And in return, Stiles sent him the look that said he couldn't and that things were how they had to be right now.
He fought the urge to runaway from him then, but instead Stiles just caught up with his fellow interns and entered the next room on their rounds.
"Carter Atch." Isaac began. "He's 23 and he has a schedule ETS for his erythrophobia hyperpyrexia."
Whispering to Lydia, Allison said, "What is-"
"Blushing." She ushered back.
Ramsey, once again reigning over her interns, took hold of the conversation. "Are there any questions you have for us, Carter?"
"No, Dr. Ha-" He stopped as red pigments overtook his face, fanning himself as the blushing took its rightful place along the ridges of his features. "Sorry. Dr. Hale explained everything in perfect detail."
"Don't feel bad." Scott smiled down at him. "Everyone wants to run into an on-call room with Hale."
"Dr. McCall." Ramsey didn't need to say anything but his name, the disapproval leaked over every syllable.
"I'm sorry, but it's true." Scott dared a glance at Stiles, who just shot him a look of anger and to focus back on the patient.
Just then, Ramsey got a page. After apologizing to Carter, she wrangled her interns out of the room as they went trekking down the hallway towards the pit.
"What do we have, Dr. Ramsey?" Lydia beckoned.
"It's looking like diverticulitis."
Once in the pit, they assessed the patient. Stiles had been lagging behind because he had been starving ever since his job with Lydia that morning and was the last one of them to set their eyes on the patient. And he froze. He froze like he had been shot, GSW directly to his left other interns swarmed around the patient, who was destructively combative. He was an older patient, with brown hair and skin that glistened with life experience.
"Get your hands off of me before I have your job!" The patient crooned, struggling to get Isaac's hands off of him. "You're not even a real doctor, you're a novice! Get off of me! I want the Chief!"
Lydia was attempting to read the chart while Ramsey tried her best to calm the patient and the rest of the interns were moving the gurney. "Patient's name is…"
"You're all novices!" Their patient continued.
"Patient is complaining of intermittent cramping pain and diarrhea. He also suffers from…" Lydia paused again, glancing over at Stiles, who was slowing backing away from the floor and from the sight of the patient in question. She could see in Stiles' eyes that panic and tragedy reigned over his ability to process what was happening before his very eyes.
"NOVICES! GET OFF OF ME!"
"Patient suffers from Alzheimer's." Lydia finished.
"What's his name?" Ramsey asked as they pushed the gurney further.
"Dr. Ramsey…"
"Martin! What is the patient's name?"
The patient found Stiles with his wandering eyes, a vein on his forehead protruding and pulsing with vigor. "What in the hell are you doing here? Why are you here? You know not to bother me when I'm at work! GET OUT OF HERE NOW." He yelled loudly and irately at Stiles, causing him to run away and head to the closest on-call room so he could hide from the secret he had tried so hard to keep only to himself.
Seeing this action, Ramsey looked to Lydia for an answer, since she was the one who still cradled the patient's chart in her hand.
"Asher Stilinski."
"Stiles' father?" Isaac said, all of the friends looking to where Stiles had just been and wondering if he was even still breathing.
They found him a little while later in the interns locker room. Ramsey was preventing them from going in and consoling him because, while she sympathized, they had other patients to attend to. Stiles was just leaning against his locker, thankful that the room was empty, save that of himself and the lingering doctors in the doorway, thankful also for Ramsey's restraint at their entry. He had his back facing them, unable to meet their eyes and just stared at the aged metal that made up other interns' lockers.
"Stiles, are you alright?" Isaac called, but of course, he was unable to answer.
"Enough." Ramsey told them, wagging a finger at every one of her remaining interns. She gave a previously rounded chart to Scott. "McCall, you're on the ETS case and if you so much as breathe another joke about his blushing, I will destroy you. Got it?"
"Allison, Nephew Hale and Blake need an intern, head to the NICU."
"Wait, they're working? Like, together? I'm going to be the meat in the adultery sandwich?"
"Get out of my face before I hit you."
Allison didn't stick around to see how serious her boss was, leaving her friends for Derek and Julia's case.
"Thoracotomy with Uncle Hale, Lydia. That's yours."
"Peter? Oh, can I please have the married couple that like to sleep around?"
"I must have missed my first day, because I fail to remember becoming at hostess. I give you the case, you take it. Am I missing anything?"
"No, I'm happy to be with Hale and learning, thanks." Lydia changed her tune, knowing that rising against Ramsey wasn't smart right now.
"And go to Stilinski, Lahey. Asher. Now."
He left, and that meant that only Ramsey was left. Stiles turned around, but on his best neutral face and regarded the resident with heavy eyes. Eyes that had yet to break a tear, and wouldn't, because he knew that he was stronger than that.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm fine." He told her.
"I totally understand," Ramsey nodded. "If you needed to take the day off and be with your father."
"Definitely not. I'm fine. Totally fine. Finer than fine. I'm great. Fantastic."
Staring him down, Ramsey clearly didn't take his ramblings as insurance of his state of mind. "Alright then. You're going to be assigned to scut."
"Wait, what? Didn't you hear me? I'm fine."
"Yeah, your words say you are. But I hate to tell you, your face tells a completely different story. So you're on scut, to take your mind off of everything because while you might think you're fine, you're not fine. So scut, thank you."
x
During a break from his scut, Stiles toed with the idea of visiting his father. Granted, they didn't have the greatest relationship right now, but he was his dad. That hadn't changed because his father blamed Stiles for his mother's death and had acquired Alzheimer's. He was watching Isaac tend to a very uncooperative Asher while he stood outside. He turned around to see Derek heading over to him, and maybe it was because he was distraught, maybe it was because he was shattered and vulnerable, but he let him amble over to him, looking like a knight in ironed polycotton.
"Stiles." Just the way he said his name was enough for Stiles to cry, to run into Derek's arms and just bawl his eyes out. But he couldn't do that. He wouldn't. "I heard."
"Yeah, secret's out. Time for the whispers and the stares to head my way."
"Stiles-"
"Dr. Hale, I-"
"You don't have to keep calling me Dr. Hale."
"Dr. Hale, I need to do something. I can't just watch...I just can't. I need surgery. I need a distraction. Can you help me with that?"
Staring into his eyes, Derek knew that this wasn't just something Stiles was asking for, it was something that he needed, craved.
"Alright. I have the ETS later this afternoon. You can scrub in."
"Thank you."
They lingered for a few moments, just staring at each other before Stiles broke away, preparing for the surgery and pushing all thoughts of Asher Stilinski out of his head so that he could be the doctor that his mother and the former personality of his father would be proud to call their son.
x
Asher Stilinski was angry. So angry, that he was throwing things around the room. His intern was keeping him from the surgery he knew he had to perform. Didn't they know that being a first year attending was rapidly important?
Isaac was doing his best to attend to the delusions of Stiles' father, but it was proving to be a little more than difficult.
"Dr. Stilinski, please stop."
"Get out, get out of here, right now!"
A nurse barged in and asked what she could do to help. "Get me some haloperidol!"
"Don't come in here, Aaron!" Asher screamed at Isaac. "I'm tired of you judging me for everything, even after Claudia and I agreed to let you stay here."
Stiles was just coming up on the room with Scott, glad to have a friend to talk about the case he was on rather than focusing on his father. But when they went closer to the room and Stiles saw his father throwing his fit, he couldn't just not look. He was throwing something at Isaac, causing Stiles to recoil in terror. Scott took one look at his friend, knowing he couldn't handle it.
"Stiles, go."
He didn't need to be told twice. He fled the scene like the hospital had spontaneously combusted.
"I'm a surgeon, Aaron." Asher was telling Isaac, reliving an episode from his former life like it was happening for him for the first time. "I don't have time to waste, my time matters! So I can't leave surgery to attend to your ego! And you can forget about spending more time with Stiles. He might like having you around, but I sure as hell don't. You're going to stay far away from my son and me. Get out. GET OUT RIGHT NOW AND DON'T COME BACK!"
Stiles found himself in Carter Atch's room, not thinking twice about running into the patient's room and slamming the door behind him. In all honesty, he wasn't even sure the room he had just sought refuge in was a patient's room. He just focused on his labored breathing, trying to get it to slow to a more normal pace, leaning against the door so he didn't fall apart like wet paper. It wasn't until the patient spoke up that he realized that he in fact had barged into an occupied room.
"Are you okay?"
Turning his head, Stiles saw that Carter was acutely attuned to his well being, worry oozing from the sockets in his face while his stare pleaded for an answer. Sighing, Stiles just squared his features and said, "I'm supposed to be asking you questions like that."
He turned away from him again, even though he knew Carter was still staring. He just focused on getting his breaths to lighten, to think about anything except the ground of his life being ripped open from him, allowing him to fall into the chasm of strife like he'd been dreading ever since he had moved into his parents' old house and started working at Seattle Grace Hospital.
x
Isaac finally found help in the Chief of Surgery when he ran from Asher Stilinski's room. There was no way he could handle him alone, and dragging Stiles into the mess of his father's disease didn't seem fair at all. So when he found the Chief roaming the halls, he seized the chance to bring him into the matter.
"Sir, could you, um, help me for a second?"
Alan Deaton rolled his eyes, lifting his attention from the paperwork he had been absent-mindedly going over and glossing over the frame of Isaac Lahey. "What is it, Lahey?"
"I could really use some help with Dr. Stilinski and Dr. Ramsey is in surgery."
"Stiles? Are you two fighting or something stupid like that? Honestly, Lahey, you're a doctor. The least you can do is figure out your rivalry amongst yourselves. I'm busy."
He turned away from him, fully meaning to walk away from the young doctor just then, but Isaac was far from giving up on dealing with his patient alone.
"No, sir, not Stiles. It's Dr. Asher Stilinski."
Deaton's feat screeched loudly on the linoleum of the hospital. The sheer force he felt when he looked back at Isaac was enough to send him falling to the floor, but by some miracle, his feet didn't betray him just yet.
"Asher's here?"
"Yes sir, he was admitted a little while ago. And he keeps calling me Aaron and won't let me accurately examine him. Sir, who's Aaron?"
"Aaron." Alan thought about it for a second, not looking at Isaac. Until he realized who Asher must have been referring to him as. "Aaron Stilinski. He was Asher's brother."
"So Stiles' father thinks I'm his brother?"
"It's funny, you do sort of look like Aaron."
"I...look like Stiles' uncle?" Isaac hadn't been expecting, and definitely didn't want, to warrant such a fact.
Finally getting a grip on the situation, Deaton shook his head. "Uh, get to work, Lahey. I'm busy."
"But sir-"
And that was it. All it took for the Chief of Surgery to disappear out of his sights, leaving him to deal with the burden of Asher Stilinski all on his own.
x
Walking into the NICU once again with her patient's chart in hand, Allison was less than optimistic. Early in the day, Julia had begged Derek to take the case of a premature baby, one who had a very slim chance at survival. He had told her that because she had failed to give him all of the details, about how far gone the baby had been, that there was nothing they could do. But Julia was persistent and was getting a set of labs one more time before completely giving up on the little child. So with the labs, Allison gave Julia a small smile and handed her the chart.
"Dr. Blake, it's not looking good."
"What?"
Julia grabbed the chart, looking over the most recent results and sighed so deep, it vibrated throughout the entire room.
"Damn it. Pneumococcus, and a resistant strain at that." She looked from Allison back to the incubator where the tiny baby resided. "The antibiotics aren't working."
"Isn't there anything else we could do, besides the proposed spinal surgery you suggested to Dr. Hale?"
Julia answered with a sigh. "I don't think we're operating today, Argent. You might want to find Ramsey and get reassigned."
"So, he was right. Dr. Hale, when he was here earlier." Allison sighed. "You think he was right about her being a lost cause?"
"She has such a good grip. But it looks like she might be a little too far from being able to help."
x
Lydia, despite having to work with Peter yet again since they had ended their fling / relationship / undetermined situation of romantics, was glad to be in the OR watching the older Dr. Hale operate. Only, she was feeling like crap. No, crap wasn't strong enough a representation of how she was feeling. Death, she felt like seconds away from seeing her life drift from her very eyes. Only she was an intern, and she couldn't tell her boss' or anyone else for that matter that she felt 'sick' and couldn't be watching this amazing surgery take place. So she was toughing it out and working through the pain she began to feel spreading from her abdomen and the sweat piling against her scrub mask.
"Alright, the tumor has infiltrated the pericardium." Peter was saying, looking over to Lydia as she swayed on her feet, looking bored, in his eyes anyway. "Martin." When she didn't respond or even look at him, He yelled again, "Martin!"
"Sorry, what?" Lydia was feeling the ramifications of toughing it out through this surgery. The beads of sweat on her forehead felt like microscopic burns sizzling on her skin. The stomach felt like it was a bomb, ticking away the time until it exploded and took her with it.
"Is my surgery getting in the way of your seemingly important thoughts, Dr. Martin?"
"No, sir." She told him, knowing that there wasn't a right answer to give him. "I apologize."
Up in the gallery, Ramsey was looking down on the surgery when Allison walked in, seeing her boss and just sighing to herself. Ramsey wasn't one to pry into the lives of her interns, but curiosity stirred her tongue to ask, "Did you know, Argent? About Asher. Stiles ever mention anything about his father's condition?"
"No." She said, taking a seat next to the resident. "No, none of us had any idea. And Blake says I need a new case. The preemie is inoperable."
"Never thought I'd see the day that Asher Stilinski was ruled by a disease."
"You knew him?"
Ramsey shook her head. "I knew of him. He left the hospital before I started my internship. Deaton's always been a big fan, from what I understand. It's just strange. I figured Stiles would have mentioned it, as close as you all appear to be."
"I thought I knew everything, almost everything, about him." Allison rolled her eyes, annoyed. "We share a house together and I don't know anything about him, about any of them. We're just interns who work together and some of us happen to live in close proximity to each other. We're nothing to each other."
Back inside the OR, Lydia was still feeling like her life was at its' end. Peter was going through with the surgery of course, but she was convinced that she might be the next one to need his skillful hands to save her own life.
"When I press on the tumor, there's an arrhythmia." Peter sighed, not looking up from the patient's open cavity before adding, "Martin, what is that a sign of?"
"A sign...of...sorry, it's uh...a sign that the tumor has infiltrated the pericardium."
"I've already determined that, Dr. Martin, if you had been listening. What's our possibilities here?"
"I…" Lydia couldn't answer. It was causing her actual fire-wielding pain to open her mouth and speak. "Dr. Hale, I'm sorry…"
"Get it together, Martin. I expect you to know such a simple answer. It could be causing a tear in the aortic muscle of the heart. He, literally, has a broken heart."
That's when the darkness Lydia had been prolonging took hold of her, swallowing up her consciousness and causing her to faint and collapse on the floor of the OR. Ramsey and Allison immediately stood up from their seats, danger spreading across their faces as they rushed down to the OR to assist. Peter took one look and felt fear grip at his own heart.
"Lydia. Lydia! Someone help her! Get a gurney in here! Don't just stand there help her. Lydia!"
Allison and Ramsey stormed in, helping get Lydia out of the OR and onto the gurney that had been acquired shortly after.
"Lydia, can you hear me?" This was Allison, trying to appeal to the weebly eyes of Lydia has she struggled to stay awake.
"Argent, what's going on? Tell me what you know." Peter demanded.
"I don't know, Dr. Hale."
Ramsey strapped an oxygen mask to Lydia's face, as they maneuvered the gurney to get here the hell out of the operating room.
"Dr. Ramsey, I want a full report when she stabilizes, do you hear me? As soon as she's alright."
"Right away, Dr. Hale."
Ramsey lead the gurney carrying Lydia out of the room and pushed her through the hallway, Allison hot on her heels, a free-range rug burn.
"Jesus, her pulse is racing." Ramsey told Allison as the gurney was turned down the corner of another hallway of the hospital. "We need her BP and we need it now, so let's get a monitor. And she needs a liter of LR, stat."
Still half-conscious, Lydia worked to remove the mask from her face. Allison saw this and tried to get her to keep it on, but Lydia moved it enough so that she could speak.
"Seven...seven weeks. I'm pregnant, Allison...I'm...pregnant."
Looking up from Lydia, Allison locked eyes with Ramsey, who also had heard their one-sided exchange of dialogue. Worry laced in the eyes of the great resident
"We need to get to pre-op then." Ramsey shook her head. "Allison, find Julia Blake. Hurry."
Allison watched them step onto the elevator while she listened to Ramsey's orders, looking at Lydia like she was already a worst case, like there was already nothing they could do. But she shook herself, and found Julia walking with the Chief, Isaac tagging along while he told the Chief of Asher's need of a needle biopsy, to see if he had liver cancer. But Allison couldn't even focus on that when Lydia's state of life hung in the balance.
"I'm leaving, Alan." Julia was telling the Chief. "I was here for one patient and I can track the progress from Beacon Hills. Plus, it's not like Derek is advocating for me to stay."
"Should I leave?" Isaac added.
"Dr. Blake," interrupted Allison. "We need you, right now. It's Lydia. She's collapsed."
"Lydia's collapsed?" Alarm and terror was audible in Isaac's voice.
"But why do you need me?" Julia asked.
Allison didn't answer. She just stared at Julia while the three doctors before he understood why Dr. Blake was being requested.
"Oh my God, Lydia's pregnant!?"
"Shut up, Isaac." Allison scoffed, returning to Julia. "Please hurry."
As she lead Julia away from the nurse's station, Julia threw back over her shoulder, "I'm still not staying, Alan."
x
Scrubbing in on surgery with Derek and Scott, Stiles was in much better spirits. He felt like he had finally gotten control over his previously seeping emotions. Even though he wasn't doing any cutting, Stiles was just happy to have something to align his priorities to, something to block out the Asher Stilinski receptors that caused him to want to run away from Seattle and never return. And it didn't hurt that he got to look at Derek while he was blocking everything out either.
"Okay, Dr. McCall," Derek said, ever sounding like the elegant teacher he tried his best to always be. "If we're going to stop Mr. Atch's blushing, we have to expose the sympathetic ganglion chain. Now, where does such a thing live?"
Scott had opened his mouth to answer, but Deaton stormed in, Isaac hanging just off of him in the doorway.
"Hale, it's time to clear me for surgery. Right now."
"I'm in the middle of surgery, Chief." Derek said, not looking up from his patient or the performing of the surgery. "I'm too busy to give you every reason about why I'm not clearing you for surgery."
"I'm the Chief of Surgery, in case you've forgotten." Deaton was beginning to elevate his voice. "We'll do the paperwork later, just give a verbal okay and I'll have Lahey attest as a witness."
"It's been a week, Alan. Chief of Surgery or not, I'm your doctor and one week is not long enough of a recovery to perform a medical procedure."
"It's just a needle biopsy."
"So get a resident. I'm not clearing you, so you might as well save your breath and let me get back to my surgery."
Watching the endeavor unfold and change drastically, Stiles had a feeling. A certain nagging that he knew why the Chief was needing to perform such a surgery.
"It's my father." The look on Deaton's face confirmed it, as much as Stiles' didn't want to have such information attended to. "You think he might have cancer?"
"Isaac needs your signature, Stiles." Deaton nodded. "I'm sorry."
Leaving the OR, Stiles ripped off his gloves and followed Isaac out of the OR. They made their way to a counter just off of the scrub room and was assigning his signature to the forms.
"His bili, what's his total bili?"
"Four." Stiles nodded, giving the paperwork another flick of the pen he was holding. "Not great, but not terrible."
When he handed Isaac the forms, there was something readable on his face, something he was keeping hidden from him and lingering just beyond his eyes. Here his father was, needing to know if he had cancer or not, and Isaac was keeping something from Stiles.
"What is it?"
"What?"
"You're not telling me something, so just say it. What else is wrong with my father?"
"It's not your father." Isaac sighed. "It's Lydia."
x
Having just finished his surgery, Peter came out of the OR with a vengeance. He had to find Lydia, had to find out what was going on. It didn't matter what was going on between them, it only mattered that he cared for her and needed, craved to know what was happening with her. He was on his way to check the OR board when Deaton blocked his view.
"Great, you're done. I need you to do a needle biopsy."
"Uh, sorry, Chief, I have to check on my intern. She collapsed on me in surgery and I need-"
"You need," he stopped the Cardio God from furthering his sentence. "To do this needle biopsy. Because I need you to, because I asked you to. Nicely."
"Chief."
"Now, Peter. That's the last time I'm telling you." Deaton sighed. "It's for Asher Stilinski."
Seeing the need in his eyes, Peter nods, knowing that Deaton had known Asher for years, not to mention that Asher was Stiles' father and he wanted to help anyway he could. Peter left the OR board and the Chief to prepare Asher for the biopsy, knowing that he wouldn't be able to relax until he knew that Lydia was alright.
x
Julia was doing her best to remove Lydia's pregnancy in the OR. Ramsey was sitting behind Lydia, sitting in a chair just by her head, smoothing out her hair in an attempt to comfort her. Allison was observing the whole thing, every inch of her mind worrying that they weren't going to be able to help her friend, even though there was a dire need for Lydia's surgery to happen as quickly as possible.
"Is she going to make it?"
Not responding to Allison's question, Julia asked her own inquiry. "She was going to have this baby?"
"I don't know." the intern admitted. "Lydia's the most private out of all of us. Although that title could go to Stiles right about now, with everything going on with his dad."
"I heard," she nodded. "It's awful. Asher was something to be reckoned with, as was Claudia Leigh." Julia sighed again. "You know, I studied under a doctor that Claudia trained herself?"
"Really? So you're like the grand-doctor of the great Claudia Leigh?" Allison knew that she was supposed to hate Julia out of loyalty to Stiles, but this was amazing, and if Stiles could get passed his own issues, he could learn something about his mother from Julia.
"Lydia's lost a lot of blood." Back to the surgery at hand, Julia shifted paradigms. "But I think I've got it under control. Dr. Ramsey, you must have a surgery of your own to get to-"
"I'm fine. Right here, I'm fine." Ramsey assured her superior.
"Alright, then." Julia nodded. "Let's reverse this pregnancy then."
x
Washing his hands after the surgery, Derek was in the scrub room, finishing up and drying his hands when Scott and Stiles entered the room to do the same.
"Can you take over on the post-op?" Stiles sent this to Scott, not needing to glance over at Derek. "I have to check on Lydia as soon as I scrub."
"Yeah, what's going on with her anyway?"
A knee-jerk reaction, a would-be go to maneuver, Derek extended out his arms to Stiles, his hand touching his shoulder, trying to ease his pain with a touch, but Stiles sent him a rage-inducing look, one that told him to take his hand back while he still had the chance. Scott began to wash his hands, and Stiles did so as well as he sent daggers during his intense lock of looks with Derek.
"Don't!"
"I'm sorry-"
"Don't be sorry. Don't be anything! I'm so tired of you being sorry, Derek." Stiles sighed.
"Dr. Stil-"
"Don't!"
Still scrubbing, Scott did his best to keep his head down and let Stiles take out all of his feelings on the one that held the most of them.
"Dr. Stilinski…"
The annoyance reached it's peak at that professional delivery of his name, and Stiles was ready to let the neuro attending have the brute of what he had coming to him. "Seriously? 'Dr. Stilinski', he says. Are you worried about Scott finding out about us, as if I haven't already shared it with my friends because that's what you do when you're screwed over by the dreamy attending you were stupid enough to sleep with in the first place."
"Stiles, it's okay." Derek said, but none of it was okay. Absolutely nothing in Stiles' life was okay right now.
"It's not okay! You, doing this, being...you, is not okay. You're married! You have a wife!" He was screaming, and he didn't care. It was too much. So he had to, he just did. Letting everything out was his only option at this point. "You have a wife that's not easy to avoid or dislike." Stiles had finished scrubbing, and Scott had just left the room as Stiles dried his hands with some paper towels that were readily available. "She's painfully nice and annoyingly intelligent and in the process right now of saving my friend's life!"
"Stiles-"
"Don't! Stop talking to me like we're in a relationship. Stop talking to me at all."
He stormed out of the room, anger fueling every step he threw into the ground as he walked away from the OR, away from the scrub room, away from his feelings, away from his life, and most importantly, away from Derek.
He found the OR where they had Lydia and put on a mask and went to go inside to be with Lydia, but Ramsey wasn't having it. She left her seat before Lydia and ran over to the door where Stiles was trying to enter through.
"I'm coming in, Ramsey."
"No, Stiles, you're not."
"She's my friend."
"Exactly why you're not coming in here. She's naked and exposed, lying on the table. She's terrified out of her mind right now, even though she's sedated. Lydia deserves all the privacy she can get right now, so no, you're not coming in here."
Stiles ripped off his mask, tears wobbling uneven circles against his dark orbs as he stared at Ramsey intently.
"I knew...about the pregnancy and I-" He cut himself off, staring past Ramsey and looking at Lydia on the surgical table before seeing his resident's face gaining clarity again. "We went jogging this morning. Could that have…"
Ramsey, softening at Stiles' admittance and concern, gave a weak smile and her best sympathetic eyes. "No, it was going to happen this way, regardless. Nothing caused it. You didn't do anything wrong here."
"Please just…" Stiles stopped, not knowing how he was planning to finish his sentence, but pleading with his watery eyes anyway.
"We've got this. Go. We'll take care of her. Just go."
Nodding, Stiles tossed his mask in the trash and left for safer pastures, knowing that his places to hide from his problems was dwindling down faster than he could list them.
x
Derek was trying his best not to stare at Stiles Stilinski. Which was hard, given that he had, for whatever reason, taken a seat in the NICU's waiting room, and he was overseeing Julia's patient in the NICU. Luckily, Julia walked in so he wasn't as distracted by his earlier squabble with the intern.
"BP is stabilizing?" Julia asked, always the furrowed brow of business.
He nodded, and then he shook his head. "She's stronger. There's no reason behind why she would be stronger than this morning."
"I told you, Derek, she's a fighter." She smiled.
"If she makes it through the night, I'll operate, if she has a little bit more strength."
Smiling at each other, Julia strode over to Derek as he sat down in one of the many rocking chairs that the NICU had to offer for its various occupants.
"Okay, so we haven't talked."
"Julia." His sigh was deep and trench-life, but her persistence won out over his resistance.
"Hear me out. There's three scenarios here, in the Derek and Julia Era. One, I could say I'm sorry until...forever. You find some way to forgive me and come back to Beacon Hills, back to your life, our life, and we become the adults that we are and move on. Two, I can say I'm sorry, you forgive me, but you get to throw it in my face and become the passive-aggressive one and I have no say in the matter because, well, I deserve it." She laughed.
"Are you trying to make a joke right now?"
"Who said Satan couldn't be a stand-up comic?"
Shaking his head and hiding his smile, Derek asked, "And the third scenario?"
"I don't know what Three is," She braved, but she leaned down and placed a kiss on Derek's lips, and he couldn't resist because he had so much love for Julia, despite everything. He had married her for a reason, so he kissed her back. This action wasn't lost on her, because he felt her smile against him. When she stood upright again and looked over him, she said, "All I know is that I still love you, Derek."
Staring into her eyes, Derek didn't know how to feel. So much had transpired in his marriage. First Jackson, then the move to Seattle, and then Stiles. Now...now everything was a mess and Derek didn't need Alzheimer's to not recognize his life. But he knew that something had to change.
x
Isaac and Peter were walking toward the OR board, mainly because Isaac wasn't sure what else he was supposed to do after assisting Dr. Hale with Dr. Stilinski's needle biopsy. But it seemed that Peter was very keen on heading to the OR board like his life depended on it, and he could only assume it was because of Lydia.
"Go, Lahey." Peter finally turned around in time to tell him. "Tell the lab the Chief wants those results rushed. Say it's Asher Stilinski's biopsy."
"Yes, sir." He retreated to do as his attending had instructed him to do, but when Peter was just about to try and find Lydia's name on the OR board, assuming she had needed surgery, Isaac came running back to him. "Dr. Hale, should I order the histological grade and staging or any specific stains?"
"Run everything, Lahey, go."
Finally leaving him alone, Peter stared at the board and saw Lydia's name in bold looked to see what procedure she needed done and he felt all the air leave his lungs in a rush to remove itself from his body. Exploratory laparotomy, ectopic pregnancy. Lydia was pregnant. Pregnant with a baby. His baby.
Across the hospital in the ICU, Lydia was just waking up from her surgery, eyes faltering until they found Ramsey sitting next to her in a chair just to the side of her hospital bed. She felt battered, weak, beaten. Lydia felt like her body has been through a war, one that she had lost.
"What happened?"
Ramsey sighed, her features much glazed over and softer than Lydia had ever seen them. Although, she supposed it could have been the drugs that were altering her outlook on the outside world. "You had an extra uterine pregnancy. Your right fallopian tube burst and everything was so...Dr. Blake couldn't save the tube, there was just too much damage…"
Looking away from Ramsey, Lydia just stared at the ceiling before closing her eyes and sighing. If she had surgery, that meant that Peter knew. Peter knew that she had been pregnant, and that she had lost his baby.
x
Waking up from the surgery, Carter opened his eyes to see Stiles standing over him, and Scott scribbling in his chart as he was coming to.
"Hey."
Stiles smiled at him, looking up from his incision to stare into his eyes. "Hey there."
"It worked? The surgery worked, right?"
"It did." Stiles explained. "The surgery was a definite success. This is just us following up on you. Dr. Hale should be by shortly to check on you."
At the mention of Derek's name, nothing happened for Carter. No blushing. "Dr. Hale…" Carter started to cry and he realized that his life was finally forever changed by the surgery. No longer was he a victim to his emotions, to let the world know how he was feeling whenever he felt something, no matter how private the matter at hand. "I'm not blushing. I'm really not blushing."
Scott and Stiles exchange a look. Speaking up, Stiles looked at Carter and said, "I guess it was worth all of the risks."
Chuckling, they left Carter's room, sauntering away and talking amongst themselves as they receded from their patient's room.
"Despite it being successful, I still think it's sort of much to have a major surgery with more than a handful of risks just so people don't know how you're feeling."
"Really? You wouldn't care if everyone knew you liked Allison, even though all of us already know?"
Shoving him playfully, Scott and Stiles laughed. "Okay, maybe not."
They found a spot near the nursery, making faces at all of the newborn babies when Scott could see past the layers of defense that Stiles was spinning around himself, pulling over his raw feelings.
"You know, I'm here. I'm still here. I know you've been getting close with Lydia, and that's great. You both went through Attending Affection Boot Camp together and that bonds you, but I'm still here, Stiles. We can still talk about anything and everything."
"I know, Scott." Stiles smiled. "I know you are, but I'm fine."
"Okay, you're so not fine." Stiles shifted in place, looking away from the babies and seeing the true defiance in Scott's crooked brow. "You've said those words, 'I'm fine', over and over today. So many times that it doesn't even sound like a word anymore. You're not fine. And that's okay."
"It's...a lot." He felt the emotion rising like a tsunami inside of him, but he wasn't letting it capsize just yet. He couldn't risk it.
"Listen, if it were me and I was the one who was dealing with my father having cancer, I'd be halfway through my second bottle of tequila."Scott inched closer to Stiles, tapping his arm affectionately. "You're stronger than you're giving yourself credit for."
"The truth, though? I'm not afraid he has cancer." Stiles sniffled, even though tears had yet to drop down his face, his sinuses betraying him anyway. "I'm scared that he doesn't have cancer."
Scott nodded, getting what he was trying to convey. "Yeah, liver cancer...that's fast. Quick, clean. And they give you a shit ton of morphine. The same can't exactly be said for Alzheimer's."
"No, it can't." Looking back to the babies, Stiles sighed. "Am I an awful person?" He found Scott's eyes on him once again. "Am I awful for hoping that my father has cancer?"
x
Isaac had taken it upon himself to wait with Stiles for the results of his father's biopsy. A word hadn't been spoken between the two since he had sat down with the anticipating son. Allison came trotting over to them, sitting in between Stiles and Isaac.
"Still waiting?"
"Yeah." Isaac answered for Stiles, who had his head down and turned away from the pair of friends.
"How's Lydia?"
Stiles questions sparked surprise to flash over their faces, not expecting him to speak with him being faced away.
"She's...alive." Allison said, wishing that her voice didn't sound as bleak as it did, given the verity that their friend had survived the surgery. "She'll be okay, but there's going to be days filled with pain for Lydia."
Lifting his head up, Stiles regarded Allison with a small smile. "I'm glad you were there, in the surgery with her."
"You are?"
"Of course, I am." Stiles reacted positively. "One of us should be in there with her."
"I just wasn't sure you wanted anyone but you in there, with you and Lydia as close as you are. Sometimes it seems like you and Lydia are over there, being we-slept-with-our-bosses with one another, and here the rest of us are...expecting more from our attendings."
"Allison…"
"Sorry, I'm just...I'm glad I was there too."
"Here you go." The lab tech interrupted, handing Stiles a piece of paper for him to examine. "Results for Asher Stilinski."
Silently reading the results, Stiles didn't move. He took in the results, and then gave them over to Isaac. "You'll let him know?"
He got up from his seat, strutting away without looking at either of his friends. "Stiles, are you okay?"
"No. No, I'm not okay."
x
Asher was lying very still in his bed. The procedure at left him sore, and he didn't want to do anything but sleep, even if it was escaping him at the moment. Isaac walked in then, the biopsy results in his hand while he passed doorway and made his amble inside.
"Dr. Stilinski…"
"Ugh, Aaron, please. Go away. I've had a very long day and I'm tired."
"No, Asher." Isaac figured if he looked like Asher's brother, maybe he could at least get some things to seep into his diseased brain. "No, I'm not going away. I'm your brother, and I care about you, even if you hate me. But I don't always like you either, so I'm not going anywhere. I hate the way you talk to me and, more importantly, I hate the way you talk to Stiles. You're his father. He deserves a lot better from you, Asher."
Soaking in the words, actually hearing them, Asher cleared his throat. "You're right. I'm sorry."
"Really?"
"There's something wrong with me, Aaron." Asher sighed. "What is it?"
"The mass on your liver-"
"It's chemistry?" His brain his greatest enemy, Asher thought more about trying to get the right words out. "I mean, is it chem...shit." He sighed deeply, tired of what had been plaguing him for most of his adult life. "Is it malignant?"
"No," Isaac scoffed, shaking his head slowly, reluctantly. "No, it's benign."
x
A roller coaster. That's what the day had been for Derek Hale. With Julia's preemie patient, Stiles' hatred in the scrub room, and then Julia kissing him...everything was a blurred edge, something just outside of his reach. He needed to figure everything out. And that was hard to do when he wasn't alone. So he was leaving Seattle Grace for the night, clear on what he needed from himself when he walked outside of the doors leading to and from the hospital and saw Stiles sitting on a bench, sobbing profusely.
"Stiles?"
He didn't say anything, couldn't say anything, because his cries were too severe to admit a response to slither off his tongue.
"Stiles."
"Don't." Stiles mimicked the words he had been pleading Derek with all day. It was all he had left. "Please, Derek, just don't say anything."
But that was harder said than done. Derek wanted, more than he wanted to sort his life out on his own, to console Stiles, to hold him and convince him that everything would turn around, that everything was going to be okay in due time, but some part of him...some better part of him knew that he couldn't do that. Stiles didn't need any more reasons to hate Derek. And the attending certainly wasn't going to give him any more.
"Alright."
Still standing there, he watched as Stiles lifted himself from the bench and stopping just before him, standing now just inches from his face, their breathing synchronizing together like swimmers intent on winning a race together as rain fell behind them. The perfect backdrop for how everything was between them.
"I'm just tired." Stiles was still crying, but it was subsiding enough so that he could talk. "My father is tiring. What just happened with Lydia...and you, Derek. Hating you is the most tiring thing that I've ever done."
Grabbing his face, knowing that he was still crying and tears were still fresh on his face, Stiles kissed Derek roughly at first, and then softened the kiss as Derek leaned into it, accepting the gift of his admiration expressed through their mutual lip-lock. Stiles pulled away, looking into Derek's eyes and seeing himself, seeing the sharp exhaustion that beat throughout his body as easily as his heart continued to pump his blood.
"I don't want to do it anymore."
Stunned, Derek was left to watch Stiles walk back inside the safety of the hospital, his earlier thoughts of figuring things out clouded by getting kisses from Julia, the wife that he had separated from and left Beacon Hills to get away from, and Stiles, the thriving surgical intern that threatened to overtake every ounce of his heart, unable to know what he was going to do next.