The Yellow Brick Bar was buzzing with the doctors of Seattle Grace Hospital. Joel, the owner, was tending bar and slewing drinks to all his favorite doctors, some of which had played a huge or minor part in his ability to be handing out drinks to them. Allison was bringing drinks to the table, setting down a slew of shots for Isaac and Stiles. Their pack was a little short, given that Scott was still working at the hospital, and Lydia was still a patient and recovering from her miscarriage.
"She claims she's fine." Isaac was telling them as he let the liquid fire of the tequila attack his better judgment, both Allison and Stiles doing the same. "At least before I came here. She practically yelled me out of the room before I headed over."
"That's Lydia being Lydia." Allison told him. "There's no way that she could go through what she went through and can come out from the other side of it without any residual heartache."
"Lydia can." Isaac nodded.
"She's fine. Lydia is fine." Stiles assured them. Considering he was becoming the closest to Lydia, if anyone would know, it would definitely had been Stiles. Lydia was coping, in Lydia's own way, which was to say using her overused skill of ignorance.
"Maybe she's a little too fine."
"Lydia has steel veins, Allison. She's kickass, and she's fine."
Rolling her eyes at Isaac, Allison tossed another shot before saying, "She was pregnant, and she lost the baby. That's not fine. Lydia is good, but she's actually like she's the best she's ever been, like she hasn't just suffered through a severe tragedy. Lydia Martin is soulless."
"God, she's going to be the best surgeon."
"Isaac."
"What? The surgeons who prove that they can handle anything, especially in their intern years, are the ones that win things like the Harper Avery."
"Some people can keep things to themselves." Stiles added.
The door to the bar rang loudly in their ears, bringing Stiles attention to the handsome doctor that just ambled into the Yellow Brick Bar. Except for the fact that the excruciatingly handsome doctor happened to be Derek Hale. He turned away from him, so that he could only slightly watch Derek as opposed to full on staring at him. He joined who looked like Dr. Ramsey at the bar, whom Stiles had failed to notice was even in the dim-lighted establishment. He looked away. Not because he really wanted to, especially after his admittance to Derek last week about not wanting to hate him anymore, but because he had to. Because he needed to.
Derek sat down next to Ramsey, the dark-humored resident who seemed to be at least feeling the flapping of a buzz in her system.
"Scotch, double, please."
His drink fell on the counter before him quickly, allowing him the burn of the brown liquor to bring down his walls, setting his eyes on Ramsey before he just blurted it all out.
"Stiles kissed me. Julia kissed me, and then he kissed me." Derek laughed to himself, trying to see if Ramsey had heard him, but seeing a hard stare in place of her emotions as he went on. "My boyfriend and my wife kissed me around the same day and I don't know what I should do. I should do something, right?"
"Oh God," Ramsey sighed, looking across the counter of the bar and looking Joel dead set in his dark eyes. "Joel, what did I do to deserve this?"
"Come on, Helena. He needs a friend."
"He gets to call you Helena?" Derek smiled.
"Not anymore." The delivery of the stare Joel received sent him to the employees only section of the bar, hiding from the further heat of her gaze. "McDreamy, please go gossip to someone who likes you and isn't completely put off by your perfectly imperfect hair."
Because he clearly liked her company, for some unknown reason to the smaller doctor, Derek went on to say, "It's going to work out, I think, it really is. Julia is heading back to California so Stiles and I can have a fresh start, a clean slate, and everything will be back to the way it was."
Surprisingly, Ramsey threw her head back and laughed, though it was unclear to Derek whether or not her head was thrown back by choice or because of the alcohol in her system had loosened up her limbs. "If you really believe that, they should call you McDimwitted."
x
Alcohol pulsed out of their systems, the interns were making their rounds with Ramsey, stepping into their first patient's room and waiting for Ramsey to shoot them the glare, the one that told one of them to step up and present the case for her. But this patient was already having a huge pow wow of nurses and other unrecognizable personnel, which was not how Ramsey had wanted the room to have started out being, which was crowded.
"Who's birthday is it, because that's the only reason I can think of for why there's so many people breathing in this room right now. Go."
Her bark was enough to scare everyone but the patient out of the room, her reputation following her around like a formidable pit bull, stereotypically ready to lap the blood from their heels as they ran away afraid and alone.
"Sorry about that." The patient, a young woman with tied back blonde hair told Ramsey. "I was just telling some stories of missionary life." When a pair of raised eyebrows were visible from her hospital bed, she added. "My parents, they're the missionaries, so we get around. Different cities, countries, all the time."
"That's amazing." Allison stated, smiling at her, but Ramsey was staring at her, so she cleared her throat and decided it was up to her to present the case. "Um, this is Leera Anaplak, Uncle Ha-, I mean, Dr. Hale's patient, who presents with ventricular arrhythmias and multiple syncopal episodes."
"How many fainting spells have you had, Leera?"
Leera shrugged her shoulders at the question still hanging around Ramsey's smaller frame. "A fair amount, I guess. I've also been having some palpitations."
"Medical history of rheumatic heart disease with mitral valve stenosis." Allison tacked on at the end, like the perfect period to the patient's tale of sickness.
"Can you tell me the primary causes of ventricular arrhythmias, Dr. Argent?"
"Valvular disease," They all turned around to see a hospital gown-donning Lydia Martin limping herself through the doorway of the room, the shock on their faces fueling her delivery of the answer she had begun. "Mitral valve prolapse, drugs, metabolic abnormalities, and stimulants."
Several sets of eyes befell her, looks of astonishment from her peers, worry from Stiles, and palpable annoyance from her surgical superior.
"Leave!" Ramsey screeched at her, her pointed finger silently directing her to where she was supposed to be, which was anywhere from the doctoring of patients.
"How many times have I told you people that I'm-"
"A patient," Ramsey finished for her, "And not a doctor this week. So, I repeat, leave. You have fifteen seconds to be in your room, Lydia, we're rounding on you next."
Mocking Ramsey with an unpleasantly distorted face, Lydia leaned on the rolling IV drip that had accompanied her during her trek from her room. As she was walking, the air from her movement widened the gap from the back of her gown, allowing everyone of them to glimpse at her "Wednesday" panties.
"It's Friday, Martin."
Scott's comment caused all of her fellow interns to scream laughing, despite being chastised by Ramsey as they fled from Leera's room. Lydia turned back around, spinning sloppily on her heels as she eyes Scott evenly. "You wish you had this, German Shepherd."
Once they were in Lydia's room, her friends saw that her mother was in attendance, clearly feeling like it was her duty as the woman who had bore Lydia in her womb for nine months to come to her aid during something had heart wrenching as losing a baby.
"Lydia Martin," Stiles said, starting his presentation of his friend's current condition. "Post-op three days from a unilateral salpingectomy."
"Three days since I've practiced any medicine," Lydia sputtered, looking from Stiles to Ramsey. "I'm fully capable of coming back to work. Today."
"She is?" This was from matriarch Natalie Martin, who didn't seem to have the same grip on medical situations as her daughter did.
"My pain is being controlled, I feel great, taking solids. I'm ready, I swear." Her pleading with her resident continued, but even she was beginning to doubt it's effectiveness.
"But what about her fever this morning-"
"Mother!"
Her friends had to metaphorically glue their mouths shut from laughing, but Ramsey just rolled her eyes, a small smile her lips before looking back to Lydia. "Did you have a fever this morning, Lydia?"
"101 last night, but who cares! I worked with the flu last month and my temp peaked at 103!"
"And that's stupid, but commendable, but you're staying right where you are until you're clear of fever-inducing body temperatures. Get better this week so you can continue being a doctor next week, Martin. Get some rest, okay?"
They all went to leave, but Lydia managed to grab a hold of Stiles' coat sleeve, keeping him back for a few seconds as Lydia lowered her voice, low enough so her mother couldn't interpret it.
"You have to do something, Stiles, I'm going to end up hurting her." She let her eyes gloss over to Natalie, letting him understand the 'her' in question.
"Ramsey's right, Lydia. You need time."
He left the room as she yelled, "But I'm better! I am!"
The next person on their list for rounds was Asher Stilinski, who was looking very agitated this morning for some reason that may have happened recently, or may have happened more than twenty years ago, or even before Stiles had been born.
"Lahey, go."
Isaac nodded, shifting from Ramsey to look at Asher. "Dr. Stilinski is post-op day three from a tumor resection."
"I didn't do a tumor resection this week, no, no, no." Asher shook his head vehemently. "It was a cranial reconstruction." He sighed, crossing his arms across his burly chest. "I keep telling them not to send me novices."
"Asher is-"
He stopped Isaac again, saying, "My guy needs a Nissen fundoplication." The eyes of his father fell on Stiles then, scrutinizing everything that made his son up, down to the very last atom. "I want him out of here."
"Dad!" Stiles recoiled vocally, but there was nothing to combat when his father wasn't really even there.
"He's a child," Asher looked to Ramsey because despite his memory depletion, he knew who was in charge. "I don't need him to scrub in."
"You can wait outside, Dr. Stilinski."
Sighing, Stiles left the room and happened upon Derek as he rounded the corner away from his father's room. A look of curiosity left Derek and pulsed against Stiles' temple until he made eye contact with Derek, unable to avoid the contact that was about to take place between them.
"I thought you were doing rounds?"
"Oh, my father doesn't want his incompetent son around him during rounds."
"Stiles-"
"You still have a wife."
"I do."
"Complicated doesn't even begin to describe how your life is right now."
"Yes."
"So you get that I don't need that. I'm fully complicated without your complicated."
"Correct."
"Okay, the agreeing? Kind of what got you into this mess in the first place."
Sly lips lifted Derek's expression to a look of deviance. "Don't move. You can't be seen if you don't move."
"Are you cutting jokes right now?"
"Stiles, relax." He knew that Asher riled up Stiles in ways that he didn't fully comprehend, but he was trying to at least alleviate some of the pressure he was sure the younger MD was feeling in the small space between his shoulder blades. "She's leaving. Julia, she's finished with her patients so she has no reason not to return to Beacon Hills."
"Are you sure?" Stiles' scrutiny wasn't something Derek had expected, but it was definitely something he could handle. "There's not some reason, at all, for why she could be hanging around? Like, a reason that's tall, dark, and stupidly gorgeous and within talking distance?"
"I would have thought intelligently handsome, honestly."
For a spare moment, he let a hand graze upon Stiles' cheek, an action that the latter actually allowed to transpire when Julia came strutting up to them, watching the scene with wide eyes of amusement and a stained grin permanently transfixed on her soften features.
"Ooh, hot exchange in the hallway." Julia laughed, bending closer to Stiles so that she was closer to his ear, but speaking loud enough for her husband to hear that words escaping between her red-dyed lips. "You know, you're cute enough for a ménage a tois, but is Derek really up for it?"
"Goodbye."
Stiles walked as fast as he could away from the both of them, leaving the married couple to hash it out in the corner of the hospital, like they usually seemed to do.
"Satan. You are Satan."
"I'm not Satan, Derek." She was beginning to tire of this analogy.
"If he could take human form, lose the horns and tail and red skin, he would choose to become you and vice versa."
"Are you done being childish?"
"Are you done being a selfish bitch?"
The elevator next to them chimed it's way to allow entry, but neither of them took the ascended ride to separate floors, continuing their squabble quietly.
"You know, I thought after the other night, you might have been on your way to forgiveness."
"The only thing I want to be on the way is you back to Beacon Hills." Derek sighed, feeling the formings of a headache creeping in between his already overstimulated eyes.
Her bag feeling suddenly heavy of her impending proposition to Derek, Julia retrieved the file from its contents and thrashed it against Derek's chest until his hand stopped them from slipping to the sterile linoleum. Unbeknownst to either of them, Stiles was on the second floor, watching their exchange, seeing the papers that Derek was flipping through at that exact moment.
"Divorce papers." Julia breathed the words out like the burned her throat, and for all she knew, they had because a sudden taste of copper filled her mouth, like her skin had been scorched by her diction and it was seconds away from filling with blood. "This is your choice, Derek. I'm not fighting anymore. If you sign them, I'll sign and I'll be back in Beacon Hills by the end of the day."
"Fantastic." Derek beamed. "I'll sign them immediately so you can get out of Seattle and get back to ordering your demons around in Hell."
"Have you ever thought," Julia said, slithering over to him in her snake-like glide to purr her sentiments closer to his face so that the words really beat against his pores like a moisturizer or vocabulary. "That maybe even if I am Satan in human form and a selfish bitch that I might be a selfish bitch disguised as Satan that you still have feelings for?"
Opening again, Julia flitted onto the elevator as Derek read over the terms of the divorce, Stiles onlooking from the floor above, wondering what would happen if Derek knew that the awareness of said papers were known by his ex-boyfriend.
x
Lydia was making notes in her own chart when Peter walked into the room. They hadn't talked since he had found out. About the surgery, about the baby. He harbored a lot of mixed feelings about it. Guilt, over ending things with Lydia while she had been pregnant with his child. Sadness, over losing something that he had always wanted, despite the timing not being on his side. And lastly, and more consuming, he felt anger. White hot rage at Lydia for not telling him, for not trusting him enough to go over every option with him when what she was carrying, what she had been carrying, wasn't just her burden to bare.
"Doctors fill those out." She looked up at him in time for him to snatch the chart away from her. "You're a patient right now."
"But it's mine."
Sighing, Peter looked at her, and she looked at him too, and he waited as long as he could before breaking the wordless gaze they were keeping before his need to speak broke it. "Talking to you alone has proven to be difficult."
"Peter, we don't have to-"
"You're feeling alright?"
It wasn't the first thing she had figured would slip out of the corners of his mouth. A smooth recovery was needed before she had an appropriate response. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm...I'm alright."
"I had every right to know."
There it was. "You know now. End of discussion."
"Lydia-"
"You ended things." Her vulnerability was licking at his face, and he caused him even more of that earlier guilt he had already been welling with. "You had no rights left, when you did that. You tossed aside your rights so don't come in here and claim stake to something you had already given up on. That's it."
"That's not it! You-"
"Mom," She spoke this loudly, so Peter would know to stop talking. Partly because her mother didn't need to hear that Peter was the father of the baby she had lost and partly because she didn't want to hear anything else from Peter Hale, at that moment or really at all. "This is Dr. Hale, head of Cardio."
"Ooh, nice to meet you, Dr. Hale."
"The pleasure is all mine, Mrs. Martin."
"Oh, please, it's Ms." Natalie smiled at her daughter. "So proper. Why can't you ever bring a proper man like this home to meet me sometime?"
"Mom."
"What? He's charming and handsome."
"Mom."
"Are you single, Dr. Hale."
"Mom!"
Rolling her eyes, Natalie just shook her head. "Excuse my daughter, Doctor. She failed to learn manners or tact despite my best efforts."
"STOP TALKING."
"Well, I should be on my way." Peter decided that it was a lost cause to discuss anything else with Lydia at this point, least of all with her mother present in the room. "Nice meeting you, Ms. Martin."
Natalie stared at Peter's ass on his way out, causing her daughter to throw a pillow at her. "Ow, what did I do?"
"Stop oogling to my boss!"
x
"Good morning, Asher."
The beam of pride that he gave Alan at that moment was great. It was a blessing in disguise that Asher didn't have the best memory. Deaton had secrets, dark secrets, secrets that cringed in the daylight. And Asher Stilinski having no control over what he may or may not have already known helped Alan Deaton keep a close eye on his secrets.
"Alan, thank God. What intern is scrubbing in with me today?" He presented Isaac, who had been standing behind him. "Great, let's get started."
"I'm sorry, get started?"
"Yeah, I have a barium esophagram in OR 2, let's go." Asher nodded.
"Sir," This was to Alan, who gave him a mean stare. "This isn't surgical."
"This is your patient, Lahey. Don't let me down."
Yes, having his secrets safe was very important to Alan as he left Asher with Isaac. Because if someone was tending to his secrets, they had zero chance of spreading their knowledge to the world. Or to an oblivious child of his secrets that happened to be roaming the halls of the hospital as his father prepared for a surgery that didn't exist.
x
"I saw that."
Overruling the nurse into letting her take the wheelchair hadn't been the hard part for Lydia. Manning the wheelchair also wasn't hard, taking the chart of Peter's arrhythmia case wasn't hard. But what was hard was calling out Leera over seeing her take something and ingest it.
"What?" Leera asked, gulping down some water to ease the path of the pill. "I'm just on the pill."
"It's not in your chart." Lydia countered.
Allison, being the actual intern on the case, swooped in and took the chart from her, glaring down at her in the wheelchair and snickering. "You badgered a nurse into not only allowing you access to a wheelchair but also wrangling a chart away from them?"
"I have out of bed to chair privileges."
"This is not what that means."
"She took something!"
That's when Leera coded, and they tended to her collapse on the floor by calling a code, Lydia straining to lift out of her chair to hit the blue button on the wall while Allison tried to administer something to help her.
"Allison, she needs an echo!"
"Someone page Cardio!" A nurse came by then, attempting to assist in anyway, which Allison used to the fullest extend of her ability. "Get Dr. Martin back to her room, please."
"Let's mark her chart if she's taking OCPs, Allison!" Lydia yelled as she was wheeled away.
Slamming a fist on Leera's chest, she slowly came out of v-fib, eliminating the need for a code and hoping that Peter could help her make sense of her patient.
x
Reading Ramsey's scans in Radiology, Stiles saw something that he was hoping he was right about assuming when he presented it to the resident.
"He has a mass."
Ramsey nodded, relief flooding his senses. "In his midepigastrium. Diffused enlargement of the pancreas. Paired with his hypoglycemic seizures and-"
"He needs exploratory laparotomy." Stiles added. "Don't his lungs make you a little weary about cutting?"
"Absolutely. Tate's triathlons definitely are over."
Sauntering into the room then, of course, had to be Julia Blake, because Stiles' life was plagued by visits from either Derek or the wife he was seemingly attempting to divorce.
"Doctors."
"Hi, Dr. Blake." Ramsey said back to her, watching as Julia set her eyes on the patient's films.
"How old is this patient?"
"Tatum Gerome, 26. He has cystic fibrosis."
"Good, he's a survivor."
"At least for the past five years that I've treated him." Ramsey nodded. "This patient has been through a lot. Almost as much as he's caused, but we can't just do nothing. I refuse to stop having his back after all this time."
"Have you scheduled the laparotomy?" Julia inquired.
"That was the plan, but look at his lungs."
"Dr. Ramsey, I might be of some assistance on this. There was something similiar in a nine year old that I've seen. A total pancreatectomy ending up having to be the procedure to best procure him."
"I can use all the help I can get." Ramsey nodded. "I normally don't allow myself to get too close to patients, but this one really means alot to me."
"Understood," A smile, like usual, stained Julia's face. "I'll make some time."
"Aren't you neonatal? What could you possibly bring to this case?"
Stiles knew that he shouldn't have said it, shouldn't have let his personal feelings cloud the medicine of his patient but it was uncontrollable, like a metronome had been started and couldn't turn off his dialogue. Ramsey's eyes grew wide fast, and Stiles had to do damage control as Julia shaped her look in his direction.
"I'm sorry, Dr. Blake, I was just curious given that your specified field is a little more attuned to other types of patients."
"I actually did two years of genetic cystic fibrosis research, Dr. Stilinski, I've seen more than you could imagine of cases just like this."
"Right." Stiles chuckled lightly. "Apologies, once again."
So now Stiles knew about the divorce papers Julia had given Derek, even though the latter didn't know that he knew, and he was being forced to work with Julia yet again. Life sure was playing him a hard hand, and he was out of easy moves.
x
"It doesn't mean she's staying."
He was quick to run to Derek's side after Julia had assigned herself to his case with Ramsey. They were taking the stairs together, wandering in succession like two symphonies clashing off-key to the same song.
"Then what does it mean, Derek? Because…" He couldn't say it yet. The thing about the divorce papers. It was Derek's news to tell. It wouldn't be right if Stiles had announced it in some sort of reversal news telling.
"She's Satan, but she's a good doctor. Ramsey cares about the patient, just let her help so she can get on a quicker flight back to California. They rounded another corner and Derek stepped in front of Stiles so that he bumped into his a little bit, seemingly needing the contact. "Stiles, she gave me divorce papers. Julia filed, she's leaving."
A smile curled his lips, but Stiles tried his best to subdue it. It just so happened that this had been weighing on him and now he felt as flightful as a kite.
"She did?" He also tried to feign any knowledge of said papers.
"I sign and I'm free of her devilish grip on me. On us."
"Us."
Yes, us."
Their smiles were unmatched by the happiness of anyone around them, around Seattle, maybe around the entire state of Washington. Derek was saying that there was nothing standing in there way anymore. They could be Stiles and Derek again. Before they wife, before the lies, before the betrayal of trust. They could be the men from the bar again. They could be them again.
x
Scott found Allison loitering around the nursery, where all the recent babies that were recently birthed were placed until further notice. It was a spot that he knew Stiles seemed to frequent, when he needed to get away. So it was only natural for him to wonder how Allison's day was going if she was smiling lazily at all the new generations in their designated room of well being.
"Rough day?"
She met his gaze with ease, smiling back at him before looking back at all the beautiful babies before her. "No, just needing some inspiration, I guess."
"Inspiration?"
"My patient, the missionary or whatever. She claims she has a PHD but when I was just in her room and Peter scheduled the echo, she acted like she was an MD." Allison shook her head. "Something's off and I can't figure out what it is. But anyway, how are you? Heard you were with Derek on a GSW to the head and the guy is still talking."
Scott shrugged. "Claims he was cleaning his gun and it went off. How it missed all the major parts of the brain is beyond me."
"So you don't believe him then?"
"Just a feeling."
"Too bad we can't just go off of our feelings." Allison giggled.
"Why not?"
The stunning sparkle in his eye was something of a spectacle for Allison to witness. She hadn't prepared for it, or thought that it would happen in the moment for her to see. "We're...not talking about our patients now, are we?"
"Go to dinner with me." When Allison looked like she was about to run in the other direction, Scott pressed on. "You said you liked me too. I like you, you like me, what's the big deal? Yes, we work closely and I'm over at the house all the time, but I don't have to be if it's too much for you. Allison, I can push back my feelings about my patient because that's medicine and I need to let medicine decide the course of treatment. But this," He wagged a finger between them, motioning toward both of their frames. "Us, this isn't medicine. This is chemical. All I'm asking, is you think about going to dinner with me. You wear something gorgeous and I pay for dinner. It's as easy as that. Just think about it."
He'd be lying if he said the struggle for Allison to contain a grin wasn't completely cruising his mood elevators. He saw when Allison smoothed a stray strand of her brunette hair behind her ear that she had already made a decision about his insistent proposition.
"Okay."
"Okay?"
"I said okay." She laughed. "I'll meet you at Joel's after our shift?"
"I'll be there."
She walked away then, leaving the success of their date boost Scott's confidence as he made his way back to his GSW with Derek, trying to not overthink about the hot date he had later with Allison Argent.
x
Minding her own business was easy. Helena Ramsey was a woman of her own destiny, of her own guidance. She was a one woman band and she played every instrument well. So when Derek Hale entered the elevator with her and her alone, he was disrupting her way. And that was something that just set her off, especially on a day where her thoughts were wrapped around the further care of a patient that had been with her since she was an intern.
"Why did you let Julia weasel her way onto your case?"
"That's enough, Hale."
Derek wasn't letting up. She could tell by the intense angle of his perfectly groomed eyebrows. "She's supposed to be leaving, going back to Beacon Hills and forgetting her way to Seattle so that I can get back to what I came here to do, which is get away from her, and you're hindering her leaving by letting her assign herself to your patient."
Without even missing a moment, Ramsey went over to the control panel of the elevator and pressed the emergency button that stopped the rise and fall of the elevator, leaving them suspended so she could deliver what she was sure to be an award winning speech that would cut Derek Hale down to size.
"Ramsey, you don't have to-"
"Do you think I care what's going on with you and your wife right now? You think that I base any of my decisions, throughout my entire day, based on what's happening in the trials and tribulations of Seattle's newest brain surgeon?" Ramsey stepped closer to him. "I am dealing with a patient that I care for, that I've cared for for a long time, one that means a lot to me, Hale, so forgive me if I use the talents of anyone who could possibly help my patient get better. Are we clear on that?"
"You're right, but-"
"No," Ramsey threw up a hand, laughing a little as she squared herself in his eyes. "You've gotten yourself into a huge mess, in between two fine doctors, and you're looking for a simple clean up. Nothing about that is simple. Make a decision, deal with the consequences, and grow up."
She started the elevator again, Derek speechless in the wake of her tyrannical rant about Derek Hale and the love life he was having to thrive within.
x
In the tunnels, Stiles and Lydia had found some peace and quiet. Lydia was still in her wheelchair, having found their hangout to be the perfect place to go over Peter's patient with the mysterious arrhythmias, Stiles was just sitting on one of the abandoned beds, going over in his mind the day's events, which he had yet to tell Lydia about.
"She gave him divorce papers." Stiles nodded. "Julia filed and gave them to Derek this morning. That's good, right? He's moving on and maybe, if he wants to, he could move on with me, which is stupid of me, I know, but have you seen him? He's just so...whatever. I mean, Julia is still here, in the hospital, being Queen Julia of Neonatal, but it's fine. Because I'm not envious or anything stupid."
Lydia hadn't responded to the entire utterance because she was so engrossed by going over Leera's chart. "Weird."
"It's weird that I'm not envious?"
"No, you have every right to be envious." Lydia looked up at Stiles, realizing that he wasn't going to let up unless she acknowledged his feelings. "It's your house and she's a wrecking ball tearing it down."
"Derek's a house now?"
"What's weird," Lydia began, choosing to turn the conversation back towards Leera. "Is Peter's patient. She's been in four other hospitals this year alone. That's not normal. Something isn't right."
"Are you really this interested in this patient or is this some pathetic attempt to stay connected to Peter even after you swore you had nothing else to give him?"
"This has nothing to do with Peter." she sighed.
"Lydia, you lost the father of your child, your fallopian tube, and said baby all in the same space of time. You have a right to be upset."
"And you have a right to be envious, you're losing McDreamy to his flawless wife."
"I'm not losing McDreamy to anyone. Divorce papers, remember? And I'm not envious. There's no room for envy when there's divorce papers freshly drawn up."
"Well, I'm not upset."
"You know, you should be resting in your room. With your lovely mother."
Lydia rolled her eyes, growling at Stiles. "If the situation were reversed, would you want to be confined to a room with your father without any means of escape?"
A sign drooping his smile, Stiles nodded. "We aren't them, are we? Our parents, I mean. We're nothing like them, right?"
Staring was the only means of Lydia's answer, and it left Stiles feeling uncertain about his claim. Leaving the tunnels, Stiles felt the need to actually check up on his father. It was hard, even harder having him here in the hospital, but Stiles still cared about Asher Stilinski like he had never gotten his disease, because he'd always been there. Only sometimes he wasn't mentally able to arrive.
But when he got to his father's room, he wasn't physically there either.
A nurse came by, a guy named Taylor that Stiles would probably consider his favorite. Plus, he was aesthetically pleasing to look at. Crossing his arms, he looked to Taylor when he too noticed the empty bed.
"Wait, where's your dad?"
"My thoughts exactly. Where the hell is my father?"
Isaac burst through the room, eyes widening at the empty bed in the room. "Where's your dad?"
"Funny, coming from his intern!" Stiles yelled back at him.
"Shit."
x
Scott was going over the MRI scans of his bullet patient, seeing that he had indeed shot himself. Or someone had, because there was a definite bullet in his head.
"This guy is up and talking. This is insane."
"It's definitely a bullet." He turned to see Asher Stilinski standing over him, clad in dark blue attending scrubs. You'd never know that he had Alzheimer's and didn't work at Seattle Grace if you didn't know better of it. "Tracked clear through his head. He needs surgery, so let's get moving."
Isaac came barreling in, wheelchair in tow. "Dr. Stilinski, they need you upstairs." It of course was a lie, but that's what you sort of had to do when your patient didn't have concrete memories. Asher's mind was fluid and sporadic, popping up random access to his life whenever the certain memories wanted to be relived.
He thought he had everything handled, even dismissing the look of inadequacy on Scott's face, but the Chief sauntered up to them then, seeing that Asher was just now getting into the wheelchair.
"Is there something I've missed, Dr. Lahey?"
"Absolutely not, sir, I have this covered."
He spun the wheelchair and left with Asher then, hoping that he could get back to surgery soon and not having to deal with the mental Swiss cheese brain of Stiles' father.
Once his father was back where he was supposed to be, Stiles made his way back into Tatum Gerome's room, where both Ramsey and Julia were to explain the scans to him. Ramsey was standing close to Tatum, close enough that their hands could touch if they wanted them to.
"Tate, it's looking like the pancreas. It has to come out and then we have to re-route your intestines." Julia told him.
He turned to Ramsey. "What about the anesthesia, you know my body doesn't handle it well."
"Don't I always have you covered?" Ramsey smiled.
"Your kidney function is decreasing, Tate, and the only option is to operate before you go into multi-system organ failure."
"So I die if I don't go through with the surgery, and I might die if I actually agree to it?" Julia and Ramsey confirmed as much without saying anything, and Tate just nodded, gently grabbing Ramsey's hand. "It's been lovely knowing you, Helena."
"It's going to stay lovely, Tate. You're fighting and we're going to do the same."
x
"Are you seriously out of your mind?"
Lydia ignored the musings of Isaac Lahey as he sat down in her wheelchair as they resided in the tunnels. She knew he was referring to her still being absent from her room, but she didn't care. She still had Leera's chart, shifting on the hospital bed that had been left in the tunnel as she tried to find a reason for Leera's palpitations.
"Go away, Lahey. I'm working."
"You're supposed to be resting." Isaac sighed. "You have a better patient than me and you're not even cleared to assess patients. Scott has the gunshot wound, Stiles is on the CF case with Ramsey. Allison has the arrhythmias and I'm running around the hospital, scheduling fake surgeries for a fake patient. I'm a surgeon," He was scoffing as he spoke, annoyance evident within every syllable he spoke. "I shouldn't be carting Asher Stilinski around like he's Chief of Surgery when our actual Chief of Surgery is riding my ass to stay assigned to the fake surgeries of a doctor that can't operate anymore."
It struck Lydia like lightning, a spark tingling every cell in her body to the point of massive realization. "Oh my God. Faking it."
"It's real to him, Lydia, he has Alzheimer's."
"No, Peter's patient. Leera. She's faking it!" She leapt off the bed, wincing at the slight pain she felt when she did so. She tucked the chart under her arm and kissed the top of Isaac's head as she stood. "Thank you!"
She leapt her way to the nurse's station, where she saw Allison searching around where they kept the charts. Her eyes found Lydia, throwing out an arm once she spotted the chart in her possession.
"I've been looking for that!
"What's her results?"
Allison went over the chart as she sighed. "Her tilt test was negative, the echo showed mild mitral stenosis. Peter is ordering EP studies."
"I know what's wrong with her and you won't have to do anymore tests on her."
"Oh, and you know this by harboring her chart all day?"
Lydia leaned on the counter for support, as she was beginning to feel a little bit more pain that she had since last night during her fever. "I think she's doing this to herself, Allison."
"She'd be an idiot to be causing herself to have ventricular arrhythmias."
"Yeah, but it would mean she has Munchausen's."
Allison's brow furrowed. "You think she's taking something to produce real symptoms? Seriously?"
Peter showed up behind them, though Lydia hadn't seen him yet as she made his way over to them.
"Listen, just run it by Peter."
"Run it by him yourself, he's behind you."
She looked up at him, and he looked down to her, but they said nothing. Allison wasn't sure she should be witnessing the look between the two of them, but they just stood there until Allison gave Peter the chart and Lydia just sighed to herself while Allison walked away, leaving the former lovers to their battle of silence.
But Lydia was right, and she wasn't going to let her drama with Peter get in the way of the patient's care. So she told him exactly why the patient was doing this to herself, that her parents were off helping other people while she used the hospitals she was admitted to as her de facto family.
"It's not enough." Peter said at the end of it all.
"She lied about her job too. She's a pharmacy tech, not a PhD."
"I've been lied to before, doesn't seem to hard."
Lydia sighed. "This isn't about us."
"Maybe we should make it about us."
"I didn't lie!"
"You withheld the truth, I consider that lying, Lydia!"
"Okay, stop." Lydia barked. "You broke things off, okay, not me, and you were fine to do it! This is not a relationship, this isn't something for you to have an opinion about!"
"Lydia!"
"So why are you walking around like you're all hurt or whatever? It's stupid and you have no right to be because everything that's happened has been your doing so, you know, own up to it."
"Lydia-"
"I've got to go." She grabbed the door, but spun around to say, "I'm supposed to be in bed."
Peter yelled her name one more time as the door swung open and close, his anger getting the best of him as he shoved some papers off the desk of the private room they had been in, wondering if things between them would ever resolve to normal.
x
"This guy is crazy. Letting his wife shoot him." Scott shook his head as he stood in the OR with Derek, performing the removal of the bullet that was lodged in their patient's brain.
"Dr. McCall, hold back on that retractor please." Derek nodded, looking at another intern in the OR with them. "Suction, please."
"I mean, covering for his wife after she shot him? He needs spine, not the removal of a bullet."
"He cheated on her, McCall." Derek said. "I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying."
"Guilt's worth a bullet in his brain?"
"Relationships are fragile, and they're nothing if you're not willing to sacrifice." Of course, Derek knew this all too well. On a painfully clear level of clarity.
"Not that kind of sacrifice."
"Sometimes, the bullet is worth it, worth what you're fighting for."
After the surgery, Derek and Scott made there way back to him in his room where their patient was recovering from the surgery.
"Do you know what my wife told the police?"
"That you cheated on her." Derek sighed. "That she was drunk and you were cleaning your guns in the kitchen."
"I'm not going to charge her with anything." The patient said defiantly.
"She confessed, Roger." Scott said. "You should be grateful, she shot you!"
"I'm stupid, Dr. McCall, that's all I wam. Nothing will make you feel more idiotic than cheating on the woman that you've loved, that you will continue to love. Makes you see what you're missing."
Derek thought about this. About Julia, about Stiles. About everything. Sacrifice. It meant something to him, and he had no idea what it was going to mean for him when he looked back on the divorce papers.
x
"My urine was blue?"
Explaining to Leera what has transpired during the EP studies, Peter and Allison were trying to break the news to her easily, which was proving to be difficult if Leera decided to fight the truth of her condition.
"We did another screening for drugs, Leera, one that tested positive for amitriptyline, which I'm sure you already know by now, causes ventricular arrhythmias." Peter stated.
Allison chimed in in true intern fashion, but it was a move that Peter wasn't minding because their patient needed to hear it. "I'm guessing you knew it wouldn't show up on a regular drug screen, but not that it would cause your urine to change color."
"No, but..no! I didn't cause this to happen." Leera pleaded. "I really am sick!"
"You're lying to yourself." Peter said without hesitation or fear for her feelings. "You're seeing only what you want to see, Leera. You're wasting our resources, our time and you're wasting your life. All of this is in your head. You're going to Psych."
The devastation on Leera's face was easily visible as Allison followed Peter out of the room, heading down the hall to give Lydia the good news: That she was right as usual.
Still donning her silk gown, Lydia was pacing the floor, almost like she was awaiting Allison to strut into her room and give her the final diagnosis of the patient she had been side-attending to in her spare time as a patient herself.
"Lydia, please lie down." Her mother begged.
"I don't need to, mother." She rolled her eyes as Allison came in, her face brightening upon her intrusion.
"You were right." Allison breathed easily.
"What happened?"
"Leera one hundred percent suffers from Munchausen's."
"See, that?" Lydia spun on her heels to face the feeble minded Natalie Martin. "I was right." She locked eyes with Allison again, seeing it written all over her friends face. She had fought so hard to keep everything in and redirect it to Leera. Everything with Peter and the baby and the deterioration of their relationship that it came all rushing up for her to the point of catastrophic explosion. "I was right." Tears lines her eyes. "Oh, I was right." She started to full on sob then, Allison exchanging a look with her mother as she cried so hard. "I was right, I was so right, I was…"
x
Tate Gerome was coding. It was a nightmare for Dr. Ramsey. She cared so much for him and his family and him coding was not supposed to happen. Julia wasn't doing anything. Stiles wasn't doing anything. No one was doing anything to help him, so it was up to her to perform CPR to try and save his life.
"Dr. Ramsey." Julia pleaded. "Dr. Ramsey, he's DNR."
"Fight this!" Ramsey said to Tate on the table. "Fight to live, damn you."
"Do not resuscitate, Dr. Ramsey." Julia said. "Stilinski, get Dr. Ramsey away from the patient."
"No!" Ramsey bellowed, missing the side-eye glance that Stiles and Julia shared, knowing that he was already gone. "There wasn't any bleeders, he was fine! No, this doesn't happen, he doesn't get to die!"
"Ramsey, there was just too much damage, too much for his body to handle. It's already happened. You have to let him go." Julia's words shocked Ramsey enough to stop the CPR When she did, the monitor registered that there was no heartbeat. Her patient, Tate Gerome, was gone. "It's your call, Dr. Ramsey."
Tears, things that Dr. Helena Ramsey never let fall from her face, did just that as she walked away from the table and started to rip off her gown and mask, obliterated by this personal loss. "Time of death, 19:26."
Ramsey was gone by the time Stiles was in the scrub room, scrubbing from the surgery as Julia joined him. They both knew how close she had been to Tate, and they were allowing her the time to talk to the family herself and deal with such a tragic and heavy loss.
"That was rough to witness." Julia said, but Stiles didn't say anything. He just looked over and saw Julia running her thumb over her wedding ring. "Listen, Stiles, I'm not going to force someone to stay with me if they don't want to. But if there's a chance, even the smallest chance, that Derek does, I'm not leaving Seattle anytime soon."
Stiles froze in place, Julia stomping out of the room in her runway walk as he pondered the idea of Julia sticking around Seattle Grace. There wasn't room for both of them in Derek's life, that much he knew presented as fact. What would happen if Julia Blake stayed in Seattle?
x
"McCall, hang back for a sec."
Scott was on his way out the door, going to go change for his date with Allison, when the Chief had caught him in between the hall and the locker room.
"What's up, Chief?"
"You took the clinical skills section of your medical board exams after most interns, so the results are only now coming out. I got a call from USMLE this morning."
"Oh...does that mean I failed…"
"McCall, you're still an MD. You still get to practice medicine. The hospital grants you 4 months to retake the exam. You study it, you pass it, you put it behind you. One misstep doesn't affect your career."
"And if I fail? I mean, if I take the test again, sir, and I fail it again."
"You'll be fired from practicing medicine at Seattle Grace and unable to continue in the program." Deaton shook his head. "There is no failing again."
The Chief walked away, a swarm of thoughts embedding themselves in Scott's head. He was just supposed to take Allison to dinner, and now this was happening. He wanted to take her out and enjoy himself, but that was going to be hard to do when his life here at Seattle Grace was hanging by a thread.
x
Stiles got the page to Lydia's room from Allison, and he ran. He ran because any number of things could have happened to her. Only when he got there, she wasn't in need of surgery or coding in her bed. She was sobbing uncontrollably, to the point where Stiles was worried she was going to pass out. Isaac and Allison were standing far in front of her bed, fearing to touch her while Lydia's mother looked on in worry from the couch in the room, standing slowly upon his entrance.
"What happened?"
"I can't!" Lydia screamed through the boughs of sobs. "I can't stop, can't stop."
"Crying." Allison added.
"What did you guys do!?"
"Nothing!" They answered together.
Stiles went to comfort Lydia, to hug it out even though they weren't huggers but Isaac grabbed his sleeve and pulled him back towards them and away from Lydia as the thought of someone touching her increased the decibels of her cries.
"We tried that." Isaac said.
"It only made it worse…" Allison said, concern laced in her language.
Natalie Martin sighed. "I knew it. I knew it was only a matter of time before she broke down."
A scream came out of Lydia's mouth as she looked at Stiles, pointing a finger over at her mother as the deepest voice they'd ever heard from her emitted from her small mouth. "I will kill her!"
Jumping to action, Stiles ran over to Natalie and started to guide her out of the room.
"But I'm her mother!"
"Yeah, we don't do well with parents around here so just go and come back later." Stiles told her, almost pushing her out of the room and shutting the door once she was clear of the exit.
"Stiles, please, please stop, make it stop." Lydia cried again. "Somebody sedate me!" She yell-cried some more as her friends did what they were told, the emotions of her pregnancy and of Peter swirling in her mind.
It was only about an hour later when Peter showed up. Lydia had been weaned onto sedatives to keep her calm, forgotten tears still staining her face while her mother knitted in silence on the couch. When he entered the room, a wave of crying began, but it subsided when the look of guilt and sorrow fell on his face.
"Lydia."
Her mother looked up then, seeing him and shaking her head, telling him that she wasn't in any condition to have company after what had happened with her friends, but he wasn't going anywhere. Lydia could tell by the look in his light eyes. He was dressed to leave the hospital, but he put his things in a nearby chair and approached her bed.
"She can't handle being touched." Natalie warned, but she saw that Peter wasn't going to listen.
Lydia just stared up at him, sobs subsiding as he climbed into bed with her. Peter wrapped his arms around her as he settled into the bed, smoothing out her red hair as she lightly let a few cries spill from her mouth, holding onto him as she gripped at his chest.
"Shh," he cooed, running his hands through her long, unkept hair. "I'm here."
She cried a little more, Peter kissing the top of her head as she writhed against him, seemingly needing to be as close to him as possible, Natalie just looking like Lydia had found someone who could finally silence the hyper talkative nature of her daughter.
x
Having left Lydia to sleep, Stiles made his way back to the Yellow Brick Bar. Only this time, he wasn't there with his friends. Derek had found him as he was leaving the hospital, and had asked to join him across the street for a drink. The action caused pride to course throughout Stiles' entire body, because he hoped they were going to be talking about them again, about becoming a them again. Maybe Derek would even show him the signed divorce papers as a beginning to their lives becoming more aligned with each other, going back to being the them that Stiles had been wanting back for some time now.
He set down his coat over one of the high tables as Derek set down his briefcase. Taking their seats, Stiles smiled over at Derek.
"I'm so glad you decided to meet me."
"Me too." Derek grinned back, turning his head to the side so that it cracked pleasantly. "You want a drink?"
"A drink is something I definitely need." Stiles laughed.
When Derek got up, it knocked over his things, causing them to litter the floor of the bar in a way that made them both laugh a little. Stiles bent down to help him gather his things, and when he did, he noticed that one of the things he was picking up was the divorce papers. He flipped them over in interest, a look of unreadable emotion crossing over Derek's face as he watched Stiles read them.
They weren't signed.
He put the papers down on the table and looked into Derek's dreamy eyes. Derek let out a great sigh, knowing that the fact that the papers remained unsigned was going to cause a great deal of questioning for Stiles. All Stiles could do was stare at the man, wondering if Julia's earlier rambling had been true, and he was thinking about fighting for his ruin of a marriage, and Stiles just felt the air leave his lungs as they stood in the bar, not knowing what their next move would be.