EPILOGUE

GREY HOUSEHOLD

TWO WEEKS LATER

There were quite a few people irked that Meredith and Derek had not told anyone that they had gotten married by Post-It a year and a half ago.

All of Meredith's interns and Lexie knew as did Sloan. Most of the attendings had been in the dark but only Weber was momentarily offended. Once he learned how soon everything after Stevens' cancer and her subsequent marriage to Karev it had happened he understood why Meredith hadn't wanted to steal her friends thunder. He'd been fine with the celebration at their house a couple of weeks later.

Almost all of the attendings and every one of the Oceanics had shown up for the party. Only Addison had skipped out - "I'm fine with us moving on Derek but asking me to attend a party celebrating your remarriage is a bit too far," she'd told him – and no one could blame her.

Hurley had generously offered to hold the party at his LA home – "Jack and Kate got married there and that's going great". Both Meredith and Derek had thanked Hurley politely but had told them they'd wanted to have in the home they'd met, fallen in love, and intending to start a family some day in. Hurley had no objection.

Everyone had been celebrating and was in a good mood but Juliet could tell someone was not having a good time, and she had a pretty good idea as to why.

"Would you like a real drink?" she asked Bailey.

Miranda didn't turn around. "I thought this party was dry for the sake of the two fathers of the bride," she said in a tone that was dark even for the Nazi.

Juliet didn't blink. "That's for celebrating. This is for a wake."

She took out a bottle. "I'm told by the man who helped rescue us that this is one of the crowning achievements in whiskey. Of course the one time he got drunk on it, he could barely understand why it was $100 a glass."

That at least got Miranda's attention. "I don't think even the Chief ever bothered with something expensive."

"When you're an alcoholic, your pallet isn't particularly the thing you care about the most. But I think we know only the best will do for Miranda Bailey."

Miranda turned around. "Red Solo Cup? Really?"

Juliet smiled. "I blew all the money on the MacCutcheon," she said as she poured the Scotch into the cups.

"So what loss are me commiserating on?" Miranda asked.

Juliet didn't blink. "How long ago did you get the papers?"

Miranda looked straight ahead and then sipped from her cup. "I always thought there was too much gossip at this damn hospital."

"Everyone's speculating but no one's certain. Jack probably knows too but only because he's also a member of the club."

Miranda's stony glimpse softened a little. "I thought you were glad to be out of your first marriage."

"I divorced him. The bastard still had a hold on me," Juliet took a sip of her own. "I remember when our parents told us that they were getting a divorce. Rachel knew right away, but I was in denial. My parents told me that they still loved each other but that sometimes love isn't enough. They said I'd understand when I got older."

She smiled bitterly. "I was nine when it happened, still naïve and I shouted that I didn't want to understand. I spent so much of my life proving that I didn't."

Miranda took a smaller sip. "How bad was it?"

"Aside from the fact Edmund had to get hit by a bus for his hold on me to break," Juliet asked sadly. "The three years I spent on the island were a combination of psychological torture and horrible lief-choices. I spent a year and a half having an affair with a married man. The first six months I deluded myself into thinking no one knew. Then his wife confronts me on it and basically tells me to end it or it will end horribly for both of us."

Miranda didn't know this part of the story. "Did you end it?"

Juliet looked ahead. "I was still sleeping with him right up until the plane crash. Then Ben sent him to the beach and…"

Miranda didn't press.

Juliet chuckled humorlessly. "You know the weirdest part of this? Harper was supposed to be this brilliant therapist and I don't think she got the core of why I spent so much time following Ben. I didn't realize it myself until after I left the island."

Miranda was quiet now. She had a feeling this was a story that few of the people at Seattle Grace knew about, maybe not even Jack.

"I was so desperate to get out from Edmund Burke's thumb that I didn't realize that everything Ben offered me was essentially the other side of the coin of what he had," Juliet said. "I started out as Edmund's research assistant, and his brilliance and charisma attracted me to him. I didn't realize the abusive undertones until the first year of my marriage."

"How long was your first marriage?" Miranda was genuinely curious now.

"Four years. He got bored with me quickly, for the record," Juliet said. "I knew he was having affairs with other women at least two years before our marriage ended. You know, I think he was relieved when our marriage ended. Now he could flaunt his indiscretions in my face and there was no way I could use it as leverage in court."

"Why'd you keep working with him?" Miranda thought she knew.

"Rachel got sick not long after," Juliet confirmed. "You know the rest of that story. I thought that I was free of my husband but I just exchanged one tyrannical megalomaniac for another. Only this time there was nowhere to go and not even my work offered relief."

"Sounds like you need this drink more than I do," Miranda said.

"All I'm saying is that right now, you think you've failed. I do understand that." Juliet said. "Edmund Burke was a loathsome human being in every respect, but even after I signed the papers I was the one who felt I'd failed. You've heard Jack's story; you know how well he handled it when Sarah left him."

"I loved Max. I still do." Miranda looked vulnerable in a way few got to see. "I really did think I could have it all. Be a great surgeon, be chief resident, be a great wife and a great mother. And the last two years I kept choosing this job over my family. My husband was wrong to make me choose between my specialty and my marriage but I was just as wrong to take this as the last straw. "

"No," Juliet said. "The problem is you both still love each other but that's not enough to stay together anymore. And now you're old enough to understand that."

Miranda smiled sadly. "Is there a bright side to this?"

Juliet gestured. "You're surrounded by people who keep proving that just because your marriage ends doesn't mean you'll never find love again. Jack found Kate, I found James and Derek found Meredith. Mourn the loss of your marriage, you have every right too. Grieve as long as you feel you need to. But always remember that you're not an island and that you have a support system."

"You do know how dysfunctional most of my friends are?" Miranda said wryly.

"I scrub in with most of them too, so I am painfully aware yes," Juliet said straight-faced. "But I know Miranda Bailey. She can do anything she puts her mind to. It may not seem like it right now in the wreckage of your marriage, but I also know that this is just a momentary setback."

Miranda was quiet. "You know, for the life of me, I can't tell the difference between this and the stuff that Joe serves."

"Hey, don't look at me," Juliet said. "I'll take rum over Scotch any day."

LGLGLG

"Hey Doc, you seen Blondie anywhere?"

Jack shook his head. "Last I saw her; she'd taken a couple of the solo cups and said she needed to help a friend."

"That makes sense." James said. "Bailey's been looking like someone stole her surgeries for the last couple of hours. I'm guessing she ain't the mood to make any celebratory toasts these days."

"It's just like her," Jack said. "She could've begged off tonight; no one here would have held it against her. Instead she's trying to blend into the wall."

"Miranda Bailey? Wallflower?" Callie had heard the last bit. "I'd have an easier time imagining her dancing with a lampshade on her head."

"Well, Juliet's probably the best person to talk to her right now," Jack said. "But if we haven't heard back from either of them in ten minutes, someone should probably go after them before they get drunk enough to they decide to break into the morgue and start playing dancing with the dead."

"You joke, but I'm pretty sure that's how the last crop of interns thought it would be a good idea to take out their own appendixes," Callie paused. "While one of them was still awake."

"Which is one of the reasons there's now a security guard and an ID checkpoint in from of the morgue," Jack said.

"Why do I always come to these conversations right at the time I really don't want an explanation?" Hurley asked as he walked over to his girlfriend.

"It's the way your luck has always run, Hoss," James said with a smile. "Though I'd prefer a subject change myself right about now."

"Okay." Hurley said, pointing to Thatcher Grey talking with Lexi. "Good to see that our plan worked."

"It wasn't a plan, Hurley," Jack said. "All we did was help two people who wanted to reach across a divide do so."

"Yeah, but it doesn't always work out that way, does it?" Kate was unusually sanguine and for good reason. All of them knew far too well that trying to connect with a loved one after years of grief could be impossible. Most of them had been unable to do it with their parents while they were in the picture.

Jack knew there was more beneath it. "Sam reached out again, didn't he?" he asked his wife.

Sam Austen hadn't made much of an effort to reconnect with the woman he'd raised since she'd come back to civilization. He hadn't come out in support at her trial, had only visited her once when she was in prison and though he'd come to her wedding, the conversation had been incredibly awkward. It had been more than a year since the two of them had talked.

Jack knew just how complicated Kate's relationship with Sam Austen was. He knew that he loved Kate as if he were his own daughter but that he had left her to grow up with Wayne and Diane and he felt his own guilt because of it. He suspected that there was more to the story than that, though Kate still hadn't told him. If he had to guess, he suspected that she blamed him for leaving him behind and that somehow she held him responsible for why she had finally killed Wayne – something that was far darker than the fact that she had learned that Wayne was her really father just before she killed him.

"When John came back and told us about Jacob, I wondered about something," she said slowly. "He told us that we were being pushed towards the island. And much as I've been trying to just get on with my life like all of us, there are things that keep me up at night sometimes."

"We've all been there, Freckles," James agreed. "And when it comes to all the shit that happened to get on that plane, I bet you, me and John Boy must have the biggest nightmares of all of us about the how and the what."

Jack could have argued for Sayid as part of the club but he decided not to. "When John told you what Jacob looked like, did he ring any bells as it did with some of us?" he asked his wife instead.

"I've been thinking about that. And all I've ever been able to think of is one time it might have been him," Kate said. "I was eleven. Tom had gotten this idea in his head that he wanted to bury a time capsule. Each of us had stuff we wanted to bury but we didn't have something to put it in. We thought a lunchbox would be the perfect thing but both of us needed ours and neither of us had the money to buy a new one."

James knew what was coming. "Which of you came up with the idea to steal one?"

"I don't know who came up with it first but we knew where we'd go. We didn't have much of a choice; there was only one store like in within walking distance of our houses." Kate said. "I tried to talk Tom into doing it but he said he'd be the lookout. We went into the store together. And I picked one with New Kids on the Block on it." When everyone looked at her: "I couldn't stand them and I figured it would be fun to bury it."

"Pretty good taste in music even then," Hurley acknowledged.

"When did they catch you?" Jack asked.

"We didn't even make it out of the store. The owner caught us and he recognized me immediately. He said he was going to call the cops." Kate paused. "And then this man I never saw before said he would pay for it."

"Do you remember what he looked like?"

Kate shook her head. "No, but he knelt down and he said: 'You're not gonna steal any more, are you Katie?" and then he beeped me on the nose.' I shook my head and I walked out the door."

"You think he would really have called the cops?" Hurley asked.

"No but he would've called Diane and I might have wished he had," Kate said so matter-of-factly only the people around her could have picked up the subtext. "What sticks with me all these years are two things. The first is that may have been one of the only times in my entire childhood when an adult actually helped me rather than ignored him."

"And the second?" Jack asked.

"Diane always called me Katherine. Wayne only called me Kate. Almost everybody else in town called me Kate. Sam was the only person who ever called me Katie, other than him."

The rationalist in Jack could have pointed out to his wife that the stranger could have heard the owner call her Kate and just used a derivative. But even before he'd come to the island Jack knew that no one called you by your nickname unless they'd known you for a long time.

He did, however, have a different idea. "So what kind of push do you think that was?" he asked.

Kate got it. Hurley didn't. "Um, wasn't it good? He helped a young girl not have to be dragged home by the cops or yelled at by her parents?"

"Or maybe he helped an impressionable young mind prove that when she needed to, she could get away with doing the wrong thing." James countered.

No one in the room could argue that James didn't know the first thing about that.

"He did come at a vulnerable time in my life, same way he did for everyone else who remembers him," Kate agreed. "My mom never found out about the lunchbox or why I never went with her into the store again."

"Is that why you haven't reached out to Sam yet?"

Now everyone looked at Jack, who shrugged. "I may be new to the whole destiny thing, but I am an expert on having a complicated relationship with your father. He was your father," he said before Kate could interrupt. "He certainly was willing to show more love and compassion to you then not only your real one, but almost everyone else's here."

Kate certainly couldn't argue with that.

"And speaking as someone who only figured out how much his father loved him once he was dead and gone, I think I'm qualified to say that you want to try and reconnect while he's still there," Jack told her sincerely.

Kate gave a watery smile. "You're right."

"Would you mind saying that again, a little louder?" Jack joked.

It worked. His wife chuckled.

LGLGLGLG

"May I have a dance with the bride?"

"You know, if it were anyone else I'd be worried," Derek said to Christina.

"And with me?"

"I'm terrified," Derek said.

"Let me scrub in on the next surgery and we'll call it even."

"Seriously? Even at a party for my marriage, you're still asking for surgical favors."

"Girls, girls, you're both pretty," Meredith said with a smile. "Besides Christina, I thought our thing was to dance when no one was watching."

"Are you saying I'm a bad dancer?" Christina asked.

"I've seen you dance. You're worse than I am." Meredith gestured to the crowd. "Besides, you know if we do this, they'll hold it over us for the rest of our lives."

Christina considered this. "I'm pretty sure Karev started to get his camera ready to second I mentioned it."

"You really think he would miss an opportunity to humiliate us every chance he got?"

"That's our job," Christina said. "All right, you're forcing me to do something I real am not very good at."

She took a deep breath. "I'm sorry for all the BS I gave you about you and McDreamy over the last couple of years. It was petty and selfish and not worthy of someone who calls herself your friend."

"Christina," Meredith started.

"Let me get through this." Christina said slowly. "I haven't been there for you as much as I could have been the last year or so, and I'm sorry for that. I've been going through some crap of my own and I've never been great when it comes to sharing my feelings…or really, anything."

Meredith gave a small smile. "Were you jealous of my relationship with Derek?"

"No, of course not." Christina paused. "But I wasn't exactly thrilled you got a happily ever after with your attending and I didn't."

Meredith took this in. "You know I've signed medical forms in your presence and I've seen you on an operating table. I know that despite how much you want to act otherwise, you are a human being capable of such things as emotions."

"Keep it down. I don't want that to get out," Christina said seriously.

"In all seriousness Christina, showing humanity doesn't make you weak." Meredith said. "I realize how much you admired my mother, but it's taken me a long time to realize that being one of the greatest surgeons ever robs you of as much as gives you."

"Having spent so much time among some of my idols the last few weeks, they've made that very clear," Christina admitted. "That's actually more frightening then not being the greatest. Seeing the greatest wish they were average."

"Did Geiger or Austin actually go that far?"

"Jeffrey Geiger said he didn't feel whole until he started raising his daughter. Dr. Austin regrets that she missed most of her daughter's childhood. Both of them admit that when they were in their prime they were toxic human beings to be around," Christina said. "I'll be honest, that scares me more than learning whether or not there is an afterlife when it's too late to do anything about it."

"Aaron Shutt basically told me the same thing." Meredith told her. "His first marriage ended on very bad terms. Jeffrey Geiger was his best friend. Geiger was gone from the hospital a month after his divorce was finalized. And he spent a very long time trying to figure out what to do going forward."

"When did he meet Simon?" Christina hadn't heard that part.

"May of 1999. A lot had happened in the meantime, obviously. But he was nearly as honest about what led up to the aneurysm as what he saw during it," Meredith said. "He said he had spent the better part of two years throwing himself into his work. He spent seven months dealing with surgeries and the better part of a year trying to save Chicago Hope from a corporate takeover. So many big things happened – his father was killed in a hit and run, his first wife resigned from the hospital and moved across the country without even a goodbye – and he chose to ignore it. He told me that he spent so much of his time never dealing with his demons because Jeffrey had enough for ten men. And as much as a burden as it could be to be his best friend, it was noticeable when it was gone."

"I got that," Christina said. "Geiger told me that when he left the hospital, he knew he had to make a break. He also admitted he did a piss-poor job of it. Every five or six months he'd show up at the hospital, make up some excuse to be there and the urge to be operating never went away. He'd tell himself, maybe I can do both. Maybe I can cut my leave of absence short. And each time, he made the decision to stay away longer. He thought it was the best thing for Alicia and himself."

"It might have been the best thing for Chicago Hope," Meredith admitted. "You know the horror stories that Austen told us about him and she only worked with him for two months."

"Geiger confirmed what a selfish asshole he is," Christina told her. "He says it's never entirely gone away but his years as a father have helped him filter it better."

"So what's the takeaway? We stop trying to being the greatest surgeons who ever lived?"

Christina raised an eyebrow. "I'm not capable of that, and I'm pretty sure you're not either. No, I think the only thing we can do is look at becoming healthy emotionally is the same way we learn from surgery. Figure out where we made mistakes and try to figure out how to do better the next time."

She fixed a look at Jack Shephard. "And try to learn from the ones who clearly have figured it out better than we have."

"He certainly has as much experience getting stuff wrong as we do," Meredith admitted.

"That actually reminds me of something I wanted to do," Christina said. "And now seems as good a time as any."

"Scary things happen when you get ideas, Christina," Meredith said.

"Trust me. This'll be fun."

She took a glass off the table and began to tap it with a spoon.

"If I may have everyone's attention, I realize that drinking is out of the question out of consideration for several of the guests having issues, so I'm actually going to propose a little party game." Christina looked around. "Mr. Grey, I don't know how much your daughters have told you about some of our guests yet, so you can't participate. But I have a feeling you'll get the idea very quickly."

"Why don't I like that look in her eyes?" Claire whispered to her brother.

"I just hope she's not going to start proposing on playing Operation and making us be one of the people in the middle," Michael said.

"All right, now will everybody from Seattle Grace, stand on this side of the room. Not so fast, Jack." Christina said.

"I'm pretty sure you can't fire me," Jack had a decent idea what Christina was about to do and he was actually looking forward to it.

"There's method to my madness and I think you know what it is," Christina said.

It took roughly five minutes for groups to separate, everyone from Seattle Grace on one side, everyone who'd survived the crash on the other and Thatcher was standing with the latter group, looking slightly befuddled.

"I think I'm not talking out of school that everyone on this side of the room has heard some, if not most, of what happened to everyone who survived the crash by this point," Christina was answered by several assents. "I've heard much less than most of you, I admit, but it's safe to say I've gotten enough of a sense to know what happened, even if I don't know the whole story yet?"

This time she directed her remarks to Sayid and the Kwons, all of whom nodded.

"Then I think it's time to do a kind of scientific study. The results won't be published anywhere and I think by now it's safe to say they won't even leave this room, but I have a feeling it might interest many of the people on that side of the room, and very likely give them some peace of mind as well," Christina said.

Now Jack was sure what was going to happen.

"All right. Let's take a hypothetical that isn't entirely impossible given our professions," Christina moved to the center of the room. "It's January of 2005. Each of you have been called to an International Red Cross station to deal with emergency relief. You're dealing with the return of survivors from a plane that crashed roughly 100 days ago in the South Pacific. At a certain point while treating the survivors, they start to tell you some version of the story that you've already heard."

"Um quick question, Christina," George had actually raised his hand. "How much about the circumstances of the crash do we know by the time we get there?"

"No more than what you have seen on the news," Christina was clearly prepared. "Which means that you have seen the report that the wreckage was supposedly found in the Sunda Trench with all passengers confirmed dead."

"In other words, we know that there's something more behind this then just a simple search and recovery mission," Sloane said.

"Absolutely." Christina agreed. "And obviously you've done a physical on your survivor and you have enough medical training to note some of the inconsistencies between what your training tells you and what you're seeing in your examinations. Does anyone else need clarification?"

She turned around and looked at the side with survivors. "Anything you guys want to me to put in the mix?"

The survivors looked a little surprised; none of them had expected that Christina was going to be this fair. "Could you give us a minute?" Jack asked, before turning to his friends. They whispered for about a minute before everyone let Jack speak.

"When you arrive on the scene, do you have any records of any of the survivors past medical histories?" he asked.

Christina didn't seem shocked by the question. "I'm assuming that in this scenario, you'd be lucky if they'd confirmed all of the survivors and dead even by this point."

This seemed to satisfy the survivors. "Okay we don't have anything else to add," Juliet said.

"Based solely on what your medical experience would tell you and not influenced by any other factors, would you be inclined to dismiss their stories as some kind of PTSD or some kind of delusion based on their experience?" Christina asked. "Those of you who would do that, I'd like you to raise your hands now."

There was a pause of roughly five seconds. Meredith was the first person to raise her hand. Sloane's went up next and within a period of less than thirty seconds every single attending or resident had their hand in the air. Christina saved hers for last.

There was a long pause. Then Jack put his hand in the air.

"Judas," James said loudly.

There hadn't really been any tension but everyone laughed loudly anyway.

"Jack, did you set this up just to prove a point?" Locke asked with a small smile.

"I wish I could have come up with something as inspired as this, but no," Jack admitted. "That said, I don't deny that I feel vindicated for having suggested this idea after we got rescued in the first place."

"I don't want you to take this the wrong way. I think it's clear by now I do believe what you guys have been telling me," Christina said. "I wish I didn't, parts of it go against everything I've spent my life studying, but I do believe you. The point I was trying to make is I think we all understand not only why you didn't go to the public immediately after you were rescued about what happened but why it took so long for Jack to get to a point where he was willing to share what did in the first place."

"Well, seeing so many of Jack's colleagues share their thoughts, I need to say something too." Locke looked at Jack. "I understand now why you and I got into so many fights and arguments on the island. I realize that there were countless other factors involved but the biggest problem was we were living in two worlds that really didn't orbit the same sun."

"You could have told me why you were so sure about your beliefs," Jack was offering a hand.

Locke looked at him. "Would it have made a difference then?"

Jack considered it. "Back then, probably not," he conceded.

"I'm guessing this is part of the story I don't know about yet," Christina said in a low voice to Izzie.

"Yeah, and like we said, you're going to want to wait as long as possible to understand why," Izzie assured her friend.

"I'm closer to your point of view now than I was back then," Jack said. "I don't know if I can completely get on board, but I do think there's room for science and faith to coexist."

"I think I can live with that. I think we both can."

Kate shook her head. "This is nearly as historic as peace in the Middle East."

"I know," Hurley said. "If only Ben could see this now."

"Who's Ben? One of the Others?" Christina asked innocently.

She noticed the long pause and brief moment of panic that seemed to overtake the room. Sayid chose to answer.

"I haven't gotten to him yet because the man caused all of us a great deal of trauma when we were on the island," he said smoothly.

Sun picked up on it. "He was fairly high up in the hierarchy of the Others," she told Christina.

"So he was the one who gave you all so much pain when you were there," Christina said.

"That's putting it mildly." Kate said.

"Kind of like saying Jeffrey Dahmer had an eating disorder," James said.

Christina took this in. "All right," she said.

Everyone was a little stunned that Christina Yang was letting this tidbit go.

"This is a night of celebration," she told them. "Last thing I want is for you guys to deal with painful memories. When you want to talk about him, there'll be time."

Again Christina couldn't help but notice the sigh of relief everyone took. This time, however, she decided to bait them. "I mean," she said deliberately, "it's not like he's going to show up on your doorstep tomorrow. Because that would be ridiculous."

Without waiting to observe everyone's reactions to this she walked right over to Juliet. "By the way, Juliet, Sun mentioned that I should talk to you about your experiences on the island."

Juliet had spent years perfecting her poker face. "I've been expecting this conversation for a while."

"Glad to hear it," Christina said with a smile. "I can't wait to learn what it was like to live among the natives."

Kate wandered over to Izzie. "This is going to be a problem."

"No," Izzie said sincerely. "Thinking we could sneak one over on Christina Yang; that was our problem."

"What do we do now?"

"Eat, drink and be merry," Karev said. "Because tomorrow, we have to worry about Christina."

"Tracking down Ethan was more fun," Kate said.

"And probably less dangerous."

THE END

AUTHOR'S NOTES

And we have come to the end in this story. Some minor notes before we end.

Miranda's marriage has come to an end slightly later in canon then it did in the series but now it's over. I figured Juliet was the right person to talk to her about it, and I figured it made sense to do it with the same whiskey that Widmore told Desmond was not good enough for him. The fact that Juliet says she prefers rum is an in-joke: when the freighter blew up at the end of Season 4, she mourned the loss by getting wasted on Dharma rum.

It didn't occur to me that there might have been a part of Juliet that is drawn to powerful, charismatic men who eventually reveal themselves to be ogres. Watching Juliet and Ben's interactions throughout Season 3 you can see that it is a controlling and emotionally abusive relationship that must parallel the one that Edmund had over her when they were married. It was clear in Not In Portland that he was capable of emotional blackmail long before he got hit by a bus so I don't think I'm reaching to much here.

Kate's relationship with Sam was always complicated and it is telling that while she resolved things with Diane when she returned to civilization, she seems to have cut off ties with Sam as well. There's no sign he has any involvement with her in any of the flashforwards we see her in and it's telling we see her visiting Cassidy in Season 5 and Miss Littleton but she never talks to Sam before she goes back to the island.

The survivors have recognized the connections they had to Jacob and obviously Kate has as well. Jacob did call her Katie in the scene we see and that is the nickname Sam used for her. (Diane always called her Katherine and that may be why she prefers to be called Kate by everyone else.) Kate is going to reach out to Sam in another story, but there's no guarantee it'll work out.

Everything that Meredith and Christina say about the doctors from Chicago Hope is canon to that series. Aaron's first wife was the head nurse and much of Season 1 was spent with the two of them first separated, then reconciling before their marriage ended early in Season 2. After everything that involved Geiger leaving the show, Aaron Shutt did spend almost all of the next two seasons throwing everything into his work and never really having a life until the aneurysm. After Mandy Patinkin left Chicago Hope early in Season 2, he sporadically made guest appearance for the next three and a half seasons before he returned as a regular in what would be the final season. Geiger appeared in Aaron's hallucination but he never showed up at the hospital. I thought that would have affected his best friend.

Both Christina and Meredith are going to try and learn from the mistakes of their idols.

I wanted a variation of this scene to end the story fairly early on. I intended for Jack to be the one to actually do it, but I figured given how much of this story has focused on Christina it would be fitting for her to close it out. I thought it made sense for Locke to see it and understand it.

I was going to end with Ben being off the island being revealed in the final scene but I thought it would mar things too much. Instead, I decided to do something worse: make Christina curious about someone she hasn't heard about and demand to know every single detail. That will be an issue in future stories.

I will return to this series again, though probably not for at least a year. I have other fanfics to work on and other ideas to try and keep working on. But this has become a favorite of mine – almost a sanctuary in the aftermath of the 2016 election – and I will keep 'going Baack' to it as often as I can.

Read and Review!