After The Storm (Sequel)

Unexpected News

"Nope," Jackson smirked. Bailey dismissed us all to resume working.

"Hey," Jackson said walking over to me as I made it by the stairs.

"Hey." I sighed.

"I was wondering if I could come over tonight. Help you put Isabella to sleep." He said.

"Yeah." I nodded.

"Maybe you and I could talk afterward." He suggested.

"We'll see." I shrugged.

"Lily, can I talk to you for a moment." I heard Amelia calling from the front desk.

"Yeah." I nodded. "I'll see you later," I said to Jackson before walking off.

"What's up?" I asked walking over to her.

"I need you to look over some scans of this tumor. Just for a second opinion." She said.

"Okay." I nodded before walking down the hallway with her before making it to the scan room.

"DeLuca." I said greeting him as I entered the room and Amelia closed the door.

"Hey, Dr. Garcia." He said.

"Here are the biopsy results." She said handing me the files with the results. I took a seat and looked over them as she pulled the scans up on the screen.

"It looks to be a benign grade 1 meningioma. It's big, but it should still be relatively simple to remove." I shrugged. "Of course you're going to still need an MR angio to check the venous outflow and the tumor vasculature."

"Already done." She said.

"It looks like you've got it under control. Do you need me for anything else?"

"Yeah, I need you to remove it." She said.

"Why? You remove tumors like this all of the time." I frowned.

"Because the tumor is mine. It's my brain tumor." She sighed.

"What?" I said looking up at her. I knew what I heard her say, but it wasn't registering at the moment. I was just so shocked and speechless.

"Hey, don't look like that. You're the best. You removed an inoperable tumor last week, this will be easy for you." She smirked trying to lighten the mood.

"Does Owen know?" I asked.

"No." She shook her head.

"Amelia." I sighed. "I can't take this out." I shook my head.

There's a reason that doctors don't work on their family or the people that they're close to. It's too much pressure. To literally be responsible for if someone you care about dies or lives was indescribable stress. The thought of possibly making the smallest mistake and killing or damaging Amelia was not something that I wanted to deal with.

"Yes, you can." She nodded.

"Amelia, you're my child's godmother. You're my friend. You're Derek's sister. I can't be responsible for operating on your brain." I said.

"Liliana, you're the best. I trust you and I need you to do this." She said sincerely.

"Okay. I'll do it." I agreed. Even the thought of being in charge of Amelia's case stressed me out, she was depending on me and I couldn't let her down. "When was the MRI taken?"

"Two days ago." She said.

"I need to take new ones in case anything's changed," I said

"Okay, can we do it this afternoon? I have a consult in half an hour.