pretty please ✵ derek shepherd.

chapter five.

Standing right beside her, trying to bring some sense of comfort to the girl, he said, "If you had punctured it, you would have known when they reperfused. They got her heart beating again and the woman's okay."

"So, I shouldn't tell Burke?"

"Tell him what?" Alec looked over at her with a knowing smile. "Nothing happened - the woman is okay. Nothing to tell."

Taking a minute to think it over, replaying the situation in her head, Florence eventually nodded and admitted to herself, "She's okay."

"She's fine."

"She's fine."

៚ ......... ˁᱸᲲᱸˀ ............ ༄

Florence wasn't a naive little girl. She grew up carefully observing everything at least twice – and she had a reason behind it. The female was six when she started to notice her father physically abusing her mother. It might have started before the time but that was as far back as she could remember. It was the day of her birthday and Florence was ecstatic. All of her friends were coming over to celebrate her and only her – the day of her birth.

The family was having a pool party at the local pool, because let's face it, the Ledger family was not rich enough to have and maintain a pool in their backyard. Every one of Florence's friends were invited and she was quite the social butterfly back in her youth, not so much anymore.

There were kids screaming everywhere in joy as they splashed one another in the pool, doing cannonballs, you name it. Florence was having the time of her life when she spotted her parents under the cabana arguing with one another. Her father's large and broad frame towering over her mother who, according to her husband, didn't know when to quit. Her mother was significantly smaller than her partner but that didn't mean she couldn't stand up for herself – and her daughter.

As young Florence kept watching her parents argue from afar, she never noticed them fighting before, she could barely register how fast and hard her father's hand was slapped across her mother's face. Gasping, her eyes wide open, Florence thought her eyes had betrayed her. There's no way her father, the sweetest, most loving man to Florence, could ever violate someone like that. She couldn't believe it.

Turning back around and facing her friends, she felt the need to get it off her chest. But when she went to look back at her parents someone dunked her head under water and she heard laughing up above the surface. Rising up, she cursed at the laughing of her friend who claimed she was just having fun. Looking to where her parents were, the pair was no longer there. Looking around, her parents were nowhere in sight anymore.

"What's wrong?" Her friend had asked.

Florence merely whipped her head around, tears in her eyes and muttered weakly, "I can't find my parents."

The girl's eyes moved in confusion before pointing behind her friend and saying, "What do you mean, they're right there, Flo?"

Turning back around to her friend's wish, surely enough her parents were there, talking and laughing with the other parents without a care in the world. Her mother had an ice pack to her cheek but laughed it off, saying she merely ran into the side of the cabana because she wasn't looking where she was going.

It was all so confusing for Florence. The little girl could barely process it. So from there on out, she started noticing more between her mother and father. The flinching her mother did when her father made a sudden movement. The bruises on her mother's skin that she tried so hard to conceal. It was torture. Florence wanted so badly to stand up to her father but she couldn't. She couldn't wrap her head around the fact that this damage was coming from her father.