[BELLA LEDFORD]
Seattle, Washington
˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚
The morning started off interestingly as Bella got paged to the ER. Hoping for a surgery, she was left with a panging chest at the revelation of every patient who had come through the door was DOA. Thrown off by this, she pulled her gloves off and they snapped in the air as she sat on a gurney, and Hunt told the surgeons present about the tunnel caving in and trapping almost twenty vehicles. It wasn't until one alive patient came through the ER door, everyone swarming around it, that Pierce voiced her hope for more and Bella butted in, killing off that hope.
Soon after that, Bella joined Webber on his quest to gather supplies for the potential patients coming in. This was the last thing she wanted to do but she was a busybody. Knowing what day it was, thinking of the dress she had gotten ready with fitting shoes, she just needed to sniff around the subject a little bit.
"I would've thought you tried to fight the patient out for yourself, Dr Ledford," he said as a matter of fact, smiling at her. Every word he spoke, Bella came to notice, marinated on his tongue until the silence became too loud between them, further suffocated by the smallness of the supply room, and he had to let go of it.
"There were enough qualified doctors taking up the breathing space. There'll be more patients to see," she responded easily, shrugging her shoulders. After they both grabbed as much of the supplies as they could, they headed for the doors and out into the hallway. "Plus, I would've thought you'd be getting ready for your big day, sir."
"Oh," he sighed. "I was on my way. Then I got the page. I couldn't, in good conscious, leave, could I?"
Bella hummed. "Fair enough. What did Dr Avery say about this?"
"Let's just say I haven't had the chance to—uh," he stopped himself. Both from speaking and moving. His attention turned towards the front, away from Bella, and she followed his view. "I—I know. Look, I am sorry," Webber started apologising as they both neared Catherine. She wore a deep turquoise top and some black trousers. Her makeup seemed professionally done, no doubt to match her wedding dress. "I was on my way to the hotel, but we crashed the OR floor. It was too big to just—,"
"I'm not here to haul you out of here. I'm here to help," Catherine told him, and surprised both Webber and Bella. Truth be told, she also expected the woman to grab Webber by the ear and pull him all the way to the altar. "I'm looking for a pair of scrubs."
Webber let out a sigh of relief. "This!" he said, turning to Bella, who now had both of them looking at her. Shock sat on Bella's face from the sudden attention, the volume of the doctor's voice. The last thing she expected was to be addressed in this conversation. Thankfully, Webber looked back to his soon to be wife as he told her, "This is reason number 537 why you and I are made for one another."
What followed was a kiss that Bella knew she could've lived without. The sounds that curled into her ear and clawed away at her were giving her goosebumps. She prayed to whoever controlled this Earth she did not make others feel this way when her lips ended up locked to Jackson's. Not that the two ever showed much public display of affection for one another.
"Surgery is sexy, honey," Catherine spoke as they pulled apart. Webber hummed and she added, "It's hot."
"Yes, it is," Webber said.
And it wasn't that they weren't cute or whatever outsiders thought of couples who loved each other like this. Bella wasn't some sort of love thief who would've rather seen it taken away than flourishing, but she couldn't help her scowl. The uncomfortable feeling that spread through her. All over her.
"And tonight, on our wedding night..." Catherine continued and Bella definitely felt like she was interrupting. Her skin curled and turned, wishing to tear off of her flesh and run away. This moment wasn't meant for her poor, innocent ears. Oh, no.
"Mhm-hmm?"
"...Dr Webber, I'm gonna show you just how hot a morning surgery can make me."
The moment needed to be interrupted. This needed to be scraped off of the hospital floor. If not for Bella's sake, then for everyone else who required treatment, and not the sight of two lovebirds.
She took it up on herself to forcefully clear her throat and quickly say, "There are people dying," which deemed to be enough to break the couple out of their bubble. It led her to be faced with Catherine's deadly eyes but she'd rather be murdered time and time again than witness any more of what she already had to.
"Dr Ledford," Catherine called to her, acknowledging her, and the look in the woman's eyes grew gradually more confusing. It appeared either as challenge or something that indicated she knew more than Bella wanted her to know.
"Dr Avery," she reciprocated the little nod. One of acknowledgement. One of basic human respect from one to another. That's how Bella would've described their relationship. It was the bare minimum.
The woman raised her eyebrows slightly and pulled her shoulders backwards. Her eyes were cold, though not as cold as they usually were. She voiced, "I presume I'll be seeing you at the wedding?"
"Unless there is a special request for me not to be there, I was in the know that I'll be attending along with the other surgeons," she confirmed, watching Catherine for any change that could've suggested her presence wouldn't be welcome.
"Good," Catherine nodded, then diverted her attention back to her soon to be husband.
Bella's shoulders sagged. Every time she was in direct conversation with Catherine Avery, she felt herself pull up the stone walls she crafted carefully throughout the years. A defence mechanism she resorted to, even when she didn't necessarily need to or thought was doing so. More like a second nature of sorts, knowing deep down that she needed to look out for herself.
Truth about the wedding—her invite got lost in the mail. The formal invite that everyone else had received, anyway. Hers had come directly from Jackson, who didn't think twice about what he had been doing during a surgery that required the both of them to be present at the same time. It was a surprise, but one that Bella didn't turn down or away from. The sound of attending a wedding came as much needed live music to her ears. For once, she was excited about, and looking forward to, something.
It had been two weeks since that invite.
"Ledford, we could use some help with our kid in Trauma One?" Hunt shouted over to her. It had been no longer than two minutes since she made it back to the busy ER. Somewhere along the way, she lost Webber. Maybe it was for the best.
Without responding, she followed the order.
"Where do you need me?" she asked, pulling on a new set of gloves. The room had Warren and Jackson, Hunt in the corner. One of the peds surgeons ordering an amp of epi before Jackson ordered for the paddles to be charged.
"Get in here and help bag," Jackson turned to her for a second before he called, "Clear."
The situation in the room was disorganised to the brim. Bella didn't enjoy the ER all that much. Her preferred position had always been in an OR, where everything remained under her control and contained. Perhaps that's why she usually allowed other Neuro attendings to take on incoming traumas, and said yes to those that seemed more organised.
It most likely didn't make sense to anyone but she knew what she meant.
The surgeons doing their best, she still found that nothing seemed to work as the patient only got worse. Bella watched as things escalated, keeping her hands steady on the bag. Dr Wilson joined the room, who answered Bella's rapid-fire questions about the patient, his injuries, anything she needed to know to be up to date. With the decline of the patient, the monitor displaying the young boy's vitals continued to drop lower, the machine beeping rapidly. It put Bella on edge and she felt helpless.
"We're getting nowhere," she called, looking towards Hunt then right over to Jackson, who continued on with compressions. "He is losing blood faster than we can put it in him."
"I can see that," he said, his green eyes shooting her a glare of warning. Perhaps of concern. Definitely focus. "We should get him upstairs right now."
"We need to open his chest," Hunt called, walking from behind Bella. "Glove me."
"Crack his chest and then what?" she asked him. "That still might not buy us enough time to get to the OR and fix his injuries."
"She is right, Hunt," Jackson agreed.
"Then we stop time," the man ordered. "Put him on bypass, drain out all of his blood and replace it with cold saline, and then we operate."
"Can you do that?" Warren questioned, seeming shocked by the possibility.
"No," Jackson said, frowning. "He can't—that's way too risky."
"We put him in suspended animation, cooling him from inside out—his brain, his heart, his organs. That buys us an hour or two."
"Are you out of your mind?" Bella claimed with disbelief all over her face. Her heart dropped at the sound of the surgeon's words.
"Hunt!" Jackson exclaimed, feeling the same way Ledford did.
She added, "You not only lack the parents' consent, but you are wanting to do something that's never been done before."
The trauma surgeon turned deaf ears to the claims as he proceeded to ask for a ten blade. The paediatric surgeon poured betadine over the patient's chest and Hunt made the cut as everyone stepped away. Bella shook her head, disapproving of his choice.
"Are you aware of the complications of this procedure? Do you even know what you're doing?" she continued to question him. Which was unlike Bella. Always up for a new way of doing things, of doing everything to save the patient, but this? Outright insane. "There's one way of doing things in the army, and another of doing them in a hospital."
"Exactly!" Jackson backed her up, completely siding with Bella. "You can't just say 'suspended animation' like it's a real thing. It's science fiction."
"It's called emergency preservation and resuscitation," Hunt argued, addressing his words to Jackson. And then he spoke to Bella. "Trauma programs have been discussing it for years. It's a way to save patients who can't make it to an OR."
"Precisely. They have been discussing it," she pointed out.
"It's completely risky. It's an impossible way to save a patient, actually," he crossed his arms over his chest, and Bella saw it happen while Catherine Avery pulled the curtains apart. Dressed in navy scrubs with a stethoscope around her neck, a frown on her face. "The safe option here is to keep transfusing him and race him upstairs."
"Hunt, how do you do it?" Dr Barnett, the paediatric surgeon, asked.
"Well, we cannulate the aorta, drain out his blood, infuse cold saline, then drop his core temp to fifty degrees," the trauma surgeon explained. His words left Bella shaking her head, and from the corner of her eye, she saw Jackson breathe in a slow, and deep breath. He tried to calm himself down before he leashed Hell on Earth in that trauma room.
Dr Barnett then asked, "You put him in hibernation?"
"You replace his entire volume with ice water," Warren contributed to the fast paced, insane conversation taking place in the room.
"You're gonna do what to him?" the voice was high, and young, the doctors in the room turned and faced a girl, no older than the patient on the table.
"Wilson, get her out of here," Bella instructed, seeing how the resident was the closest and could be spared in the debate between the attendings. The last thing they needed was the friend of this young boy freaking out when everyone else, those in charge, were already freaking out. "Now!"
Her eyes met Webber's, who also found his way to the scene, and he stated, more than asking, "So you induce hypothermia."
"You agree with this, sir?" Bella asked him, a scowl on her face.
It was Jackson who stepped back, nearly on Bella's foot, as he put his hands in the air, mid-level, and stated, "Hold on," and he caught Hunt's attention. Jackson continued, "We're not gonna consciously kill a kid over something you discuss over beers with your trauma buddies."
"This kid's gonna die, anyway," Barnett butted in, earning deathly glares from Bella. If it would've been possible, she was sure steam would've poured out of her ears. "At least this way, we can try to bring him back. I say do it," he encouraged Hunt, and the surgeon's eyes filled with hope.
"No. It's way too experimental," the change in tone for Jackson showed how much he felt against the idea.
"Especially without consent? You're begging for a lawsuit if something goes wrong," Bella added, resulting to a calmer fight. Jackson's voice was enough to fill the entire ER floor. If she would've started raising her voice, security would've rushed in.
It seemed to attract Catherine Avery's attention, alright.
But Hunt said, "I don't recall anyone going against your plan of merging seven separate procedures into one to remove Nicole Herman's tumour. That's never been done before, either, and it was a success."
"That is not the same, and you know it!" Bella claimed. The fact that he even brought it up... The fact that he tried to sell his idea on her surgery... "I had my patient's consent. The procedures I used were, in fact, techniques that I have performed many times beforehand. This is just insane, Hunt."
"Not to mention, we'd need Pierce. She's at the site," Jackson argued shortly after.
"This is not a Cardio procedure," came the response from Hunt.
"It is if you can't get his heart beating again!" that shout... that came from Jackson's chest. Bella stumbled backwards, and cleared her throat as she tried to let it settle but he just went on, "What are you gonna do if you can't get him back after bypass? What then?" he stood back, and braced his arms again. The fury in his eyes, in his stance—so much power radiated off of him. Anger.
His question remained unanswered, so, once more, he continued, "That's why we don't do things like this on a whim."
"This is not a whim. This is a Hail Mary."
"This is a child!" Bella butted in the same time Catherine asked, "On a child?"
They shared a look before the Avery woman followed to say, "The patient is a minor. And as Dr Ledford continued to emphasize, we don't have consent. By the time you find the parents, it'll be too late. I agree with Dr Avery and Dr Ledford," she glanced to her son, then over to Bella for a short moment. "It's a no, Hunt. We're wasting time having this conversation."
Without waiting for his reaction, or any sort of response, Catherine turned around and left. For once, Bella was glad to have the woman in the room, and finally on her side about something. She didn't let it linger for a long time, though.
Mostly because of the ridiculous order of words that came from Hunt. "Okay. We only need two physicians to give consent. Barrett?"
"Really?" Jackson's voice interrupted the question, then Bella's, "You're not serious," before Hunt turned to them and Jackson asked him, "That's how you want to play this?"
And in spite of that, Barrett said, "In."
"Webber?" Hunt turned to the doctor on Bella's right.
After some consideration, he muttered, "Just do it." And Bella's jaw dropped. Right to the floor of the trauma room.
"I need a cannula!" Hunt shouted while the furious doctors—Jackson and Bella—turned to Webber.
"With all due respect, sir, I don't agree with this and I don't understand why you would," she walked up to him, away from the table where Hunt began working on the patient. Bella's arms were locked on her chest, and Jackson took up the same stance not a second later. She only looked for half a second but caught the confusion plastering across her best friend's face.
"Too many people have died today," Webber gave the explanation. As always, he sounded well-reasoned and wise. Perhaps he saw something Bella failed to find. "We're not adding this kid to the list."
When Webber walked away, and they began rolling the gurney out of the trauma room soon after, Bella felt torn. The idea of using a technique as untested and never-been-done-before as this one was, especially on a minor, made her shudder.
"Are you coming?" the question came from Jackson while he pulled his yellow gown off and threw it in the bin.
"No," she announced, pressing her mouth into a thin line. Jackson stopped in his movements and turned to her. Rather than asking verbally, he looked at her. "I'm not needed in the surgery. One. Two—I don't think I can be in there. I'm too pissed. He brought up my Herman surgery to try and sell me on this stupid idea. Can you believe it?"
"He went completely over everyone's head with the consent from two other physicians, putting a child in even more danger," Jackson replied, his words matching Bella's in their disbelief. Fury. "I'm going into that OR."
Bella gave him a look. A warning of sorts. She had no idea what may happen in there with a strong-willed Jackson Avery at the head of the ship—because he led it. As much as the surgery itself landed in Hunt's grip, and he pushed the watercraft, it was Jackson who stood on top, it was Jackson who had eyes all over the territory.
"Try not getting kicked out, please," she said to him in the end. Good luck and don't fuck up. It sat on the tip of her tongue but she held those specific words back. Starting a pointless argument between them, over something that Bella just wanted to forget about, wouldn't have done much good.
The tone she used was light, and it seemed to caress Jackson's ears. The smile that spread over his mouth was enough proof of that. When she felt warmth covering her hanging hand, she pulled it away and turned her head down to catch the movement of Jackson's.
"What are you doing?" she asked him with her eyebrows pulled up. A month later, they still haven't discussed what was going on between them. Not when it involved being public.
Amusement swirled in the green of his eyes, the complete opposite of what ruled them five minutes ago. "Can I really not hold your hand?" he tilted his head as the question fell from his lips.
"No," she told him, standing her ground. Jackson laughed, of course, his voice coming from behind her as she made her way towards the lift.
"And why not?" the question made Bella grin so hard her teeth showed as she put her fingers over the round button on the side but she cleared her throat and licked her lips to hide it. The transition from friends to friends who kiss on occasion was... interesting. A little nerve-wracking.
Especially for Bella. The thought of being something more still terrified her. Some tiny part of her brain was against the idea but then her eyes landed on Jackson and all of that went out the window. Over the course of the past four weeks that they have spent completely blocked away from everyone was enough for her to find that same feeling Avery described a while back. That urge—that need to kiss her. She felt that way about him.
But they never made anything official. They never truly spoke about what would happen with them. They enjoyed each other's company in private, the only space and time they could find to explore these bursts of emotions, but nothing went further. It couldn't because they didn't have the time.
The lift doors opened with a quiet ding and Bella walked right in. She left the question unanswered. The usual position she took up against the railing, right in the centre, worked in Jackson's favour as the surgeon stood right across from her. Whenever they had the metal box to themselves, he made a move. And Bella, like the desperate fool she was, she let him. Every time.
This one included.
Avery wasted no time in closing the gap between their bodies—their lips. Warmth fanned against Bella's face, her mouth burning with raging fire against Jackson's feather light kiss. When he brushed his nose against hers and his thumbs stilled against the back of her jaw, steadying her eager movements to be as close to him as she could be, Bella let out the quietest, most content mixture of whimper and exhale. It brewed between them for a second before it caused a grin to break out on Jackson's face, pulling their kiss into nothing more than a memory.
"I can't hold your hand, yet you let me kiss the air out of your lungs," he concluded, rubbing his thumbs against her cheeks. Bella didn't say anything, nor did she react, other than the single touch of her index finger moving up between them. She pressed the tip of it against his chin and pushed him away.
Bella needed a second to collect herself, to recontrol her breathing, and scrape away the tingling haunting her lips. A simple glance at Jackson's bright, freshly kissed mouth, told her enough about the state hers must've been in.
Not a moment passed before the lift came to a stop. Its doors opened just as Jackson twirled around, completely blocking Bella from any incomer's line of vision. He walked out first, and then Bella, only to bump into Callie, who had a very visible change of expression on her face.
"Torres," Jackson nodded at her, a way of acknowledging the doctor in a swift passing. If the two of them emerging from the lift, looking the way they did, along with the very formal yet unnecessary greeting wasn't enough to tip Callie off, then the added glance towards Bella, and his, "I'll see you later, Dr Ledford," sure did the trick.
"You never call her that!" Callie shouted after Jackson. That was her way of exposing them, for no other reason than her own entertainment. "He never calls you that," she spoke to Bella after, shaking her head. The smile grew, the sparkle of mischievousness brightening her eyes.
"No," Bella mused, smiling to herself in the direction of where he had disappeared to. "He doesn't call me that unless he's pissed or I'm pissed at him and he doesn't know how to approach me."
"God, you really are into him, aren't you?" Callie asked, faking disgust, but the way her eyes remained ever so cheerful, Bella knew she was playing.
"I don't kiss and tell," Bella shrugged, a smirk tugging on her lips as she left the ortho surgeon standing there—or entering the lift. Whatever she was doing, wherever her responsibilities required her to be. "I'll see you later, Dr Torres."
"Oh, you are so annoying!" she called after her, and Bella just laughed.