˚♡ ⋆｡˚
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
six days, part two.
season three, episode twelve.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Billie, Meredith and Cristina stood by the nurses station in the waiting area, leant over the counter and staring at Thatcher Grey, who talked through the phone while he held a carton cup of coffee on his hand.
"How am I related to that man?" Meredith asked existentially.
"What do you mean?"
"Look at him. He's a mess." The blonde reasoned, watching as Thatcher waved his hand and accidentally spilled some of his coffee on the floor. "I mean, he's a disaster. A stammering, mumbly, clumsy disaster with whom I have absolutely nothing in common. Not one thing."
In front of them, Thatcher grabbed one of the newspapers stacked on the table to try and clean the mess he'd made on the floor, all while he held his phone to his ear, but he only managed to make a bigger mess. Billie and Cristina looked at each other and laughed.
The former glanced at the blonde. "I hate to break this to you, but..."
"What?"
"You know, you do your own share of stammering yourself." Cristina looked over at her, amused.
"Yeah, that nervous talking thing you do, it's actually a lot like him." Billie smirked, causing the former to hum in agreement.
"No, it's not!"
"Plus that messy thing," Cristina added.
"Totally."
Meredith looked at her two friends in disbelief. "You're the messy one. And you, Billie, don't even get me started on your stammering."
"Hey, I don't stammer!"
"No, my apartment's messy, my locker's messy, but I am not messy." Cristina gestured with her hand towards herself. "Sometimes you have, like, food and stuff in your hair."
"Yeah, food on your hair, Band-Aids on your face." Billie leant in forward and squinted her eyes, still slightly mad about the comment on her supposed stammering. "I can still kinda see the indentation from the nose strip you were wearing last night."
Meredith frowned and looked at Cristina. "You are in a relationship with no words." She glanced at Billie. "And you are a millionaire with twenty-dollar shoes who doesn't even spend the night at her house and that is pining over a man-whore. How would you even know I wore a nose strip last night? Whatever."
They watched Meredith storm away and their eyes landed again on Thatcher, who attempted to hold the carton coffee cup with his mouth as he balled up the stained newspaper.
"Oh, my God. She's just like him!" Cristina chanted.
"I know, right?" Billie laughed vividly.
☆
Later that day, Billie knocked on the Chief's door, which stood askew. She pushed it open and the man who sat on the chair behind the desk smiled politely, looking up from the paperwork in front of him.
"Black, come in," he greeted. "Can I help you?"
"Yes, actually, sir." She nodded her head, walking into the office and shutting the door behind her.
Billie stood in the middle of the room with her hands held together in front of her. Richard leant back on his chair and removed his glasses, looking at her expectantly.
"I wanted to talk to you about a patient of mine, Heather Douglas?" she began nervously. "About her surgery."
"What is it?"
Billie bit her lip. "I've recently cashed a twelve million dollar check to the bank. Twelve million dollars which Denny left to me after he died."
Richard stiffened on his seat and took a deep breath.
"My patient, she... she has an extremely severe spinal curvature which we have the chance to fix by three hundred grand." Billie nodded. "First, I thought we could maybe offer the surgery to be pro bono, but the procedure's too experimental, so it doesn't qualify."
Webber leant back on his seat. "You want to pay for the surgery yourself."
Billie nodded.
"You understand that means she will no longer be your patient and you will not get to scrub in on her surgery, right?"
Billie nodded once again.
"Okay, then." He nodded. "Sit, Black. Let's talk."
☆
The following morning, Billie and Meredith stood in the conference room behind Bailey's chair, who sat in front of George, Louise, Ronny and Jerry O'Malley on the long table. They had to talk about Harold O'Malley.
"Okay, I called the family in because I need to perform a procedure on your father to help him breathe," the resident said.
"So- So you're saying he can't breathe?" Ronny asked, worrisome, as Callie walked into the room.
"Uh, with the extensive surgery, your father is not breathing on his own, which is why we still have him intubated."
"Intubated?"
"The tube in dad's mouth. It's breathing for him," George clarified shakily.
"And, right now, that tube has a kink in it, which is straining his breathing," Bailey explained.
"How did it get a kink in it?" Louise asked, eyes covered by a sheen of tears that glimmered under the ceiling lights.
"It just happens, we don't always know why." George stroked her arm reassuringly.
"But- But he's doing good today." Ronny nodded. "I mean, he made plenty of pee, so..."
"Still, we need to replace the tube."
"So why don't you just do it? I mean, what are we waiting for?" Jerry frowned, glancing over at Billie, then at Meredith and, finally, at Callie, all for some sort of answer.
Bailey looked down, "Okay. With the damage to your father's esophagus and the swelling in his throat from being intubated all this time-"
"You might not be able to get it in? The new tube." George finished her sentence for her, eyes watering.
"Under these circumstances, it can be a complicated procedure. If I'm not successful..." Bailey swallowed thickly. "I'm saying you need to prepare yourselves."
☆
The procedure performed on Harold O'Malley by Bailey and Meredith, supervised by Webber, was difficult and almost unsuccessful, since they nearly lost all of his oxygen. However, in the end, they managed to get the tube in, which Billie heard about from Meredith after they were done.
Now, the brunette was on the mission of getting to Heather Douglas' room to check up on her, knowing she had underwent her awaited surgery a few hours back. Notwithstanding, as she took a turn to the right, she collided into a broad body.
She let out a little squeal of surprise and heard the towering man in front of her cursing under his breath, yet grabbing her forearms to stop her from falling. Billie steadied herself.
"God, I'm so sorry-" she began, but cut herself off when she looked up and recognized those swirling blue eyes. "Mark."
"Billie," he replied with the same amount of shock, but a tone to his voice that suggested otherwise. "Hey."
"What are- I- I haven't seen you in two days. You didn't come home." She frowned and shook her head. "Where have you been? You have no idea how worried I was. Had me thinking you got run over or something."
"I, uh... I slept over here." He shrugged, looking down at the floor and clearing his throat awkwardly. "I had surgeries."
Billie bit the corner of her lip pensively for a second and then proceeded to grab him by his elbow, dragging him down the hallway and into an empty on-call room. She flicked on the light and closed the door behind them, feeling as Mark glanced her over weirdly.
She planted herself in front of him, adopting a soft expression. "Addison told me."
Mark's head shot up and his eyes widened ever the slightest. "What? She told you what?"
"About the baby," Billie confessed, making him huff out and cover his face with his hands in frustration. "I'm sorry that happened to you, Mark. You should've told me, I- I could've helped you."
"You were gone. I had no way of contacting you, how could I have possibly told you?" Mark said quietly with remorse.
"I'm sorry for that too." Billie nodded in reassurance, reaching out her hand to hold his. "Mark, you don't have to push me away. You know you can talk to me."
"I know," he said, then took a second to look into her eyes. "It just doesn't feel that way sometimes."
Billie frowned and her hand instinctively began fiddling with the red thread around her ring finger. "What?"
Mark sighed, not sure if he wanted to get started on the topic. However, Billie remained silent, fidgety stance, so he had no choice.
"You left me. You- You left me alone in New York and I- I don't wanna blame you. God, it's not your fault, it's just... when I found you back, I thought it was the best thing that ever happened to me." Mark pressed his lips together and looked up at her. "But you took off and left without even letting me know. I don't know if I can trust you enough to be sure you won't do the same thing again."
"Mark, that was different. I was getting away from my father." Billie argued, starting to get uncomfortable at the situation they stood on.
"I could've helped you," he said simply. "I could've helped you. You didn't have to run away."
The girl stared pensively quiet for a moment, but then opted to let go of his hand and cup his cheeks instead. She used her hold on his face to lift his head up, meeting eyes with his arctic blue ones.
"You can trust that I'll never leave you again," she said softly, nodding her head to reassure him. "Don't push me away, Mark. Don't do it."
It took him a long second that felt like three decades, but finally, he nodded shakily and pressed his forehead against hers. They held that position for a moment before they wrapped each other into tight embrace.
"That hickey's still there," Mark pointed out then.
Billie giggled. "Yeah, that won't be going away any time soon."
☆
After setting things right with Mark, Billie made her way towards the main hall, where she was supposed to take her name off Heather's chart. She met with Chief Webber there, whom she greeted politely, and then grabbed her clipboard and headed towards one of the seats to complete the task. However, as she signed off the chart, she noticed George storming into the hall.
"Why did you do it?" He ran up to Webber. Bailey, who was hanging close by, turned to pay attention to the conversation.
"George?" Billie frowned, stopping her scribbling on the pages.
"Dr. O'Malley."
"Why did you do the surgery once you saw the cancer had spread?" George raised his voice a little with tears in his eyes.
Billie frowned, knowing she had had the same concern ever since the operation, and then pushed the chart aside, standing up and walking up towards them. She stood behind George and glanced over at Webber and Bailey.
"George." The resident looked at him sympathetically.
He paused. "He asked you, right? He asked you to do it no matter what?"
"We have to honor our patient's wishes," Webber replied simply.
George's chest heaved in complete anger and fear, added to his bloodshot eyes that were product of his unshed tears. As an instinct, Billie took a step forward, wanting to protect him from whatever was about to happen.
He ignored her and walked up to Bailey, standing close to her as the took in ragged breaths.
"You said you would be straight with me," George said, then turned to Webber too, starting to back away. "He- He could've lived for weeks or... or months. We could've had months with him. My mom, she could've had months with him!"
As in reflex, Billie's eyes teared up, noticing how distraught her friend was. She took a deep breath. She knew better than anyone what George was feeling, how his grief settled on every crevice of his skin and pushed him back, held him back, tortured him.
"Georgie," she called out in an attempt to somehow soothe him.
"He wanted to fight the cancer, George," Webber said as he got ready to walk away, but he suddenly turned.
"HE DIDN'T KNOW ANY BETTER!" he yelled as the tears started streaming down his cheeks. "YOU KNEW BETTER!"
Instinctively, Billie ran up to him and cupped his cheeks, urging him to look down at her, but to no avail.
"Hey, Georgie, Georgie. Calm down, look at me-"
"You shouldn't have done it." He sobbed with his eyes on the two doctors behind them. "You shouldn't have done it!"
He then proceeded to fall into Billie's chest, giving her the indirect heads-up to hug him. She wrapped her arms around him and held him so tight, placing her free hand on the back of his head to stroke his hair soothingly. He nuzzled into the crook of her neck.
"Focus on me, Georgie. I'm here. I'm here."
He sobbed. "You shouldn't have done it!"
☆
Three hours went by. Billie was walking out of the hospital. George stood by the sidewalk. He was her final destination.
She hugged herself to shield her body from the penetrating post-rain cold and then walked up to George without saying a word, hoping he felt her presence enough to know she was there for him, no matter what. Finally, he turned.
"There's a club," she said after a brief pause. "The Dead Dad's Club. And you can't be in it until you're in it." Billie sighed, pulling her words from a very deep part of herself. "You can try to understand, you can sympathize, but until you feel that loss..."
She trailed off near the end, leaving her words up to interpretation. George remained silent.
"I- I never had a dad. The closest thing I ever had to one was Denny, so I can't really count myself into that club. But the thing is, I do know what that loss feels like because I lost my father too before I even got to know him." Billie pursed her lips. "George," she then called out. "I'm really sorry you had to join the club."
George shook his head and swallowed thickly. "I don't know how to exist in a world where my dad doesn't."
Billie sighed deeply, "Yeah, that never really changes."
They stayed silent. She reached out her hand. He caged it within his own.