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chapter thirty one ━ P.Y.T. (pretty young thing)
season seven, episode fourteen
❝ my whole life at the
moment consists of
trucks, cabins and spoons. ❞
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"It's horrible." Meredith complained as she leaned down to tie her shoe, in the midst of an existential crisis.
Cristina rolled her eyes, setting her hair brush down as she swivelled towards Meredith. "It's the opposite of horrible."
"Make a pro, con list, that always helps." Aliya suggested, running her fingers through her hair, gathering the strands into a ponytail. "Alzheimer's or Diabetes. Sandwich or salad. Strawberry milkshake or chocolate milkshake. Cabin or spoon."
With a disgruntled groan, Meredith's head fell into her hands in defeat. "It's all Derek's fault, he offered to let me help out with the stupid clinical trial."
"Hm." It was Aliya's turn to grunt. It wasn't like she was unhappy Derek let Meredith on their trial. Aliya could share, some of the time.
"Hey," Cristina rolled her eyes for the hundredth time that morning. "If you continue to whine about how you can't decide which ground-breaking medical advancement to put your name on, I will punch you in the ear."
"Well, my name is already on one of them according to the Chief. I mean diabetes—"
"Affects two hundred and forty million people worldwide." Lexie informed, using her photographic memory for good use.
Meredith sighed, indecisively. "And Alzheimer's—"
"The seventh leading cause of death."
Cristina gasped in the realisation. "It's Sophie's choice."
Meredith watched her with widened eyes. "It's Sophie's choice."
"I haven't seen that movie." Lexie replied, freeing her hair from her white coat.
"Great movie." Aliya informed through a huge mouthful of unfortunately luke warm coffee, giving her a useful reminder that she needed to stop at the coffee cart on the way to the conference room where she would inevitably spend a good portion of her day interviewing patients from the Alzheimer's trial.
Cristina nodded to Lexie like a movie critic. "You should see it, it's really funny."
"Grey's," Miranda Bailey new tweed the residents lounge, her attention on Lexie and Meredith. "How long has your father been having abdominal pain?"
"Abdominal pain?" Lexie repeated, her face dropping.
"It sounds like abdominal pain." Bailey said with a sigh. "Thatcher Grey is not an easy man to get information from."
"Our father's here in the hospital?" Lexie looked like she had just seen a ghost.
"Yeah, I admitted him an hour ago." Bailey raised a brow in confusion, her eyes going back and forth between the two sisters. "You didn't know he was coming?"
"What's wrong?" Lexie questioned, worried. "Could it be related to the liver transplant?"
"Of course," The Grey who didn't get along with said father, rolled her eyes. "He's rejecting it because it's my liver."
Aliya smirked, subtly from where she was pulling at the sleeves of her red long sleeved thermal that she wore underneath her scrubs because it was too cold to function without layers.
"Okay, look, just do me a favour," Bailey began, turning her attention to Lexie, the one who would actually help. "I need you to go take a blood sample and try to get more information out of him. I need someone who speaks Grey."
If Aliya found someone who was an expert in speaking Molly Levine, she may have had a half-decent relationship with her mother.
Though, despite that, she highly doubt it.
"Yeah." Lexie agreed, stuffing her stethoscope into her pocket and making her way out of the door.
"Right," Aliya yawned into her palm, grabbing her to go cup as she pushed herself from the bench. "I have to go ask clinical trial patient's if they can remember the words truck, cabin and spoon for the next five hours."
Cristina turned up her nose at that prospect, the clinical trial was interesting, everyone knew that, but some of the aspects may be considered far from it, to the naked eye. "At least not having a clinical trial means I don't have to do that."
Aliya chucked, shaking her head as she disagreed with the statement. "You'd give rectal exams all day if it meant having your name on a groundbreaking clinical trial."
Shrugging her shoulders, Cristina swept her hair up into a pony tail. "You're not wrong."
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Aliya sat at the table of the conference room with her hands in her hair, her eyes narrowed at the pages and pages of data collected from the past four hours led out in front of her.
Though the clinical trial was one of the most exciting things she's ever done in her whole medical career, aside from burr holes in the field with a contractors drill, her lack of a good nights sleep really put a spanner in the works in terms of general motivation.
At this rate, Aliya was going to have to be buried with all this paperwork.
It could end up being her cause of death, there was no doubt about it.
"Holy crap! Your mom was smart." Cristina commented, hunched over the outline of Richard's diabetes clinical trial, which he formulated using Ellis Grey's old diaries.
Aliya had been catching snippets of their conversation about it for the past few minutes, and it did seem groundbreaking.
"Truck, cabin, spoon." Aliya didn't even move her head, her eyes just lifted to Alex, who was leant on his chair with his hands on his temples, reciting the three words that would haunt her in the middle of the night.
"Three for three!" Jackson hollered, high-fiving Alex in victory.
Aliya was wrong, something else was much more likely to haunt her in the middle of the night.
"My whole life at the moment consists of trucks, cabins and spoons." Aliya groaned, turning the page and stifling yet another yawn. She took that as a sign she needed even more caffeine.
Was it weird to be in the same room as her ex-boyfriend, who she was still in love with, who she was also angry at for a reason she wasn't even that sure about anymore?
Yes. Incredibly.
It was weird. That was the one thing she was sure about right now.
"Crap! This is so good!" Cristina exclaimed, flipping the pages of the trial outline.
"Is it better than this?" Alex said through a mouthful of salt and vinegar potato chips. "'Cause seriously, Mer, you'd have to have died of Alzheimer's to fail this."
"Hey," Aliya snapped her head back, her brows lowered in agitation. "You weren't the one that just asked patients to remember three words for the past five hours. I've seen it all, Karev."
"I'll take your word for it." Alex strained a reply to the unusually crabby brunette, watching her with cautious eyes as if she looked like she was going to lunge at him from across the table.
"I don't even know if I'm doing it yet." Meredith muttered from the other end of the table.
"You have to." Cristina enthused, tapping the pages excitedly. "Mother daughter surgeons cure leading killer."
Aliya tilted her head, that would make a great headline, she would read that article. "That does have a great ring to it."
"I don't trust your opinion," Meredith fired back with a displeased frown. "You just want the Alzheimer's trial to yourself."
"Maybe, maybe not." Aliya shrugged back, tapping her pen on her pages.
"I mean," Cristina waved her half-eaten apple in the air like a prop. "I'm so jealous and I'm doing a heart transplant on a baby that hasn't even been born yet."
"Will you shut up about this?" Alex grumbled, seeing as he was kicked off the case this morning by the new OB fellow.
"You're the one who needs to keep his mouth shut, Cabbage patch." Cristina spat back.
"I heard about that from the Nurses." Aliya acknowledged, looking over at Alex as he looked far from happy. "I mean, come on Alex, turnip?"
"Screw this," He chucked his sandwich back onto his plate, sending pieces of cheese and lettuce across the table. "I've been on this case for a month."
He pushed the chair back, passing Lexie in a whirlwind as he exited the room she just entered.
"Meredith, you have to come see Dad." Lexie tried to encourage.
The blonde didn't look up. "Does he want more organs?"
"I mean, you have to two kidneys for a reason." Aliya remarked with a shrug, scribbling down notes in the margins, stifling another yawn into her palm.
Meredith chuckled. "You're so right."
"One to keep and one to sell." Aliya grinned, gathering up her papers as she finished up with the last patient results and pushing herself from the chair.
"Exactly."
"He wouldn't say," Lexie interrupted the organ-selling segue, quickly turning the subject back to the matter at hand. "He was too busy loving-up on a tattooed twenty year old."
The shock of Lexie's statement caused Aliya to send all of her papers that she had just neatly stacked all over the carpet. "Crap!"
"Exactly!" Lexie pointed to Aliya's reaction, though it was more to do with the new flooring she had just made with A4 printer paper.
As she leant down to start grabbing what felt like a thousand pieces of paper, a shadow cast down on the white sheets, and as if even his shadow had been memorised by her, she knew it was Jackson as he started to pick up papers.
He mainted an odd and careful distance, flinching if they got even a centimetre apart from where they were collecting the papers.
All the chatter about Thatcher Grey's 'tatted-up skank' had disappeared, and all Aliya could focus on was him.
All of her senses seem to be completely captured by him.
Jackson passed her the papers he had in his hand, now that they were off the floor. "Thanks." Aliya spoke, and he simply gave her a short nod in response, his lips pursed and his eyes glazed over as he turned, sitting back down where he was once sat.
Bringing herself back to reality and out of a daydream that only tortured her, Aliya cleared her throat. "I would love to stay and chat about this twenty year old your dad has acquired but, I have to go. Good luck with that."
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"Hey, how's it going, you paged?" Aliya greeted with as much positivity she could possibly muster as she entered the oncology ward, making her way to the chair Summer was sat in, nearly in her final rounds of chemo.
"Hey," Summer beamed, tucking a strand of brown hair behind her ear. "I need your opinion on a lip gloss for Tyler's, ex-girlfriend's sister's wedding, Candy floss dreams or Honey apple?" She held up two tubes of lip gloss, one a bright pink, one a deeper, burgundy pink. "My dress is blue."
Aliya squinted at the tubes, slipping down in the armchair next to her bed. "Honey apple, definitely."
"Perfect." Summer threw Candy Floss Dreams and Honey Apple into her bag before studying her friend closely, under a mental microscope. "You look gaunt, want a Twinkie?" Frowning at Aliya's supposed gaunt complexion, she held up a wrapped Twinkie, dangling it in the air.
"I really love coming to visit you because every time I do I get these lovely compliments." Aliya said, sarcastically, shaking her head at the Twinkie in a sort of disgust.
"How about Milk Duds?" Summer rummaged through her Mary Poppins bag, retrieving a packet. "You love Milk Duds."
Aliya smiled, fondly with a laugh. "I'm good."
"Hmm," Summer wasn't having it, returning back to the art of rummaging. "I swear I have some Swedish Fish on here too."
Aliya narrowed her eyes. "Stop trying to pawn your snacks off onto me."
"You just look—" Summer analysed Aliya's face, in a way that if Summer were a stranger, Aliya would feel incredibly self conscious. But it was Summer. She could never make Aliya feel like that. "Pale. That's all."
Aliya sighed heavily, pushing her hair off of her forehead. "I'm fine, Summer." She tried to assure.
"Okay." Summer said in reply. "Have a twizzler to make me feel better?" She held out a red candy that Aliya didn't even see her grab.
"For you, I'll have a twizzler." Aliya took it, nibbling on the end of it. "Did you get the Nurses to page me for gloss advice or was there something else?"
"I just wanted a bit of company." Summer stated with a shrug. "Daniel had to head out and pick Eliza up from school. Just his luck right? Two of us having tumours." She laughed, Summer had always been a fan of the dark humour.
"Eliza's clean. That kid is the strongest person I know."
Summer nodded, playing with the edge of her blanket. "And what about me?" She asked with a raised brow, watching for Aliya's answer.
"Who do you think she got it from?" The brunette replied, earning a light smile from her friend. Having survived the removal of her tumour, Sunmer was also nearing the end of her chemotherapy, which was a relief to everyone. Aliya wasn't lying about what she had said, Summer was one of the strongest people she knew, at this rate, Aliya believed that woman could survive anything, and that made her admirable. "Summer—"
"Aliya." Summer said, softly.
Aliya huffed, pausing and hesitating for a long while as she tried to articulate the words in her head into long form sentences. "I just don't understand why. Why didn't you tell me?"
"Aliya," Summer looked down. "You were going through so much already with the shooting, Andy's death. Your nutty family. I didn't want to add me into that mix. I didn't want you to worry that you were going to loose me too."
Summer showed so many signs she was sick — the times Aliya had seen her at the hospital, when she was acting all weird on the phone and in person, she should've know something was wrong. Why didn't she know? What did she do wrong?
"I'm a doctor. I could've helped you."
"I know." Summer reached for her hand, pulling it on top of her fuzzy blanket. "Believe me, Aliya. I was going to tell you eventually. I just didn't want to worry you until there was something to worry about."
"Summer." Aliya's lips turned down. "It was cancer. That was something to worry about."
"Are you looking after yourself?" Summer squeezed her hand with worry, going back to over-analysing Aliya's face.
"Summer!" Aliya exclaimed in irritation at her friend's tendency to change the subject, sinking into the armchair. But even then, she could not talk about changing the subject, seeing as she did it all the time. "You have to stop changing the subject."
"You still haven't introduced me to your boyfriend—Ow!" Summer swatted away half of the Twizzler that had just landed on her chest. "What was that for?"
Aliya quirked a brow. "You know what it was for."
"Can we not talk about it?" Summer said with a sigh, dropping her head back into the pillow. "My whole life is cancer at the moment, I just want to talk about something else."
"Okay."
"So—" Summer sank happily into her blankets now she had successfully shut Aliya up. "Dr. Hot."
Aliya darted her eye away, picking at the skin around her nails, nervously.
Summer's face fell. "What happened?"
"Nothing." Aliya lied through her teeth.
"You look the same way you looked when you were four and you accidentally squashed a caterpillar."
The brunette rolled her eyes. "I spent five hours building it a house, I was distraught." Aliya reminded.
"Seriously though, Aliya." Summer reached out, tugging at her friends sleeves. "What happened?"
"I—" Aliya began to stutter, her eyes wide as she tried to think of a way to dodge the question. "You've met him before."
"Not as your boyfriend." Summer said, a bright smile on her face as she said it in a way that seemed to transport her back to her old bedroom, gossiping about boys, reading those magazines that came with the tubes of lip smacker that may potentially cause an allergic reaction.
Aliya swallowed down whatever was left of the Twizzler in her throat. "How about I get some trashy magazines—"
Summer opened her mouth to protest. "I already—"
"I'll go get some more." Aliya interrupted, jumping on her feet and turning on her heel.
"Pick up some Red Vines while you're at it!" Summer called as Aliya, quite literally, disappeared from her problems.
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"Right, you're we're done for the day, go home, get some rest and we can pick this up again tomorrow." Derek announced, after a few hours of looking over the data from the trial later.
The woman sitting across from him frowned.
The neurosurgeon sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Or you can go help in the pit."
Aliya grinned, wildly. "That sounds like a wonderful idea."
"Get some sleep tonight." Derek ordered, looking up at her briefly as he packed away all of the various pieces of paper. "We have a lot to do tomorrow."
"More trucks, cabins and spoons?" Aliya said with a smirk, passing him a stack of papers.
"Better."
Aliya raised a suspicious brow, unable to tell whether he was being sarcastic or not. "Forks, mugs and four-by-fours?"
Derek rolled his eyes. "Enjoy the ER, freak."
Aliya chuckled, exiting through the door as she made her way to the ER to offer a second pair of hands and find someone with their internal organs preferably outside of their chest.
She needed to get into the OR, she didn't care if it was only an appendectomy.
And as she got into the ER at nearly nine in the evening and as if the world was punishing her with his presence, of course it was Jackson in the ER.
It was even too late to turn away because he already spotted her, his eyes trained on the way she stopped in her tracks, ready to turn on her heel and disappear back the way she came.
But instead, Aliya straightened her back, making her way over to the desk of the less crowded ER. "Is there anything I can do?"
In a rush, he shuffled some charts in his grasp, taking the one he needed out of the pile. "I haven't had a chance to see bed two yet."
"Okay." Aliya nodded, turning her back to him and making her way to bed two with the clipboard he just passed to her in her hand, feeling incredibly ill all of a sudden.
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One fractured wrist, a dozen people needing stitches and a head lac on the way to a CT scan later, Aliya had successfully kept her mind from going places she didn't necessarily want to go.
For half an hour.
She stared at the clock opposite her, catching one minute to enjoy her vending machine coffee in peace, away from the absolute chaos of the emergency room.
And as quickly as he had entered into her life, Jackson came through he double doors at the end of the hall she was current occupying, and if there were another body beside the two of them in this deserted hallway, they would want to get out and be free immediately.
Because as the two doctors locked eyes from across the hall like they seemed to do all the darn time, the tension that clouded them in unspeakable ways was insufferable.
The Avery man paused, his jaw tensing and Aliya could almost visibly see a thousand different emotions passing behind his eyes.
It was almost as if his body flinched, as if to leave the hallway but he still descended down it anyway, stopping hesitantly in front of the brunette, who was holding onto the cardboard coffee cup almost to the degree of crushing it in her palm.
For some unknown reason, this encounter was neither awkward or uncomfortable. If it were anyone else, Aliya would be certain she would want to the ground to swallow her whole.
But, it was him.
The man she so desperately wanted but couldn't allow herself to have.
He regarded the clock on the wall, reading ten minutes past midnight.
"It's your birthday." Jackson commented, tearing his eyes away from the clock to face her again, the eyes regaining contact.
It was crazy to even say it but, right in that moment, it felt like eye contact was meant for them.
Aliya flicked her own eyes up to the clock, blinking at it as it told her she was in fact twenty nine. "It is."
"I—" Jackson pursed his lips into a straight line, crossing his arms across his chest with a short and subtle sigh. "I have a hundred things I want to say to you but, I don't know where to start."
Aliya's heart began to hammer inside her chest, her mind screaming at her to say something. Anything at all, at this point, she didn't care what, she just wanted to talk to him.
But, deep down she wanted to much more than to just hear his voice.
She wanted to feel his hand on her back, as he traced circles across it like he always did, and to feel his hand across her as it met her waistline. The way his always reached for her hand when they walked together, or even the way he brought her coffee in the mornings, always planting a kiss onto the side of her temple.
Being with someone for only two months was short, but Aliya felt like she knew him for a lifetime.
"I usually pick a thought and go with it." Aliya offered him her advice, though in the grand scheme of things it probably wasn't worth taking into account.
"I know you do." He watched her, unwavering, his lip even seemed to curl up only slightly into something that was even half a smile, though it was close enough. "What happened?"
He finally picked a thought.
She just hoped it wouldn't be that one.
Aliya chose that exact moment to take a long sip of her coffee, buying herself time before having to give him her answer, though most of it was due to hoping she didn't actually have to respond to that particular question.
"When did it all go wrong? I've been racking my brain around for days Aliya." He paused, and Aliya heard his voice break as he trailed off. "Because I could say I know I can live without you but, that would be the biggest lie I would ever tell because, the truth is I can't. And I don't want to, Aliya—" He stopped himself, taking a breath before starting it all up again. "God, Aliya how did—"
"Jackson—" Aliya breathed softly, and the term saved by the bell came to mind as her pager hummed from her pocket. "I have to—"
"Yeah." He spoke, disappointed at her lack of words of any great importance, because she always seemed to have so many available in her hand, but when it came to the things that mattered most she was stumped.
"I—" She glanced up at him, her pager in her hand.
"I know." And then he smiled, letting her drift off down the hall, growing further away from him, both literally and metaphorically.
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Frowning at her burger almost three hours after operating on the patient who had a CT scan, discovering she had a brain bleed, Aliya poked the fries around on her plate, barely touching any of her food — except the milkshake, no emotional carnage that was the inside of her mind would make her not want a milkshake.
It was March third again, which meant Aliya and Trent were sat comfortably in the diner across the road from the hospital, like they did every year on Aliya's birthday.
She specifically said to Alex she didn't want anything to happen this day, it was just another day.
Though he did enter her room holding a balloon and two 'birthday muffins'.
She didn't want to be reminded of the fact that so much had changed in the year — Andy died, Summer was diagnosed with cancer, she had a boyfriend. It would hurt too much to be notified even more of how her life was changing all around, too fast for her to even stop. It felt like every single decision she made was the wrong one, like she was playing a horrific game of chess.
Usually it came easy for her, the decision making, the ability to mould herself into a hundred different versions so she would be able to be liked effortlessly.
It seemed a lot harder to do that these days when she was both physically and mentally exhausted.
"Eat your burger." Trent filled the silence, narrowing his eyes at his sister, who looked like she was going to burst into tears right there and then.
Aliya swallowed a fry, reaching for her milkshake as she tried to ignore the sickness in the pit of her stomach that may or may not have something to do with anxiety.
"You're too quiet." Trent commented, pushing her plate closer towards her with the tip of his finger.
"I'm just tired." Aliya justified, setting the glass down and sinking into the booth chair, tearing off a piece of the bread from her burger bun and popping it into her mouth.
"Partying hard last night?" Trent smirked, wiping his mouth with a napkin after setting his burger back down.
"Oh you know me, fifty shots of tequila every other Wednesday." Aliya scoffed.
"Great for the liver." Trent spoke, then cleared his throat, shifting awkwardly in his seat. "Seattle is rainy."
"That's a great observation." Aliya acknowledged his basic skills of deduction.
Even her brother was acting weird.
Weirder than usual.
He pursed his lips, giving her a short nod. "Great houses. Nice gardens."
Aliya raised a brow at where her brother, the King of segues, was taking this particular tangent.
"Fine real estate."
Well, to be fair to him, he was a real estate agent.
"I can agree," Aliya replied, her voice monotone. "Seattle has great architecture."
Trent waved a fry like a prop. "The best doctors."
"Trent." Aliya pressed her lips in a straight line, her brows lowered.
"Aliya," Her brother sat down his napkin, yet again shifting in his seat before saying something completely unexpected. "I'm moving to Seattle."
A smile broke across the brunette's face. "You're what!?"
"I'm moving—"
"No, I heard you!" Aliya beamed, clapping her hands together in excitement. "Oh my god!" She reached for his hand shaking it about manically in excitement, so hard she could've pulled off his limb.
Her brother chuckled back at her excitement, nearly sending the ketchup flying across the table. "You're happy?"
"Happy? That's an understatement!" Aliya grinned, glad that she was gaining the only Levine she truly liked.
Trent smirked, pushing a strand of his brown hair out of his face. "I thought you might be."
"But, you're not moving to Seattle for me." Aliya said with an all-knowing grin plastered on her face — she knew exactly which red-head her brother had moved all the way to Seattle for.
"Yeah but,—"
Aliya gasped, cinematically. "The betrayal!"
"I'm—"
"Outrage!" Slamming down her fork, Aliya slouched back into the chair.
Trent sighed, rolling his eyes lightly-heartedly. "Oh for—"
"So April, huh?" Aliya grinned. "You know, don't hurt her. She's not the girl you date just to break up with, she's—"
"Don't do the whole, what are your intentions speech this isn't the 1950s." Trent pointed out, chucking a fry at his sister's forehead. "We've been together for nearly four months."
"Yes," Aliya reached for the fry, lobbing it back at him. "But, April is the all sunshine's and rainbows, slopping pigs on a farm in Ohio, raising five kids type. She's not someone you do it with casually."
"Aliya, I know." He spoke, gently. "She's not just a fling."
Aliya nodded, knowing her brother was one of the best men she knew. "How long has this been going on?"
Trent shrugged, nonchalantly, wiping his hands on the napkin. "A few months."
Aliya smiled in surprise — ever since his wife died, Trent had refused to date anyone, until April. "No way."
"Don't."
"Wow. A lot has changed in a year." Aliya pointed out, slurping on the final two sips of her milkshake, before calling time of death.
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( notes! )
felt like april needed a love interest if i was going to take hers away 🫶🫶
by the way, over the past couple weeks i've been going through each chapter, rereading them, and making slight changes (i haven't changed the plot at all!!) e.g. fixing spelling mistakes, changing a couple bits of dialogue around etc! though one thing i have changed is i extended a couple bits with jackson so if you'd like to know which bits i extended let me know!!
i also changed the names of summer's daughter and trent's son for absolutely no reason whatsoever:
summer's daughter = eliza (not everly)
trent's son = james (not jace)
i named trent's son in 2020 when my mum was having a shadowhunters phase and i'd rather not relive that everytime i type his name
also i now have a tiktok !! it's aanatomy.wp 🫶🫶
also x100000, i'm sorry this chapter is shorter than usual!!
( word count! — 4,900 )