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CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
invest in love.
season six, episode eight.
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Billie arrived that morning at the hospital alongside Miles and Jackson, her and the latter both holding cups of coffee in their hands, slightly sleep-deprived after quite the eventful night they'd had last night. Miles didn't have to ask to know what had gone down, as he was close enough with Jackson to know exactly what that was. Although... well, he did find it slightly disturbing that both of them had now slept with Billie, even if she didn't seem to mind.
But it had accidentally become regular now, ever since the first time Billie and Jackson had found themselves naked in an empty on-call room. They met for drinks then ended up at his place or her place, and got very little sleep.
But also... Billie had found she quite liked Jackson.
Not only the sex, even though the sex was amazing, but also everything else. She liked talking to Jackson, as he was impressively pretty funny. She liked looking at him, looking at his eyes. Jackson even made breakfast for her. Maybe she was slowly starting to grow feelings for him, even though she was utterly scared to admit it.
On Jackson's side... he was a very different case.
Jackson had always liked Billie, ever since his first day at the hospital a few weeks ago. To him, she was beautiful, charming in her own way. She'd seen it and had sworn to himself that oh, he'd get that girl. Now... he had.
Jackson was not scared to admit he liked Billie. He thought they could work. True, they had known each other for very little, but they had spent every day together up to the date, and he was increasingly falling for her.
Miles, of course, knew that. Not only because Jackson had told him, but also because he could just tell. And he wasn't wrong to think that Billie probably liked him back.
The only problem was... well, Alex.
Speaking of which.
Billie was silent amidst Jackson and Miles' absentminded conversation. They stopped by the reception for a second and she sighted Alex close by, on the other side of the counter, alongside Webber. She couldn't help but overhear the conversation.
"Chief, you need me?" the resident asked.
"Uh..." the Chief sighed. "I wish I didn't have to saddle you with this, Karev, but..."
Promptly, he handed over to Alex a thick pile of charts. The resident took them with a frown.
"What is all this?"
"As Stevens left no forwarding address, and as you are officially her next of kin," he explained, "this is her unpaid balance of her medical bills."
Billie frowned. So did Alex.
"Unpaid balance? I don't get it. We work here at the hospital." He shook his head.
"And insurance doesn't take care of everything. I'm sorry, but Accounting's been pressing me since the merger and I can't ignore it any longer."
Then, he walked away. Alex looked down at the files, defeated, and Billie looked at him from afar with her teeth delved hard into her bottom lip.
Behind her, Jackson looked at her, then followed her eye line to find exactly who it was she gazed so longingly at. The answer made him sigh.
☆
Later that day, Billie was in the NICU, staring through the glass at Alex. He wore a pink gown over his scrubs and took care of a premature baby in one of the incubators, hearing its heart rate through his stethoscope. He looked absent, as usual, but not any less beautiful.
Billie liked looking at him, especially when he didn't notice. The more distracted he was, the prettier he looked.
Promptly, she fetched a pink gown, draped it over her scrubs and slithered silently into the NICU. In a second, she was by Alex with a smile, ignoring everything that had gone down between them over the past few weeks.
"Hey," she said softly.
He didn't even look at her. "Hey."
Billie didn't pay any mind to that. Slowly, she brought up the charts she was holding on her hands.
"I was picking some labs for Bailey and I saw you had these waiting, so I thought I'd bring them to you and save you the trip," she explained, although rather nervously.
It was a lie, naturally. She'd been spying on him earlier that morning and had seen him bring the samples to the lab, so she'd been waiting to pick them up for him, just to be able to hear his voice. Even if it was just for a second. They didn't talk much lately.
"Thanks," he mumbled, again avoiding her eye, but taking the labs and placing them on the table next to him uninterestedly.
Billie bit the inside of her cheek, almost drawing blood from it. She hated when he didn't look at her.
"Are you okay?" she couldn't help but ask. "I— I don't mean to intrude, but I accidentally overheard a bit of your conversation this morning with the Chief and I— well, I— I just wanted to check on you."
Alex finally looked at her, but it wasn't nice. In fact, it was awful.
"I'm trying to save a baby here. Get out of my face."
The words hit Billie like a punch, although she didn't show. She didn't know why she kept trying, why she kept running after him, trying to help him, trying to comfort him, when all she ever got in response was... this. She didn't know why she didn't just give up. But she guessed this was her last straw.
"Got it," she murmured under her breath before turning on her heel and leaving the NICU.
Alex looked over his shoulder, suddenly repentant.
☆
"I brought you a cookie."
Billie looked up from her charting behind a nurses station and found Jackson's blue eyes and smiley face. He held in his hand one of those cookies from the cafeteria that came inside a little plastic bag with a red thread around it and—
Billie's left hand shook and she looked down to it, to the red cookie thread wrapped around her ring finger. Nostalgia drowned her, but she forced a smile.
"Thanks, Jackson," she said. "You didn't have to."
"I wanted to." He left the treat on the counter and propped himself on his elbows. "What are you up to?"
"Nothing much, I just—"
"Wanna go out for dinner tonight?" Jackson blurted out then.
Billie frowned and laughed. "Like a date?"
"Yeah, maybe. I mean, if you want. Or we could just go out as friends."
Billie sighed. Her and Alex were over.
"A date sounds nice," she said. "Where to?"
Jackson seemed eternally relieved. "I'll take you somewhere nice, don't worry. I'll plan everything."
Billie drew a toothy smile. "Okay."
Jackson scurried away excitedly, but as soon as he was gone, so was Billie's momentary content. She huffed a long huff and melted down into her chair.
☆
Billie didn't intend on going to the NICU again. She didn't intend on finding Alex or even talking to him at all. She was done with him.
But it made it a little hard to pretend he wasn't there when he was standing in the middle of the NICU, holding a baby, shirtless.
Billie near damn stood there gawking at him when she saw him. She hadn't seen that image in so long that seeing it again... and God, had he changed. He was even better than he was before. She couldn't help but look at his arms.
"I didn't peg you for the babysitting type."
The words were out of her mouth before she could even think about them.
Alex recognized her voice almost before she even finished her sentence. He turned around, wondering why on Earth she would ever come back. Why he kept mistreating her and why she kept trying to help him, when he was just so bad. Why she always came back.
But he wasn't any less ecstatic to see her.
"Am not," he grumbled under his breath, lulling the premature baby by rocking softly his body side to side.
"Doesn't quite seem like it." Billie snorted. Her mouth had a life of its own. "Why shirtless though?"
"Don't know. Bailey told me." Alex simply shrugged.
She nodded, then finally found the self-control inside her to stop blurting out random things and actually speak.
"I hate it when you get like that," she said truthfully.
"Like what?"
"Like that." Billie shook her head. "Like all... I love you and I wanna get with you and I want you to wait for me and I'm in love with you. I hate it because you do that and then... you do this. You treat me like I'm a piece of crap. I get that you're going through something, but we all are, Alex. And I'm just trying to help you, but now it's been too many times you've mistreated me, to my face, when all I've done is been good to you. Or tried to, at least. And you have no idea how much of an effort it's taking me to come back to you every time."
"Then why do you?" Alex asked, now looking at her sternly, with one of those looks Billie couldn't quite decipher. "Why do you come back? If I'm so bad, then just leave."
Billie shook her head and sighed. "You don't get it, Alex. You're not bad. You're just... Alex. You're my Alex. Well, I mean, I wish you were. I would've taken upon your offer because I want to be with you. I really do. And it's so shitty that Izzie left you like this, especially with all those unpaid bills, but it's just... what it is. I just wish you could handle it well enough to let me help you."
"I don't need your help," he said, although he did.
Billie looked at him, her eyes sad. "You're really not gonna budge?"
Alex didn't say anything.
"Okay." She nodded, then walked away.
☆
Billie was in the ER. Much to her dismay, her day had been quite uneventful and she hadn't gotten in on any interesting cases, so the only thing she could do to distract her mind from thinking about Alex was head down to the pit and practice sutures.
That's where Mark found her.
"Are you okay?" he asked, noticing her long face almost right off the bat.
"Fine. You?"
Mark sighed. "What did Karev do?"
Billie scoffed and looked up at him. "Nothing. I'm fine. Do you have any surgeries I can get in on? I need to cut something."
"You can cut the bullshit and tell me what's wrong."
Billie dedicated him a stern look.
Mark sighed out deeply. "Not me, I don't have any surgeries right now, but your brother does. He's up in OR 2 removing a pituitary adenoma, I think he'll be glad to let you join."
"Great."
Billie did not hesitate to hand her suture kit to Mark and dash to the elevator.
☆
As Mark predicted, Ian was more than happy to welcome his little sister into the tumor removal. It wasn't a hard procedure, not something she hadn't seen before, but she was still glad she was scoring some OR time alongside her brother, who'd always let her participate a little more than she should, just because he knew she could.
Today, she was allowed to handle the curettes and was currently extirpating the final piece of the tumor before they were officially over after four and a half hours of surgery.
"Be careful not to accidentally tap the pituitary gland with the curettes, or else we risk a bleeder," Ian explained. "There, careful."
Billie slowly took out the final piece of the dissected tumor and dropped it onto the tray held by one of the scrub nurses. Ian smiled at her through his mask.
"Excellent, Dr. Black. Let's close her up and—"
Suddenly, the monitor went haywire. Billie's and Ian's heads immediately shot in the patient's direction—the woman's vitals were all over the place, and they looked down at her open brain to find that the small opening on her dura was filling up with blood.
"Crap, there's a bleeder," Ian announced.
"What happened?" Billie exclaimed suddenly, agitated. "What did I do?"
"I think you might have accidentally nicked an artery. Don't worry, just let me handle it."
"I— I—" Billie couldn't speak. "I touched the gland?"
Ian worked quickly. The younger girl followed his instructions, anguished, heavy-hearted. She feared she might have been the one to cause the bleeder, and the longer Ian took fix it, the more her chest hollowed out.
Billie couldn't believe her pulse had failed her. She knew damn well how to manage curettes—she sure knew how to assist in a tumor removal. But for some reason, she'd nicked an artery and caused a bleeder in a woman's brain.
"What do I do?" she asked herself.
Slowly, she retreated back and away from the table, her breathing shallow. Ian didn't stop her and simply took upon the space she was previously occupying to move freely, working to clip the woman's bleeder.
Billie couldn't stand to watch. She couldn't bare to know whether she had or not killed a woman due to her own negligence. So she ran out of the OR in a hurry.
☆
Ian found her an hour and a half later hiding inside the residents lounge, sat on the floor against the lockers with her knees to her chest, zoned out, alone. He took a seat by her side and huffed. He was freshly out of surgery.
"Mrs. Taylor's fine. I was able to drain the bleed and she's in the ICU, perfectly fine," Ian explained. "Billie, it was just a mistake. We all make mistakes."
"It was a stupid mistake," she said. "I was distracted, I shouldn't have gone into surgery. I've been thinking all day about stupid Alex and I just wanted to cut someone open to forget about him, but being in the OR only made me think about him even more, so I accidentally touched that woman's brain and nicked an artery. I felt it, felt the tug, but nothing happened as soon as I took out the tumor so I thought maybe I didn't break anything. So I didn't tell you. But I felt it."
"It was a mistake," Ian repeated.
"It was stupid," Billie echoed, shaking her head pensively. "I shouldn't have gone into that OR and you shouldn't have let me just take out the damn tumor, let alone right now, when the Chief's cutting out people from the program. No third year resident does that, Ian."
He sighed. "You're right. That's my bad. But you're my little sister and I know you enough. I know what you're capable of. I know that, were you an attending, you'd absolutely kick my ass. You know more about neurosurgery than any third year resident I know. I let you do those complicated procedures because I know you can and I would never let you do something I didn't think you were capable of doing."
Billie sighed deeply and shook her head. "It's just not a good day for me."
"I know." Ian nodded, then stretched his arm around her shoulders and hugged her.
☆
It was around eight. Billie was already in her street clothes, heading to the lobby to meet up with Jackson for their date. She wasn't exactly in the mood for a date—she wasn't in the mood for anything, actually. She just wanted to head back home and sleep away the crappy day. But she felt she couldn't cancel on him just out of mere courtesy.
However, somewhat purposefully, she'd taken the wrong turn. She passed by the NICU and sighted Alex on a chair, with a blanket around him, still shirtless and still holding the baby.
Doubtfully, she entered the mostly empty space and smiled slightly.
"You heading home?" she asked him.
Alex looked over her shoulder. There she was, again. And even though he was about to push her away once more, he was glad to see her.
"No, I got the baby," he said.
"Well... I'm sure somebody else could take a shift." Billie shrugged.
"I can't leave, okay?" he said rather harshly.
She was used to it by now, though, so she didn't say anything about it. She just asked him a question.
"Alex, are you really so messed up that you can't let one person be nice to you? Ever?"
There was a moment of silence. Billie's eyes were firm on Alex's.
"I can't go," he finally said. "I can't go home, I can't get Izzie to call me back. She's... gone. Could be dead, for all I know!" he yelled. "He left me with a two hundred thousand dollar medical bill and I c— I...! I can't do anything about it. About any of it." Alex shook his head pensively. "But I can sit here and I can hold this baby. That I can do."
Billie looked at him.
"Then I'll sit here with you," she said calmly.
She looked around and grabbed a chair nearby to sit next to him. Alex didn't dare look at her, didn't dare deny, and she didn't take her eyes off of him.
"I'll stay here with you for as long as you need me," she said then in a whisper.
Alex shook his head and finally spoke the words he'd been dying to let her know. "I— I can't."
"You can't what?"
"I can't get back with you, Billie, not right now," he explained, finally finding her eyes. They felt like home. "I'm not ready. I'm— I'm looking for Izzie and she could still come back, and I— I'm just not ready. I know I said I was and I was... but things changed and I need you... I need you to understand that I don't want to push you away. I want you as close as I can have you." He made a pause. "But not yet."
Billie's face didn't move. "I know."
Alex was puzzled. He expected her to object. Instead, she was smiling at him.
Alex couldn't help but lean in forward and kiss her cheek, and when her cherry scent flooded his nostrils, he felt at peace.
Billie stayed the rest of the night with him.