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chapter three ━ i saw what i saw
season six, episode six

❝ it was a mess. ❞

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There were moments where the will to live completely and truly disappeared.

And, the truth was that anything would be better than whatever the hell was going on here.

Sure, Aliya knew what had happened, in a very hectic, very disorganised kind of way. Where her brain was still trying to recall every last detail of it all. Which was that a woman had died just a matter of minutes ago in a trauma room, with every resident in the hall crowded around her as everything that could've went wrong, went wrong.

From the very beginning, to when time of death — twelve forty five in the morning — was called.

Everything just failed.

With her back pressed up against her chair, Aliya's hands were tapping some sort of rhythmic tune on the armrests out of habit, because the fact that the Chief of Surgery had everyone gathered in the hallway outside the conference was enough to send Aliya's carefully constructed calm demeanour down to rubble.

It never was anything good when you put feuding residents in a crowded hall together.

It was bound to end in disaster.

The fact that they were feuding surgeons was enough.

Surgical feuds go back many years sometimes, and seeing as this particular feud started long before the Seattle Grace residents and Mercy Wester's even met, it seemed the young doctors had many years of arguments and fights left in them.

The Levine family seemed to know a lot about surgical feuds. Mainly because Molly Levine wasn't an easy person to get along with, let alone compete with.

Twenty-one year old Molly Winslow, before she had even married into the Levine family, made every single med students life in her a class a living hell.

And everyone knew surgery was in a DNA. The Winslow surgeons were spread all across the country, the world for that matter, seeing as many of the extended family moved to various places in Europe and Australia to go be doctors and surgeon's there.

So, when the Levine's and the Winslow's crossed paths, the surgical dynasty of both family's spread like wildfire, burning anyone who even stepped their foot in their way.

And when her oldest brother and sister showed now sign of interest the family trade, Aliya was the last hope.

The prodigal freaking daughter.

No wonder her parents, grandparents and other relatives shoved surgery down her throat from a very young age.

The brunette stared straight ahead with widened eyes that were now fixated on an unassuming chair leg as she tried to piece together what could have happened in her mind, though it only made her even more confused and, she was sure her accomplices were feeling the exact same way.

Because, that's what they were now. No better than conspiring criminals.

Lexie looked green, Alex and Cristina looked bored, and a few of the Mercy Westers — now clad in blue scrubs — looked even worse.

Though, via some sort of magnetism, one side of the hall was crowded with the new residents, and the other side was full of the originals.

"Someone's definitely getting fired." A voice announced over the top of the overlapping murmurs and whispers, and Aliya realised it was Reed Adamson — the short, kind of bitchy, kind of annoying one.

"Stop it." April Kepner, the one Lexie swore had a nose job, according to the infamous red notebook she stole, spoke up.

Charles Percy sighed before opening his mouth to add something (un)intellectual to the conversation. "She wasn't even my patient."  

Cristina slowly turned her head to face the man, casting him a look as if he was the bane to her entire existence (which he was). "What?"

"Nothing." The Percy doctor murmured.

The voices seemed to have died down now that Owen had strode past them, and Aliya tried miserably to hide her yawning into her palm, the events of the day catching up to her.

Alex sighed, cutting the silence short and glancing to look at his friend. "How long do you think this is gonna take?"

And, before she had the time to even answer him herself, someone took it upon himself to answer for her.

"Why? You need to make another phone call?"

Charles gave a short laugh at the comment, and Aliya's eyes flew to the man who had made it.

If Jackson Avery had one brain cell and also read a guide on how to avoid starting a fight, it may have stopped him from starting this one.

Because, the manual would've said, number five: don't make jokes about estranged wives.

And, it was almost as if you could hear a hairpin drop in that split second of peace.

Because, you didn't have to be a fortune teller with a shiny crystal ball to predict what was going to happen next.

In the blink of an eye, Alex leaped out of his seat and launched himself at Jackson on the other side of the corridor, so fast that it all seemed like a blur in Aliya's periphery.

"Oh my God—"

Alex, with a fistful of Jackson's scrubs, tugged the Avery man to his feet, and Aliya quickly reacted, jumping up from her own chair, her hands flying to Alex's shoulders as she attempted to pull him back.

"—Alex!"

"Jackson!" The Kepner woman beside him screamed, tugging at his arm as the attendings dashed down the hall to stop the outbreak, and Owen had his arms out already, pushing Jackson against the wall and away from Alex.

"Dude!" Aliya shouted, her hands digging into his shoulders as she used her entire strength to push him back down and away from getting himself suspended, or fired for that matter.

In fury, her best friend turned to face her, a red hot flush growing across his face, his cheeks expanding and deflating with gasps of air as he tried to catch his breath, his knuckles growing white from clenching his fists so tightly.

"That's enough!" Dr. Webber yelled across the room from down the hall, his arms were crossed firmly over his chest as he watched everyone in disappointment, mainly at the monsters he had created.

Finally, Alex raised his arms in surrender as he was pushed back by the brunette into the confinement of his chair.

"What happened here tonight," Richard paused momentarily, eyeing everyone who avoided his gaze like the plague. "What happened to that patient was inexcusable! We're going to be here until I find out who is responsible for it."

Mark stole a fraction of a moment to look across his shoulder at Aliya, with the same guilt ridden eyes he had been using to stare at her with for the past several weeks, which made it quite frankly impossible to ignore his existence entirely.  

The Levine woman wasn't even looking at him, instead she was looking straight ahead at what he should really be looking at too, though he couldn't help but stare at her for just another moment.

As she listened, her lips pursed slightly, and he knew that the honey lip balm she always used would be on there, he could smell it if he leant down closer towards her, taste it if his lips met hers once more. Her dark brown hair was loose around her shoulders, longer than he remembered it to be, her bangs now outgrown and sweeping past her brows.

Now, her dark hazel eyes were onto him, unwavering as she narrowed them, noticing his stares. Though, he really shouldn't be thinking any of these things, or even looking at her at all, seeing as the woman he had chosen was standing right beside him.

But it was, as if, he couldn't escape the what if. The possibility of them. Of what could have happened if they stayed together, because the feeling he had once felt for Aliya didn't seem like something his mind wanted to forget.

If she was the one, surely he wouldn't have ruined it all?

"So, until then you will sit down, shut up, and you'll wait to be called." Richard snapped.

Aliya sighed, tearing her gaze away from Mark and slumping back down into her chair as Owen was called into the conference room.

Because, the warm and mushy feelings she had for Mark Sloan were left in his apartment back at the end of Summer. And when the leaves browned and fell from the trees as the seasons changed into Autumn, she still hadn't escaped him.

This was going to be a long night.

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"Dr. Levine, please take a seat." Richard Webber gestured to the chair opposite him and two other people she vaguely recognised as members of the hospital board.

Now it was Aliya's turn to be—

What would this particular interaction even be called? An interview? A questioning?

Interrogation sounded the most accurate term to used judging by the way the three other people in the room were looking at her.

"This is Larry Jennings from the board," The Chief gestured to the bald, greying man sat beside him. "And, this is our in-house counsel."

"Hello." Aliya smiled at them, shuffling in her seat a little as she waited for further instructions as to what she was doing here, feeling the extreme amount of pressure of three pairs of eyes on her.

Aliya knew she couldn't have done anything wrong when treating that woman, she knew that she did everything she could for her, everything she was taught to do. On the other hand, their stares made her question herself and what she knew.

She would confess to a crime she didn't even commit based on the pressure of their expressions.

"We're just trying to get in front of this." Larry explained to Aliya, sensing her nerves from a mile away.

"We just need to know every single thing you did today, Levine." Richard told her, his hands rested on a pretty full notepad. "From start to finish."

Aliya took a breath, her mind repeating to her everything that had happened over the past however many hours. "The ER was swamped, it was a huge trauma. Burn victims, a penetrating chest wound, an idiot fainting and taking the axe with him—"

"Sorry, what was that?" Larry picked up on Aliya's muttering, his brow raised.

"Oh, nothing." Aliya shrugged it off, and she knew she probably would get to that particular story later on in the interrogation.

"Levine." Richard tried to speak calmly, though he rubbed his temples at the stress of it all. "Let's just start from the very beginning."

Then, it occurred to Aliya that Richard Webber, the Chief of Surgery, was asking her for a day in the life, more or less.

In her mind, Aliya took herself back to the very beginning, whatever that was.

For Aliya, the day had started as it always did.

Having an existential crisis whilst eating toast.

She raised a brow. "You want to know what I had for breakfast?"

"No, Levine, that's quite alright." Richard pursed his lips at the girl in an attempt to try and hide his sky rocketing frustration, and Aliya began to curse herself for her somewhat lack of filter, and how she couldn't really stop things from flying out of her mouth like a rocket ship ready for take off.

"What did you do when you first arrived at the hospital?" The Chief clarified.

"Oh, okay," The brunette nodded her head, fast forwarding time from when she had her jam toast, to when she stepped into the threshold of Seattle Grace Mercy West. "Well, I got in this morning at around half six, and then I went to the residents lounge and got changed into my scrubs."

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THE RESIDENTS LOUNGE
seattle grace mercy west
( several hours ago )
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Medicine was really the wrong career to get involved in if you couldn't stomach waking up to go to work in the early hours of the morning, when the sky was still dark.

However, it really was nice to watch the sunrise on your way to work, various shades of orange painting the sky, getting it ready for the day.

It was no wonder that most surgeons were addicted to any form of caffeine they could get their hands on, because sometimes that was the only thing that could get them to stay awake.

Aliya stepped into the already crowded residents lounge, her thermal of hot coffee held to her lips as she took a very long sip from the mug. She manoeuvred around all of the other sleep deprived, zombie bodies of surgeons tying their laces and shrugging on their white coats.

"You're late." A voice so effortlessly observed, as he appeared from the bathroom in nothing but his scrub trousers, his arms up as he lifted his shirt over his head, shrugging it on conveniently in that moment of time.

Aliya blinked at him as his shirt finally covered his body, and she cleared her throat (trying to at least be subtle that he didn't send her into a downwards spiral in that very moment, seeing as she could see every single one of his abs) to reply, pressing a smile on her lips. "Thank you for that excellent observation, that's really great."

It has only been two minutes and she already wanted to throat punch the man.

She set her coffee down, shrugging her bag off of her shoulder and slipping it into her cubby, with the photo that was in George's cubby now in hers, along with a photo of him and Alex and the one time they were actually smiling together.

It was a very rare occasion that it happened, so Aliya had to retrieve photographic evidence of it.

"We're on neuro together today, the tumour resection."

Another one of Jackson's ingenuous observations flew out of his mouth.

Aliya looked across at him as she took of her jacket, her brows lowered at the man. "Thank you for informing me."

"You didn't know?" He raised his own brows.

"Of course I knew." Aliya scoffed, rolling her eyes and she didn't even fathom that she had a way to make him nervous, which was out of her control seeing as her simply existing made him squirm.

She moved towards the fresh scrubs, piling them in her arms, along with her red thermal — the hospital was unseasonable cold in the fall — reaching for her coffee (residents were coffee poachers), and as she passed him to go to the bathroom, she turned back before she shut the door completely.

"I do actually look at what I'm doing, rather than just strolling into the hospital without a plan. It really helps with the whole saving lives thing."

Jackson glared at her, though it was more to study her. "Thanks for the tip."

"You're welcome." She smiled falsely again, slamming the door shut behind her.

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"You were meant to be on a surgery that evening?" Richard noted from Aliya's recollection of the events, even though it technically was still the evening, or the very early hours of the morning, one o 'clock to be precise.

"Yeah," Aliya nodded her head, taking a sip of water to help the drought that was happening in her throat. "A craniotomy. It was cancelled because of the trauma. It's scheduled for tomorrow— this morning instead."

She looked up at the clock, telling her she had to be in surgery eight hours from now.

The three glanced over their notes that they all had been making this entire time, which had realistically been ten minutes but, to Aliya it had felt like a whole lifetime. And, the length of the silence nearly made Aliya crack.

"So, you were on neuro today?" Larry asked, supposedly seeing a hole in the already extensive notes.

"I was meant to be on neuro," Aliya explained, tucking her straying hair behind her ears. "But, then Dr. Bailey need my help."

"She needed help?" Richard asked.

Aliya nodded her head, setting the water glass she had been holding onto for dear life down onto the table. "Remember when I said about that idiot who fainted."

"Very vaguely."

She cleared her throat, ready for the next however many minutes to go by painfully slow. "Well, nosedive—"

Larry pulled a confused expression. "Wait, nosedive?"

"Oh, Dr. Percy!" Aliya corrected, though it wasn't actually a correction seeing as everyone will know who nosedive was by the end of the week. "Sorry, well there was blood everywhere, it was bad. It was like a freaking crime scene. The axe was holding everything together, and that dingus didn't have a cookie—"

"A cookie?"

Now they were confused, completely lost in whatever story Aliya was trying her best to tell chronologically.

She wasn't the most efficient story teller seeing from the amount of segues she was making. She was nothing if not the Queen of Segues.

"He drew blood today." Aliya clarified. "I told him to have a cookie but he ran off anyway, and I don't like to say I told you so, but you get the insinuation."

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THE BLOOD BANK
seattle grace mercy west
( earlier that day )
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Aliya gave blood every two months with Alex, the pair sat beside each other each time, like they were currently doing now.

The brunette had finished, and she was currently munching on a chocolate chip cookie, whilst Alex was still waiting for his blood too be drawn, seeing as he was too busy on the phone that was attached to his ear.

"This place is a freakin' maze." The Avery man told Charles as he ate his own cookie. "I've gotten lost eleven times, no joke."

Aliya snorted, lowering her voice and turning to a rather grumpy Alex. "That's because he's an idiot with no sense of direction."

Jackson looked over his shoulder at the woman, his eyes narrowed in her direction. "What was that, Levine?"

"You're an idiot with no sense of direction!" Aliya repeated herself, loud enough so he could hear her, though she had practically shouted it across the room. Because, if she could say that behind his back (quite literally) she would also say it to his face.

The Avery man angrily bit down on his cookie.

"I lost a patient." Charles told Jackson, solemnly.

"That's bad, dude." Jackson said, sympathetically, his back to Aliya. "How'd they die?"

"No—" Charles shook his head. "I lost her. Parked her in a hallway, went to get her labs, couldn't find the hallway! No one would help me!"

"Two idiots with no sense of direction." Aliya let out a laugh, jumping happily off of the gurney, reaching for another cookie. "That's somethin' you don't see everyday."

"Charming, Levine. Real nice." Jackson shook his head, smirking only just. "Don't even ask for help. These Seattle Grace people are kinda douchey."

And, as Aliya was going to eat her second cookie, her pager buzzed from her pocket, alongside with the other three residents in the room.

"Oh! Finally! Big trauma, let's go!" Aliya ushered her hand, willing Alex to follow her as she dashed to the door, and Charles was struggling to find someone to help him removed the needle from his arm.

"Hey, I need to— Emergency! I'm a surgeon! Hello!"

"Have a cookie," Aliya lobbed her perfectly good cookie at Charles chest, hitting his scrubs and he stared down at it as if it had been a gun that had hit him. "Might make you feel better."

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"Idiot." Larry, the spokesperson for the entire room, commented.

"Right?" Aliya agreed, because it was fairly obvious that Charles Percy was in fact, an idiot.

"Nosedive, that's gonna stick." Larry laughed and Aliya did too, though they both caught the way Richard was looking at them and quickly steeled themselves, suppressing the laughter in this incredibly serious situation.

"So, back to the axe."

"Do you know when your parents tell you not to run with scissors?" Aliya asked, her hands resting on the table in front of her, leaning forward in her chair ever so slightly.

"Yes." Richard answered, and he knew exactly where this was going.

Aliya cleared her throat. "This guy ignored that very pivotal piece of knowledge."

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THE EMERGENCY ROOM
seattle grace mercy west
( earlier that day )
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"Hey—" Charles opened his mouth to protest as Aliya approached the ambulance that had just pulled up, and the patient being wheeled out into the ER with a giant red fire axe embedded into his chest.

There was no way she was gonna let this one go, after treating what felt like fifty burn patients in the past twenty minutes, all she could smell was burnt skin and she needed to smell something different badly, like the smell of an OR for example. She needed it almost as much as she needed oxygen to breathe.

"This is my patient." The idiot spoke as Aliya reached across for the chart, walking alongside the gurney.

"Doesn't look like it." The brunette replied, scanning her eyes along the pages for an overview, before putting the chart back.

Charles huffed. "He's my patient, I was here—"

"No he's not, he's mine." Dr. Bailey interjected as they stepped into the emergency room, she turned to Aliya, angling her head to the axe. "Apparently, he grabbed the fire axe out of the case, tried to run down the stairs with it."

Aliya stared down at the unconscious man. "Was he ever told not to run with sharp objects used to maim things?"

"I severely doubt it." Bailey pursed her lips.

"Mom was right," Charles marvelled. "No running on the stairs."

"Ok," Bailey ignore him as they stopped in a trauma bay. "On my count: one, two, three."

They moved axe guy aka John Doe onto the gurney, careful not to move the fire axe.

"I want a CBC, chem panel, and make sure there's an OR ready." Bailey ordered, trying to get a visual on what they were dealing with. "Wait, wait, just stop, I need to see what I'm looking at. Um— do you have steady hands?" She turned to Charles, who looked pretty ecstatic that someone was acknowledging his existence.

"Yes, ma'am," He smiled wide. "In college I—"

"I don't want your life story," Bailey snapped, and Charles smile faded almost as quickly as it had arrived. "I need both hands on this handle. Do not push the axe in, do not pull the axe out. Do not move, understand?"

"Yep." Charles nodded as he accepted the assignment, that was something he could do at least.

Or so he thought.

"Percy." Aliya snapped as she helped Dr. Bailey, noticing that the man across from was growing paler by the second, his eyes staring ahead and it was as if the lights were on, but no one was home.

And half a second later, the pale man fainted, taking the axe with him, nosediving straight onto the floor of the ER.

Blood immediately started to gush out of the wound, all over Bailey's trauma gown and Aliya hauled herself over it, pressing her hands down on the multitude of bleeders this guy had now the axe was out of his body.

"What did I just say!"

Bailey was mortified. Her eyes pinned on the man beneath the axe on the floor, now with three nurses crowded around him.

"Keep applying pressure! Ok, come with me, Levine, we need to get to the OR right now!" Bailey instructed, and Aliya followed the gurney, her hands still covering the injury as she looked back at Charles, on the ground, with a bleeding head from where the axe fell onto him. "Karev! Clean that up!"

And that was the moment when Dr. Charles Percy, would forever be known as nosedive.

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"All things considered," Aliya began, thinking at the tendency that things seemed to go horribly wrong when men had to hold an axe. "He flew through that surgery. Dr. Bailey and I got all the bleeders and he's gonna be fine."

"Great," Richard was getting frustrated. It wasn't easy to interview half a dozen doctors in one night, especially when they were all fighting for their own careers.

It was like elephants at the watering hole.

Richard had known Aliya Levine for quite sometime now, and this was the second time he had to interrogate her. The first time was the LVAD wire incident, which was unpleasant for everyone involved seeing as all he had gotten out of the brunette doctor was long rambles about topics that had nothing to do with the matter at hand.

From her nearly three years at Seattle Grace she had proved to everyone in the hospital that she was meant to be there. That she deserved to be a surgeon, more than anyone. Alongside this, she was loyal, which was not a good characteristic to have when it came down to all of these interrogations.

Having no physical characteristics in common with Molly Levine, the blonde haired and blue eyed cardio goddess, the Chief had hoped in this situation she would be just like her mother, with her tendency to be upfront and blunt. Having met that woman many times in the past, he knew her personality well.

However, the only thing Aliya had in common with her mother was her surgical skills. Other than that, the pair could not be more different.

"Levine, did you ever come into contact with the patient, Cathy Becker?" Richard questioned, his brow raised.

Aliya nodded her head. "When I came out of surgery a few hours later."

The Chief leaned forward in interest. "What happened?"

"As soon as I walked back into the ER," Aliya explained. "She needed a chest tube, her son came to me, told me his mom wasn't breathing."

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THE EMERGENCY ROOM
seattle grace mercy west
( earlier that day )
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"Hey, Aliya, are you free?" Andy, who was covering a shift in the ER that night, came bounding up to her, her thick hair tied into a disheveled bun on the top of her head, holding a chart in her hand.

"I am now," Aliya answered, now officially out of surgery. "What have you got?"

"Twenty-year old burn victim, leg fracture too. It's crazy in here tonight, right?" Andy handed over the chart, and Aliya had to mentally prepare herself to handle another burn victim that night.

Burn victims were the hardest, it was simple enough to treat when you've done it a few times, but the pain the patients were in, and listening to their screams proved gut wrenching. And it sometimes was hard to keep it together than people would think.

"Tell me about it." Aliya agreed, eyeing the still overly crowded emergency room.

"And these Mercy Westers—"

Aliya scoffed, looking through the pages of the chart in her hand. "Menaces, am I right?"

Andy took the gold frames off of her face, wiping them on the corner of her scrubs. "I was going to say they aren't actually that bad. Maybe you should give them a chance instead of acting as if they killed your cat."

Pursing her lips at the fact that they had gotten to Andy too, Aliya closed the chart shut, not wanting to believe the 'they Mercy Westers aren't all that bad!' agenda. "I'm more of a dog person."

The nurse laughed, shaking her head and patting the brunette's shoulder before disappearing completely out of Aliya's vision.

And before Aliya could even walk one inch to her next patient, a young boy with blonde hair stopped straight in front of her, staring up at her with big blue eyes.

"Oh—" Aliya spoke in shock, a hand to her chest as she hadn't noticed the tiny human at her feet. "Hey buddy, are you okay? Are you lost?" She smiled warmly at the boy, tucking the chart underneath her arm.

The boy frowned, pointing over towards a bed, disguised by light blue curtains. "My mommy can't breathe."

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"It's been reported that you put in a chest tube." Richard spoke as he looked at his notes yet again, though it was more to himself than to the doctor before him.

Aliya nodded her head to confirm. "Yes. I did, she had a tension pneumothorax and I—"

"A pneumothorax?" Larry interjected, stopping his writing.

"Her lung collapsed." Aliya clarified. "Her lips were blue, she was clutching at her throat, she couldn't breathe at all."

"Oh." Larry nodded, chewing on his lip.

Aliya looked back towards Webber, knowing the only person there with her when she put in that chest tube was Jackson. Meaning, he must have said something to screw her over. He was from Mercy West after all. "Was it Avery who told you? What did he say? Because I did—"

Richard, obviously sick of the feud between the two groups of surgical residents, sighed. "He said you did everything by the book, and then some."

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THE EMERGENCY ROOM
seattle grace mercy west
( earlier that day )
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"Danny!" Cathy Becker pulled away her oxygen mask, even though she was gasping for breath, her lips still blue. "Don't let him see me die!"

"Cathy? Your name's Cathy, right?" Aliya stopped for a moment, holding her scalpel in her hand as she turned to the scared woman on the gurney. "You're not doing to die, okay? You're not going to die." She assured, squeezing the woman's hand.

"Do you need any help?" Jackson appeared out of thin air opposite her, his shadow casted over where Aliya was trying to work.

"I'm perfectly capable," Aliya stated, just before she made a hole in Cathy's chest blindly to relieve the pressure. "Of doing this by myself."

Cathy gasped for breath, her chest rising and falling in the process, as she began to breathe easier, now that the pressure was gone.

"Believe me, I know you are." Jackson replied quickly, trying to act calm at the sight of witnessing Aliya take a scalpel to Cathy's chest, and wondering if it were him she was picturing stabbing.

However, the brunette just began to silently count the intercostal spaces, searching for the space in between the fourth and fifth, like she had learnt to do one when she was only eight years old.

As she finished counting, she made a small incision, inserting the tube into Cathy's chest.

"Stop! What the hell are you doing!" Cristina's yelling came from the other side of the ER, where she was shouting at Danny, Cathy's son. Half a second later the sound of the young boy's cries filled the pit, catching all of Aliya's attention.

The Levine woman, lowered her brows, turning to Jackson reluctantly. "Hey, can you take over from here?"

"Of course. See, was it so hard to accept help?" With a smirk, Jackson moved to finish off.

"As a matter of fact, it was." Aliya took off her gloves, throwing them into the trash before jogging up to Cristina, who was still lecturing the crying boy in front of her.

"Cristina!" Aliya snapped, placing a hand on Danny's shoulder. "Stop! Why are you yelling at a child?"

Cristina gestured to the boy with a gloved hand. "He took the paddles and—"

Instead of listening to whatever Cristina had to sayto justify screaming at a kid, Aliya kneeled down to Danny's height. "Hey, I'm Aliya, you're Danny, right?"

It could be said Aliya was great with kids. Having grown up in a big family who loved to procreate like there was no tomorrow, she spent most of her Saturdays in High School baby sitting.

"Do you know what my nephew likes when he's sad?" Her tone was soft, a smile on her lips causing a dimple to pop out on her cheek.

Danny shook his head, sniffling and wiping away the tears stained on his cheeks.

"Chocolate pudding," Aliya exclaimed, and Danny's face seemed to light up at the mere mention of the word chocolate. "Do you want some chocolate pudding?"

Danny nodded, a small grin on his face as he took Aliya's hand, and she led him off to locate sustenance, handing off the chart of her burn victim to another doctor in the ER.

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"And, where did you take her son?" Richard further interrogated the rather frustrated doctor in front of him.

Because, these questions were really getting useless.

"I gave him a juice box and some chocolate pudding, and then I took him to the nursery so he could wait there until his dad came." Aliya explained, sipping her water as her throat grew more and more dry.

Richard nodded slowly in though. "And who was the doctor on her case?"

Aliya thought about it, racking her brain around to figure out whose patient she was.

"It was a mess." Aliya told the three. "Everyone was everywhere, it was an all hands on deck situation, nobody was sticking to just one patient — we were helping out wherever we can."

"So," The Chief cleared his throat. "You're telling me she didn't have a doctor?"

"I'm telling you I don't know." Aliya placed down her water, her hands returning back to her lap, where she had her hands balled into fists, her fingertips digging nervous crescent moons into her palms. "I really don't know what was happening until I had to step in."

That had seemed to grant Richard's attention. "Step in to do what? What did you do, Levine?"

"I went back to check on her and—"

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THE EMERGENCY ROOM
seattle grace mercy west
( earlier that day )
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As Aliya returned to the ER to check on Cathy after the chest then, she was met with the horror of whatever Reed Adamson and Charles Percy thought they were doing.

"What in the world is going on?" Aliya raised her voice over the noise that was happening around Cathy's gurney in one of the trauma bays, appearing behind the various nurses.

"I don't—" Reed panted, frantically trying to fit a 6-0 tube down Cathy's throat. "Her airway is completely closed off I can't get in—"

"God!" Aliya's voice was strained, because not even that smaller tube Reed had in her hand could even fit down Cathy's throat, and these surgeons beside her did not know what to do. "She needs a crike! Get out of my way, now!"

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"You went in blind?"

"I don't know what else I could've done!" Aliya defended. "They were taking forever to do a simple thing so, I mean they were trying to get a tube into her throat that was completely closed off. She needed a crike, so I did it."

"By hacking at the poor woman." Richard fired back instantaneously.

"Hey!" Aliya's jaw dropped at the suggestion that Aliya hacked at someone, because the word hacking was nowhere near what went down with Cathy. "No, no I did not hack at the patient! I— in that moment I saved her life. We were— we were losing her, okay? I had to do something."

"Well, you lost her anyway." The Chief replied, grimly, knocking the wind right out from underneath Aliya.

"I'm sorry," Aliya scoffed, her voice catching in her throat. "But, do not try and put the blame on me."

"You did the crike. You did the chest tube." Richard told her, as if listening of Aliya's convictions.

"Yes," Aliya admitted. "But, I was in surgery for most of the evening before I had to do those procedures! I did not treat her initially, and if I did I would probably admit the chest tube instantly, and when I did do that I left her with—"

"Who did you leave her with?" Richard cut in.

"Dr. Avery."

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—✩—
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For Jackson, his night was going about the same as Aliya's.

Crap.

He was not having a great time here, surrounded by people who looked at him as if her were an enemy. Which was insane, he was a doctor. How could he be an enemy?

Like he had been saying all week, it wasn't his fault the hospitals merged. People lots their jobs, at both hospitals, though they didn't see him holding grudges towards the doctors that got his friends fired.

"Yes, Dr. Levine did leave her with me." Jackson replied back, his voice calm even though it seemed as if he had been here for all eternity. "She went to help Yang with the kid."

"And what did you do?"

"Karev did a crap job at stitching up Charles, so I helped him out." Jackson answered. "I left her stable. She was stable."

The Chief raised a brow, really nailing the whole Sherlock Holmes act. "Her lung had just collapsed."

"She was stable." Jackson repeated again, more to himself than anyone else. "And besides, I left her with Adamson, seeing as she was her patient."

"Hold on," Richard spoke, a hint of confusion in his tone as he raised his hand in the air to stop the Avery man. "Adamson was her doctor?"

Jackson nodded his head. "Yeah, I assumed so."

Richard thought on the subject for another moment.

"You've been described as being distracted." The Chief switched the focus, which only made the whole interaction even more difficult than it already was. "After the whole ER superhero act, I would've expected more."

Oh. He was choosing a different angle. It was a method of attack.

"I was not distracted." Jackson said, sternly — denying all accusations.

Richard leaned back in his chair, leisurely. "I've spoken to a few of the nurses. It seems like staring at the back of Levine's head is more interesting that being a doctor, maybe we should employ you as a painting. Might brighten the ER up a bit."

Jackson thought there must be something different in the water on this side of town.

Because this hospital was insane.

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—✩—
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After her own personal interrogation, Aliya had spent the rest of the night in the hallway, surrounded by the other prisoners.

No one even dared to talk about it. Or anything at all for that matter.

Many were staring into space, others were flipping through magazine and books.

And when Aliya had had enough of Mark glancing at her out of the corner of her eye, she pushed herself from her chair, informing Alex that she was going to grab a coffee as she breezed down the hall past all the other doctors and hospital staff, turning the chart corner.

Though Mark trailed after her, like a seemingly lost puppy.

"Aliya—"

"What!" Aliya was angry now, at this whole thing. At how Cathy Becker died, at Izzie for leaving, at George for dying, at her mother, at Mark for not allowing her to move on. It had been a months, and every stolen glance he had given her ripped her heart out of her chest.

Anger really was a deep shade of red, painted all over her cheeks.

"What more could you possibly want to say?" The woman stood there, exasperated, her hands braces by the side of her hips.

"Aliya, I don't know. I—" Mark Sloan was rendered speechless, even though it was him that had chased her down the hall.

"What do you want from me?" Aliya interrogated, because that was the only question she needed to be answers to right now. "What more could you possibly want?"

"It's been two months." Mark shrugged his shoulders, looking down at his sneakers in a sort of remorse Aliya couldn't tell was fake or not. "I miss talking to you, seeing you everyday, I miss—"

"You have no right to tell me you miss me!" Her voiced grew louder, mainly due to the idiocy of Mark's words. At the audacity of them to be coming out of his mouth. "Why do you keep hanging onto this? You made your choice, Lexie was your choice. Can't you just leave me alone?"

Mark was frowning now, his face tensed. "I don't think I can do that."

"Then try, Mark. For once in your life can you actually care about what I want and try to leave me the hell alone." Aliya yelled, her voice strained, her cheeks flushed. "I need you to stop looking at me, it's cruel. You're with Lexie—"

"That doesn't stop me from missing you—"

"I don't miss you." She snapped back, and it wasn't entirely true, though her words still hit the same. "For months you led me on, made me believe it was just us—"

"I didn't mean—"

"I can't do this right now with you, Mark. I just can't." Aliya surrendered, stepping back, and racing to the nearest escape from the conversation.

Then it occurred to her, he only missed her once she had pulled herself together, once she was rid of him.

He only missed her because she was starting to look all shiny and new again.

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"You missed the whole thing." Alex grumbled, his voice low as he dropped down onto the bench in the ambulance bay beside Aliya.

"I needed some fresh air." Aliya explained with a deep breath, pulling at the sleeves of her red thermal shirt. "What happened?"

"That Kepner girl, she was fired."

Aliya's jaw dropped tiredly, she was exhausted after all, too exhausted to even comprehend what was going on around it. She was in the realm of dangerously tired that she might just collapse right there and then.

"You're kidding." Aliya exclaimed as the pair got up from the bench, returning back to the warmth of the hospital.

"She forgot to check her airway." Alex informed Aliya.

"Crap."

As soon as the pair entered the hall, they were met with the seemingly glares of Reed and Jackson, Cristina was stood opposite, looking far from impressed.

"What?" Alex grumbled at Jackson, who had left his gaze on the pair a little too long. 

Jackson stood a little taller, rolling his shoulders in a challenge. "I'm just waiting to see if you're gonna try to hit me again."

Reluctantly, Alex sighed, massaging his temples as he turned to the Avery man, though unable to actually meet his eyes. "I'm sorry. I was just—"

"Forget it." Jackson shrugged his apology off, the night catching up on him. "Rough night, right?"

"So, April missed the airway?" Charles walked up to the group that had gathered. "That's so stupid."

Aliya rolled her eyes. "If you say so, nosedive."

"Huh?" Charles grunted at whatever Aliya had just called, unaware that that was his new nickname.

"Airway first." Lexie shook her head.

"That's like med school 101, right?" Jackson added.

Alex nodded his head. "It's pretty basic."

"It was one second!" Reed exclaimed, her voice loud as she defended her friend for one mistake that caused huge fallout. "She got distracted and she made a mistake!"

"That we all nearly got fired for." Charles muttered.

"Nosedive's got a point." The Avery man agreed.

"Thank you— wait what?" Being called nosedive twice on the space of thirty seconds raised a red flag in Charles mind.

"We nearly got fired for trying to fix what she screwed up in the first place."

"Because that's our job!" Cristina unexpectedly added to the discussion. "What, you didn't make any mistakes today? You've been distracted for the entire week." That particular comment was aimed at Alex (and his phone). Then, the Yang woman turned to Jackson. "Who knows what you screwed up. But our patients didn't die, that's why we didn't get caught. It could have happened to any one of us."

"Here she comes." Jackson pointed out, and all eyes went onto the woman walking towards them, unable to meet their eyes as she kept her eyes focused straight towards the door.

"April." Reed called after her, but it was too late.

She was already out of the door.

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( notes! )

i have a vendetta against this episode. i reckon i could write an essay and get a solid A+ about how much this episode confuses me — i mean it was good and all but working out how to actually write it omg THE STRUGGLE, but aliya calling everyone an idiot every ten seconds was so fun to write and you can't tell me aliya and mark aren't silver springs coded!!!!!!!!! stevie nicks will forever be my queen in stevie we trust

also, please accept my formal, very sincere apology for the charles x gun joke, it was uncalled for and i'm deeply ashamed of myself, it won't (will) happen again.

( word count! — 7,400 )