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chapter five ━ invest in love
season six, episode eight

❝ you look so cute,
i'm gonna frame it. ❞
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"Do you ever just wake up and think it's going to be a bad day?" Aliya inquired thoughtfully, her chin awkwardly resting on a takeaway coffee cup as she stared vacantly into the space in front of her.

Out of the corner of her eye, Cristina Yang was spinning around on the front desk chair, her head tilted back as she ran her hands through her curly black hair. "Did your tarot cards tell you that?"

"I don't own tarot cards," Aliya narrowed her eyes as she spoke matter-of-factly. Though thinking about it, maybe she should buy some, it might be productive to get a warning in advance if the day was going to be a total disaster, instead of just a simple gut feeling. "But, if I did I would draw The Devil. I have a bad feeling."

"You know," Cristina spoke through a mouthful of croissant. "Meredith had a gut feeling and that whole situation ended with her hand inside a body cavity with a bomb in it so, maybe you should just go home."

"Oh, shit!" Aliya dropped her head further into her hands, letting out a disgruntled sigh, simultaneously earning many strange looks from many different people. "I'm going to die!"

"You are not going to die." Lexie attempted to convince, patting the brunette's shoulder.

"What's going on?" Alex stopped at the counter beside Aliya, watching his best friend cautiously with narrowed eyes.

"Aliya thinks, emphasis on the thinks, she's going to die." Cristina clarified as she sipped on her own coffee, picking the pastry crumbs off of her scrubs and flicking them onto the floor.

It was strange to think it was just the four of them left now, with Izzie and George gone, somehow things didn't seem right, like there was a massive gaping hole where two people should actually be.

She guessed she was just used to it being the six of them, like it had been for two whole entire years.

They were the six interns, annoying Dr. Bailey, hiding in tunnels, working forty eight hour shifts, running on caffeine, drinking ungodly amounts of tequila. It was just the way the world worked.

Or, how interns in Seattle worked.

With a deep sigh, Alex turned to the two women who weren't going through a very public existential crisis. "Did you let her watch daytime television again? You know it bums her out!"

Lexie shrugged her shoulders, as Cristina started throwing torn up bits of paper from the bag her croissant came in into Aliya's hair.

"Meredith removed a couple channels from the TV." The youngest Grey sister informed him.

Aliya mumbled something inaudible into her arm.

"What's going on with her?" A new voice, possible owned by Charles Percy aka nosedive, asked, seeming to be surrounded with the other three Mercy Westers.

They travelled in a posse now.

It was becoming obnoxious.

"Mind your own business." Cristina aimed a bit of rolled up paper at Charles, hitting his forehead.

The man pursed his lips with a frown, rolling his eyes and collecting a chart from behind the desk, not even bothering to fight back, or he was so much of a knucklehead that he couldn't actually think of a good retaliation.

"Aliya, you're starting to freak me out." With her nose curled up, Cristina reached out to prod her shoulder.

"Maybe you should take her up to psych?" Jackson Avery commented, helpfully, as he leaned on the counter in an annoyingly casual kind of way.

If he could see her face, he would have caught a glimpse of her far from enthusiastic expression (she looked like she wanted to murder him in cold blood).

"What did I say about them being crazy?" Reed muttered to April, loud enough for Aliya to catch on.

"You want to start that again, Adamson?" Aliya finally straightened up, tilting her head towards Reed in a challenge, who simply shrugged, though she never said anything else back to her. "We can pick up exactly where we left off?"

"Besides," Lexie chimed in, trying to diffuse any tension between the two groups of residents, wanting to avoid the conflict at all costs. "Aliya isn't crazy, she's just superstitious."

"Superstitious?" The green eyed man mocked, the corner of his lip twitching.

"No." Aliya frowned at him, reaching for her coffee in deep thought. She didn't know what it was, but it was something. Something didn't seem quite right. "It's a gut thing."

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Andrea Burman cleared her throat, popping a bit of her egg white omelette into her mouth. "I was thinking of dying my hair bright pink. I thought it would be pretty cool, I'd look like the cotton candy you get at the amusement park. Or, I was thinking of selling the house and moving to Barbados."

"Hm, yeah you should do that." Aliya murmured, her fingers tapping next to the plate of uneaten scrambled eggs and sourdough toast, staring out of the window in the cafeteria that looked out onto the busy streets of Seattle.

Andy narrowed her eyes from beneath her glasses at the brunette who was dissociating from the entire conversation. "I was also thinking of dropping Reese off at an animal shelter. I'm rarely there, and he really is the sweetest dog."

"Yeah, that sounds—" Aliya snapped back into reality as her brain processed exactly what Andy had just said. "Wait, what? No, no! You can't get rid of Reese? He's old and you can't throw him out onto the street, starving and cold!"

"Animal shelter, honey." Andy clarified, smiling with amusement as she continued to eat her omelette, as if she didn't just dump a bunch of information right into the hands of a stressed and superstitious coffee addict.

"You can't get rid of him, you can't do it!" The brunette spoke with passion, seeing as the golden labrador was her favourite dog in the world, though Aliya hadn't actually met all that many dogs. "It's inhumane, and no, Andy please don't dye your hair pink, you'll look like a flamingo."

"A flamingo?" The woman across from her raised a brow at the comparison, pushing her frames up higher onto the tip of her nose.

"And, please don't move to Barbados!" Aliya begged, urgently, abandoning her eggs and toast and lurching forward across the table. "I wouldn't be able to cope if you moved that far away!"

"And, she's back in the room!" Andy clapped her hands together in victory.

Aliya simply raised a brow, and it was safe to say she was unbelievably confused. "Huh?"

"You zoned out for a second there, anything on your mind, Aliya?" Andy reached over, placing her warm hand adorning a couple of vintage gold rings on Aliya's hand.

Andy's slightly greying, brown hair curled around her face as she watched her intently, a pair of gold frames balanced on the tip of her nose. Her face was drawn in soft angles and curves, probably because a frown rarely ever appeared on her face after all the years Aliya had known and adored her.

Aliya sometimes thought that Andrea Burman should have had kids. She was the kind of woman who had every single good quality that a person could possess. She always had the right words to say in any given situation.

And she was always there, even when Aliya didn't think she needed her.

That's the sort of things mothers do.

Because, Molly Levine was always there. But, not in the ways that matter, she was more of a looming presence, when Aliya definitely didn't want or need her to be.

The excruciatingly long and very late nights that took over Aliya's life in her first few months of internship were only made tolerable by Andy being just around the corner, taking her under her wing and assuring her she was doing a good job.

The doctor shook her head in denial of the accusation. "Nope, no, nothing at all."

"How are you doing? After George. I know it was hard for you." Andy gave Aliya's hand a tight squeeze as the blood drained from her face.

"I'm coping. I'm fine, really. I'm doing great, really well." Aliya set down her coffee, running her hands across the fabric of her scrubs as she smoothed the material down. "People die all the time unexpectedly. Almost seven thousand people die every hour, and over half is unexpectedly. Because, not everyone really expects people to die. For example, I didn't expect a bus to come hurtling out of nowhere and kill George."

A lady, possibly a relative to a patient, peered back to where the pair was sat on the table across from her, looking very visibly concerned over what she had just overheard.

"But other than that, I'm fine, Andy." Aliya reassured, though she wasn't even that sure of it herself.

"If you say so. But, you always know you can talk to me, right? About anything." Andy reminded her of that fact, like she always did.

Aliya nodded her head, tucking her loose strands of hair behind her ear and out of her eyes, her lips drawing up into a smile in an attempt to put on a brave face. "I know."

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Despite the start of the day where Aliya declared that her very opinionated gut was telling her she was already set up for failure, Aliya decided to wilfully ignore it.

She had her eggs and toast from the cafeteria, and her weekly scheduled existential crisis.

Balance had been restored, and she was ready to get on with her day.

"Hi Tyler," Aliya grinned, placing her hands on the desk of the ER, tapping some sort of rhythmic tune out with her fingers. "I was paged?"

Her curiosity was getting the better of her as she peered over the counter at the chart clutched in his hands. She was meant to be on cardio today, with the most boring, misogynistic doctor alive, so she took this impromptu page as a very welcomed distraction.

"Hi, Levine," Tyler paused in his tracks, searching for something on the desk in a hurry. "Yes, they requested you."

Passing her the chart quickly, he moved out from the desk and paced over to a stack of papers on another countertop to start sifting through them. And when he finally looked up, he gave some sort of a cheer as he finally found what he was looking for, pushing into Trauma One with his back, leaving Aliya alone with the chart.

Flipping it open, Aliya began to read it as she made her way over to bed three, the curtains around it pulled shut for privacy.

Her eyes moved to the name of the patient, making Aliya stop in her tracks completely, her breath catching in her chest, because the name written on the chart was Eliza Vasquez. In the swirly, neat handwriting of the woman who had gotten her through high school.

Maybe she should really start trusting her gut more?

Aliya blinked at the name, as if trying to make it disappear, because there was no way her goddaughter was in this hospital.

She managed to convince herself in the short five seconds she had to process that it was probably just a fractured arm or a common cold, until she flipped the page and saw stomach pain scrawled in the symptoms section of the paperwork Summer must've filled out.

Kids get stomach pain all the time, right? They eat dirt and bugs for god sakes. When her older brother, Trent, was a kid, he used to make potions out of mud and leaves and eat it. And he turned out just fine.

Biting the bullet, Aliya gripped hold of the blue curtain, tugging it back and instantly meeting the deep brown eyes that belonged to Summer Vasquez.

The tall, about two inches taller than Aliya, woman had her hair tied up into a messy (however, annoyingly neat) bun at the top of head, a pair of sunglasses pushing her stray hair backs (even though it was early November in a city that really liked to rain all the time). She had her arms at her hips, her heels clicking against the ground as she paced in the small space by Eliza's bedside.

"Summer!" Aliya smiled warmly at the familiar face, moving to the other side of the bed as Summer's lips curved up into a smile, despite the fact she was frowning just three seconds earlier.

The woman brought Aliya into a hug, wrapping her arms around her shoulders, squeezing her so tightly as a long sigh of relief escaped her mouth.

"Aliya! They got you!" Summer said, breathlessly, as if she had been holding it all this time. "I was one step away from bribing that hot nurse with a twenty!"

"He wouldn't have taken it." Aliya assured, as Summer pushed her back by her shoulders to look at her, the gesture grandparents always did when you haven't seen them in a while. Which usually happened every time Aliya went back to Malibu — which was incredibly rare. "Believe me, I've tried."

Summer chuckled, chewing on the corner of her lip. "How long has it been?"

"Three months?" Aliya replied, unsure.

"Three months too long." The brunette finally let go of Aliya's shoulders.

Even though Summer lived in Seattle, she travelled a lot for her work all over the country, meaning that she rarely got to see Aliya, due to their manic and polar opposite work schedules.

"So—" Aliya turned to the young girl, whose dark brown hair was in two neat french braids, tied off with two small pink bows. "Miss Eliza, how are you?"

"I'm good, Aunt Aliya." Eliza beamed at her aunt, clutching her purple bunny teddy closer to her stomach as her mother's face tightened.

Summer reached a hand over to Eliza's shoulder, giving it a small squeeze.

"Eliza." Her eyes widened at her daughter, who looked up at her through her lashes, a small frown on her face. "We don't lie, now tell Aunt Aliya what's wrong."

Aliya flipped the chart shut, drawing the stool from behind her and slipping onto it, positioning it close to the gurney.

"You can tell me, Lizzie, and I might just be able to show you the Nurses lounge with the best chocolate cake." Aliya smiled, trying to coax her into confessing what was going on.

Eliza began to nibble on her bunny's ear, cautiously looking up at her mother, before looking back to Aliya, sniffing loudly.

"My tummy hurts." She mumbled, shyly.

Aliya gave the young girl a nod. "Do you mind if I take a look?" 

"Yes." Eliza answered quietly, moving her bunny out of the way.

"Do you know what's wrong yet?" Summer asked rather impatiently, seeing as Aliya hadn't even touched her stomach yet.

"Not yet." Aliya began to move her hands across Eliza's stomach, trying to find what was—

"Ow!" Eliza squealed, kicking her legs in the bed as a pink blush spread all across her face. Aliya's breath caught in her throat as she stilled her hands over Eliza's stomach.

"Just one moment—" Aliya motioned to Summer, pressing again in the same spot, as Eliza yelped in pain once more, and Aliya's hands felt around a small, ping-pong ball sized lump on the inside of the her stomach.

"Oh— it's okay, Lizzie." Summer soothed, leaning down to Eliza, pressing a kiss to her forehead and wrapping her arms around her tiny shoulders once Aliya moved her hands away, pulling down Eliza's shirt carefully whilst the two of them hugged continued to hug.

"I'll be back, okay? I need to check a couple other things, like her temperature and her heartbeat. I'll just be one minute." Aliya informed.

Summer looked up from where her cheek was pressed against Eliza's. "Everything's okay though, right?"

Aliya forced a reassuring smile, pushing down the anxiety in her gut. "I just want to run a few extra tests."

Pushing the stool back, Aliya left the two in privacy for a few moments, shutting the curtain behind them as she advanced over to Tyler, who had returned from the trauma room.

"Please could you page for a peds consult?" Aliya managed to get the words out, because now the whole room around her was spinning, and she was clutching hold of the front desk for dear life.

"Sure." Tyler nodded, punching numbers into the phone, bringing it to his ear. "Everything okay? The woman said she knew you, and you were the only doctor she wanted to see."

"I don't know." Aliya tried to keep her breathing steady, but nothing could stop the panic pulsing through her, causing her heart to beat erratically in her chest. "Actually, while you're on the phone, could you order me a CT scan?"

Yeah. She should really should start trusting her gut more.

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"You paged for a peds consult?"

Exactly two minutes later, an entire two minutes where Aliya has lost all of her fingernails, a doctor from peds appeared beside her — though it wasn't the doctor she expected, nor the doctor she had wanted.

Aliya narrowed her eyes. "I did, yes, but not a consult from you, I needed Robbins."

"Robbins is a little busy right now," Jackson explained. "So, she sent me down to see if I can help."

Aliya watched him, sceptically. She really couldn't read him, and she was usually good at judging people, but with him, she had no clue in the slightest. "I don't need your help."

The Avery man scoffed at her tone, crossing his arms across his body. "That's probably the tenth time you've made that clear this week, are you aiming for the triple digits now?"

The woman rolled her eyes at Jackson's witty attempt to joke with her. "I needed Robbins, not a doctor who will tell me everything I already know, and do tests I'm very capable of doing by myself, Tyler—" She caught the nurse's attention with a wave of her hand, beckoning him over to her. "Please could you ring up to peds to see if they have a bed available?"

"Sure," Tyler nodded, accepting yet another task from the resident across from him. "Your CT is scheduled for an hour, I couldn't pull any strings this time around."

"Thanks, Tyler." Aliya replied, mentally psyching herself up for going back in there.

Jackson, who had just wasted a trip to the ER, crossed his arms. "It seems you have it all under control, Levine."

He really was starting to wonder when this stubborn woman was going to let go of the vendetta she had against him.

"Hm." Aliya murmured, abandoning Avery by the desk and slipping back through the blue curtains.

Though, even Aliya wasn't entirely convinced she had this all under control.

Because when it came to sick kids, Aliya lost her focus, like she had done many times in the past.

"Right," The anxiety was forcefully washed out of Aliya's face, replaced with a wide grin. "I want to be extra certain that you are okay, so I've booked you in for a CT scan. Which, in less fancier words, means a machine that will let us look in your tummy to see what's going on, does that sound good?"

Eliza nodded her head, and Summer looked up at Aliya, her fingertips tracing circles across Eliza's temples as if to soothe her. "It's going to be okay, right Aliya?"

The brunette swallowed the lump in her throat, putting on a brave face for the sake of her friend. "Yeah, it'll be okay."

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"And, I thought it was just a rumour." Aliya announced, a fond smile on her face as she stood in the doorway of the NICU.

The brunette doctor had left Summer and Eliza in a room on the peds floor Tyler managed to get from them. Leaving them with a bunch of snacks and magazines from the hospital shop as well.

She had decided that she couldn't push the scan for Eliza no matter how hard she tried, because she would ultimately loose brownie points with the nurses if she kept on pestering them about it every few seconds.

So, after spending time with Summer and Eliza in their hospital room, the clock marked only thirty minutes to the scan, so she trailed off to the nurses lounge on the peds floor.

Which was where she heard the new piece of hospital gossip flooding through the halls from none other than Reed Adamson.

Alex snapped his head up from the chair where he was cradling a small preemie baby to his bare chest. "Who told you?"

"Adamson. She's not too bad actually. I take back what I said. I can be too judgy." Aliya spoke, happily, the sight before her doing wonders to change her current mood. "She said you ripped off your shirt and were kangaroo holding a baby, I had to see for myself."

Aliya whipped her cellphone from out of her pocket in a matter of seconds, holding it up to him and taking a quick photo.

It would prove very useful at any occasion really.

His next wedding, a birthday party — the possibilities were endless.

Reed only redeemed herself by talking to Aliya about tarot cards for ten minutes at lunch, and she didn't even utter the word crazy once.

"Don't you even dare!" He warned, but it was too late, Aliya clicked onto the image she had just taken, smiling wide as she turned the phone around to show him.

"You look so cute, I'm thinking gonna frame it for the house." She announced, turning the picture back to herself to admire it again, a huge grin on her lips.

"If you even—" Alex started to argue, but Bailey had just walked in with a chart, stopping in her tracks as she saw Aliya, her phone still out with the picture displayed on the small screen.

"Levine! What are you doing here?" She made her way over, crossing her arms angrily at the brunette who was infiltrating the NICU.

"I just had to see it for myself, Dr. Bailey. It's all over the hospital like a bad rash." Aliya jumped on the balls of her feet as she turned her phone around to show Bailey the photo of Alex.

Bailey shook her head but with a smile on her lips, prodding Aliya's arm and pointing at the door, beginning to physically shoo her out of the room. "Cute. Now move, this isn't a zoo."

Lifting her hands up in the air, Aliya began to block Bailey's sweeping (more like hitting) with jagged movements.

"Okay, okay— I'm going! I'm gone!" Aliya backed out of the NICU.

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Aliya's hand hovered over the button to the speaker, now that Eliza was safely in the CT scan, Aliya sat alone in the windowed room, the computers beginning to load up.

"Lizzie, I need you to lie really still for me, okay? It helps to think about your favourite things, like ice cream, I remember you telling me you love ice cream. My favourite's mint choc chip, what's yours?" Aliya spoke into the mic, taking her hand off of the button as she turned her eyes to the monitors.

"Chocolate!" Eliza giggled from the other room.

Daniel Vasquez, Summer's husband, had finally arrived at the hospital, meaning the two were currently waiting in Eliza's room for her to get back from the scan.

Aliya couldn't let them be in the room, because if something appeared on those scans and they had been in there, she wouldn't have been able to predict what she might have done.

And that's when the scans loaded up, confirming her suspicions.

A mass, about the size of a raisin, appeared on the screen, located directly in Eliza's stomach.

Aliya narrowed her eyes at the screen in disbelief, because even though she knew that this is what she would be looking at, it didn't stop it from making it hurt any less.

Reacting quickly, Aliya reached over to the telephone, making sure to page Dr. Robbins this time.

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"Dr. Levine, what have you got?"

Eliza had been taken back to her room, but the scans still remained on the monitor, and Aliya had been analysing them ever since.

"Six year-old Eliza Vasquez, came into the ER with stomach pains, I did a CT scan and it shows a mass in her abdomen." Aliya explained to the peds doctor, pointing to where the mass had been taunting her for the past ten minutes. "I don't know whether it's cancerous or not, we'll have to do a biopsy to check once we remove it."

"Poor kid." Arizona sympathised, slipping on the chair next to Aliya. "Have you spoken to the family yet?"

"Not yet." Aliya replied back, sadly, frowning at the scan. "She's my goddaughter and—"

"Oh, she's your goddaughter?" Arizona intervened, inhaling sharply. "I'm so sorry Levine."

Aliya nodded her head at the blonde, accepting the sincere apology, but she was unable to say "it's fine", because nothing about this was fine at all.

"But, Levine, I'm going to have to remove you off of the case."

Oh.

Oh.

Aliya spun her head towards Arizona "What?"

"You are her godmother." Arizona responded, softly, looking the brunette carefully in the eye as she reached for Eliza's chart on the table, in between the two of them. "Therefore meaning you have a conflict of interest."

"A conflict of interest?"

"Yes, Levine, I'll be assigning a new resident to her case." The attending said, holding the chart with her hands, as if she was half expecting Aliya to lunge over and grab it off of her. "It's easier if you just be there for your friend."

"This— This is— crap!" It was fair to say the brunette was far from happy about this situation. "Conflict of interest! Again! Are you kidding?"

The blonde's face contorted, and she let out a muffled sob, swatting her the tears beginning to fall down her cheeks, burying her head in her hands.

"Dr. Robbins, what's wrong?" Aliya's face tensed, suddenly feeling bad for making the blonde cry as tears streaked down Arizona's cheeks, making her blonde waves stick to them.

"I can't have two kids die on me! It's just— it's just too much!" The head of peds exclaimed, sniffing into a tissue Aliya just handed to her out of her pockets.

It was hard to be optimistic about anything when your goddaughter's doctor and the head of paediatrics was crying directly in front of your eyes.

"Two kids? What do you mean?" Aliya questioned, needing to know what in the world was going on as Arizona let out another sniff, dragging the back of her hand along her nose.

She took a shaking breath. "Wallace."

Aliya raised a knowing brow. "As in Wallace Anderson?" 

Arizona nodded her head and Aliya's heart stopped, because Wallace was the sweetest kid to ever exist in the world.

He had been living in and out as a patient in the hospital for almost two years, undergoing fifteen surgeries for his short gut syndrome — the kid was a fighter.

Aliya was his doctor for a short time before she got too 'emotionally invested' (how the Chief and Arizona Robbins put it) with his case — which seemed like a running theme for Aliya, every time she stepped foot in peds — and was transferred off of the peds service.

It really wasn't the speciality for her.

"His parents donated twenty five million dollars to peds," Arizona explained, because even Aliya knew his parents were rich, but she didn't know they were that rich. "And, to finding a cure for Wallace's condition. He's beginning to deteriorate quickly, and now the Chief and his parents want me to perform a surgery that he may not even survive just so he can stay alive for two more months."

"Oh lord." Aliya placed a hand over her mouth, unable to believe what she was telling her, because the last time she visited Wallace (three days ago), she was helping him with his math homework.

And, now he was going to die.

It just wasn't fair at all. He was meant to be turning eleven on friday.

Aliya hadn't even realised her own eyes were lined with tears.

"I'm so sorry, that's just— that's just horrible. Wallace is the sweetest thing—" Aliya stopped herself with sigh, not quite able to believe what she was hearing. "You don't have to do the surgery— if you don't want to. Do what you think is best for Wallace, it's one hell of a risky procedure and they need to know what they are signing up for."

Arizona nodded her head and wiped away her tears, understanding that twenty five million dollars were at stake here, but none of it really mattered when a dying kid was involved in the mix.

"I could always—"

"Levine," Arizona quickly cut in, her brow raised as she stuffed a crumpled up tissue in her pocket, straightening in the chair. "You know you were removed from the case."

Aliya nodded, slowly, sighing in defeat. "Yeah, I know."

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Following her last conversation with Dr. Robbins, Aliya made her way to Wallace's hospital room, mainly because she promised his a few days ago that she would come by and visit him.

And, as morbid as it sounded, Aliya wanted to see him one last time before he died

Which, she hoped with everything in her that he wouldn't.

Quickening her pace, Aliya rounded the sharp corner leading to the corridor before his room, almost accidentally colliding with Jackson Avery.

If she hadn't already met him already on several different unfortunate occasions, this could have been the story of how they would have met, the one that only happened in a book in the Barnes and Noble romance section.

But, this was no romance novel, and Jackson wasn't the charming green eyed adonis.

And maybe, if he had caught Aliya at a different time where she wasn't thinking about two potential dying children, she would have reacted differently.

Stumbling back slightly, Aliya managed to regain her balance as she turned to face him, fury clouded over her usual sunny-ish demeanour.

"Jeez!"

"Learn to slow down!" Jackson lectured, crossing his arms as he regained his posture after being his in the stomach with Aliya's palm, smoothing out his white coat.

Aliya pulled a face, pressing a hand to her forehead where it had met Jackson's undeniably muscular shoulder (she would be a fool not to notice it, she may not like him very much but she wasn't entirely oblivious).

"You can't get anywhere moving slowly." She acknowledged with a frown.

"You're not going to go anywhere with a concussion, either." Jackson pointed out as Aliya squinted back at him from where she was rubbing her forehead with her palm, slightly dazed.

"It could get me away from you." She deadpanned.

Jackson pulled a face at that.

"Sucks for you that Arizona took you off that case." The Avery man smirked in triumph, any sympathy over Aliya walking directly in to his own shoulder disappearing as he took it as win in the unspoken competition they had going on that, at this time in her life, Aliya had no interest in being a part of.

"Asshole!" Aliya shot back, her jaw dropping and all the pain of her headache seemingly disappearing, turning to unfiltered rage. "That case is my goddaughter—"

His face dropped in realisation, flushing a bright red that Aliya had never seen before, especially not on his cheeks. "Oh—"

"—And I only got removed because I'm a conflict of freaking interest!" Aliya leaned forward and swatted his arm at his insensitivity. "We both know it had nothing to do with my surgical abilities."

The brunette pushed past Jackson, whose expression was quickly replaced with amusement at the woman storming away from him at a very quickened pace.

"Oh yeah? How can you prove it?" Jackson called from down the hall.

"Kiss my ass!" Aliya fired back, getting a very concerned look from a parent.

She had forgotten she was on the peds floor.

Jackson scoffed excessively loud, enough for Aliya to hear it from where she was just a few metres ahead of him. "Oh! Real mature!"

A part of him was disappointed she didn't throw her head back over her shoulder, shooting him one of those classic grins he saw the first day he was at Seattle Grace.

But, it was the wrong time. That woman was pissed. And, she only reserved those grins for the people she actually liked.

And, it was still a mystery if she liked him or not.

Like Charles said on the third day of being in this hospital — if she's anything like her mother, she hates you already.

Jackson Avery didn't get like this.

He failed to put it in to words an explanation as to why he craved her smile.

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Finally arriving at where she aimed to be, Aliya stopped outside the door. She moved to look through the window which overlooked the room where Wallace was led, a hand draped over his stomach and the other hand holding a book to his face, his glasses perched up on the tip of his nose. He squinted every so often, as if trying to magnify the words on the page.

His parents must be in a meeting with the Chief and Robbins at the moment discussing the next steps.

"Whatcha reading?" Aliya grinned from the doorway, because there was no room for sadness, moving across the room to sit on the foot of his bed.

"Aliya!" Wallace cheered, happily, dropping his book to the side and jumping up to wrap his tiny arms around her neck.

Even though he only saw her three days ago, he reacted like that every single time without fail.

"How have you been, buddy?" Aliya asked with a smile, breaking free from the hug.

"I have a surgery scheduled with Dr. Robbins." He said, nervously, chewing on the side of his lip.

"Hey," Aliya reached for his hand, giving it a squeeze. "You'll do great— you've survived fifteen of them, what's one more gonna do, huh?"

Aliya poked his arm, causing a giggle to escape his lips, all signs of worry seemingly disappearing.

"I guess I have survived a few of 'em." Wallace replied, sheepishly.

The brunette nodded. "You're a superhero."

"Like Iron Man?" Wallace asked hopefully, his eyes wide.

She grinned back at him. "Better."

"Better than Iron Man?" Wallace marvelled, unable to comprehend the fact that there's a better superhero than Iron Man out there.

"Oh, by far." Aliya assured with a wave of her hand, smiling at the stack of Marvel comics on his bedside table, the Iron Man one on top of course.

"Where's Dr. O'Malley?" The young boy asked, completely innocently and unaware of the sinking feeling that automatically appeared in Aliya's chest at the sound of his name.

Because, despite his faults, Aliya missed him endlessly.

She missed his laugh, and the way he told her parents to fuck off one night (even though he never usually swore). How he made Aliya really bad french toast when she was sad, and how beer dripped from down his nostrils that one time in Joe's, and how he always bought her a snack from the vending machine. How he always listened to everything she had to say.

"He's gone away for a while." Aliya murmured softly, because somehow it was better to live in a fantasy, that George was in a tropical island somewhere, soaking up the sun. "But, he's happy. Don't worry." The brunette reassured the boy with a nod, more to herself than to Wallace.

She didn't even want to say the words, because it still, even to this day, felt weird saying that he died. It just didn't seem right.

She couldn't even admit it when she was sobbing uncontrollably into Mark's shirt the day he was declared brain dead.

From her pocket, Aliya's pager made a low buzz. She tugged it out, glancing at PEDIATRICS - ROOM 327. Wallace peered over to sneak a peak at the screen, seeing as he was a young doctor in training from the amount of rounds he wanted to be a part of.

"Duty calls." Aliya announced in a light hearted tone, trying to lighten the mood by showing him her pager he was always so fascinated by. "I'll come see you later, okay? When I have more time. You can tell me all about what you're learning at school."

His nose scrunched up as he smiled, tugging the blanket back over himself to keep warm. "I would like that."

⠀
—✩—
⠀

"Aliya! Finally!" Summer breathed in relief, her hand clutching her chest as Aliya hovered in the doorway outside Eliza's room. "I need to talk to you, outside." She pointed past the window.

Aliya nodded her head, moving back a few steps as the couple exited the room.

"Hi, Aliya, so— have you had a chance to look over the scans yet?" Daniel questioned as soon as the door shut, and Summer reached over and clutched his hand, squeezing it tightly.

"Please tell me you know what to do." Summer begged, her eyes red and swollen from crying, her brave smile she had been putting on disappeared as soon as she had left that room. "Please. I called Mae, but she's in New York. You're the doctor out of the three of us. Just tell me what you would do."

Aliya cleared her throat in attempt to steady her emotions, her breathing shaky as she slipped her hands into her pockets, nervous at the fact both of their eyes were studying every facial expression she were to make. "Has Dr. Robbins spoken to you about your options?"

"Aliya— Don't talk to me like a doctor, talk to me like a friend, what would you do if that was your daughter?" Summer spoke in desperation.

Aliya looked through the window at a sleeping Eliza, her chest rising and falling in her sleep, the purple bunny still clutched in her grasp.

Aliya would most likely say, at this point in her life, she had very limited maternal instincts and little to no experience with children other than babysitting once or twice every few months and at the hospital.

However, she did learn that feeding children the most sugary foods in the world was something she should never do again — not after her nephew, James, threw up on Izzie's silk comforter.

Being the aunt to two small children was the position Aliya had always filled. It wasn't like she was necessarily bad with kids, she knew how to make them laugh and smile, but she just never had to think about how to be a mother or what she would do for her child.

And with that, Aliya experienced a revelation. An epiphany. To be a good mother, all she had to do was the opposite of what Molly Levine did.

"Have you spoken to Eliza about what's going on?" Aliya broke the long silence.

"No," Summer shook her head, glancing towards her husband. "We don't know what to say."

"Tell her she has something growing in her belly. A bad guy, or something— I don't know, anything. Talk her through it using an analogy, it makes it seem less scary to them. And, take into account what she thinks, okay? I know she's only six but she's smart. She's a smart kid." Aliya suggested, her friend was holding onto a tissue, dabbing her eyes. "Whatever you decide, make sure it's the best for your daughter. But, I don't have to tell you that, you're a great mom."

Summer nodded, biting back tears. "I want the tumour out of her, okay? Schedule a surgery, I don't care, I just want it out."

⠀
—✩—
⠀

CALLIE TORRES (3:45pm)

Levine, please tell me you are
coming to Arizona's birthday party.

⠀
ALIYA LEVINE (3:48pm)

actually i might have to skip it,
something's come up and i won't be
able to make it, sorry xx

⠀
CALLIE TORRES (3:49pm)

It wasn't a question, you are coming
to her party otherwise I'll put you
on scut for a week.

⠀
ALIYA LEVINE (3:50pm)

you're not actually being serious???
you can't put me on scut, i'm not
an intern anymore

⠀
CALLIE TORRES (3:50pm)

Try me.

I bought cinnamon swirl vodka.

⠀
ALIYA LEVINE (3:51pm)

that sounds gross

i'll be there
⠀

"Callie just threatened me into going to Arizona's birthday party. I'm weak." Aliya announced to Cristina and Meredith bitterly, standing in front of the doorway to Mer's bedroom, where they were both sprawled out on the bed in a sea of magazines and newspapers.

"She's being very pushy with the whole surprise birthday party thing." Cristina replied, flinging a magazine to the side.

Meredith chuckled. "I thank my father for not having to go to that."

Aliya dropped her bag in the doorway, dropping onto the bed, her head resting next to a health and welfare magazine. Which was ironic because she wasn't feeling all that health and welfare at the moment.

"My goddaughter has a tumour." Aliya told them, staring at the ceiling, her hands resting on her stomach.

"Oh, Aliya. That's terrible." Meredith placed a hand on the brunette's knee.

"Owen is being an ass." Cristina grumbled, successfully taking Aliya's mind off of it and handing the woman her coffee as an olive branch.

Aliya scoffed, taking the coffee from the woman next to her. "Owen's always an ass."

Maybe Aliya was still holding a grudge against Owen just for, well, being Owen.

"I rocked that embolus." Cristina pouted, and Meredith simply flicked through her magazine, an all-knowing look on her face as if she had heard this story millions of times already in the past several moments before Aliya's arrival.

The hundreds of documentaries she had been watching for the past several weeks have gone to her head.

"What?" The Yang woman narrowed her eyes at Meredith.

"He cares about you." Meredith explained in amusement, moving onto another magazine.

"So?"

"So," Meredith shrugged, the only one out of the three woman in a happily married, somewhat stable relationship. "Maybe he's a little bit right."

Cristina looked like she wanted to murder Meredith in cold blood, or shake her by the shoulders in an effort to knock some sense into her.

"I get it. I mean, I'm dying to get out of this bed and cut." Meredith clarified. "But, you did an unauthorised procedure in an OR. You're an amazing surgeon, but if anything had gone wrong, that would have been your career. He cares about your career. He's in love with you."

The Levine woman, the objective third party in this conversation, frowned. "You've been watching way too many rom-coms in your bed bound state."

Cristina nodded in agreement at Aliya's comment. "I hate married and happy you."

The Grey woman chuckled. "Go to work, and don't cut anybody open without permission."
⠀

—✩—
⠀

"I'm too tired and emotionally exhausted for this, all I want is my bed and a packet of oreo's, and maybe Matthew McConaughey, that's all I need right now." Aliya groaned, slouching against the door to Callie and Cristina's apartment as Cristina appeared behind her.

Alex was still at the hospital with the preemie, meaning his emotional support services were in use elsewhere.

"I would rather be led in a pile of dirt on the side of the highway." Cristina grumbled, narrowing her eyes looking at her own front door as if it had personally committed a crime.

"I can second that." Aliya agreed, miserably. Though, her demeanour quickly lightened as she clapped her hands together decisively. "We have to go in. Callie told me she had this new Cinnamon Swirl Vodka from Walmart that's meant to taste like Christmas. That's all the convincing I need."

Cristina cast her a look of disgust. "My opinion of you just lowered." She stated, running her hand through her curls.

Aliya narrowed her eyes at Cristina. "I watched you eat a raspberry jam and cheese sandwich that someone had stepped on when we were interns, there was dirt on the bread and everything."

Cristina opened her mouth to disagree but quickly shut it again, looking at Aliya in a sort of agitation, knowing there was no way to counteract her argument.

"Fine. We're even." Cristina replied reluctantly.

Then, the door to the apartment flew open before Cristina could even unlock it with her key, revealing a very hectic Callie.

"Are you both drunk already, or is this your natural energy?" Callie interrogated the pair, raising a brow in suspicion.

"Natural and sleep deprived energy." Aliya yawned into her palm.

Callie looked upon the two women— one slumped against the other's shoulder, the other eyeing her up and down as her eyes slowly drifted shut. "Only if you're sure you're not high."

She had spent the rest of the day studying Eliza's results, trying to get her head wrapped around the situation, it felt like a bad dream.

Summer had also managed to hack the pager system (a positive of having a computer guru husband), and paged Aliya every minute to ask a new question.

She didn't really mind, because she knew that her friend needed her.

But, god, she was exhausted.

"Okay, cool, now get in." She ushered Cristina and Aliya into the apartment when she finally received confirmation they weren't in fact drunk already, or high.

She practically pulled them in with her bare hands.

"SHE'S NEARLY HERE!" Callie exclaimed to the very large group of people before her, bouncing up and down on her feet, waving her hands in the air like a mad woman in Aliya's peripheral vision.

Though saying that out loud would make Aliya a hypocrite, because who was she to call another woman mad.

"Okay, I'm going to go get a beer." Cristina announced, stalking off to the makeshift bar Callie had created.

"This— this is a nice— woah." Aliya started as Callie pressed a party hat to the top of her head. Aliya's brunette waves fanned around her face as the string flipped under her chin.

Callie grinned at her before rushing off to find her next victim, holding another gold party hat in her hand.

Blowing up a piece of her hair, only making it rise and fall back into the exact same position, Aliya made her way over to where the drinks were, picking up a red plastic cup and pouring in a single (double) shot of the infamous vodka, then topping it up with soda.

A hand reached over and clasped around the roof of the vodka as she went to add another shot, just for good measure. She moved her head up as Jackson looked over at her, his lips turned down, sending creases across the corners of his mouth as he read the label.

"Cinnamon swirl?" He lifted the bottle to his nose with a smirk and Aliya's hand fell from the bottle as he sniffed the alcohol before pulling away with his nose scrunched up. "It smells like Santa threw up in there."

"At least it's festive." Aliya responded despite the fact it was only November, taking a sip.

Surprisingly to her, it wasn't even that bad, and it did taste remotely similar to a cinnamon swirl.

The Avery man looked at her with a disapproving look. "What happened to you?"

"Do I have to have a reason to drink?" Aliya retorted, taking another sip — now it was most definitely starting to taste like a cinnamon bun that had gone past its sell-by date.

He was right, the second sip did taste like Santa's vomit.

"No, I guess not." Jackson agreed with her. "But I'm drinking today because of my mother." He raised his beer bottle in the air.

"That's something I can get drunk over." Aliya instantly agreed, clanking her cup with his — the amount of times she got drunk over her mother was too high to count on all of her ten fingers.

"ALRIGHT EVERYONE!" Callie shouted manically over the noise. "PLACES PLEASE!"

Aliya heard a low chuckle from behind her as Jackson followed her to where everyone was gathered, mainly all of the hospital staff.

"You wanna switch?" Aliya asked, holding up the awful vodka to him as they stopped in the crowd of bodies.

"Oh, we're not going to do this again." He spoke stern as he took a sip of his beer Aliya had become envious of.

A key turned in the door, and someone completely unknown to her shoved a kazoo into Aliya's free palm.

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!" The group shouted in unison, in a sea of noises from kazoo's and cheers.

Arizona stood still in the doorway, completely frozen until her expression broke, but not in to a wild grin of happiness, but into sobs as she burst out of the apartment in floods tears.

"I don't think that's meant to happen when you say surprise." Jackson whispered, the heat of his breath on her neck, painting a blush along Aliya's nose and cheeks that she would rather tell herself was from the god awful vodka, and not Jackson's mouth so close to her ear.

"Is she okay?" Aliya tilted her head, her stray hairs falling in front of her eyes.

"Guessing she's not that big on surprises." Jackson mused, as Callie hurried after Arizona, who had just left her own party.

"That, or she just took one look at you and ran for the hills." Aliya turned on her heel, navigating her way to the foot buffet, where she picked up a salted pretzel, popping it into her mouth happily.

"Pain in the—"

"What was that?" Aliya turned around, her brow arched, and Jackson realised he couldn't take her seriously with a bright pink party hat on her head, slipping further down onto her forehead.

Jackson grinned wide, lifting his beer bottle in the air. "I said you are a pain in the ass!"

"Real mature!" Aliya called back, grabbing her own beer now and taking the bottle cap off, deciding the vodka was far too disgusting.

"Oh, yeah?" Jackson appeared beside her, grabbing another beer for himself. "Tell that to the woman who chased me down the hall because she was having coffee withdrawals."

Dr. Kingshead, the cardiothoracic surgeon from Mercy West no one liked (not even the Mercy Westers), pulled a face.

"That's taken so out of context!" Aliya assured the attending.

"In what context is it then, Levine?" Jackson asked calmly in an attempt to put Aliya on the spot.

"I—" Aliya clamped her glossed lips shut. "It was a coffee morning! And, Felipé was withholding my coffee supply. I had no other choice, Jackson!"

Shit.

Jackson tried his hardest not to react at that fact that she didn't call him Quarterback, or Avery, or asshole, but actually his name for once in her life.

"Okay, then." Dr. Kingshead walked off with his party sized plate of sausage rolls. "Residents these days." He muttered to himself as he went to the furthest corner of the room, away from the bickering pair.

⠀
⠀
⠀

( notes! )

craving cinnamon rolls right now 😣

and i don't think cinnamon swirl vodka (if i did, it would taste VILE) exists but oh well we move on i just wanted jackson to say it smelt like santa's vomit

my girl aliya can't catch a BREAK. in the space of five chapters she's had run ins with her ex-boyfriend numerous times, was yelled at by her mother, had to go for dinner with her maniac sister, accused of killing a woman & found out her goddaughter has a mass in her stomach. she truly deserves to devour a packet of oreo's & have lie down

( word count! — 8,600 )