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chapter twenty nine ━ don't
deceive me (please don't go)
season seven, episode thirteen

❝ that resolution
was so last year. ❞
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trigger warning!
this chapter has characters
who suffer from alzheimer's

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"You know," April said through panting and gasping for breath, running alongside both Aliya and Trent, inhaling the ice cold air of Seattle. "When you said we'd do something, just the three of us, I didn't expect—"

The Kepner woman gasped again, because running and talking didn't really go hand in hand.

And, what Aliya needed right now was in fact silence.

The week had proved hellish, to say the least.

However, Aliya couldn't exactly be mad about it, seeing as it probably was all of her fault, even though she was too proud to admit it.

Firstly, she broke up with her boyfriend. Then, she had a very public spat with him, labelled a "war" by med students.

Med students!

Freaking med students.

Aliya gritted her teeth as her trainers pounded on the pavement, her new hobby of running proved very therapeutic to say the least.

"Don't get me wrong," April rambled, her cheeks pink and her lips blue. "It's great."

"You don't sound too convinced." Trent smirked wide, specks of rain sticking to his dirty blonde hair as he ran into her side so their hips bumped together.

April giggled, wrapping her arms around his arm, pressing her cheek into his shoulder.

Aliya seemed to unconsciously pick up the pace, trying to get rid of the couple trailing behind her.

"Let me point out," Aliya spoke up, her head pounding in her skull with every time her sneakers hit the sidewalk. "I didn't actually invite you."

"I know." Trent pointed out with a shrug of his shoulders, kissing April gently and delicately on her flushed cheeks. "We just thought you'd might like some company."

The brunette woman frowned. "Running is usually an independent activity."

"But, you haven't exactly—" Trent trailed off, casting a look to April who just simply shrugged, an uneasy look on her face.

Aliya haunted abruptly on the sidewalk as they finally reached the house. "Haven't exactly what?"

Trent chewed on his lips, shoving his hands into the pockets of his joggers, looking down at the sodden concrete.

"You haven't exactly been yourself, is what Trent's trying to say." April spoke gently, her eyes sympathetic.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" She snapped, though she didn't mean to. They just didn't get it. They didn't get what losing him felt like.

She was angry, so angry she could hurl her car into a wall. And also, she was hurt. So hurt, she could cry so much she felt sick to her stomach.

Aliya knew Trent knew loss.

He had lost the mother of his child.

And, she would never invalidate that for him, but losing Jackson—

Even though they had been together for only two months, he had already made his way directly into her heart.

Relentlessly. Wildly.

A part of her wanted to run up the steps, rush into his room and confess it had been a mistake.

That these past few days where they had been apart felt wrong.

They had been with each other every day for the past sixty one days, and these seven felt like a lifetime.

It was crazy when you thought about it.

That someone could get so wrapped up in another person that they needed them more than they needed air to breathe.

"It means—" April spoke, softly, her eyes asking for at least some support from the very angry woman's brother.

"It just means that we're worried about you."

When Trent went through that line, Aliya was already half way up the steps, and they were following her quickly, trying to make it right.

Though, they meant well.

All they did was care.

Aliya just wasn't in a caring kind of mood as she pushed open the front door, kicking off her sneakers.

"We didn't mean it like that." Trent said, shutting the door gently behind the three.

We. Like they had discussed this already.

"We just meant, Aliya, that we want you to be happy. You're not acting like yourself." April's voice was gentle, but that seemed to anger her even more.

The brunette was furious. "You don't even know me."

A wash of hurt passed of the Kepner woman's face. "I've known you for over a year, Aliya."

"That's beside the point." Aliya denied, taking her hair out of her ponytail, sending loose waves down her back.

"When was the last time you even stopped for a second, huh?" Trent questioned, seeing as he had spent this week at the house, with his son, James, back in California with his grandparents. "You need to take it easy."

"I can't do this right now, okay?" She ran her fingers through her hair, trying to calm her growing frustration. "Will you just drop it?"

"No, I won't drop it. I don't like seeing you like this, Liy." Trent spoke, trying to reach out for her, but she stepped back away from him, and April inhaled a sharp breath. "Please, talk to—"

The Levine man trailed off when he spotted Jackson, paused in the hallway behind them, looking equally as hurt and as angry as Aliya.

He swallowed the lump in his throat, his jacket in one hand with his car keys, his duffel bag slouched over his shoulder.

"I have to get to work." He explained.

"I have to shower." The brunette said at the exact same time he spoke up.

The pair passed each other, not even making eye contact as he made a beeline towards the door, and she raced up the stairs.

"It's been a week." April pursed her lips as the door slammed behind them, and the shower turned on upstairs. "I can't keep living like this, I'm breaking out into hives."

"Hives?" Trent smirked, despite it all.

"Yes," April threw her hands down. "Anxious hives. They need to at least talk to each other."

Trent shook his head as the two meandered to the kitchen. "I don't think that's gonna happen anytime soon. They can barely even be in the same room with each other without either arguing, or walking straight back out again."

"Did you see them?" Meredith questioned instantly as the two entered the kitchen, where Derek, Alex and Lexie were also gathered, looking as if they were having some sort of a mother's meeting.

"Yeah, it was awful." April sighed, retrieving her herbal tea from the cabinet and making herself a cup of it. "Where are all the pop tarts?"

"There's none left." Alex grumbled, annoyed, casting a look towards the youngest Grey woman sat beside him. "Lexie ate them all."

The woman in question guilty munched on the last strawberry pop tart, she was stressed to say the least.

"We need a plan of action." Meredith said, decisively, pacing back and forth in determination. "They just work. They're good together. And, Aliya was happy. They can't just end like this, right?"

"We shouldn't get involved." Derek spoke like the only adult in the room, getting up from the stool and swilling his cup out. "They're adults, they just need time to work it out."

"Ignore him, he knows nothing." Meredith exclaimed with a wave of her hand, dismissing him as he left the room, removing himself from the situation completely.

"I propose we Parent Trap them." Trent suggested, slipping into a chair as April brought him over a cup of coffee.

"We could lock them in the bathroom together? Barricade the door?" Lexie suggested through a mouthful of pop tarts.

"Put them on the same service?" Meredith suggested, not remembering how bad that went down last time.

"Jackson won't talk to me about it." April confessed to the group, propping her chin on her hands. "I've never seen him like this. Not in the three years I've known him."

"I think, we leave them to figure it out." Alex spoke up, because judging from his previous conversation with Aliya, the last thing he wanted to do was stress her out even more than she already was. "Aliya's hurt enough as it is, she'll just get even more upset if we get involved."

After a moment of silence as the group thought of any potential ideas, Trent cleared his throat, the only non-doctor in the room.  "Am I the only one who thinks that we should just fake an earth quake? Trauma always brings people together, no?"

April widened her eyes, placing a hand on his and patting it. "Wrong time."

It was safe to say, the whole house was on edge.

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THE NEXT MORNING
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"Can you believe it?" A grin of joy spread across Aliya's face, her voice close to a breathy whisper as she followed Derek down the stairs, remaining as quiet as possible so they did not wake Meredith, which equated to waking a sleeping lion.

It seemed Meredith was the furthest from pleased at the start of the clinical trial, seeing as she wasn't actually on it.

Derek looked over his shoulder as they walked into the kitchen, simultaneously buttoning up the cuffs of his blue shirt. "Can you?"

"Today is finally the day." Aliya enthused.

The only option the pair had was to sneak out whilst everyone else in the house slept soundly, killing multiple metaphorical birds with one theoretical stone. They wouldn't annoy Meredith even more than Derek already had by barring her from the trial, they could get a head start on preparing for the first said clinical trial patient and, the probability of running into a particular Adonis all morning breath and dreary clad in tartan pyjama pants like he was in the mornings, lowered by about a solid seventy percent.

Reaching for the coffee filters and more grounds of her favourite coffee brand she treated herself to a box of in the grocery store, Aliya began making a fresh pot of coffee, still with that excited and determined look on her face. You would think she had just been given a full Barbie Dreamhouse, like her Grandmother gave her for her eighth birthday that was still stashed away in her closet back in California. That thing was a relic, there was no way she was ever getting rid of it. "It felt like we're going to be buried under that pile of paperwork and draft outlines forever."

Derek laughed, softly, retrieving a bowl from the hutch and reaching for his muesli from the countertop, pouring it into the bowl. "It sure seemed like it." He agreed, opening the refrigerator and unscrewing the cap of the milk.

She reached to the top shelf, grabbing two mugs from the cupboard whilst the coffee brewed. "John Driscoll is a truly marvellous man."

"There needs to be more John Driscoll's in the world."

"I wholeheartedly agree." Setting a mug of coffee in front of Derek, Aliya took a seat on the stool beside him, holding her own mug of scolding hot coffee in her hands as the two made eye contact, clinking their coffee mugs together, wide and giddy smiles adorning their faces.

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"John Driscoll."

Still grinning like she did that very morning, Aliya swivelled around in her chair as Derek began speaking into the hand held voice recorder whilst the two of them sat watching John in the MRI machine, waiting for the scans to load up.

"White male, 63. Alzheimer's diagnosed eight months ago."

Derek caught Aliya out of the corner of his eye and he genuinely felt as if he was babysitting an excitable toddler.

She had two small clips in her brown hair, pinning up the two front portions to keep the strands out of her eyes, though still one small wave fell around her face, resting by the line of her jaw. Her whole body was hunched forward, her elbows leaning on the desk in front of her as she watched John's scan intently, marvelling at all the excitement.

The trial really did feel like a thing that was never going to come around. They had been working their asses off for months on outlines, developing the drug, writing and rewriting, editing and reediting.

Aliya had thrown herself fully into the trail that it felt like she was branded with it, or it physically lived with in her now, just as much as blood and oxygen did.

"Patient number one of the Alzheimer's NGF Clinical Trial."

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Aliya breathed through her mask and flicked open the notebook, pulling the lid off of the permanent marker and writing 'THIS PATIENT IS AWAKE' in careful capital letters onto the paper. She turned around, holding it up to Derek who had just finished scrubbing in. "Now this is a relic. When we're done, we're going to have to frame it." She mused whilst he chuckled, a Nurse tying up his gown.

After successfully sticking the sign to the door and scrubbing in, Aliya returned to Derek's side. "Okay, you're going to hear a drilling sound." Derek notified, testing the power drill and preparing to drill two burr holes into John's scull.

"Are you doing okay, Mr. Driscoll?" Aliya asked as Derek finished with the first hole.

"Yes. I'm okay."

Aliya smiled and nodded, even though John couldn't physically see her. "You're doing great."

Derek looked across to her, placing the drill onto the table after finishing the second one. "All right, envelope, please."

The scrub nurse approached the pair, large brown envelope in her hand. She opened it, handing the syringe to Derek and handing the paper with whether Mr. Driscoll had been allocated the placebo or the actual drug to Aliya.

She opened it, revealing that Mr. Driscoll had been allocated the placebo. She looked up at Derek, who nodded his head solemnly and turned with the saline solution in his hand. "Okay, John, we're going to insert the probe now."

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"Lucky patient number two, Daniel Cobb is now admitted and in a room down the hall. I have a good feeling he's going to get it." Aliya enthused, given the disappointment from the placebo on the first patient, Aliya had a good feeling about Daniel. He was going to get the drug. So, she didn't let herself feel disappointed anymore. She was going to be optimistic. "His wife has some questions she wants to ask you, specifically you."

"I can't believe you didn't pick me for this thing." Meredith complained.

"Aliya earned it fair and square." Replying calmly to his wife, Derek picked up the whiteboard eraser, taking off John Driscoll's surgery from the OR board. "She's helped me from the very beginning work out this clinical trail, it would be a disservice if she wasn't on it."

Aliya grinned, turning to a rather displeased and quite frankly pissed off Meredith Grey. "You hear that Mer, it would be a disservice."

"You can both go to hell." Meredith retorted through gritted teeth.

Derek swayed on his feet, an amused grin on his face that only made Meredith more annoyed than she already was. "It wasn't open to any of the residents except Aliya."

"You're both being McAsses."

Aliya turned to Derek. "I think I can handle being a McAss."

"You know what, Dr. Levine—" Derek began, breaking his eyes away from Meredith's and meeting Aliya's. "I think I can too."

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"You having a good day, Daniel?"

Daniel Cobb, the second clinical trial patient, turned to Derek as he entered the room with Aliya. "Yes I am Dr. Shepherd." The man smiled warmly, one hand holding his wife's. "Give me that new wonder drug of yours and I'll be even better."

Derek chuckled. "If it came down to how much I liked the patient you'd be a shoo-in."

Mr. Cobb snorted with laughter, leaning his head back on the bed.

"Oh, most definitely." Aliya confirmed, flicking open his chart on his table. "You're an incredibly charming man, Mr. Cobb."

"You're too kind, Dr. Levine."

Mrs. Cobb shifted in her seat, giving her husband's hand a tight squeeze as she straightened up. "Now, if Daniel gets the drug, how soon will he stop slipping in and out of things?"

"Well, at this stage we don't know any more than you do, Mrs Cobb." Derek informed, watching as her face faltered slightly in disappointment. "That's why we're gonna do a two year follow-up."

"And the idea that his condition could be reversed altogether, is that completely out of the question?" She questioned. "'Cause I just read that when the drug was used in rats and monkeys there was reversal in tissue damage."

"Though rats and monkey's brains are different from humans, they do share similarities." Aliya pointed out. "So you're right, Mrs. Cobb, we can't rule out reversal in tissue damage all together, but the main focus right now is trying to stop the progression of the Alzheimer's."

Mrs. Cobb considered what she said and after a second of thinking, she nodded in understanding.

"All right—" Clapping his hands together, Derek moved toward the door. "Dr. Levine is gonna take you down for an MRI later. So if you have any more questions today, page her."

"I'm feeling better already doctors." Daniel spoke as the pair exited the room.

"That was good Levine." Derek encouraged as they stopped at the desk. "Great job. Meredith didn't joke about the McSunshine story."

"Oh, great." Aliya sighed, placing Mr. Cobbs chart down. "She told you about that."

A smirk pulled onto the corner of his lips. "You know how she likes McNicknames."

"I know, you should too."

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Aliya glanced up, catching Meredith power walking over to her. "If you're coming over to complain how you're not on the clinical trail, Derek's gone to get some coffee, he'll be back in five."

"I was not going to complain." Meredith said with pursed lips.

"Hm, okay." Aliya murmured, unconvinced as she flicked through Daniel's chart.

"No! I'm not doing this without my wife." A raised voice came from Mr. Cobbs room, and Aliya turned to catch it.

A Nurse approached him to attempt to calm him down. "Sir—"

"No!"

"Mr. Cobb, hey, what's going on?" Aliya entered the room, stopping by his bedside and turning slightly to gesture to Mrs. Cobb, who was stood behind Aliya, her purse clutched to her chest, her mouth hung open. "Your wife—"

"That's not my wife." Daniel replied in frustration, kicking the sheets off of his bed so they dropped in a crumpled pile on the floor.

"Who is your wife?"

"Victoria!" Daniel snapped, pointing an accusatory finger towards Mrs. Cobb. "That's not Victoria!"

"Daniel— Daniel, Daniel." Mrs. Cobb hushed, soothingly, placing her left hand with a gold wedding band on the ring finger. "It's me."

"You're not Victoria. You're not my wife." Daniel spoke assertively, and Meredith appeared by the side of Aliya. "You're not Victoria. I want Victoria! I want my wife!"

"It's Allison." Mrs. Cobb tried, though Daniel pulled abruptly away from her touch.

"Get away from me!"

"Okay, okay." Aliya stepped in front of Allison as she wiped a tear from her eye, her head darting to the floor.

"Is Victoria here? Is she in the room with you?" Meredith asked.

Daniel looked around the room with a blank expression, his brow furrowing. "No." He spoke, slowly.

Meredith stepped forward as Aliya guided Mrs. Cobb outside into the hall, her eyes glazed as a single tear fell from her eye. "Okay, we're going to go find Victoria for you. We'll find her and we'll bring her to you, Mr. Cobb."

Daniel calmed, his breathing straightening out as he nodded slowly towards her, interpreting her promise. "Okay."

Mrs. Cobb swatted the tear away, frowning at the floor. "Mrs. Cobb, do you know who Victoria is?" Aliya asked, retrieving a tissue from the box at the front desk and handing it to her.

The woman opposite her slowly brought the tissue to her eye, watching through the small blinds of the window into Daniel's room as Meredith comforted him. He seemed more at ease already. "Victoria is the woman he loves."

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When Aliya was ten years old, her grandfather from her father's side, Philip Levine-Campbell, was diagnosed with Early-Onset Alzheimer's. At the time, it would've seemed pretty ironic seeing as Philip was in fact a neurosurgeon in one of the most highly rated hospital in the country.

And the fact that he had taught Aliya at just the age of ten before he got diagnosed everything to do with Alzheimer's. Perhaps he knew what was waiting for him around the corner, but nothing stopped him from cramming her brain full, as if she didn't have enough of that at home.

All four of her grandparents (and their parents and their parents and so on) had been surgeons. Philip, being a neurosurgeon and his wife Mila, being a general surgeon though she was pretty against the idea of forcing Aliya's hand in becoming a surgeon.
Evelyn, who was a cardio thoracic surgeon just like her mother, and Marcus, who was an OB/GYN.

About a year later after Philip's diagnosis, him being lucid was a rarity. He almost never recognised any of his family. Eliana didn't understand it at all, she refused to see him full stop. Aliya would read articles to him, though the majority of them were medical, the minority consisted of guilty pleasure celebrity gossip and 'mindless quizzes' as her grandfather liked to call them. Though he listened to her anyway.

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━━━━━
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ALIYA'S GRANDPARENTS HOUSE
los angeles, california
( seventeen years ago )
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"There was this really cool article in a medical journal I was reading the other day." Aliya, now twelve years old, enthused, rummaging around in her school bag, retrieving a printed stack of papers.

"What was it about?" Philip replied from his bed, the covers wrapped around his neck as the rain poured from outside the ground floor window, which was incredible odd for California seeing as it was usually unbearable hot.

"Ah!" Aliya jumped up in the armchair, pulling out five pages and placing them by the side of Philip. "Surgical treatments for a severe benign tracheal stenosis."

Philip took the papers in his hand, reading the abstract of the article. "Hm."

"In the article, it says the strategies of anesthesia, mechanical ventilation, identification of stenosis lesion, the hybrid sutures and postoperative anteflexion are all important for a successful surgery." Aliya grinned as she spoke, knowing exactly what those words meant.

Philip, who had been lucid for a time of just ten minutes, smiled. "Don't tell your mother she was wrong. It's our little secret."

"It's great leverage though." Her smile was as wide as it ever was. Not many things made her smile when her head was shoved in books twenty four seven, but nothing made her as happy as it did to prove her mother wrong. "I'll save it to throw in her face when I'm twenty nine."

Philip quirked a fluffy brow, lines appearing on his forehead. "Twenty nine is a specific age."

Aliya shrugged, pulling at the sleeves of her thick sweater. "When she's moaning at me to pick a speciality, we will have the discussion about cardio, it'll be long and torturous then I'll tell her she had been wrong all those years and a balloon pump isn't the best way to go."

"You're calculated." Philip leant across, placing the papers on his bedside table.

"I like to say prepared." The brunette corrected happily, returning the other stacks of papers to her bag.

"You're definitely that."

"I'll save these for another day." She pulled at the zips of her bag, tugging the strap over her shoulder. "I have to go Grandpa, Mom wants me back in time for dinner."

"Thank you for visiting, I always enjoy your company." Philip held out a hand, and Aliya took it, squeezing it gently. "On your way out, can you send Margaret in here?"

Now, that was a name she hadn't heard before. The maid was called Geraldine, unless they fired her. Was Margaret the replacement? "Margaret? The maid?"

"The maid?" Philip threw his head back with a laugh. "No, dear. Not the maid. Margaret. My wife."

Aliya's face paled, her stomach dropping as she racked her brain about what to do. "Do you mean Juliet?"

His face contorted as he grew more confused by the second. "Juliet? Who's Juliet?"

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"They met at the home last year." Mrs. Cobb explained, watching Daniel and Victoria through the window to his room. Her expression vacant. She was used to it, she was used to watching him fade away, but that didn't mean it didn't sting. "One day he asked me to wheel her towards him and that was it. I watched him fall in love with her. Well, Ben and I watched." She gestured to the balding man with small silver frames stood beside her.

"You're Victoria's husband?" Derek inquired.

The man nodded his head. "Until she leaves me." He grimaced, turning away from the scene in front of him.

"She's not gonna leave you, Ben." Mrs. Cobb ensured, taking it as her cue to turn away from Victoria and Daniel also.

"We'll see." Ben grumbled, clearing his throat into the sleeve of his beige shirt. "Victoria was diagnosed with vascular dementia. It's not Alzheimer's, but it might as well be. She's like Daniel. When she's lucid, she knows I'm her husband. When she's not, I go from being her husband to somebody who gets to hear about Daniel all the time."

"Daniel can still be in the trail, can't he?" Allison asked with a worried tone. "This doesn't mean he can't do it?"

"No, he can still do it." Derek confirmed and Mrs. Cobb sighed in relief, and Aliya noticed she was tugging on her wedding ring, spinning it around on her finger. "The rule of the study is we need his consent. Once we have it, it's okay if he's not always lucid."

"You don't have any more openings, do you?" Ben inquired, hopefully.

"Unfortunately, the trial is only for Alzheimer's dementia."

His face dropped. "There's no chance?"

"I'm sorry." Derek replied, handing Aliya the chart for Daniel as cue for her to get the OR ready.

A part of her was glad to go. Though her grandfather was long gone in the past, this whole trial still made her think of him. Of how he always wore a shirt and tie, even at causal family dinners, how his office always smelt of oranges and pine. The way he broke his glasses so often by sitting on them, he kept having to get them fixed every month.

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—✩—
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"How's he doing?" Meredith leaned against the desk Aliya was currently working on, typing up all the reports for the day.

"He's calmer." Aliya replied, breaking off the corner of a piece of pastry Alex had bought up for her five minutes ago, despite it being five o'clock in the evening.

"I'm not mad at you." Meredith tried to convince, though Aliya looked up at her over the top of her glasses, taking a break from her contacts. "Bitter. But not mad. You deserve to be on this clinical trial."

"Thanks, Mer." Aliya considered it for a moment, leaning back in the chair in thought. "You know, we have a lot of clinical trail patients."

Meredith grinned, propping her elbows onto the counter. "I'm listening."

With a sigh, Aliya slowly tilted her head to the side, her nose scrunching, causing tiny little lines to form on the bridge, the kind she got when she was concentrating a little too hard. "You could ask Derek if he needs help."

"I could?"

The brunette rolled her eyes. "Yeah." She dragged out the syllables, watching Mer practically run away from her in search of Derek.

Mrs. Cobb passed Meredith as she ran, stopping in front of the window with her back away from the desk so Aliya couldn't see her face. All she saw was the way she stood there silently, watching as Victoria moved closer to Daniel, lying on his bed, their arms comforting each other like that one specific scene from The Notebook. "He followed me through a snowstorm." Mrs. Cobb said after a long while, almost four hundred words of Aliya's report later.

"That seems—" Aliya paused, searching for the right thing to say to her right now. "Like he was determined."

"In college," Mrs. Cobb straightened, one hand fastened around the strap of her purse, as if that was the only thing keeping her together. "Daniel saw me in the student union and he followed me to my class in a snowstorm. Introduction to French Poetry. It was in this big lecture hall and he sat there for an hour and a half, twice a week for five months just trying to get up the nerve to meet me. That was forty years ago."

Aliya widened her eyes at the story. The fact that, without even knowing her at all, Daniel sat in a class he might not have been interested at all in, just to see her.

The cynical part of Aliya thought that was insane.

How could you know that someone was worth knowing just by a look. Was it love at first sight, if it even existed at all? However, these days Aliya didn't know if she believed in all those magical love stories with the happy ever afters. The kind of love where you just know that you are meant to be with that person. She didn't even know if she believed it didn't exist at all either.

"That's one hell of a love story." She smiled, lightly.

"It was. It is." Mrs. Cobb corrected sternly, clearing her throat as she turned towards Aliya, approaching the desk slowly. "Please, give my husband the drug."

Aliya brought her hands away from the keyboard and pushing herself out of the chair, making her way to the woman's side. "I'm so sorry, Mrs. Cobb. It's out of my power. We can't decide who gets it and who doesn't."

"You could do it if you wanted to." Mrs. Cobb replied, her voice weak, her eyes visibly swollen from crying.

Giving her a half-smile, Aliya stopped in front of her. "I would give it to everyone if I could."

"Dr Levine—" Mrs. Cobb stopped, pressing a shaking hand to her forehead. "I need my husband back. I need Daniel back."

"Mrs Cobb—"

"I can live with being a part-time wife." She spoke, desperately. "But I cannot live with losing my husband all the way. So. For gods sake. Give him the drug. Please." Her voice was pleading as she reached for Aliya's for arm, her grip tightening as she held back sobs.

Aliya placed her hand on top of hers. "How about we get you some coffee?"

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—✩—
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"Okay, we're almost there." Derek announced in the operating room of Daniel's surgery.

"Please can I have the envelope." Aliya crossed everything. Hoping with every fibre of her being that Daniel would get the drug, if not for his sake, but for his wife's. It was killing her to see her husband like this. It was killing her as much as it was killing him. That was the thing when someone dies, or you have to watch someone you love slowly deteriorate. A part of you is killed in the process of it all.

Two pairs of us traced the word PLACEBO on the piece of paper. How could one word mean so much?

Derek cleared his throat, giving Aliya the same, half-disappointed glance he gave her before. "Okay, Daniel. I'm going to insert the probe."

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—✩—
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After the surgery, Derek and Aliya were gathered in Daniel's room with Mrs. Cobb, explaining to her how the surgery went until Daniel stirred from where he was lying, sighing as his eyes opened and readjusted to the light. 

"Honey—" Mrs. Cobb beamed, placing both of her hands on his. "Hey, how are you feeling?"

"I'm okay, I've got a slight headache." Daniel replied, slowly, his eyes scanning around the room with purpose. "Where's my Victoria? Can I see her?"

Without a word, Mrs Cobb pushed herself from the chair, moving away from Daniel and towards the door.

"Mrs Cobb." Aliya stepped in front of her before she could leave. "Your husband just came out of surgery, he's a little groggy now. This all takes time. I know it's hard, but we have to be patient. He's still in there. The Daniel you know is still in there."

What she said had been true, she knew it herself. The week after her Grandfather had asked for Margaret, he asked for Mila. And the week after. Then a month. But, back then they didn't have any fancy clinical trials that would give him a shot.

Mrs. Cobb glanced up at Aliya, before turning back to her husband, stepping closer to his bed. "Daniel, I'm gonna call Victoria and get her here as soon as I can, okay?"

Daniel relaxed. "Thank you."

They left Mrs. Cobb sat beside Daniel as he drifted off back to sleep. "Levine." Derek tapped her elbow, stopping her as they left the room. "I just wanted to say, I meant what I said earlier. You're doing a great job, you're reassuring. You help your patient's family see the bigger picture, I couldn't have done it better myself."

Aliya smiled, slightly, walking further down the hall with Derek beside her. "That's why I wanted to do the trail single-blind." She began, digging her hands in her pockets. "So I wouldn't know who got the placebo and who got the drug. I didn't want to know because I like my patients. And their family's. I didn't want to see who got a chance and who didn't."

Derek nodded, considering what she said. "It'll get easier."

"I know." She shrugged, shifting to the side slightly as a resident ran past her in a frantic rush, five charts in hand. "It just doesn't make it suck any less."

"Just wait, all this will pay off. When we cure Alzheimer's and win a dozen very prestigious awards, of course." He smirked across at her, half-heartedly nudging her arm with his elbow.

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The only way to perfectly end a not-so perfect day was if it ended at Joe's bar. Other than being a great bartender, Joe was also a great conversationalist, though it was mainly Aliya talking at him at a rapid, incoherent speed that would've driven strangers to believe she was on the road to insanity.

"This seat taken?"

Aliya quickly turned, narrowing her eyes at whoever interrupted her vocal essay on how much of an asshole Daniel Cleaver from Bridget Jones Diary. "Yes."

"I'm taking that as a no." Mark frowned, sliding into the chair next to Aliya, who was very unwelcoming as she sipped her drink.

She shrugged, sloshing the crushed ice around with her straw. "You were going to sit down anyways."

"Can I buy you a drink, Levine?" Mark asked, shrugging off his coat and hanging it over the back of his stool.

Aliya raised her empty glass. "You can buy me three."

Mark smirked, gesturing to Joe for two beers, even though Aliya was in fact drinking tequila. "Classy."

"Only on the weekends."

"Can I tell you something?"

"Mark—" Aliya accepted the free beer, angling it towards Mark as she spoke. "If I say no, would it actually stop you?"

He quirked a brow. "Probably not?"

"Okay then." Sipping back a good amount of beer, she set her bottle down, sitting up in her stool. "I'll accept my losses, go ahead."

"Callie is pregnant."

"Wow! Oh my— That's amazing. " Aliya's jaw dropped, then her head tilted to the side as she tried to work out the logistics of how Callie might be pregnant. "But, Arizona only just got back from Africa— Oh shit." She straightened, slowly turned to the man sat beside her. "You didn't."

Mark swigged his beer. "Yeah. I did."

"Holy crap." Aliya shook her head, reaching for her own beer. How could she be surprised? She knew what Mark Sloan was like, she knew it before she had even met him several years ago.

"I thought you said you weren't going to swear as much." Mark lectured, giving her a side eye.

She pushed a strand of hair over her shoulder, breaking apart the pistachio shells that were strewn across the napkin in front of her. "That resolution was so last year."

"I'm going to be a dad." Mark marvelled, more to himself than the woman next to him, who quite overtly disliked him. His face paled, and he looked very much in shock that Aliya thought he might faint there and then. Though her perception of reality was incredibly warped seeing as there were now three Joes behind the bar and she was pretty sure there was only one.

"You already are a dad, Mark." Aliya replied matter-of-factly, popping a pistachio into her mouth. "How are you feeling?"

"I didn't think you cared." He grumbled and Aliya shrugged nonchalantly, lobbing a pistachio shell at him. "I feel— good. I feel really good about this, Aliya. It's my kid in there, you know? I want to be there. I want to be present. But, Lexie— she doesn't want that. How could I get her in that situation twice? Unintentionally."

"Just give her sometime, she'll understand." Aliya replied, robotically.

"Yeah, well, it doesn't seem like she'll ever be able to trust me again. I've screwed up."

How in the world had Aliya ended up, in a bar, talking to her ex-boyfriend about the woman he left her for? The trial had put her mind off of the outside world for less than a day, before Mark came into her sanctuary, realising her life was going down hill at an astronomical speed that she felt she couldn't stop no matter how hard she tried. And not to mention the fact she was turning twenty nine next month, one year closer to thirty.

She wasn't in a very fit mental state.

"Oh, Mark." She brought the beer away from her lips, setting the empty bottle onto the bar. "You should go home, you have a baby on the way. Go read a book."

"I have a baby on the way."

She watched him as a wide grin slowly adorned his face. "Now, doesn't that sound good?"

"Yeah. It does. It really does." Finishing off the rest of his beer and gesturing to Joe for another, Mark turned his whole body towards Aliya, angling his head towards the back of Joe's. "Do you want to play darts?"

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⠀

"You need to hit a double four or an eight to win." Mark reminded, eyeing the two men they were up against, who worked as paramedics, stood across from them.

"Keep your panties on, Mark, when in the past hour have I missed?" Aliya scowled at the man hovering over her shoulder, one hand holding a dart raised in the air as she aimed at the board.

"You have consumed an unknown amount of alcohol and an hour ago you nearly took my eye out—"

"Nearly. Keyword there is nearly." Aliya exaggerated, closing one eye to get a better look at the board — Joe wasn't the only thing that seemed to have gained clones. "That's because you won't step back and give me some personal space."

Mark raised his hands in surrender, taking a step back. "Okay, go ahead. Go for it."

"I'm gonna." Aliya squinted at the board, aiming for the double four on the board that was the clearest in view out of the three. She pulled her hand back and then let go, sending the dart flying across, causing it to land right in the double four margin. "YES!"

"HOLY SHIT!" Mark clapped his hands together in victory as Aliya practically leaped out of her skin, throwing her arms up in the air that then futuristically ended up around Mark's shoulders as they screamed into one another's ear.

After they drew apart and several minutes of gloating over their win, Aliya took her bag from the table. "Right, I'm going to the restroom."

Aliya made her way to the restroom door, remaining upright as she pushed through it, setting her purse onto the counter as she rifled through it, searching for her lip gloss. The door swung open and shut behind someone who passed behind her as she found the tube of lip gloss, pulling it out of her bag and looking up to the mirror.

"What the hell are you doing?!" Aliya screamed, her lip gloss falling into the sink at the sight of Mark, standing behind her in the mirror.

"You said you were going to the restroom?" He said, simply, as if he wasn't standing in the middle of the women's bathroom.

Aliya turned to real-life Mark, not the one behind her in the dingy mirror. "I've been peeing successfully by myself for twenty eight years Mark! I don't need my hand held."

"I thought—"

"You thought—" Aliya paused, her brain working point five seconds slower than it usually did as she tried to do the math of why Mark was looking at her as if he had just been cleanly slapped across the face with the back of her purse. "Oh my— get your head out of the damn gutter!" She stared at the floor where the contents of her purse led. Oh wait, she did hit him with her purse.

"No— that's not—"

"You!" She pointed an accusatory finger at him.

"Aliya! No, I just wanted to make sure—" Mark stuttered, trying to save himself from the hole he was currently digging for himself.

"Oh, please!" Aliya scoffed, dropping to the floors and shoving her purse, a couple loose quarters, her perfume, her keys and a few other random items back into her bag. "Come on! Ugh!"

"Okay, I'll admit." He paused, one hand splayed on his hip. "I did think—"

"Ha!"

"I did think that, but in my defence—"

"Get an attorney!" Aliya yelled from the floor.

"I've had many, many beers." He looked at Aliya guilty, watching her as she shoved a fistful of hair ties into her bag.

"Well, so have I!" She threw her hands down in frustration, finally managing to gather all of her belongings into her bag, she pulled back the zipper forcefully. "And so has Bill and Thomas and you don't see them in here! And you certainly don't see me jumping you in the men's restroom!"

"I did not jump on you." Mark replied, sternly, and she didn't even know he had that emotion in him.

"You thought of it though." With her bag finally zipped and ready, she rose off of the floor, not knowing what unknown substance was on there, quite frankly she didn't want to know. 

"Okay." He sighed, his blue eyes widening as he met hers. "Maybe I did think about it. It's hard not to think about."

Aliya crossed her arms tightly, a frown on her face. "I can't have sex with you, Mark. Not after everything that's happened between us. There's too much here. Even when I've had five plus maybe three or four give or take drinks, I'm smart enough to know to never go back there again."

She didn't wait around to hear his reply, she instead breezed out of the restroom, passing the bar, nodding goodbye to Joe, taking her coat from the rack and jogging up the steps.

Of course Seattle was pouring it down.

⠀
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⠀

With her car abandoned in the parking lot and a surprisingly cheap cab she thought might have been due to with the fact her mascara was smudged from the rain so she looked like she had been drying non stop for twenty years, Aliya finally made it to her front door, the artificial wreath still hung there despite it being the beginning of February.

She brought the key up, jamming it into the lock and stepping into the threshold, creating a puddle on the floor below. The sound of paws padding across the floor sounded instantly, and Reese appeared from the kitchen, wagging tail and all as Aliya knelt down to pet him, before kicking off her shoes and heading off to her room, fully prepared to crash into her bed.

Yawning into her palm, she reached for her door handle with her coat draped over her arm, just as the door opened from down the hall and she locked eyes with Jackson.

It was in fact the next morning, she couldn't have avoided him forever. The other mornings were just pure luck.

"Oh." The word, if you could even call it that, flew out of her mouth, breaking the silence of their eye contact.

He traced her, looking her up and down, all the way from her wet hair clinging to her flushed cheeks, to the soaked bottoms of her jeans.

His throat bobbed, and he opened his mouth to speak but stopped himself halfway, the words on the tip of his tongue but instead he turned away from her, venturing down the stairs and leaving her with the question of what he actually wanted to say.

⠀
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( notes! )

aliya's passive aggression instantly turns on as soon as she hears mark sloan breathe:

aliya to everyone else: 💗🌷🫶🌞🌻🥰
aliya to mark: 🥊🤨💀😒🙄👎

ok, so i was originally going to do the mark & aliya chapter after the plane crash chapter (iykyk) but, that's in sooo many chapters time so it's actually going to be the next chapter because their backstory is longggggggg overdue!!

also new scrub caps cover for the first time in like two years???? call me a picsart queen!

( word count! — 7,600 )