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CHAPTER EIGHTY
sanctuary.
season six, episode twenty-three.

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TWENTY YEARS AGO

Frank rocked his drowsy daughter to sleep, standing in a star-patterned pink room, cradling little slanted-eyed, five-year-old Elizabeth in his embracing arms. Her little chin lay on his shoulder and he could smell the fresh smell of lavender shampoo on her hair, as Ivory had recently bathed her before it was time to go to sleep.

It was late, bedtime. Frank sang her daughter to sleep.

"L'était une poule gris, qu'allait pondre dans l'Eglise," he sang softly in his native language. "Pondait un p'tit coco que l'enfant mangeait tout chaud."

Ivory, who'd already put Ian down in his own bed (he was thirteen now, entering his rebellious teen years, so he'd refused to receive a bedtime story before he finally fell asleep, even though that had meant renouncing to the one thing he loved, but he'd do anything to keep up his new facade and bedtime stories were for babies!), watched her husband from her spot under the doorsill of Elizabeth's room, her face lit up with a grin and her arms crossed over her chest in silent relaxation. Frank's voice had always had that effect on her, and hearing him speak his mother tongue was an outer-body experience for her. He soothed her.

"L'était une poule blanche qu'allait pondre dans la grange," Frank swayed from side to side. "Pondait un p'tit coco que l'enfant mangeait tout chaud."

And so on the song went. It didn't take long before Elizabeth was fast asleep in her father's arms, letting out little pleasant snores of comfort into his shoulder, and once she was, Frank quietly, delicately placed her down on her bed and draped her under pink sheets she'd deliberately chosen to match up to pink walls, pink covers, pink everything. He propped her head on the pink pillow, kissed her forehead goodnight and only when he turned did he finally notice his wife's presence.

Ivory and Frank LeBlanc walked out of Elizabeth's room in silence, together, then softly closed the door behind them.

"I always loved that song," Ivory assured as they walked out into the living room of the LeBlanc household in New York to take a sit on the couch.

"So you've said." Frank chuckled, wrapping an arm around his wife's shoulder, kissing her temple tenderly.

There was a moment of silence. Both their smiles lasted a fleeting instant before they withered in the face of the circumstances they faced and tried so hard to avoid.

"When are we gonna tell the kids?" Frank then asked, his throat suddenly tight.

"We don't have to tell them. They're too young. There's no need for them to know." Ivory hurried to shake her head, avoiding her husband's eyes. "I'd rather have them think I left quickly than have them watch me suffer for years."

The man turned to her with a frown, grabbing at her hand in sudden alarm. "Honey."

"I know what you're gonna say." Ivory simply closed her eyes, as if she wouldn't hear it.

"Please, listen to me," he begged, his voice full of desperate sorrow. "This cancer is really advanced. You could just get worse any second. They're gonna find out eventually. Wouldn't— Wouldn't you rather be with them? This is not gonna be easy, my love. You're gonna want your children there. I'm gonna want them there, too. All of us, together. So we can beat this as a family."

She shook her head. "I don't want them to see me... bedridden. Sick. I don't want them living inside a hospital until I die."

"You won't die." Frank scoffed. "We'll tell them tomorrow at dinner, before your surgery Saturday. If anything... goes wrong... I just don't want them to think their mother abandoned them on a random weekend afternoon. Okay? Do this. If not for me, for them."

"Frank, I—"

"Please."

Ivory looked up at her husband. She couldn't say no to those pleading eyes of him. The silence choked her.

"Okay," she finally agreed with a heavy sigh. "But hospital visits once a week, max, that's it. Okay? Let them go to school and be happy. Let them learn how to live without me in case they have to."

"They won't have to."

"Frank, don't be stupid." Ivory shook her head. "We know about these things. We've seen them, we've seen how they turn out, especially with this prognosis and the state I'm in. We're both surgeons."

He looked up at her with a frown upon his face, as if he couldn't quite grasp what she was saying. "You're my wife."

"Which is why you must be ready, too." She placed a hand on his cheek and caressed him softly.

Frank leant into his wife's soft touch. Ivory savored the moment.

"Once a week," she concluded.

Frank sighed. "Once a week."

☆

Reunion is a weird something.

Billie had always had this fantasy about the day her father finally apologized to her. She'd thought life would start over, that she'd have a dad. She thought ages of abuse would be wiped away, and for endless years, the only thing she craved on top of everything else was to hear that God-forbidden sorry.

However, she'd never thought as far so as to know a word as empty as such wouldn't instantly make everything disappear. It wouldn't wipe away her trauma, her suffering. It wouldn't wipe away the bad dreams or the inability to sleep, or the fact that she'd never gotten the childhood she deserved after she turned ten. It wouldn't erase the loss—of her mother, of her father, of her brother. It wouldn't erase anything at all.

As years went by and Billie grew older and more mature, she was more and more capable of telling what she felt, and eventually came to the conclusion that she no longer yearned for an apology the way she did when she was young and stupid. Yes, some small part of her believed that as soon as she stepped into that bar, things would go back to what they once used to be and she'd get to hug her dad, but Billie wasn't Elizabeth anymore. She'd given herself up the moment she'd chosen to run away—run, run as fast and as far as she could from a broken home where nothing and no one was waiting for her anymore.

Elizabeth LeBlanc had died a long time ago and Frank LeBlanc was a man she had ceased to know. Now, she'd grown to be the person she wanted to be as Billie. The grown Billie. The mature Billie. The one who'd put her murky past behind her and now lived slightly happier, enduring her trauma every night but working all day long to finally put an end to it.

She'd relapsed when her brother—that broken, most cherished figment of a nebulous past—had first showed up and now was debating how to feel with the presence of the father she had summoned. But this was Billie, not Elizabeth; Billie sought change and fresh starts.

So, she walked into Joe's bar. Her right hand trembled just like it always did, except it was worse now due to the unchanging, unceasing feeling of unease she'd woken up with that morning. Or, perhaps, ever since she'd arranged said meeting with her father. Or maybe since she'd first heard that voicemail. She didn't know.

It didn't take long for her to sight him sat on one of the booths, toying with an empty glass of what used to be soda but now was only melting ice propped on the table in front of him. His head was down distractedly, so he didn't notice her when she came in, but for her, it was hard to miss him. It was like she could detect him in that room full of people, even though she swore she no longer recognized him.

Billie steadied herself by taking a long, grounding breath of fresh air. It was cold outside, so much that the wind had seeped past the cracks of the many layers of clothing she wore, but the chill she felt wasn't caused by the weather.

Slowly, she approached her father's table.

"Hey," she greeted solemnly once she was close enough like who greets a business partner.

Frank's head shot up in recognition of his youngest child's voice, despite it having changed with time. A small smile tinted his features bright, tiny specks of glowing light bathing his eyes in sunlight.

"Billie, dear," he said, immediately jumping to his feet. "I'm so pleased you came."

His hands twitched by the sides of his body, as if he wanted to hug the unyielding Billie in front of him. However, a thick wall of concrete and stone broke them apart. She immediately sat on the table without so much as a timid smile in his direction, simply to interrupt that weighing silence. Frank took a sit again, clearing up his throat nervously.

Billie soon found herself at a loss. "I'm not really sure what we're supposed to talk about."

Frank chuckled fondly. "Tell me, honey, how have you been?"

"I've been good." She nodded curtly, fiddling with the hem of her jacket—Alex's jacket—nervously. She hadn't even taken it off. She was still cold. "Working."

"Oh, yes. Ian's told me everything."

Billie's heart suddenly came to a halt. "Ian?"

"Well, yes, mostly. But Richard also—"

"You kept in contact with Ian?" she quipped.

She felt it was some form of betrayal, and judging by the look on her father's face, she knew he knew it.

"Well, yes," Frank replied timidly. "For a few months now, only."

Billie nodded and looked down at the ground, processing it over. She felt he'd cheated on her somehow.

She didn't dare speak any further on the topic. "Listen, dad—"

"Wait." Frank's face now fell. "I know I don't deserve it. I know I've lost you forever. But just let me enjoy you for a few more seconds before we finally start talking about what must be talked about."

Billie opened her mouth to say something, but deep inside her, the part of her that still yearned for her father—the child inside her—felt bad for him and couldn't help but grant him those few seconds of daydream. The ones she'd lived in her whole life. She slowly nodded in understanding, looking down at her twiddling fingers latched together on top of the table.

"You're sober, yeah?" she asked then, looking to distract herself from what seemed to be such a tense silence between them both.

A big, toothy grin then lit up on his face. He nodded, quickly reaching into his pocket to take out a small golden badge. His smile was radiant as he placed it on top of the table and slid it towards her. Billie turned her head to read the inscription, but didn't dare touch it.

TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE
Unity Service Recovery
18 months

"Eighteen months sober," Frank explained with a smile. "I just got the badge a week back."

Billie smiled softly and looked up at her father. "That's good, dad. Good for you. Congratulations."

"Thank you." He nodded excitedly, tucking the badge back into his pocket. "I just wanted you to know. Wanted you to show you it's true and I will keep my promise. And, well... I'm doing better. You know? Much, much better. I've moved from our old house in New York, left it for Ian and you in case you ever want it. I've started over."

She nodded again, genuinely glad for him, but unable to feel much past that. She wasn't planning on going back to her childhood home, anyway. Her smile now slowly faded and her eyes had fallen back to her hands, where she used her thumb and index finger to rip out dead bits of skin around her nails until she made herself bleed.

Again, that sense of betrayal.

"Why now, though?" she muttered to herself.

"What was that, honey?" Frank leant in.

Billie looked up and scoffed. "Why now? Why do you decide you want to stop drinking when I finally make the decision to leave? Why not when I was twelve? Or fifteen? Why not then?"

Frank looked at her like he couldn't properly voice his thoughts.

"Billie, honey, it was losing you what made me realize how miserable I was," he began to explain. "After you stopped coming home, I was... alone. Your brother had left years back and now the house was empty and I— I regretted everything so much, because it was my fault. I always regretted it, but I was too clouded... until I lost you. I know, I know it's selfish, but I just... it never occurred to me that you were gonna leave me."

Billie shook her head. "That's not a good enough answer for me, dad. Not good enough."

Frank looked down, embarrassed, as if there were no more words he could say. She was looking at him in utter disappointment after her lifetime daydream fantasy had been obliterated into pieces by a few simple words. Things had changed. They weren't going back to what they used to be.

She wasn't going back to what she used to be.

"I know," Frank finally stated. "I know. There won't ever be a good enough answer. What I did... there's no explaining it. There's no forgiving it."

"Then, why did you call?"

"Because you're still my little girl." Frank didn't even hesitate to speak, looking up—his eyes were teary. His voice snapped in half. "You're still my child."

Billie shook her head, her own eyes welling up with tears. "No, I'm not."

"Yes," he insisted with a trembling voice. "I may not be your father, but you will always be my little girl. And I— I wish I'd been there for you when you were just a kid, but I just now realize that the loss I suffered... we all suffered it. You, me, Ian. Your mother was important to all of us, not just me. I was too selfish to know that back then. But even if you hate me, I will always love you enough for the both of us, so I called just in case there was the smallest, littlest chance that you'd wanna forgive me. It was a stupid thought, but there's nothing wrong in having hope. And I hope more than anything else to make things right."

Billie's eyes had drawn tears that now silently marred her freckle-stained cheeks. She squeezed her eyes shut and looked down, unable to face him any longer.

"I'm sorry," Frank mumbled helplessly.

"Sorry's nothing." She shook her head. "Sorry's nothing, dad. Nothing at all. You think sorry's gonna give me back my childhood? You robbed me of my life how it could've been. When I should've been going to school dances and going out with boys, I was taking care of your ass so you wouldn't choke on your own vomit while you were asleep, even knowing damn well you were gonna beat me at first sight just for breathing wrong as soon as you woke up. You left me hanging alone with so much trauma to deal with that when my first boyfriend started beating me up too, I didn't leave him, because I thought that's the way I should be loved! And I thought that if I could take it from you, I'd take it from anyone I loved enough. You damaged me, dad. You ruined me, scarred me for life. It's because of you that I am now scared whenever someone so much as raises a hand at me and it is because of you that there are so many scars on me that I will never be able to get rid of. Everything bad I am today, you caused it. Sorry's nothing."

There was a silence.

Slowly, as seconds went by, Billie didn't dare look at her father, so her mind began traveling to the hundreds of conversations that she heard in sporadic stabs happening around her: she got distracted listening to the couple on the booth behind her because they were talking about marriage. Then, she thought of marrying Alex because he'd never beaten her. She was crying.

"I miss mom, too," she said then.

Frank hesitated to speak.

"I will always be here for you, my little girl. From now on. Even though I should've been here earlier, the only thing I can do is be here now in case you ever need me. I'm so sorry."

"I'm not mad anymore, dad." Billie sniffled. "I'm not."

"Don't." He shook his head. "Don't lie to me. You've lived your whole life mad. You've lived your whole life angry at me for being drunk. Angry at Ian for not protecting you and angry at your mother for dying. There is anger in you, dear. And for good reason."

She bit her lip.

Maybe there was.

☆

It was almost eleven in the morning by the time Billie arrived at the hospital. She'd had time to clear her head after she'd sent her father off back to New York about an hour ago and had come to the conclusion that she'd gotten her closure. Now, she wanted to look forward instead of continuing to look back, and it all started by never again seeing her father. At the moment, the only ting she wanted was a distraction.

Meredith telling her and Cristina that she was pregnant was just perfect.

"No way," Cristina said.

"Yeah." Meredith nodded.

"No freaking way," Billie added.

"Right?"

"Jesus." The brunette frowned.

"Were you trying to...?" Cristina asked.

"No! Total accident. I used the thing," Meredith explained.

"Oh. So, are we happy about this or are we... killing it?" Billie questioned, looking at her friend worriedly.

Meredith breathed in deep, then smiled awkwardly. Billie and Cristina shared looks before they began laughing excitedly.

"Okay! Alright!" Cristina exclaimed.

"Congratulations!" Billie added. "Let's hug it out!"

They hugged each other tightly for a second, Meredith laughing nervously over their shoulders, as if she didn't quite know how to act in the face of the shocking news.

"My god, have you told him?" Cristina asked excitedly.

"No, I just found out!" the blonde said.

Suddenly, Meredith and Cristina's pagers went off at the same time, warding off both their attentions.

"Teddy," Cristina said after she'd checked the call.

"Derek." Meredith sighed.

"Are you gonna tell him now?" Billie asked, nervous for her best friend.

"Yeah!" Meredith nodded, then looked at Cristina. "How is the Teddy and Owen thing going?"

"Oh! Oh, fantastic. It's going great, I'm completely over it," she was quick to reply.

Billie frowned. "Don't be weird."

"Yeah, whatever. You talked to your father?" Cristina asked.

The brunette opened her mouth to say something, but instead, turned to Meredith and placed a solemn hand on her shoulder, then smiled.

"This is very adult. I'm really proud of you, Mer," she said.

"I'm... proud of me, too?"

"Yeah, you are." Billie laughed, then left in a hurry.

Meredith and Cristina watched her go with frowns upon their faces.

"She totally avoided the topic," the latter said.

"Right?"

☆

NINETEEN YEARS AGO

"Oh, God. Frank, it's the third time this week."

Ivory smiled widely once she caught sight of her husband and two children—a six-year-old Elizabeth and a fourteen-year-old Ian—walking into her ICU room after her surgery. She stretched her arms wide even though she barely had any strength to do so.

After a year on chemotherapy, Ivory wore a cherry-patterned scarf around her hairless head. The television was on in a music channel, playing Michael Jackson silently to provide the family with a background ambience.

Elizabeth jumped on her mother's bed and Ian came running to her side in order to hold her frail hand.

"Kids were anxious to see you. Couldn't stop them little beasts." Frank laughed. "Careful with your mama over there, little one."

Elizabeth laughed as she rolled around on the bed bed, on top of Ivory.

"Oh, dears." The woman grinned widely, then looked at her son with a frown. "Is it me, or have you grown?"

Ian, who had now fully entered his pre-pubescent phase where every teen seems to become quite moody, laughed and rolled his eyes at the typical motherly comment. "Mom, it's been two days."

"And you're as tall as ever, my God!"

Elizabeth laughed stridently, just like any child would—should. The family all chuckled together, then, when the children's attention veered off, Ivory talked straight to her husband, her voice a notch lower.

"They were able to get some of the metastasis on the liver, but they couldn't get the ones on the brain with clean margins. It might come back," she muttered lowly as Ian and Elizabeth were too busy discussing whether to go or not to the cafeteria to fetch some snacks.

Frank pursed his lips and, as he shook his head, his face hidden in his hands, Ivory reached out a hand to him.

"Honey," she said.

He simply took her hand without saying a word back. It was a rhetorical call, anyway.

☆

"Billie! Hey."

As soon as she heard the familiar voice, Billie turned with a relieved smile to find Alex approaching her, a grin big on his face at the renewing sight of her, as he hadn't seen her that morning after she'd left early to go to the bar.

"Hey," she said as he leant in to peck her lips, which was a new habit they had recently acquired, ever since they had officially proclaimed themselves a couple.

"You talked to your father yet?" he asked.

Billie sighed. "Yeah... don't really feel like talking about it though."

"Oh, that's fine, we can talk about it later."

She meant to tell him that not wanting to talk about it meant not talking about it ever, that it was now in the past and in the past it shall stay, but she decided to keep her mouth shut and simply smile. (It wasn't too hard, she'd avoid the topic again later).

"I've missed you," she said in an urgent attempt at a shift in the topic of conversation, leaning in to hug him without previous warning just as an excuse to touch him and hide her face in the process.

Alex was caught slightly off guard by the sudden action, seeing as Billie not so often initiated physical contact, but immediately melted into her velvet touch, delighted at the scent of her fresh cherry perfume she'd put on about a half hour ago, as she hurriedly changed into her scrubs in the residents lounge.

Billie, on her part, was not the biggest fan of physical contact. But it was okay if it was him.

"Missed you, too." He laughed, frowning slightly, hugging her tightly around the waist. "You okay?"

"Oh, I'm fine," she muttered into his skin, planting soft kisses to his neck.

Alex giggled, tickled by her breath against his skin, and Billie laughed and pulled away, looking at his clear features with nothing but a longing gaze. Then, suddenly, a distant boom traveled far enough to reach her ear and cause the hairs on the back of her neck to bristle for no apparent reason. She jolted at the sound and her head shot away from Alex's face towards the shut door of a supply room a few meters away, where she thought the noise had come from. The deafening silence that followed after made a chill slither down her spine.

"Did you hear that?" she asked, her voice suddenly low, nervous.

"Heard what?" Alex frowned.

Billie didn't bother to answer. In a split second, her instincts were making her dash towards the supply room and burst the door open, then surround a shelf just to sight the body of a lifeless Reed Adamson on the floor, with a bullet hole straight through her forehead, a puddle of crimson red blood oozing out of it and a man who she thought to recognize standing above her with a fuming gun on his hand.

"Jesus!" she exclaimed in sudden shock, bolting upwards, then frowned as she took in the scene with a tight chest. "Mr. Clark? What are you doing in here?"

The man slowly turned. There was something in his eyes—nothing.

"You," he said, seemingly devoid.

Billie's heart beat a thousand beats a second, so quickly it felt like a vibration in her chest replacing what should've been a slow rhythm. She heard the blood rushing past her ears and thought to feel some sort of aching pain to her chest when Gary slowly raised the gun to her head.

"Wait—"

Billie didn't get to finish her sentence.

☆

NINETEEN YEARS AGO

"What do you mean you can't fix her! You're a surgeon, for Christ's sakes!" Frank yelled at Dr. Hosbawm.

"Dr. LeBlanc, I'm so sorry," he said. "The cancer is far too advanced. At this point, surgery will only do more harm than good, not to mention her tissue is far too friable to undergo such procedures at the moment. We can wait and try again in a few weeks, but I can't guarantee—"

"No." Frank shook his head. "No, you have to find a solution. You have to operate on her now and take it all out. People live with cancer all the time and my wife has already had her breasts removed and her liver all prodded around for you to now tell me you can't fix her. You can't tell me that was for nothing! No, do something about it. Fix her."

"Dr. LeBlanc, we can't—"

"I don't care! I'm gonna sue you. I'm gonna sue all of you!"

A few feet away, Elizabeth and Ian sat together with Nurse Black, a lovely middle-aged woman who they'd befriended months back during one of their occasional detours to the cafeteria. Frank's screams had interfered in their conversation.

He was a wreck.

"Don't pay attention to that, you're dad's just sorting things out with the doctors," Nurse Black said nervously, trying to get the children's attention away from their frantic father. "Let's keep playing. Where were we?"

☆

Billie opened her eyes. 

She opened her eyes and the first thing she felt was warm, sticky something gluing her scrubs tight to her body. She panted heavily, a sharp pain on her shoulder making the fingers of her hand tingle uncomfortably with the feeling of pins and needles, as if the nerve of her elbow had been struck (she doubted that was the reason, but it sure felt like it). Involuntarily, a soft moan came out of her mouth when she shifted sideways and tremendous pain blinded her eyesight.

Nimble fingers traced back the source of the pain to come in contact with the bullet wound in her shoulder, which oozed blood intermittently with the slightest twitch. Hurriedly, once she slowly came in touch with herself, she appealed to her quick thinking under pressure and used whatever strength she could find to grope for supplies on the shelves to her left, finally coming in contact with what luckily were gauze packet. She ripped one open with her teeth, unable to even summon strength to her wounded arm, and immediately began wrapping it around her oozing shoulder however her only available hand permitted her to, uncaring for whatever bleeder there was because the only thing in her mind was pain and Alex.

It took her horrific efforts to manage a tight bandage around the wound on her shoulder with a disabled hand and having to use her teeth. She hadn't even cared to check whether there was an exit hole or if the bullet was still lodged inside her—she knew gunshot wounds to the shoulder where only fatal one out of five times, so she first wanted to take care of Alex, aside from the fact that she didn't actually feel enough pain to a concerning level. Or maybe she did, she just didn't care (was it the adrenaline?). Anyway, it wasn't a deadly wound, she'd take a look at it later, so once she had a good-enough blockage for the bleeding hole, Billie used whatever strength she could find inside her to pull herself up from the floor.

The first thing she saw was blood. Tons of it.

Most of it came from Reed, who still lay lifeless a meter away, far from saving. Her face had already lost color, her lips blanched and her eyes still and soulless, staring straight at her in longing void. Billie pinned her eyes shut with an ache to her chest (even though she hadn't known her much, her body laying right next to her stirred something inside her), then quickly kept scanning her surroundings even through her bleary eyesight, trying to avoid looking at Reed as much as she could.

She felt that, if she moved her eyes just a little, her world spun. She was nauseous and felt she'd fall.

Another part of the blood she saw was her own, although most of it had stuck to her scrubs, making red out of the light blue of the fabric. But there was also a lot of it smeared carelessly on the floor, as if she'd been trying to make flowers out of it on the tiles. A flower-shaped crimson stain. She grimaced in disgust, swallowing bile to steady herself, and then noticed that the third part of the blood came from Alex, who had been shot right next to her and looked at her from the ground, choking, panting, silent.

At the sight, Billie's knees gave out beneath her.

"Alex!" she yelled, ignoring the screaming pain of her wound when she moved her weak arm to grab at his face. "Jesus Christ."

He coughed, barely able to speak. Billie held at his face with teary eyes, breathing unevenly through her mouth, feeling like she couldn't get enough air into her system. Like there wasn't enough air in the world.

"Fuck, Alex," she whispered out. "Fuck."

Immediately then, she checked the gunshot wound on the side of his chest, which dripped blood that percolated through the thin fabric of his scrubs to create a wide stain. His face was as pale as Reed's, his lips dry from breathing through his mouth repeatedly, which made Billie wonder how long she'd been out, how much blood he'd lost, was he okay?, had the bullet gotten anything important?, and what if it touched his heart?, and what if...?

"Okay, I'm gonna get you out of here, I—" Billie looked at the supply shelf again, but found that the only gauze left, she'd used on her shoulder. "Fuck."

She began looking around desperately for something she could use to apply pressure on his wound, but she found that weirdly enough, the supply closet was nearly empty. A bloody hand clawed at her hair, pulling it back and away from her face uselessly, leaving red stains on her temples.

"Fuck!" she yelled again, louder, and more pain exuded from her own wound. She began crying. "Fuck, Jesus."

With the help of her unwounded arm and teeth, Billie had no choice but to summon her whole strength to rip off a piece of her scrub top, which she used to apply pressure on Alex's wound however she could.

"Hold on, Alex, please," she begged, crying unaware.

☆

FOURTEEN YEARS AGO

Ivory was back home. Dr. Hosbawm had sent her to spend her last weeks along her family in her own house, despite Frank's constant complaints and his near tearing down and suing the whole hospital for malpractice, negligence, whatever he could think of that would tear the centre to its core. He'd screamed at everyone up and down, had knocked down desks, chairs, crash carts, had even nearly assaulted a nurse who was simply trying to get him to sit down. But in the end, he knew his screaming wouldn't do much for the fact that his wife was dying, and there was no changing that.

So, the LeBlanc's were back home. Elizabeth and Ian (aged ten and seventeen) were unaware—not quite; they knew something was going on, just not what exactly. They hadn't been told anything explicitly, although Ian in his advanced adolescence could practically already suss it out without anybody telling him. The problem was Elizabeth, who was still too young, too naive, to realize her mother was actually dying and her being back home was not a good sign. But the atmosphere in the estate was tense. Ivory hadn't moved from her room (good news for the children!, more eating on bed alongside mama!) and Frank had been pacing back and forth all around the house. And everything was a mess.

No one had cared to clean the kitchen in the past few days—not even Ian, who was quite organized—so a pile of dirty dishes kept growing on the sink, on the counter. Drawers and cupboards lay wide open and ajar, as whoever made use of them either forgot or was simply too lazy or too tired due to nights spend awake to close them back. They had run out of milk a while ago, but no one had bothered to leave the house to do the groceries. It seemed unimportant. Plus, the trash can was overflowed. 

In the living room, the couches had been messy for a while, too. Cushions and blankets were out of place, the usually neatly-placed magazines on the coffee table were disarranged and there were crease marks on the spots of the sofa were Ian spent his days laying down, asleep due to the tire induced by nights spent wide-eyed, watching over his mother.

Billie wondered what had happened to her brother. Why he didn't laugh anymore. And why Frank, who was a very organized person, wasn't being it right now. The LeBlanc home was very silent.

Frank had started drinking.

He did it in secret, didn't dare to let Ivory or any of his children see the vodka bottle he'd purchased five nights prior during a secret night escapade where life seemed like too much and he just needed to go. He didn't want to seem weak, didn't want to get scolded by his dying wife or questioned by his ten-year-old daughter. He wanted to see none of them and at the same time, sought to spend every available second by their sides. Now, he sipped whenever no one looked—and he spent most of his time secretly drunk.

No one could tell, naturally. His stumbling and his babbling was blamed on his exhaustion, his sleepless nights and the depression that had befallen him. No one really knew, not even the few relatives and friends that stopped by occasionally, not even his own wife. No one, except Elizabeth. She'd smelled it on his breath once and had then caught him drinking two nights later.

"What are you doing, dad?" she'd asked Frank once she'd come down the stairs to find him hunched on a corner, facing the wide library of the living room.

He'd turned abruptly, almost knocking down a family picture in the process. He'd hidden something behind his back and Billie had eyed him with concern.

"Oh, nothing, dear, just... cleaning out the cobwebs back here. House is a mess," he'd said with a nervous laugh.

Elizabeth had turned to look at the state of the house and had wondered why his dad cared so much for the cobwebs on the library and not the molding dishes on the sink.

"Is mommy okay?" Frank had asked. "Does she need anything? Why don't you go back up and check on her?"

Elizabeth, then, had squinted her eyes at her father in suspicion. "She needs some water."

"O—Okay. Why don't you go grab some from the kitchen? I'll finish here and follow you up, yeah?" Frank had smiled a messy smile.

She had hesitated, but had finally nodded and turned in the direction of the kitchen. However, before stepping in, she'd turned back to her father and had seen it, had seen the bottle. In the moment, she had been deeply confused.

☆

Somehow (Billie didn't quite know how, maybe it was the adrenaline in her system slowly eclipsing away the pain irradiating from her shoulder or the fact that she was far too desperate to think about anything else), Billie had managed to drag Alex's wounded body and her own weak self towards the nearest elevator. They'd left a huge trail of blood behind—on the floor, on the walls, on their own hands, clothes, hairs, skins—along with a dead body in the supply closet and now ran off as fast as they could, as fast as the elevator went, wondering what the hell was going on, wondering how to help themselves.

Billie did whatever she could to keep applying pressure on Alex's wound, but the piece of her scrub top that she'd ripped off had already become completely soaked in blood, so it wasn't of much use anymore. She'd been forced to make use of the remaining part of the scrub top and now shivered only in the tank top she wore beneath. He had been in and out for the past few minutes, delirious due to the blood lost, agonizing in his pain. She was unknowingly crying in frustration as she dragged her boyfriend across the few meters that felt like miles.

By the time they were finally in the elevator, Billie was panting, unable to properly breathe through her exhaustion and preoccupation. She, too, had lost a lot of blood and felt slightly drowsy, dizzy, out of herself, but blamed it on her hyperventilation rather than on the fact that there was an open wound leaking internal fluids from her shoulder. She'd dismissed it. She was used to pain and had managed to block it out, focusing solely on getting her boyfriend to safety. 

She clicked whatever button her hand fumbled upon and the door slowly closed, locking them in.

"Alex, baby," she begged as she sobbed. "Please, stay awake."

But his blue scrub top was far too red, his rosy skin far too white and his cherry lips far too grey. He was looking at her and he wanted to speak, but his lungs were robbed of air, so again, he went in and out. A pool of dark red blood surrounded them both and Billie could feel it soaking through the knees of her scrub pants, seeping in through the fabric of her worn-out shoes, drenching her toes.

"I'm right here, okay? I'm not letting you go." She sobbed. "I'm right here, baby. Please don't leave me."

Billie looked around, then slammed her hand against one of the metal walls, leaving behind the imprint of her fingers in bright red, kneeling on a pool of blood that grew and grew.

"C'mon!" she yelled.

Her pager went off. With shaky, bloody hands, she unhooked it from the hem of her scrub pants and checked the message.

Lockdown.

"No," she whispered under her breath. "No. No, no, no, no! Fuck! We're locked. We're locked in with him. They locked us up."

She felt she couldn't breathe. She felt like she was back in her intern year performing heart surgery on a dying patient inside an elevator, except the dying patient was now the love of her life and she could do nothing to save him. She was desperate, desperately calling for help even though no one could hear her, feeling the walls closing in on her, choking her, drowning her.

Suddenly, the elevator dinged. The doors opened to the ground floor and Billie looked up to find Mark and Lexie hugged together, panting, looking down at them both as people screamed and ran frantically behind them.

☆

FOURTEEN YEARS AGO

Elizabeth had stopped going to school. Ian had put it off, too. None of them cared much.

Now, Elizabeth knew everything. She knew her mother was dying—not because anyone had told her about it, but because she could tell. She could tell her mother's blanching lips weren't a sign of improvement and that her frail limbs weren't due to chemotherapy. Ivory's sickness had gone past any medication, any surgery. Now, she was just weak.

Elizabeth and Ian spent their days in the living room, watching TV, or in their mother's bed, reading stories, watching her surgical tapes after Ian's announced decision to pursue a surgical career just like his parents. Their weeks meshed together into meaningless periods of time and none of them checked the clocks anymore. They slept when they were tired and ate when they were hungry. Nobody knew what time it was. The curtains were shut.

Frank had ran off.

Nobody had seen him in the past few days—not at home, not at work. In his absence, the children's uncle, Denny, had come to accompany the family during Ivory's last days, which seemed to be lasting an eternity.

Elizabeth found herself in the living room with him.

"When's dad coming home?" she asked curiously for what must've been the third time in the past few hours, staring out the window, blinking at the gust of warm breeze coming in as her uncle had opened a window to aerate the common areas.

"I don't know, honey." Denny sighed, caressing her back where his arm wrapped around her tiny figure over the backrest of the couch. "I've told you, he needs some time."

"Mommy's gonna go and he's not gonna be here," Elizabeth reasoned. "He's being very selfish."

 He looked at her. "Don't say that. He knows what he's doing."

"Dad's drinking," she confessed. "I saw him with a bottle and I could smell it on him. It smelled the same way Mr. Antoine smelled, I remember."

Mr. Antoine had been one of Elizabeth's primary teachers when she was younger. He'd also been a drunk.

Denny didn't know what to answer, so he held her tighter, unwilling to let go of the little girl he considered his child in the face of the death of her mother, the death of the woman he'd spent his whole life loving but whose breath had been robbed by his own brother. At least, if Frank wouldn't bother to show up, he'd be there, playing the father he was missing to be.

"He'll come home," he stated hopelessly. "He will."

"I hope so," Billie said.

But Denny knew his brother far too well.

☆

Mark propped Alex down on top of the table as soon as him and Lexie arrived at a conference room, closely seconded by Billie, who panted heavily, bleary-eyed, dizzy because she was scared and because she was injured, and because her fingers had gone numb and her forearm wouldn't stop tingling, and because the black tank top she wore did nothing to soothe her chill. On the table, blood-covered, Alex groaned in pain, snapping into consciousness.

"I grabbed everything I could think of," Lexie said worriedly, carrying a pile of medical supplies she'd fetched from a supply room on their hurried race for shelter.

As Mark fixed himself a pair of latex gloves, Alex was panting deliriously. "I'm so... incredibly pissed off right now."

Billie stood by the door, grabbing at her head, clawing at her roots with the same desperation she'd felt the day her mother had died and her father hadn't been there. The blood on her body had come to dry now, so it lay hard on her, unmoving, encasing her in a cage. However, she didn't care past the fact that the love of her life now agonized on a table right in front of her.

She was beginning to understand what Alex's nightmares felt like.

"Oh, God," she muttered to herself, feeling herself in a fever dream.

"Billie, come in, close the door!" Mark yelled. "Alex, you've been shot."

Billie complied drowsily, closing the door behind her, then hurriedly shutting the blinds so as to not be seen in case Gary came back. Her heart was racing a thousand miles a minutes and she felt she couldn't keep herself from shaking violently. She was cold, understood little to nothing of what was going on and simply wanted to be back home—she would've even liked it better if she was still at Joe's bar talking to her father, horrible an experience though it might have been.

"We have to get him out of here." Lexie's voice trembled as she held back her own tears. "He could come back, Mark. We have to get him out of here."

"There's no exit wound," he announced after he briefly checked Alex's side. "No exit wound. We're gonna have to flip him. Lexie, grab him under the shoulders."

"Fuck," Billie muttered to herself, her breathing far too uneven, her chest tight.

"We have to get him out of here, we have to get him out—"

"Shut up!" Billie suddenly burst. Both Mark and Lexie fell silent beneath Alex's groaning. "Shut up, okay? We're in lockdown, we can't get him out and he's losing blood so flip him and shut up, 'cause I can't do it and someone has to."

Lexie gulped, but powered by her desperate friend's words, finally nodded and climbed onto the table to help Mark flip Alex over. He yelled in pain as they moved him and Billie took her hand to her mouth when they put him on his side and blood cascaded down his bare chest in an ongoing squirt that showed that the blood seeping out of his body had yet to clot.

"Nothing. Oh, damn, the bullet's still in there somewhere. We're gonna have to wing it." Mark sighed. "Start an IV, I'll set up a chest tube."

Billie couldn't breathe.

"Billie?" Mark called.

"It's not safe," she breathed out. "It's not safe, it's not sterile. He could get an infection."

"Billie, we have no choice."

"Don't, please." Billie cried in utter desperation.

Mark finally looked at her. He could count with one hand the times he'd seen her openly crying in front of him, so he felt his heart halting when he took a final look at her and noticed the tears drenching her cheeks, the white and red of virgin skin under dried blood and salty downpour like never before.

"We can't wait," he explained rather calmly then, once he noticed. "If we wait, he'll bleed out. An infection is manageable. Death isn't."

The tears kept streaming down her face, but she knew her words would do nothing to stop him. Mark and Lexie got to work, so Billie surrounded the table and chose to stand by Alex's head, holding it gently with her hands in the only way she could think of to somehow soothe him, seeking to communicate him whatever comfort she could exude within her own desperation.

"You're gonna be okay, yeah? You'll be alright," she muttered, although more to herself, sniffling lightly.

"I'm gonna kick that guy's ass when I see him," Alex mumbled shakily, looking up at her through heavy lids.

She let out a weak chuckle. "Yeah, you will."

Lexie placed a nasal cannula on him and Billie watched with horror his blood-stained teeth as he groaned through a tight jaw.

☆

"You're doing great, Alex. Really great. Now..." Mark said. "I need to put in a chest tube. You're with me, okay?"

Billie's hand was tightly encapsulated by Alex's finger, as he gripped her too tight, gazing up at her in fond adoration through his pain. Immediately, however, when he heard Mark's words, he shook his head frantically, disconsolate.

"No," he said. "No chest tube. I'm okay. Don't cut me."

"Shut up," Billie told him, and he looked up at her in immediate silence.

"Lexie, you get the betadine ready and I'll do the rest, okay?" Mark demanded.

The younger girl nodded and soaked the side of Alex's bare chest with the solution. The plastic surgeon got ready to cut, completely outside of his field but forced to carry out the procedure to save his resident's life. Alex groaned and sobbed through the pain, so Billie squeezed his hand three times and held back her own tears—she'd be strong for the both of them, if that's what it took.

However, as soon as Mark began cutting, Alex began screaming.

"Shut him up. Shut him up!" Mark whisper-yelled at Lexie. "Shut him up."

"Oh, my God. Oh, God," Lexie murmured while Billie stirred in her place uncomfortably, holding herself back from bursting into tears in the face of such horrifying, gut-wrenching screams ripping at Alex's throat. "Shh... Alex..."

But he screamed again.

"Shut him up, Lexie. If the guy with the gun hears the screaming, he's gonna head this way. Now do something to shut him up!"

Lexie swallowed. "Okay, okay. Alex, shh... I know that it hurts, but you have to be quiet. Okay?"

Alex rolled around deliriously for some seconds, allowing space for a few ragged breaths to come out, but when Mark inserted the chest tube, he screamed again, even louder.

"Lexie!"

"Jesus." Billie breathed in heavy.

She spared a glance through the closed blinds and a few tears slipped down her cheeks, but in a second, she gathered her strength, stood up and moved Lexie out of the way.

"Get out. Move!" she demanded.

Lexie did as told and Billie occupied her place on the table, immediately grabbing a piece of gauze and sticking it into Alex's mouth to muffle his screams. The room became slightly more silent when he began howling wretchedly into the fabric and the horrifying shrieks were consumed by the material, but she couldn't bear the way he looked at her with tears in his eyes and feeling nothing but pain.

"I'm sorry," she cried. "I'm sorry, I love you. Please forgive me."

☆

"BPs sixty palp," Lexie stated through a shaky voice after hearing Alex's erratic heartbeat with a stethoscope.

"He's losing a lot of blood," Mark announced as he operated. "Damn it. He needs a transfusion. I don't know what we're gonna do."

There was a moment of silence. Billie watched the scene from a corner, propped against the wall, her bloody hands crossed over her chest as she pinched at her injured arm, hoping to regain some sense over the unceasing tingling. She was cold where the air came in contact with her arms. Alex trembled, too.

"I'll go. I'll go get it," Lexie suddenly claimed.

"That's insane." Mark frowned. "I'll go."

"No! I don't know what to do, you know what to do, I don't—"

"I'll go," Billie interrupted them both.

"You're not gonna go, Billie." Mark suddenly jumped in high alert. "Look at te state you're in. There's no way I'm letting you."

"I'll go," she repeated, shaking her head. "I'll go. I'll do it."

A whisper interrupted them.

"N—No," Alex mumbled weakly. "You're not... you're not gonna go."

Billie sucked in a sharp breath and broke the distance that separated them by walking the two steps between them. She held his head gently and lent in to softly kiss his forehead.

"I can't just do nothing," she whispered. "I can't stand here and watch you die while I wait for someone else to go look for the blood you need. I have to do it and I'll make sure I get it. I have to. I can't do nothing."

Billie saw a tear slither its way down the corner of Alex's eyes. She leant in and kissed him deep.

"It's me. It's Billie," she said. "I'll be right back, okay? Try not to die."

And she was gone.