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CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
dream a little dream of me.
season five, episodes one and two.

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With a bag of strawberry Twizzlers on one hand and one of the candies on the other, Billie, alongside other doctors, stood around the computer where the hospital rankings were supposed to be coming up.

"Back up, you're sucking all my oxygen," Bailey, who was the one in charge of the computer, complained, seeing as both Billie and Derek were invading her personal space.

"We're trying to see," Derek fired back.

"It's not up yet. There's nothing to see."

"Twizzler?" Billie offered simply, but the resident shook her off.

"It's supposed to be posted at four!" Hahn stated the obvious.

"It's four fifteen," Mark said.

"Hit the refresh button. You have to reload the page." Cristina walked up to Bailey and tried to click the refresh button on the keyboard, but the resident slapped her away.

"I'm hitting the refresh button every ten seconds. Just wait," she said just as Meredith approached them.

"Is it up yet?" she asked.

"Not yet," Billie answered, chewing on a piece of the red candy, then reached out the bag towards her friend. "Twizzler?"

"Uh," Meredith frowned. "no."

"Hi," Derek greeted the blonde, seeing as, after Meredith had built them both a candle house at the top of the hill on his land, they were back together.

"Hi." She smiled back, causing Billie and Cristina to share disgusted looks.

"Is it up yet?" Alex ran up to them.

"Nope. Twizzler?" Billie asked for what felt like the hundredth time. He simply quirked the corners of his lips downwards and shrugged, to which she took the candy to his lips and allowed him to rip off a piece with his teeth.

"I think we move up a slot. Pass Hopkins, move up to number one," Mark stated his opinion.

"We're not passing Hopkins, they're, like, the best teaching program in the whole country. We're gonna stay in number two," Billie said through a mouthful of candies.

"Mayo could surge ahead, we could be three," Hahn interfered.

"Three?" Derek looked up. "Pessimist."

"Realistic," Hahn and Billie chorused, causing the attending to look at the resident with something that sort of resembled motherly pride.

"The rankings of teaching hospitals change based on any number of things," the blonde then said.

"Eh, there's top five. I can live with three." Mark shrugged.

"Hit the refresh button." Alex reached out his hand, which Bailey promptly slapped away.

"Stay back! I'm doing this." She glared.

"Hey!" Izzie approached them at a sprint. "Is it up yet?"

"No."

"Here, just hit the refresh-"

For the third time, Bailey clawed Izzie's hand away from the keyboard. "I am hitting the refresh-! Okay, all of you, back up. Stop hovering, stop speculating. The rankings will go up when they go up. We have no control of when they're posted. When it is up, I will say, it is up! Until then, back up, shut up and leave me alone, so I can-"

Billie, whose eyes have been fixated on the screen, suddenly jolted. "It's up!"

Everyone immediately turned and leant in in order to check what position they were ranked.

"Number one, Hopkins. Number two, Mayo..." Bailey began numbering.

"Told you."

"Number three-" the resident suddenly stopped, "-Cleveland Clinic?"

"Wait, what?" Billie frowned.

"Number four, Mass Gen."

"Wait, wait, we moved down to five?" Cristina asked in utter horror, almost deafening Billie due to her mouth being so close to the latter's ear. She nudged her person on the ribs in order to shut her up.

"No. We are not five," Bailey said in disappointment as she kept scrolling down the list, trying to find Seattle Grace's name.

Billie suddenly screamed when she caught sight of the familiar title. "We are fucking number twelve?!"

☆

As expected, no trauma had come in. Not officially.

As the doctors had been waiting in the ambulance station, a wrecked limousine had pulled over, carrying three women in ball gowns and the driver, who had flown through the windshield during a car crash they had recently gone through.

The three women were now up in the ER. None of them had severe injuries, except for a cheekbone cut and the fact that one of the women had her memory reseted every fifteen seconds. Billie was now hanging by the nurses station alongside Bailey, filling up her patient's chart and feeling bored out of her mind.

Bailey, with the phone to her ear, suddenly sighed. "I have a dream, Black."

"Excuse me?"

"That one day, a trauma will come through those doors..." She gestured widely towards the ER entrance. "I have a dream."

"I share that dream." Billie nodded in approval, letting out a prolonged huff and propping her chin on her fist boredly.

The older woman shook her head. "Number twelve."

"Number twelve," she repeated melancholically.

"Right now, Dispatch is squawking about three men. Three men. Three!" Bailey complained. "Serious injuries everyone. They're taking them to Mercy West."

Billie was shaking her head in disappointment when, suddenly, she brightened up. "Wait, three men?"

"That's what I said."

"You mean like three men who could be married to those ladies in the ball gowns?" she asked hopefully.

☆

"Am I to understand that you stole these traumas from Mercy West?" Webber asked Bailey and Billie as they stood in the nurses station, waiting for the three ambulances to come in.

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Bailey shrugged innocently, just as the vehicles pulled up at the station.

"Good job. Cause now it's personal," he said, much to her surprise, but there was no time to dwell on the comment. "Black, come with me."

Both doctors immediately ran up to one of the vehicles and opened the backdoors, through which a paramedic rolled out a stretcher with a man on it, "Uh, we got a situation. Fifty-eight-year-old male, MVC. Tacking one-sixty. BP, eighty palp. Decreased bilateral and breath sounds."

As the paramedic moved out of the way, Billie and Webber came in sight with a redhead man wearing an army uniform and blowing air through a thin ballpoint pen that was cut into the patient's chest.

"What did you do?!" Webber asked in shock.

"I didn't do it, he did!" the paramedic defended, gesturing towards the redhead. "G.I. Joe trached him in the field before I got there!"

"With a pen? You trached this guy with an ink pen?" Billie frowned, equally shocked, but mostly, awed.

The man looked up and frowned. "So?"

Webber was baffled. "Move this guy inside, now. C'mon, let's go. Move, move, move, move!"

As the paramedics, the doctor and the army man rolled the stretcher inside, Billie hung outside for a second, watching them go. She noticed briefly a very big cut on the stranger's leg, which oozed blood relentlessly from his ripped pants, but he didn't seem to notice or care.

"Pen trach?" She frowned, small smile lingering on her lips. "Hot."

☆

"Oh, sir!" Billie approached Webber as he came out of an exam room alongside the army man. "Dr. Hahn is working on multiple crush injuries. She wants you to take a look."

"I'm on my way," he replied, but then noticed the redhead's leg. "You're bleeding."

"Uh, my car was right behind theirs at the intersection. I cut it on impact." He shrugged off.

"And you triaged these men?"

He nodded. "Major Owen Hunt. US Army Second Forward Surgical. I'm a trauma surgeon. Just got home on leave."

"Dr. Black," Webber called. "Take care of Major Hunt's leg."

Billie frowned for a second, then followed the Chief as he walked away. "Uh, sir, I'm scrubbing in with you."

"After you take care of Major Hunt." Webber nodded.

Once again, the Chief walked away, so Billie simply rolled her eyes and huffed, turning to the so-called Owen Hunt. However, once she noticed he was striding off down the hallway, she was forced to follow him, although rather reluctantly.

"Hey, hey, where are you going?"

"To check on my other patients."

"No, no, no, you are the patient! Wait- dude, hold up!"

☆

Once Billie finally managed to rip Owen away from the patients, she took him to an exam room and searched for the needed kit in order to suture his cut. She applied betadine to the injury and then turned towards the counter in order to fetch the instruments.

"Okay, I'm gonna numb the area now," she said, but when she turned back around, she was shocked to see Owen holding a stapler and stapling his cut closed, letting out a quiet grunt every time. "Uh, you're not numbed."

He looked up. "So?"

"So, ouch," Billie winced in shock, staring at him wide-eyed as he continued to staple the wound.

However, he came to a halt, "Can't get an angle on these. Could you?"

Her lips slowly parted in shock, but soon curved into an amused smile as to what she was witnessing. She put down the needle she was priorly going to use in order to numb him and slowly knelt down in front of him in order to get in eye level with his injury. She retrieved the instrument from his hand and then stapled once, but her instincts brought her to look up in order to make sure he was okay. Owen nodded to get her to keep going and she complied.

Once she was done, he smiled. "Thank you."

"Yeah." She scoffed, still in disbelief while she rose to her feet. "Don't mention it."

"Owen Hunt, by the way," he said.

"So you've said," Billie chanted back, but then added: "Billie Black."

"Huh. You're a resident?"

"Yep. Second year."

"How old are you?" Owen squinted his eyes, slightly disbelieving.

"Twenty-four," she replied simply, yet had no choice but to elaborate when he looked at her in confusion. "Finished high school at fifteen."

"Wow, so, like a prodigy?"

Billie smiled as she tucked the instruments back into the kit.

"So I've been called," she said, and Owen smiled.

They stayed silent for a second as she finished putting away all of the surgical instruments, oblivious to his eyes on her. After a few moments, he talked.

"What are you thinking?"

She looked back at him over her shoulder briefly, but opted to shake her head instead. "Nothing."

"Not nothing," he retaliated, somehow able to read her nuances.

Billie slowly turned and squinted her eyes at him, then finally took a step forward that denoted sheer confidence. "What you did out there with the pen was butchery, if you think about it. What you did now, to your own leg, was butchery." She then paused. "I like it."

Owen didn't instantly reply, and he didn't really have the time to before they were interrupted. Just then, Callie was walking into the room.

"Uh, Major, can I ask you something about a patient?" she asked.

"Yeah," he answered simply with his eyes fixated solely on Billie.

The girl smirked. "You do that. I'm gonna go."

☆

"He's got fishing gear. And boots. And hair products. I don't have room for any of that stuff. And he talks. And not a little. I mean, he chats. He's chatty freaking Cathy," Meredith said as her, Cristina and Billie traveled down the stairs, the two latter freshly out of surgery.

None of the two had found it fit to mention, but during the operation, Cristina had erred; she had accidentally done a stitch on a bowel the way it would be done in a heart, which almost killed the patient. Billie was forced to butt in and do the stitch herself in order for the patient to live, but it had been a major bruise to Cristina's ego, so she wasn't exactly in the greatest mood.

"Not right now." Consequentially, the latter huffed.

"And then, you know what's gonna happen after he moves in, don't you?" the blonde continued regardless. "We build a house on his land. Which will be our land, because we'll be married. And then, I'll be Dr. Mrs. Shepherd. And you know what comes after that, don't you? Babies. And they'll be his babies, so they'll have perfect hair and they'll be chatty. So I'll have five chatty children, a chatty husband, and live in a house in the wilderness. And then, I'll start sleeping with your husbands!" As they talked, the two followed Cristina out of the hospital, where the snow wind blew chilly. "I gotta tell him I changed my mind, don't you think?"

"Meredith!" Cristina yelled loudly, causing her two persons to freeze in place.

"What?" Both the blonde and the brunette frowned. Cristina slowly turned. "Why are you making that face?"

"Shut up! You know, just shut up, about Derek. Shut up about moving in with Derek, shut up about your relationship! Because, you wanna know what? I've heard it all before," she yelled.

Billie jumped in Meredith's defense. "Hey, what the hell's your problem?"

"No, you know, you guys get together, and Billie and I have to listen to it. And then you guys break up! And Billie and I have to listen to it." Cristina seemed bewildered. "I erred a surgery today! If Billie hadn't been in there to save my ass, that man would be dead right now. And it would've been my fault."

"Cristina," the brunette warned.

"No, okay, you wanna know what I think? Okay, you really wanna know?" She didn't listen. "You and Derek will not work. Moving in together is a mistake of massive proportions. You are dreaming of dead Derek, which should tell you: it will not work!"

"Cristina, I-"

"No! You know, this whole thing, this 'happily ever after'? Does not exist. So please, please, please, as you weigh your options here, just consider the possibility-" she said, "-of shutting the hell up! Because I can't listen to it anymore."

There was a moment of silence.

"I-"

"No."

"Okay-"

"No!"

Billie shook her head in anger. "Cristina, could you chill the fuck out?"

"Okay, that's it. That's it, I'm done!"

With her arms wrapped around her chest in order to shield herself from the cold, Cristina stormed past her two persons and attempted to walk back into the hospital, but once she stepped on the sidewalk, she was met with a thin layer of frozen dew on the floor, which made her slip and land on her back.

"Oh, ow, ow, ow!" She groaned.

Billie and Meredith immediately ran towards her, but the blonde soon arched an eyebrow. "I'm not gonna say you deserved that, but, you deserved that."

"Oh, thanks." Cristina laughed sorely. "Oh, help me... help me up."

They laughed together for a second, but before Billie could reach out her hand in order to help her friend up, they heard a crack above them. They blinked and, suddenly, there was a huge icicle impaled on Cristina's abdomen.

"Oh!" she yelled out, seeing as a ring of blood slowly surged around the piece of ice. Billie's eyebrows shot up in surprise.

Meredith gasped. "Don't move. I'm gonna go get some help. Billie, you stay with her."

The brunette watched as her person ran into the hospital. Once the doors were closed, she looked down at Cristina and raised an eyebrow in mockery.

"You deserved that too, you know?"

"Oh, shut up."

☆

Billie heard from Meredith's mouth that Cristina's icicle had been removed from her abdomen by none other than Major Owen Hunt after her x-rays had come back clear. Once she'd checked in on all of her patients, she found herself in the viewing room, retrieving the scans left from her patients in order to seal them in their charts. She didn't hear Owen when he came in, looking for the same thing. He was surprised to see her there, but not any less pleased.

"Billie, right?" he asked after a few seconds, to which the girl turned around, having been oblivious to his presence up to the moment.

"Oh, uh, yes." She smiled politely, still picking up the left scans that were hanging from the light panels. She squinted her eyes. "Owen, right?"

He laughed. "Yes."

There was a pause as he made it his job to pick up his own scans (which, technically, he wasn't allowed to grab, but he did regardless). Then, Owen spoke.

"Oh, hey, I've been meaning to ask... what field are you leaning towards?"

"Oh, that's a personal question." She laughed, placing all of the retrieved scans inside her folder and then standing by the table, a few feet away from him. "Neuro."

"Neuro," he repeated. "I see it."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." Owen nodded. "Cocky, focused, steady. All it takes."

"Cocky?" Billie arched an eyebrow at the tease. "I think we're getting a little mixed up here."

"Oh, I'm cocky?" He inched forward, starting to walk towards her.

"I'm just saying." She raised her hands up by her sides and claimed innocence, small smirk lingering on her lips.

"I'm not cocky."

"Whatever you say."

They laughed for a second before Billie began heading to the door, ready to leave the x-ray viewing room behind in order to finally, once and for all, get back home. However, something about Owen made her stop.

She squinted her eyes. "Talk to me about trauma."

"Trauma?" he repeated, shuffling around the room in the search for one final scan he couldn't seem to find. "Quick and dirty. No time to make things pretty and no time for mistakes."

"No time for mistakes, huh?" Billie leant against the closed door. "So, what, you don't make mistakes?"

"I make mistakes, people die," he denied. "In the field, you do what you can. You work with what you have. It's about something, it's not about being the best. It's about saving lives." Owen came to a halt, standing a little closer to her and looking her in the eye. "You should ditch this place, go for the adventure."

"Oh, I should?" Billie arched an eyebrow.

"Yeah. You're telling me this place gives you a high, a rush?"

She girl looked over her shoulder, through the window that displayed a view of the main hall. "Well... yeah. It does."

When she turned back around, she found Owen to be closer than what she had expected, forcing her to tilt her head back in order for her eyes to meet his. Slowly, he glanced over at the window, which he promptly shut the blinds to before he placed his hands on her waist and kissed her.

Billie was startled, obviously. But it didn't exactly feel wrong. In fact, it felt better than what she had felt in a long time. So she didn't pull away, not at first. Instead, she relished the kiss and melted into the touch, right before reality was dawning in on her.

She laughed and pushed him away. "I don't know you."

Owen squinted his eyes. "So?"

He made a gesture to kiss her again, but as Billie was also leaning in, he pulled away and broke all sorts of contact, causing her to arch her eyebrows at the tease. Gathering his set of scans from the table, Owen then proceeded to head out of the x-ray viewing room, leaving the resident to dwell on what had just happened.

☆

That night, at three-thirty in the morning, Billie left the hospital in order to meet up with Miles at Joe's bar. They had agreed through the phone that they both had a few things they wanted to talk about with one another, but they weren't nervous.

That's what Billie loved most about being with Miles: everything was so damn easy.

Once she'd jostled down the stairs and into the warm pub, Billie sighted in the distance as Miles rose from his seat on a booth, having noticed her standing under the sill. A smile immediately took over her lips, almost too fast to be noticed, and she began heading in his direction.

"Hey," he greeted, urging her to sit down on the seat opposite to his.

She complied. "Hi."

"You wanted to talk to me, yeah?"

"You wanted to talk to me too," Billie retaliated with a playful smile, earning a soft chuckle.

"Yeah, but you go first."

"Okay, then." She nodded. "I have something I have to say. I don't know if you'll like it, I don't know what you'll do, but... I'm trying to be better." She came to a halt. "I recently had a very dark patch of my life. I made a lot of bad calls. So, I'm trying to be a new me. I'm trying to make all the right decisions so that you don't have to suffer the consequences of it later. And it starts with me being honest."

Miles frowned. "Okay?"

"Well," Billie braced herself for the confession, "I kissed somebody." She shook her head, and before she knew it, she was rambling. "Actually, I kissed two somebodies. Well, they kissed me, I just... you know, kissed them back. And I'm not sure they really count, because one of them did it while he was at a very vulnerable point of his life, and the other I don't even know and I don't think I'll ever see again. But both happened, and both I enjoyed, and both I wanted you to know."

"Billie." Miles laughed.

"No, no, okay. Before you say anything, this is me being honest, okay? This is me being better. And I don't mean to hurt you in any way, I really don't. But if I kept it a secret, then I feel it would do more harm than good-"

"Billie."

"I mean, it's not like we're in a relationship or anything. We've made that pretty clear. But we've been kind of exclusive for a while, and it just felt right that you knew before anybody else did." She breathed out a sigh. "And still, if you wanna be mad, just remember that none of those kisses actually counted-"

"Billie!" Miles finally exclaimed in a chuckle, causing her to come to an abrupt end.

"What?"

"What I wanted to tell you-" he smiled, amused, "-is that I met someone."

Billie was substantially taken aback by the words. Not in a bad way, just in a wow, I really did not see that coming, seriously, how long has this been going on for? sort of way, which, to be fair, was a pretty reasonable reaction from her, given the nervous rant she'd just blurted out all while simply and conclusively trying to tell him she was kind of a whore. Notwithstanding, Miles' smile was wide on his face.

"Wait-" Billie shook her head, trying to understand his words, "-what?"

"Her name's April. We work together and, well, I've met her before, but we've just recently began going out. It's kind of a young thing, but... you know, I'm really enjoying it," he explained genuinely.

"Wait, you're actually serious? I thought you were joking." She frowned. Miles laughed. "Oh, my God. So, like, you're all in?"

"I'm all in, I guess." He gestured widely.

Billie grinned. "Well, does she make you happy?"

"Yes," Miles said, smiling so wide she was surprised it didn't hurt his cheeks. "More than anyone I've ever met."

She stared at him for a second with a longing feeling.

"Let me guess," Billie then leant in with a cheeky smile. "she's absolutely blown away by your sex abilities."

Miles squinted his eyes. "As much as I'm, uh, flattered... not quite, no."

"Ugh. Boomer. Definitely not a keeper." She shrugged nonchalantly, retrieving the beer pint that sat obsolete in front of him and drinking a long, long swig. She struggled to chug it down. "But! I'm happy for you, Miles, I am."

"You're being weird."

"I'm being supportive." She smiled widely, genuinely happy that her best friend had finally found someone. However, her face soon fell. "Wait, does that mean that we're over?"

"Uh..." Miles grimaced. "Yes, kind of."

"So, no more sex?"

"I don't think it makes the cut."

"Head?"

"Definitely not."

"Not even some kissing?" Billie pouted.

Miles laughed. "No. Nothing."

She huffed.

"Well, I do admire the commitment." She nodded truthfully, cracking a peanut and tossing it into her mouth. "But hey, if she ever cheats on you, just know that I can and will consent to be used as payback."

Miles rolled his eyes playfully. "Oh, shut up."

"You shut up," she fired back with a grin.