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CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
crash into me (part one of two).
season four, episodes nine and ten.

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That morning, Billie arrived at the residents' lounge of the hospital, ready to start her shift... except, she was a good thirty minutes late.

Billie Jean Black wasn't known for arriving late. In fact, during her college and med school years, she had built herself a reputation: that of the freaky girl from Dorm 203, the one that never slept and seemed to have no social life, given the fact that she always got to her classes twenty minutes before anybody else. She'd never had friends in college due to it, and growing up, she realized she was very likely to never change that aspect of her life.

As a severely obsessive person, arriving at five thirty-one rather than at five thirty felt like a punishment. Chastisement for breaking the routine. But, suddenly, here she was: not a minute, but half an hour late.

Maybe, just maybe, Billie had just happened to spend the night at Miles' apartment, which had been the place she had been frequenting the most for the past few days. During their first night at the bar, they had really hit it off and it was really no surprise when they ended up having a casual one-night stand in Billie's place later on. One that, given how loud they had been, Billie was sure everyone had heard (mostly because, after having sneaked Miles out of the house without anyone seeing, she had come across her friends, who stared at her sternly with their arms locked over their chests and bags under their eyes, as if the orchestra coming from Billie's room the entire night had kept them up). Ever since then, they had chosen Miles' building to hook up.

She felt like a teenager all over again.

To be honest, Billie wasn't one to hook up on the first date-if that could even be considered a date. But there was this chemistry between them. Billie didn't have to ask Miles what he was thinking about because she already knew, and vice versa. The (amazing) casual hook-ups sure were a nice distraction from Alex.

But, Miles and Billie were starting to grow on each other, delighted by the fact that sex wasn't getting on the way of their newly-found friendship. That was what had caused her to lose track of time. And sure, maybe she had lost the entire night's worth of sleep over some really interesting things she had been pleased to perform, but it had been very worth it.

Now, Billie noticed, as she hurried to change into her scrubs, Alex was late too, rushing into the lounge and up to his cubby at record time.

The conversation she'd overheard between him and Meredith was still fresh in her head, and she remembered all about it as soon as she caught a glimpse of him. But she was in such a good mood that he couldn't possibly ruin it today.

"You're late!" Billie whisper-yelled when she saw him.

"You're late too," he bit back.

"I have an excuse."

"So do I."

"Oh, yeah? What is it?" Billie asked petulantly as she slipped out of her street shirt, then slid her pants down her legs.

Alex was about to answer, but then noticed her standing only on her underwear in the middle of the room, and he slowly connected the dots. "You got laid."

"Did not," the girl argued.

"You're wearing a matching set. No chick wears a matching set to work unless they got laid," Alex accused rightfully, but Billie simply clicked her tongue at him and rolled her eyes. "Who's it? Sloan?"

"Not Sloan. Definitely not Sloan." She was quick to shake her head, tying up the elastic of her scrub pants.

"So?" Alex asked curiously, trying to squeeze out the gossip, even if he knew knowing would only make him even more jealous than what he already was.

He could only think about slipping that matching set right off her, taking her against the wall. But, the thought of someone else doing it made him want to vomit.

"What do you care? Shut up," Billie dismissed him with a wave of her hand, plummeting down on the bench in order to jump into her combat boots. "Why are you late?"

"Eh. Traffic." He shrugged.

Billie eyed him. "Boring." She finished tying up her boots and hopped up. "Hey, you got a hair-tie?"

Alex looked at her weirdly. "Do I look like someone that carries around a hair-tie everyday?"

"Well, I don't know, I'm out of options! Cristina and Meredith have been hoarding all of mine and there weren't any ties at Mil-"

She cut herself off before the name of her lover was asserted, but Alex's head whipped up at the nearly spilled secret. A cheeky smirk slowly grew on his face-a cheeky smirk that concealed an underlying mask of raging jealousy.

"Who?" he prodded, staring at her intently and noticing how a blush of shame took over her face.

"No, uh-uh." Billie shook her head frantically. She then tried to tie her hair up into a makeshift bun, yet failed miserably, so simply let it down loose and fled the room. "I, uh... yeah. Okay, bye!"

"Wait, wait for me! And tell me about the guy!"

☆

"Keys, Miller, Rogers, Campbell, Emerson!" Billie called out to her interns once she saw them standing by the entrance of the ER, chatting calmly. They immediately stood straight as soon as they heard her. "Fetch trauma gowns and follow me. We have two ambulances incoming, so be quick."

The interns complied instantly, fighting each other to grab one of the yellow trauma gowns from the rack next to them, then stumbling on their feet as they hurried to follow their resident into the pit. Billie walked with confidence out to the ambulance station, knotting her own gown over her scrubs and hearing as her interns all ran after her.

"What do we got?" Billie asked once she saw the stretcher being offloaded of one of the recently-arrived ambulances. Behind her, Bailey, Callie, Cristina, Izzie and Meredith followed her out.

"Jacob Nolston, forty-seven. Status: post his double bypass surgery two weeks ago. Febrile with tenderness in his surgical incisions," the paramedic introduced. "We have a ten-car pileup on the freeway, you mind taking him?"

"Not at all." Billie nodded with confidence.

"I need a gurney for the transfer," Callie demanded, and both Cristina and Izzie, who were currently fighting to be on cardio, jumped.

"I'll page Hahn!" they chorused, then glared at each other.

"Jeez. Desperate much?" Billie wiggled her eyebrows.

"Sounds like we all agree. Get him inside and, uh... flip for it," Bailey said.

Billie ordered her interns to help her move Jacob onto the gurney that had been brought out. They counted to three and lifted him, then placed him back down, ready to take him inside for assessment. However, before anyone could do anything else, Izzie and Cristina were back fighting, making Billie roll her eyes in utter annoyance.

"When are you gonna realize you're in over your head?" the latter said harshly.

"When are you gonna realize that you don't own the cardio department?" Izzie retaliated.

"He's my patient, I called first dibs!"

Once more, Billie rolled her eyes and turned to her five interns. "Okay, this? This is what you should never do. Never block the doors of the ER because you're fighting over a patient, got it?"

"Hey, you guys..." Meredith called out, but her comment went by undetected by her friends.

"You can't call dibs on human beings!" Izzie complained at Cristina's prior statement.

"You guys, I think we should move!"

"Let go of the gurney," Cristina demanded tiredly.

"You let go!"

"Guys..."

Billie thought for a second, oblivious to Meredith's eyes on something approaching them. "Okay, Rogers, Miller, you're gonna be in with me. The rest of you, I need you to go get me some supplies-"

"MOVE!" Meredith shouted all of a sudden, catching them all off guard.

This time, Billie did hear her person's words, but didn't turn in time to notice the ambulance driving towards the station at top speed, without giving signs of ever stopping. She saw as her friends rolled away the stretcher and she was left standing there, alone, for a millisecond, but it didn't last long, since a harsh body colliding against hers and knocking her down to the ground caught her off guard.

She heard glass breaking and vehicles crashing, echoed by the roaring sound of distorted sirens. Billie groaned in pain at the ache in her back when she collided against the floor, most likely, leaving behind some bruises. She pinched her eyes closed for a second until she was finally fit to open them back up.

Once she did, Billie saw the wreck in front of her: an ambulance having crashed into the other, given a snap roll in the air and landed upside down on the ground. She was shocked, until she felt the other body on top of hers-John's body.

She frowned. "Did you just..."

Again, her eyes shifted from the crash in front of her to the intern, panting a little on the floor next to her.

Billie dawned in. "Did you just body-block me?"

☆

Without caring the slightest about the widespread bruise-like pain on her back and elbows from the fall, Billie didn't have time to thank John for quite literally saving her life before she was forced to rush over to the ambulance that had been the cause of the accident, where two paramedics plus a patient were still inside.

She came up to the side of the driver's seat only to find Mary, the paramedic driving, to be unconscious and laying against the wheel. Callie came up behind Billie in a rush.

"Mary? Mary, c'mon, wake up," Billie said, struggling to open the door due to the adrenaline-induced shake on her hands, but finally managing herself.

"We need help here!" Callie called out to whoever was listening.

The second paramedic, who sat on the back part of the ambulance, turned towards Billie as she examined Mary thoroughly, noticing the bruises to her arm as she still laid in her unconscious stance.

"Is she dead?" Shane, the second paramedic, asked.

"No, but she looks postictal. Dr. Torres, she also seems to have a bad elbow dislocation, and her pulse is thready. You might wanna take a look," the resident answered.

"Okay, let me see." Callie took a step forward, replacing Billie's place, and began checking Mary's elbow. "Yeah, that's definitely a dislocation. Let's get her inside and page neuro, now!"

☆

Now, Billie, Callie and John stood in a trauma room, with Mary laying on the exam table, already conscious. The orthopedic surgeon was making it her job to assess the woman's dislocation scrupulously before she put it in place for a reduction, when neuro walked in. Except it wasn't Derek-it was Ian.

Billie instantly knew today was gonna be one of those days where she'd crave a gun more than anything else.

"Dr. Torres, Dr. Black-" Ian greeted wryly with a nod, stance faltering for a second when he noticed his sister, but eyes soon landing on John. "-intern."

"His name is Dr. John Rogers," Billie defended with a glare in her brother's direction.

Ian rolled his eyes. "Yeah, that."

"This is Mary Daltry. She lost consciousness behind the wheel," Callie introduced as Ian held the CT scan and examined it to the light. Billie eyed him weirdly, wondering where his attitude was coming from.

"You're the neuro guy?" Mary asked with a shake to her voice.

"Yes, I'm Dr. LeBlanc." He nodded solemnly.

"Why did I have a seizure?"

Ian's eyes were still on the CT scan. "I don't know."

"I mean, I've never had a seizure before. I mean, I'm fine." Mary shook her head in disbelief, wincing a little when Ian palpated softly the bruise under her eye caused by the impact of the crash. "Except, apparently, I caused this accident."

Ian looked up at John. "Call radiology, let's get her in for an MRI."

John hesitated for a second, glancing at Billie for approval, and when his resident gestured a fluctuant nod, he muttered out in understanding and quickly headed to the phone.

"How's Shane? My partner? Does anybody know?" Mary asked, alarmed.

Billie took a step forward. "I think he's with Dr. Bailey. He's getting taken care of, don't worry."

"That's good." She sighed in relief.

"Okay, I'm ready to fix the arm. Are you ready, Mary?" Callie asked.

"Is it gonna hurt?"

"Yes, but Dr. Torres is very good, so you really shouldn't worry." Billie patted the woman's arm softly in reassurance.

"Okay. Dr. LeBlanc, are you good?" Callie looked up at him.

"Yeah, I'm good." He nodded back, then looked at Mary. "Alright, as soon as I get some more information, I'll let you know, okay?"

"Okay."

Ian left the room. One, two, three, and Callie performed the reduction, sound of cracking bones echoing in the room along with Mary's scream of pain.

☆

Billie followed Ian out, unsure of what she wanted to say, but needing to talk to him either way. "Ian!"

When he heard her voice, he turned, slightly confused as to why his sister, who he knew currently hated him, was calling for him. They were met face to face.

"Billie?" He arched an expectant eyebrow in query, although his stomach swirled a little in anticipation.

The younger girl, who had been meaning to scold him but had realized she didn't really have anything to say, parted her lips in order to say something, yet nothing came out. Slowly, she formulated something, anything to say, and managed to bite it out.

"Can you switch this patient with Dr. Shepherd?" Billie blurted in a hurry, stance stiffened in anxiety. "Please?"

Ian was a little taken aback- "What?"

"I'm, uh-" She huffed. "I just- please, can't you ask Derek to take over this case and, like... find something else for you?"

He stared at her in shock. "So, you can't even work with me? Like, professionally? You can't even be in the same room as me while we're working?"

"Well-" Billie stuttered, looking around and lowering her voice. "Please, Ian, can't you just... can't you do this for me?"

"No," he stated blatantly, making her eyebrows shoot up. "No, I- I get that, as my sister, you have a lifetime's worth of anger towards me, and I will not get in the way of that. You wanna be mad at me, and I get it, so I'm staying away," Ian said. "But I will not let you put down my career as a surgeon because work and personal issues, in my life, are unrelated. Now, Dr. Black, that woman in there happens to be my patient too now, so if you have a problem working with me, then I'll be glad to transfer you to somebody else's service."

Billie didn't miss the way he pronounced her surrogate surname-like mocking it.

"She's my patient, I'm her doctor," she spat out.

"So am I," Ian finished. "The decision's up to you, Billie. Do whatever you want, I have somewhere to be."

Following his finalizing statement, Ian gave her a harsh look and turned, feeling Billie's eyes on his back while he left the ER. The girl was left wondering where her brother's anger was coming from, given the fact that not once in her entire life had she seen him talk to anyone like that. She watched him walk away... worried?

☆

Later that day, after getting informed by her intern that Mary's scans had found a tumor, cause of her seizure, Billie and John stood outside her patient room, waiting for Ian in order to inform Mary of the current situation.

The girl had decided to be a grown woman and stay on the case without causing any more discrepancies between her and her brother. There was a part of her that still hated him to his guts, true, but she didn't want to start a fight with him. Especially knowing there were a lot of people who still didn't know Ian was her brother.

Every day, she found herself even deeper into very complicated situations she wished she wasn't a part of. She felt helpless and she couldn't wait for the moment that she got some leverage over her life, because lack of control felt uncharted. However, that said moment seemed to be giving no signs of arriving any time soon, and the thought freaked her out.

To get her mind off things, she looked at John next to her.

"Hey," she said. "I didn't get to thank you."

The intern frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I mean-" Billie bit her lip. "-you quite literally saved my life, and I still haven't thanked you for it."

"Well, I didn't save save your life." John scoffed, shrugging his shoulders.

"You did." She smiled widely. "You pushed me out of the way when I was distracted, that was... it was noble. Brave, it was brave. So, thank you. And accept the thanks, or else, I'm gonna punch you."

John laughed and Billie noticed it was the first time she'd ever seen him do so ever since they met. It was a nice phenomenon to look at, considering it was so rare, so she couldn't help but feel infected by his smile.

"Hey, it's no big deal though, right?" Billie nudged him with her elbow, trying to get in the same tune as him, given he was always so nonchalant. "We're all gonna die anyway."

"Are you mocking me?" He squinted disbelievingly, although with playfulness to his voice.

They laughed together briefly before they saw Ian approaching. They immediately stood straight at the attending's presence, each doctor for very different reasons, and Billie found herself avoiding her brother's eyes at all costs. Soon, the three surgeons were inside Mary's room, explaining her the procedure to be performed.

"So-" she drawled. "-you're gonna drill into my skull?"

Ian nodded, then turned to Billie without looking into her eyes. "Dr. Black?"

The girl hesitated. "Uh... Dr. LeBlanc's gonna do what we call a cookie craniotomy. He's gonna drill a very small hole and then, with a computer, he's gonna guide the scope through your brain. It's as minimally invasive as possible."

Mary nodded, unconfident. "It's just, it's weird, you know? To be on the other side of all this. How are Stan and Ray? And Shane?" She paused in realization. "Oh, my God. Oh, my God, how did this happen?"

They watched her for a second, but suddenly, her head whipped backwards and her eyes rolled to the back of her head, heart monitor going haywire to signal erratic vitals. The three surgeons became alarmed.

"She's seizing!" Ian stated, rushing to flatten the bed while Billie and John made it their job to hold her on her side.

☆

The three surgeons were now in surgery, operating on Mary's brain in order to remove her tumor. Ian was standing by the patient's head with Billie by her side, assisting from time to time, while the intern stood a little further back, solely observing.

"Alright, can I get a little suction right here, please?" The attending's eyes were fixed on Mary's brain, Billie complying to his orders next to him. "Alright, I should be able to access the tumor now."

At the words, the girl watched attentively, observing as her brother maneuvered the surgical tools on Mary's brain. However, she heard him sigh.

'However', because despite the fact that Ian and Billie hadn't seen each other in a long time, it was undeniable that they knew each other. She knew that, when his eyebrows twitched, he was angry; she knew that, if his lips tugged at the corners, he was holding himself back; she knew that, if he was anxious, he'd run his hands through his hair until he made a mess of it. So, Billie also knew that, when he sighed-just a little, like blowing out the tiredness through the corner of his mouth-something was wrong.

"What is it?" she asked automatically, pursing her lips behind her mask.

"Damn it," Ian whispered under his breath, probing the area of Mary's brain where the mass was housed. "The tumor's invaded a whole lot more of the occipital lobe than the scans showed. It's difficult, throws off all my surgical plan, but I think it's removable. I think I can do it."

"Dr. LeBlanc." Billie tensed a little. "If you remove it and you damage the tissue, then she could end up blind. You can't think, you have to know."

"Dr. Black," Ian replied with the same coldness that his voice had acquired that morning during their argument. "I'm one of the best neurosurgeons in the country. Just because this is hard, doesn't mean it's impossible. Believe me when I tell you, I can do this."

"No, no, Ian, it's too risky. One wrong move and she could have visual impairments, distortions, inattentions-"

"I really don't remember ever asking you for your opinion, Dr. Black. I am the attending, I am the lead surgeon, and you're just a resident. So, right now, I'm gonna ask you to shut your trap for eight seconds and let me do my job!" Ian fired back, keeping calm, but raising his voice a little.

He turned and stared at Billie through the eye loupes, but she found herself a little surprised. She had understood prior that day that Ian was definitely not in his best mood, but at first, she had chosen to shrug it off, considering it to be just the heat of the moment. Now... now, she was not so sure about that.

However, before she could say or do anything about it, the heart monitor went haywire. Billie and Ian, as well as every other doctor in the room (who had been starting to get considerably uncomfortable at the discrepancy between the two siblings) turned to the machine, which signaled rapid and unstable heartbeats.

"Damn it, she has a bleed." Ian bit out through gritted teeth, switching his surgical tools at record speed and starting to work faster. Billie felt her own heart speeding up. "Push five milligrams of Mannitol and get me a neuroendoscope, now!"

☆

Billie followed Ian out of the OR with her scrub cap still holding her hair, although the man was oblivious to her presence. He ripped out his surgical gown, gloves and mask and proceeded to storm down the hallway as Mary's still anesthetized body was transported to the ICU, where she'd be taken care of post-operatively.

Billie tried to catch up to her brother, but he strode about the hospital, almost fuming in said annoyance. He seemed angry, stance charged with some sort of blood redness that made Billie feel uneasy. She called out his name lowly, but he didn't answer, so she followed him into the attendings lounge when he broke in.

"Ian," she said, closing the door behind her softly, scared to somehow trigger him.

The man revealed to have been aware of her presence behind him when he turned harshly, face reddened in anger. "You were so out of line."

Billie frowned. "What?"

"You were so out of line. So fucking disrespectful," he repeated. "You can't just undermine my authority in this hospital as a neurosurgical attending, your neurosurgical attending, and defy me in my own OR in front of all those people, even though you know I have three times the medical knowledge you do. You can't wander about pretending to know more than everyone else and then pull that shit on me. Because, really, I get that you're mad and I get that you don't forgive me and I get all that crap, but you do not get to disrespect me as a human being and as a surgeon, because I will not tolerate it. Especially when there's a woman laying on my table with her brain out in the open and her life at stake," Ian breathed a little heavily.

"Ian, God, I wasn't fucking disrespecting you! For all we know, that woman could wake up blind right now and all because you decided to go in without any further knowledge on the anatomy of the tumor, without a surgical plan or anything to guide you! You think you're so brave and so smart and such a hotshot surgeon, but that was not being a hotshot surgeon. That was just plain wrong, and you know it," Billie retaliated.

"For God's sake, I didn't go anywhere near her goddamn lobe! And it's not wrong if I know what I'm doing." Ian shook his head, starting to pace around the empty room. "I am a good surgeon. An excellent surgeon, if you may. And it is not my problem if you're too clouded by your own anger to see that, but that doesn't give you the right to interfere with my job! A job that, if you had distracted me, could've costed us both a life, and a job I very well know how to do and have been doing for years now. Remind me again how long you've been a resident for? Two years?"

"I was just trying to take care of my patient, Ian!"

"And you could've killed her because of it!" he yelled, storming towards her with such pugnacity that Billie was forced to back away the closer he got. "You could've killed that woman because you were too focused on punishing me for what I did instead of actually caring for your patient, which is what you claim to have been trying to do, but it's not what you're doing! I don't know how long you've been a surgeon for, but in this world, we don't do that! We don't act like whiny little girls with family issues! If we're in an OR, we're surgeons, not children!"

"Ian, stop fucking yelling at me." Billie raised one of her palms as if somehow trying to stop him from moving any further, but at that point, she was so scared that he might hurt her that there was nothing else she felt capable of doing.

Thinking about it, about how something that she'd always feared could happen would actually happen, terrified her to her core.

"You've always had that, that... that need to punish and to hold people accountable for their mistakes, and you don't even seem to realize how that might affect the rest of us," Ian kept talking regardless, inching closer and closer and only causing Billie's fear to be exacerbated. "And I'm here, and I'm trying to apologize, but then you go and do that? How is that fair! And I am not, under any circumstances, blaming you for what I did or for not wanting to forgive me, but I'm asking here for you to please not take things to the next level like you always fucking do! It's not necessary for you to screw things up more than they already are, which, for some reason, is a quality you seem to know very well."

Billie only kept backing away until she was caged between him and a wall. Her face was red, anger bubbling inside her. "If you stop yelling, we can talk like adults."

She feared the anger in his eyes. It was one she knew very well.

"Don't you fucking play with me anymore! Don't you fucking play with me anymore!" Ian's voice was hoarse, enraged, when he punched the wall next to Billie's head.

She could've screamed, as the blow startled her. But there was someone else in the room.

Someone who pried him off of her, even if he really wasn't touching her in the first place. Someone who pressed his hands against Ian's chest and pushed him back and away, causing him to stumble a few steps back. Someone who punched him on the face. And, then, someone who came to her aid.

☆

Billie and Alex sat in one same, tension-filled room.Alex was worried about Billie. He wanted to ask, wanted to aide her in any way he could. But she was just quiet, drinking from a cup of water with shaky hands and a trembling lip.

Her eyes traveled the walls until she was met with the calendar that hung right above the desk in the on-call rom. She found out it was November seventeenth today, a fact she had been previously oblivious to.

Billie realized today was Ian's birthday.

Billie, then, understood.