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CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
valentine's day massacre.
season six, episode fourteen.

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"Why are we doing this again?" Billie huffed, sat on the passenger's seat of Jackson's car as he drove them to a restaurant.

"Because, it's Valentine's Day! And our three month anniversary," he said.

"Our anniversary's not until another two weeks." Billie frowned.

"Whatever, it's Valentine's. Be a little excited, we're going out as a couple," he explained. "Don't you like Valentine's?"

"My mother died on Valentine's. No, I'm not exactly too keen on it."

There was a deafening silence.

"Sorry," Jackson mumbled, suddenly unsure. "I didn't know."

Billie felt a pang of guilt, so she placed a hand on his thigh and gave him a firm squeeze, followed by a reassuring smile.

"But if it's that important to you, I'm gonna make it work," she said.

Jackson grinned softly and took advantage of the red light to lean in and plant a soft kiss to her lips, enjoying the soft ambience in the car. However, as they waited for the light to turn green, an ambulance ran past them.

Billie's eyes suddenly widened. "Ambulance!"

"Not tonight, Bils," Jackson argued with an affectionate laugh.

"Fine." Billie huffed reluctantly, sitting back down on her seat to dim her excitement.

They were still waiting for a few more seconds. Two more ambulances went rushing by in the opposite direction and Billie watched them go melancholically, but held herself back from commenting on it. Jackson eyed her amusedly.

"If it's big, they'll page us," he told her.

Suddenly, both their pagers went off.

"Okay, it's big," Jackson said before turning the car around.

☆

Apparently, the roof of a very famous restaurant had collapsed, gravely injuring a lot of people. Upon arrival, Billie and Jackson had changed into their scrubs as fast as they could and had already been assigned to a man whose arm had been amputated.

"I need another four-by-four," Owen said as he worked on the stump alongside Jackson. "Okay, dress him. I'm gonna take another look at the arm. His wound's completely macerated and contaminated. Why wasn't this guy brought in first?"

"He was lying in dirty dishwater for a while before they found him," Billie said as she debrided the amputated arm.

"They forgot I was back there," the patient said weakly from the bed.

Jackson glanced over at Billie for support.

"It's alright." The patient waved him off. "I'm not... I'm not too big on talking to people and nobody talks to me much back there. They just... you know, bring me the dishes." He paused, looking over at Billie. "I lost my arm. I don't wanna have one arm. I don't wanna be a freak. I don't like people staring at me."

"We're gonna do everything we can," Jackson assured.

"Please."

"Okay, Frankie. I'm gonna take you up to surgery now. We're gonna try and reattach the arm, okay?" Owen said as the nurses began wheeling away the patient. "Do we have an open OR? I'll prep him. Work on the stump. You debride the arm, tag the vessels, get it up to me as soon as you can, okay?"

Billie nodded and began tying up her hair as Owen leer the room. Once they were alone, Jackson eyed her with a playful smile, to which she glared at him.

"There's a man with no arm, Jackson, behave," she said.

"Sorry." He laughed. "But... you know... if we get some free time after this..."

Billie looked up at him with a suggestive grin.

☆

"So..." Jackson began as Billie and him debrided Frankie's arm. "Can we talk about something?"

"Sure, what?" She didn't look up from her work.

"Your father."

Billie froze.

The topic had been in the air for a few weeks now, ever since Billie had told Jackson about the phone call. It had been difficult for her at first, especially because he'd been told she had left the hospital alongside Alex and he wasn't too happy about it, but once she'd explained him the reason, he'd calmed down and hugged her tight. However, after that, Billie had refused to talk about anything related to the matter and the topic was still tangent in the air.

Jackson knew very well she was repressing her feelings about it.

"Jackson, I already told you, I don't wanna talk about that." Billie huffed. "Please, just stop insisting."

"I'm worried about you, Billie," Jackson told her. "You've been completely putting off the topic. Your father called you. Why are you pretending nothing happened?"

"Because nothing happened!" Billie looked up at him. "What am I supposed to do? Forgive him? Tell him to come visit me for a chat? He abused me my whole childhood. He used to beat me up. A voice message doesn't change that. A chat will not change that. And the fact that he's sober now doesn't erase the twelve years he spent drunk."

Jackson stayed silent for a second.

"I just think you should do something about it. Just talk it out with him. I'm not saying forgive him, of course not, I'm saying give the man a chance to tell you what he wants to tell you and then you can tell him to screw off in whatever language you know," he explained. "But at least give yourself some closure."

"What good will it do me to face the man who abused me my whole childhood? 'Cause that's what he is: not my father, an abuser," Billie quipped, growing annoyed. "I'm not gonna have some stupid talk with him. That man deserves no peace of mind for what he did."

"Billie."

"Jackson, drop it."

That was the end of it.

☆

Later, Billie found Alex and Meredith eating chocolates from a heart-shaped box near a nurses station, staring into a patient room.

"Oh, I'm starving." Billie ran up to them, but soon grimaced as she looked into the chocolate box. "Ew, these are all half-eaten."

"Yeah, you can see what they are," Alex said.

Billie shrugged and grabbed herself a hazelnut chocolate bonbon. With a frown, she looked over at the patient room where a man and a woman laid next to each other in different beds.

"What are we doing?"

"Her boring husband's in surgery. This dude's been in love with her for fifteen years," Alex explained briefly.

"She just found out, so we're waiting to see if she says something," Meredith added.

"Or if her husband croaks."

"But it's okay if he does because they're miserable," the blonde finished. "I mean, is this what marriage turns into? Running out of things to say and changing who you are?"

"Oh, yes."

"Probably."

Meredith seemed devastated. "Well, I didn't marry Derek to be the Chief's arm candy. I'm a surgeon."

"Yeah, you married him for the great surgeries," Billie said.

She laughed. "I didn't do that either."

"Right."

"You should have."

"Oh, sh. She's gonna say something," Meredith announced. The three looked forward, to where the woman seemed to be trying to reach out to the man. "She's gonna wake him up."

"Oh, what's she saying?" Billie asked out of mere curiosity.

Eagerly, Meredith walked forward to hear, but suddenly, the woman grabbed at her chest.

"She can't breathe. Get a crash cart!"

☆

Billie and Jackson ran into Owen's OR, holding Frankie's arm.

"We did it! We saved the arm! We're ready," she exclaimed, holding a mask over her face.

"It's... gonna have to be an amputation," Owen said.

"What?"

"There's too much devascularized tissue, too much contamination."

Mark, who had assisted on the surgery, looked at them. "We could push antibiotics and let the stump heal, but by that time..."

"The arm will be dead," Owen finished off. "Page me when he's awake."

A nurse approached the two residents and took the arm from a very disappointed-looking Jackson. However, Billie couldn't believe it.

"Wait, they can't just leave it behind," she complained. "We could move it somewhere else, attach it to a healthy zone."

"Don't tell me, babe. Tell them."

In front of them, Mark and Owen were already removing their gowns.

"I'm just saying they could—"

Billie didn't get to finish her sentence, as Jackson was pushing her forward.

"Temporary ectopic replantation!" she suddenly exclaimed, gaining both attendings' attentions. They looked at her with frowns upon their faces. "I mean, you have to keep the arm alive until the stump heals."

"Yes, but in cases involving the elbow..." Mark began.

"It's extreme. He'll lose range of motion, grip failure," Owen added.

"He'll keep his arm. He deserves extreme measures," Billie insisted hopefully. "If the arm is still viable, you can't just let it die. It's a waste of time, skills and an opportunity."

Owen seemed to be thinking about it. "Has it ever been done before, above the elbow?"

"I don't know. It could be done. You could implant it onto the epigastric and the venae commitante," Mark suggested pensively. "Give you a few days for the stump to heal."

"I've never done one."

"Neither have I."

"C'mon," Billie insisted. "We told him we'd do everything we could do to save his arm. This is everything."

Owen finally nodded, a surprised smile in his face. "I'll call Shepherd and let him know. Black, Avery, get ready to scrub in. We're gonna be a while."

Mark dedicated her another smile before both attendings were gone. Behind her, Jackson grinned too.

"You amaze me, Billie Black," he said.

"I know." She grinned cockily.

☆

"You will not believe what I just did," Billie told Miles once she found him taking care of a patient in the ER.

"Enlighten me." He laughed.

"Transitory ectopic replantation of an arm to a man's groin."

Miles' eyes widened. "Wow, impressive. Congratulations."

"Thank you." Billie grinned amply. "Oh, hey, I heard April was rehired. She's been running behind Derek all day."

Miles snorted. "Yeah, kinda don't care."

"Hey, are you okay?" she asked. "You seem weird."

"Yeah, sorry." He huffed out. "I'm just kind of having a crappy day. How are you, by the way? It's been a while."

"Oh, I'm fine. My father called."

Miles was dead silent for a second. "What?"

"Yeah, not really feel like discussing it, just wanted you to know." Billie shrugged.

"But—"

"No."

Miles laughed. "Okay, I hate you. You can't just bring this up and expect me to be cool with this. What? Is he in Seattle? Does he wanna see you?"

"Just wanted to say sorry."

"Wow, 'cause that fixes everything," Miles quipped sarcastically.

"Right? That's what I said!" Billie exclaimed. "Jackson wants me to have some sort of... talk with him, or whatever, like that's gonna fix anything. It's not gonna erase what happened, certainly, but he thinks I'll get some sort of closure if I do it."

"Well, Jackson might not look it, but he's a clever guy," Miles admitted. "And he's right about that."

"Oh, not you too."

"Just consider it, Billie," he suggested. "Your father gave you the biggest trauma of your life. It's been haunting you for years. Now, he calls. You have the chance to face him. Why wouldn't you wanna take it?"

Billie was left thinking.

☆

Owen folded down Frankie's blanket to reveal the gauze-covered stump. The man seemed defeated.

"You couldn't do it?" he asked.

"Actually," Billie smiled, "we could. But you need to prepare yourself, because we had to take some extraordinary measures."

"Your arm needed a blood supply to keep it alive until we could reattach it," Owen further explained. "So we had to relocate it to where we could get one."

Slowly, Billie uncovered Frankie's leg, where his arm was attached to his groin. Horror flashed the man's eyes.

"Is that my arm?!" he yelled. "What did you do? Why would you do this to me? What did you do to me?!"

"Frankie, calm down. It's only temporary, just for a few days," Billie explained with a small smile. "This is what you wanted. You wanted your arm!"

"In the right place!" he snapped. "I said I didn't wanna be a freak. You should have left me like I was!"

☆

After about an hour, Frankie had managed to calm down.

"All those people out there," he said, observing the people who stood outside his ICU room, "they just wanna stare at me."

Billie sighed, then looked up.

"They do," she admitted as she ran some tests on him. "The doctors wanna see you, ask you questions. That's 'cause you're rare. And special. And there might be press and I'm pretty sure there's even a personal injury lawyer floating around someone that thinks that restaurant might owe you a lot of money."

Something in Frankie's expression changed.

"How much money?" he asked.

Billie smiled. "Sometimes, change is good, Frankie."

Slowly, he drew a smile.

☆

Billie approached Alex at a nurses station later that day. He ate chocolate from the same heart-shaped box he had earlier, so she propped herself on the counter by him and began eating with him.

"You know, I think Jackson's right," she said through a mouhtful. "I should talk to my father."

Alex frowned. "You think?"

"Yeah." She nodded. "Things won't change, I will still hate him. But at least I'll be able to repair myself by seeing him one last time. Right?"

"I mean, it could work." He shrugged through a mouthful of candy. "You want me to go with you?"

"No. I have to do this alone."

They stared into each other's eyes for a second. Alex dedicated her a small smile and Billie felt a million things at the same time.

"You know, I hate to be this person. I'm not unfaithful and I don't cheat," she said. "But if I wasn't with Jackson right now, I would be taking you into an on-call room and kissing the fuck out of you."

Alex choked on the chocolate. She looked at his face for one more second and then scurried away.