#paraamelia

Derek stands at the door to the chemo room, staring at his sister across the room. She’s reading some sort of magazine he thinks. She’s reading something, getting chemo, and his niece is in the day care, he’d peeked in at her before coming up here. Overall, they’re happy right now. Blissfully unaware. And for a moment, Derek wants to turnaround. Run. Not be the one to upend his sister’s life, take away her fiancee. He knows, he didn’t do this. He didn’t do this, but he had to tell her, because this impossible, horrible news may be even slightly, barely easier to deal with if she had him. He couldn’t let her be alone, couldn’t let Bailey be the one to shatter everything. He had to be there, and if he and Bailey had shown up together, she’d have been thrown off. But maybe he could wait, maybe he could let her get through this without telling her. He’s about to turn and slip away, but then she looks up. 

“Hey,” Allie says, sliding up beside Amy, coffee in one hand and tablet in the other. “Morning. Happy surgery day,” She remarks, looking over at the OR board. Roberts, Olivia. Fetal tumor removal. Bradford, A. & Shepherd, A. They had given Olivia and John’s baby a few more weeks of safety in the womb, in case anything went wrong and he had to come out. And it had also given John and Olivia time to come to terms with the opposite. If it doesn’t work. It had also given them time to study up and make a plan. And today was the day. 

It felt like he had entered some sort of twilight zone. Mark coming back with a tumor, Zola’s birth mom asking to see them, Allie bleeding, and now Amelia. He hadn’t really processed what his sister had said. He wanted to believe she was kidding, but she never responded to his text, and then he’d wound up at Allie and Evan’s. After dropping all of the kids off at school and day care, he heads to her and Chris’ house, armed with coffee, juice boxes, bagels, and Amelia’s favorite donuts, knocking on her door. 

Parking outside of Chris and Amelia’s house only a minute after texting her, Derek gets out of the car, grabbing the bags from the passenger seat. Heading up to the door with bags in hand, he sends Amy a text with his free hand to tell her he was there, not wanting to risk waking Elena if she was sleeping. 

“Alright, bud,” Derek says, letting out a small sigh of relief as he lifts Liam out of the car seat in the back of his new car. Driving was a little nerve wracking since the accident. “We’re gonna go see Aunt Amy,” He says, the talking keeping Liam smiling. "This is Aunt Amy’s new house. Apparently,” He mutters, looking up at Clay Cormier’s old house, that his brother now lived in, and apparently Amelia too. “See, we ring the bell like this,” Derek narrates for Liam, pushing the doorbell. “And now we wait. Yea, we wait for the door to open, don’t we?”

The doorway was like an electric fence. He paces, watching closely every few seconds for the rise and fall of her chest, then continues pacing as he waits for his sister. He couldn’t be in there. She had a pulse, she was breathing. He was a damn doctor, but he couldn’t be in there, in the OR. It also was setting in that he was about to see Amelia for the first time since he’d decked Cormier in the face. They hadn’t even spoken since then.

“Hey dad,” He murmurs as well, putting a hand on the ground over where he knew his dad’s ashes to be buried. They’d each gotten some, his mother, him, and each of his siblings. Nancy had scattered hers over a beach she’d gone to with their father from the time she was a little girl, Lizzie had done the same in her garden, as that’s what they’d done together. As far as he knew, Kathleen and Amelia still had theirs. He and his mom had buried them with Abby. She’d found him one day, doing it, and she’d come to do the same thing. He shuts his eyes, letting out a slow breath.

Meredith was resting, and William was sleeping. Figuring he had at least a half hour until one of them woke up, and his sister’s begging getting to him, Derek stormed out of the room, down a few halls. His fist pounds on the door of the on call room he’d seen his sister in, before he pushes it open and goes in, shutting it behind him. “Ok, I’m here. What?” He says, sitting in the chair in the corner of the room, crossing his arms over his chest and looking at her, waiting.