A Posteriori
Title: A Posteriori :: The Alchemist [11/12]
Rating: PG.
Summary: Hey, happiness! This one's shorter than the others. Complain about the length and I will shove my shoe so far up your ass...
A Posteriori :: Eppur Si Muove
A Posteriori :: Feel Me Heaven
A Posteriori :: Dreaming of Andromeda
A Posteriori :: Dancing With Mephisto
A Posteriori :: Northern Lights
A Posteriori :: Invisible Love
A Posteriori :: Message from Io
A Posteriori :: Hello and Welcome
A Posteriori :: 20,000 Miles Above the Sea
A Posteriori :: Sitting on the Moon
Addison stands nervously in a conference room and tries to figure out what she’s supposed to say to the person that’s about to save her daughter’s life. She feels that thank you doesn’t quite cover the gravity of it; it seems too trite and simple a response for something as overwhelmingly emotional as saving her daughter’s life and, in some way, her own.
“Calm down,” Mark says softly and places a soothing hand on her shoulder.
She nods and, upon hearing the footsteps of a few people round the corner, decides that thank you will have to do until she’s had a little more time and she covers Mark’s hand with her own.
She isn’t sure who she expected to walk through the door with Kylie’s doctors. Maybe a nice, smiling college student with a big heart or another doctor or someone who’s been touched by the heartwarming pay it forward idea spreading across the country.
But she definitely didn’t expect to see the smile of Alex Karev.
The doctors introduce them and then smile and say that they’ll be back later to discuss all the details and specifics and then respectfully shut the door quietly behind them.
Even if she had a speech prepared, it wouldn’t have come to her. “Thank you,” she breathes shakily and steps away from her husband to give her former intern a grateful hug. Alex’s arms come up around her and hug her in return. “Thank you,” she repeats and pulls away, wiping her eyes.
While Mark never warmed to Alex and he’s in that category of men who choose to start hugs with shaking hands that stay between their bodies and finish hugs with three hard pats on the back, he gives him a real hug. Masculine pride stops for Mark when it comes to his daughter. “Thank you,” he says quietly. The hug is over quickly and Mark chooses to ignore Addison rolling her eyes and steps back. “How did you know? They said it was someone who specifically requested Kylie.”
Alex smiles quirkily. “Torres and Bailey. They told us the first time and when we found out she needed a donor, Bailey did her Nazi thing on the idiots that didn’t volunteer.”
A smile gradually grows across Addison’s face at the news that her two friends in Seattle are the ones responsible for the man standing in front of her and she makes a mental note to give them a call as soon as possible. “I feel like a broken record, but thank you. That means a lot.”
“We all did like you, you know.” He looks over at Mark. “Not so much you,” he teases. His hard exterior has softened over the years but only enough to allow a smile to acknowledge the teasing.
“How is pink and squishy?” Mark throws back. He knew that Alex’s plans to go into plastics were really just what he told everyone so they wouldn’t think he was soft for wanting to go into neonatal.
“Delivered triplets in the field a few weeks ago,” he answers cockily. “Huge pileup.”
Addison’s mouth drops open a little and her eyes light up. “Tell me!” She begs eagerly; for all her years and expertise and qualifications, she’s never had the opportunity.
“Later,” Alex assures her. “Want the rest of the good news?”
“There’s more?” Mark asks, doubting that anything could possibly top the presence of a bone marrow donor.
He nods and puffs his chest out a little proudly. “There’s a check to NCLF for twenty thousand dollars from Seattle Grace in honor of Kylie.”
Addison lets out a shocked breath and sits down on the table. “Holy shit,” she whispers.
“How the hell did you pull that off?” It doesn’t top the presence of a bone marrow donor, but it renders Mark equally speechless.
“Izzie’s insane. Bailey’s intense. Torres can organize. Shepherd’s a talker and it doesn’t hurt that your kid’s really cute.”
“Derek helped?” Addison finds her voice again.
“Fundraiser was his idea. Izzie took it over, but it was his idea. You should’ve seen the amount of kids who gave up their allowance when they asked about the girl on the bulletin board.”
Deciding that she’s said the words thank you enough times for the moment, Addison simply smiles. “You want to meet her?”
“Hell yeah.”
--
Kylie looks up from her game of handheld Pacman when she hears the door open. She puts the game aside, not caring that the game will turn off once she’s lost this turn and she’ll lose record of the highest score she’s earned in the three months since one of her friends gave it to her when he got to go home. A grin has been almost permanently on her face for the past twenty-four hours; each thought of going home or playing outside or being able to do a cartwheel again has brought a complete smile to her face, a smile that finally travels back up to her eyes. Her cheeks hurt from smiling but that doesn’t stop a big grin from greeting her donor when her parents bring him in.
“Hi!” She says cheerfully. She’s lost for words beyond the happy greeting; her ten years on Earth give her no direction as to what to say to the man who is, literally, saving her life. But Alex introduces himself and smiles warmly and she decides that, really, a hug might be better. So she opens her arms and he steps forward and hugs her just as tightly as she hugs him. She manages to thank him before they’re interrupted by a nurse coming in to check stats and change an IV.
Having completed her residency, Dr. McLeod is now fully in charge of Kylie’s case and while she was upset to learn that Kylie was back in the hospital, she was glad when Dr. Gold handed her Kylie’s chart and said that she was all hers. Despite that unfortunate first day with the dramatic failure that was an attempt to draw blood, she and Kylie have gotten along fabulously. All four occupants of the room pay rapt attention as she explains the procedure and recovery time and that they won’t know immediately if it worked but since Alex is an absolute perfect match, they’re fairly confident that it’ll work one hundred percent. Nobody misses Kylie rolling her eyes at the “fairly confident;” they all know that she’s heard almost-promises way too much in her young life but all of them are looking forward to the day when they can finally make solid ones.
--
“She looks like you,” Alex observes over lunch with Addison after Kylie’s sound asleep after the transplant. He already detailed the incident with the triplets and they fell into a silence that was slightly on the awkward side of comfortable.
“Mark would say that she acts like me too, sometimes.” Addison smiles softly as she catches sight of the ring on his finger. “Who’s the lucky woman?”
He blushes a little. “Rebecca.” At her raised eyebrow, he smiles. “Ava.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. She had it with her husband and came back.”
Addison laughs and shakes her head. “Any other Seattle surprises Miranda and Callie neglected to tell me?”
“Nah. It’s the only one that matters.”
She throws her napkin at him. “Cocky bastard.” Her expression softens out of a teasing grin. “Thank you for my daughter, Alex.”
He nods. “You’re welcome.”
--
“Hey, K-Bug,” Noah grins at his sister as she groggily wakes up.
“Hi,” Dylan adds quietly from the other side of her bed.
“Hi guys,” she says, still a little sleepy. “Looks like you’re gonna be stuck with me.”
--
Kylie tugs on her bright green hat and smiles happily as she pulls on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, finally rid of the permanent hospital gown or gigantic scrubs. She’s sad to leave the people around her, the kids she’s come to call her good friends, and everyone sheds a few tears as she hugs them and says her goodbyes but they’re all thrilled for her and it’s everyone’s dream to get to go home even if they have to come back twice a week for chemo. She makes sure that everyone’s signed her hat before she waves one last time and walks out of the ward to meet her parents and brothers. Rolling her eyes at the wheelchair waiting for her, she begrudgingly sits down because it’s hospital policy and she’s been doing things by their rules for so long that it seems silly for her to argue this one last thing.
It’s slightly belated, but she comes home to a small celebration of her eleventh birthday. It’s just the five of them and an icing-laden cake and very messy barbequed chicken made with Mark’s special sauce that Kylie would willingly eat for three meals a day for the rest of her life but it’s something and everybody laughs more than they have in months. She got all of her gifts on her actual birthday but Mark and Addison present her with a bike since she got taller and her obsession with all things pink disappeared while she was in the hospital.
Mark and Addison smile as they watch the kid pile form on the couch after Kylie kicks everyone’s ass at Monopoly without trying or anyone letting her win. They’ve finally decided on the remake of The Italian Job (because of Charlize Theron, the plotting and details of high-class robbery, and that chase scene through the tunnels, according to Noah, Dylan and Kylie, respectively) and it takes them a while to sort out pillows and whose drink gets put where but by the time the opening credits have ended, the three children have settled calmly and are completely unaware of their parents watching them.
Because the couch is taken and cuddling on any of the chairs in the family room doesn’t result in family-appropriate positions, they concede to taking separate chairs as they quietly join their kids in front of the movie. Neither parent pays much attention to the racing cars and gunshots and incredibly attractive people on ropes; they instead stare at the couch and realize how empty it seemed without Kylie sitting in the middle with her feet tucked under her and just how close they were to having that couch seem empty forever. Addison shivers at the thought and pushes it out of her mind and tries to focus on the movie but her attention keeps drifting to her children and just how damned lucky she is to have everything the way she does. She catches Mark’s eyes and he nods, thinking the exact same thing.
--
Kylie wakes up to her bed shifting and she smiles and turns over, cuddling into her mother’s arms. “Don’t cry, Mom,” she whispers when she feels Addison start to shake. “You said I was going to be okay.” Though there were times in the hospital when she truly hated her mother for making that promise when it looked to be so certain that it wasn’t going to come true, some small part of her held tightly to the belief that her mother doesn’t lie.
Addison holds her daughter closer and sniffles, crying for that exact reason. She’s sure that she would never really get over the grief of losing her child but she knows that it would’ve been infinitely worse because that loss would be accompanied by the breaking of the most important promise she’d ever made since promising to stay by Mark until death did them part. “I know, sweetie,” she says softly once she’s sure her voice is steady enough. “I’m just glad you are.”
A Posteriori :: Goodbye, Milkway
--
Note: I know that most of us are college students, high school students, or people who really can’t spare the cash because we’re up to our eyeballs in loans, debt or our funds are otherwise wrapped up in food and shelter but the littlest bit helps. National Children’s Leukemia Foundation. The pay it forward thing is something a guy from Kansas (or an equally random state) started by donating a kidney to someone on the condition that one of their family members donate a kidney, bone marrow or some other transplantable organ to a total stranger with the same conditions, and so on.
Rating: PG.
Summary: Hey, happiness! This one's shorter than the others. Complain about the length and I will shove my shoe so far up your ass...
A Posteriori :: Eppur Si Muove
A Posteriori :: Feel Me Heaven
A Posteriori :: Dreaming of Andromeda
A Posteriori :: Dancing With Mephisto
A Posteriori :: Northern Lights
A Posteriori :: Invisible Love
A Posteriori :: Message from Io
A Posteriori :: Hello and Welcome
A Posteriori :: 20,000 Miles Above the Sea
A Posteriori :: Sitting on the Moon
Addison stands nervously in a conference room and tries to figure out what she’s supposed to say to the person that’s about to save her daughter’s life. She feels that thank you doesn’t quite cover the gravity of it; it seems too trite and simple a response for something as overwhelmingly emotional as saving her daughter’s life and, in some way, her own.
“Calm down,” Mark says softly and places a soothing hand on her shoulder.
She nods and, upon hearing the footsteps of a few people round the corner, decides that thank you will have to do until she’s had a little more time and she covers Mark’s hand with her own.
She isn’t sure who she expected to walk through the door with Kylie’s doctors. Maybe a nice, smiling college student with a big heart or another doctor or someone who’s been touched by the heartwarming pay it forward idea spreading across the country.
But she definitely didn’t expect to see the smile of Alex Karev.
The doctors introduce them and then smile and say that they’ll be back later to discuss all the details and specifics and then respectfully shut the door quietly behind them.
Even if she had a speech prepared, it wouldn’t have come to her. “Thank you,” she breathes shakily and steps away from her husband to give her former intern a grateful hug. Alex’s arms come up around her and hug her in return. “Thank you,” she repeats and pulls away, wiping her eyes.
While Mark never warmed to Alex and he’s in that category of men who choose to start hugs with shaking hands that stay between their bodies and finish hugs with three hard pats on the back, he gives him a real hug. Masculine pride stops for Mark when it comes to his daughter. “Thank you,” he says quietly. The hug is over quickly and Mark chooses to ignore Addison rolling her eyes and steps back. “How did you know? They said it was someone who specifically requested Kylie.”
Alex smiles quirkily. “Torres and Bailey. They told us the first time and when we found out she needed a donor, Bailey did her Nazi thing on the idiots that didn’t volunteer.”
A smile gradually grows across Addison’s face at the news that her two friends in Seattle are the ones responsible for the man standing in front of her and she makes a mental note to give them a call as soon as possible. “I feel like a broken record, but thank you. That means a lot.”
“We all did like you, you know.” He looks over at Mark. “Not so much you,” he teases. His hard exterior has softened over the years but only enough to allow a smile to acknowledge the teasing.
“How is pink and squishy?” Mark throws back. He knew that Alex’s plans to go into plastics were really just what he told everyone so they wouldn’t think he was soft for wanting to go into neonatal.
“Delivered triplets in the field a few weeks ago,” he answers cockily. “Huge pileup.”
Addison’s mouth drops open a little and her eyes light up. “Tell me!” She begs eagerly; for all her years and expertise and qualifications, she’s never had the opportunity.
“Later,” Alex assures her. “Want the rest of the good news?”
“There’s more?” Mark asks, doubting that anything could possibly top the presence of a bone marrow donor.
He nods and puffs his chest out a little proudly. “There’s a check to NCLF for twenty thousand dollars from Seattle Grace in honor of Kylie.”
Addison lets out a shocked breath and sits down on the table. “Holy shit,” she whispers.
“How the hell did you pull that off?” It doesn’t top the presence of a bone marrow donor, but it renders Mark equally speechless.
“Izzie’s insane. Bailey’s intense. Torres can organize. Shepherd’s a talker and it doesn’t hurt that your kid’s really cute.”
“Derek helped?” Addison finds her voice again.
“Fundraiser was his idea. Izzie took it over, but it was his idea. You should’ve seen the amount of kids who gave up their allowance when they asked about the girl on the bulletin board.”
Deciding that she’s said the words thank you enough times for the moment, Addison simply smiles. “You want to meet her?”
“Hell yeah.”
--
Kylie looks up from her game of handheld Pacman when she hears the door open. She puts the game aside, not caring that the game will turn off once she’s lost this turn and she’ll lose record of the highest score she’s earned in the three months since one of her friends gave it to her when he got to go home. A grin has been almost permanently on her face for the past twenty-four hours; each thought of going home or playing outside or being able to do a cartwheel again has brought a complete smile to her face, a smile that finally travels back up to her eyes. Her cheeks hurt from smiling but that doesn’t stop a big grin from greeting her donor when her parents bring him in.
“Hi!” She says cheerfully. She’s lost for words beyond the happy greeting; her ten years on Earth give her no direction as to what to say to the man who is, literally, saving her life. But Alex introduces himself and smiles warmly and she decides that, really, a hug might be better. So she opens her arms and he steps forward and hugs her just as tightly as she hugs him. She manages to thank him before they’re interrupted by a nurse coming in to check stats and change an IV.
Having completed her residency, Dr. McLeod is now fully in charge of Kylie’s case and while she was upset to learn that Kylie was back in the hospital, she was glad when Dr. Gold handed her Kylie’s chart and said that she was all hers. Despite that unfortunate first day with the dramatic failure that was an attempt to draw blood, she and Kylie have gotten along fabulously. All four occupants of the room pay rapt attention as she explains the procedure and recovery time and that they won’t know immediately if it worked but since Alex is an absolute perfect match, they’re fairly confident that it’ll work one hundred percent. Nobody misses Kylie rolling her eyes at the “fairly confident;” they all know that she’s heard almost-promises way too much in her young life but all of them are looking forward to the day when they can finally make solid ones.
--
“She looks like you,” Alex observes over lunch with Addison after Kylie’s sound asleep after the transplant. He already detailed the incident with the triplets and they fell into a silence that was slightly on the awkward side of comfortable.
“Mark would say that she acts like me too, sometimes.” Addison smiles softly as she catches sight of the ring on his finger. “Who’s the lucky woman?”
He blushes a little. “Rebecca.” At her raised eyebrow, he smiles. “Ava.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. She had it with her husband and came back.”
Addison laughs and shakes her head. “Any other Seattle surprises Miranda and Callie neglected to tell me?”
“Nah. It’s the only one that matters.”
She throws her napkin at him. “Cocky bastard.” Her expression softens out of a teasing grin. “Thank you for my daughter, Alex.”
He nods. “You’re welcome.”
--
“Hey, K-Bug,” Noah grins at his sister as she groggily wakes up.
“Hi,” Dylan adds quietly from the other side of her bed.
“Hi guys,” she says, still a little sleepy. “Looks like you’re gonna be stuck with me.”
--
Kylie tugs on her bright green hat and smiles happily as she pulls on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, finally rid of the permanent hospital gown or gigantic scrubs. She’s sad to leave the people around her, the kids she’s come to call her good friends, and everyone sheds a few tears as she hugs them and says her goodbyes but they’re all thrilled for her and it’s everyone’s dream to get to go home even if they have to come back twice a week for chemo. She makes sure that everyone’s signed her hat before she waves one last time and walks out of the ward to meet her parents and brothers. Rolling her eyes at the wheelchair waiting for her, she begrudgingly sits down because it’s hospital policy and she’s been doing things by their rules for so long that it seems silly for her to argue this one last thing.
It’s slightly belated, but she comes home to a small celebration of her eleventh birthday. It’s just the five of them and an icing-laden cake and very messy barbequed chicken made with Mark’s special sauce that Kylie would willingly eat for three meals a day for the rest of her life but it’s something and everybody laughs more than they have in months. She got all of her gifts on her actual birthday but Mark and Addison present her with a bike since she got taller and her obsession with all things pink disappeared while she was in the hospital.
Mark and Addison smile as they watch the kid pile form on the couch after Kylie kicks everyone’s ass at Monopoly without trying or anyone letting her win. They’ve finally decided on the remake of The Italian Job (because of Charlize Theron, the plotting and details of high-class robbery, and that chase scene through the tunnels, according to Noah, Dylan and Kylie, respectively) and it takes them a while to sort out pillows and whose drink gets put where but by the time the opening credits have ended, the three children have settled calmly and are completely unaware of their parents watching them.
Because the couch is taken and cuddling on any of the chairs in the family room doesn’t result in family-appropriate positions, they concede to taking separate chairs as they quietly join their kids in front of the movie. Neither parent pays much attention to the racing cars and gunshots and incredibly attractive people on ropes; they instead stare at the couch and realize how empty it seemed without Kylie sitting in the middle with her feet tucked under her and just how close they were to having that couch seem empty forever. Addison shivers at the thought and pushes it out of her mind and tries to focus on the movie but her attention keeps drifting to her children and just how damned lucky she is to have everything the way she does. She catches Mark’s eyes and he nods, thinking the exact same thing.
--
Kylie wakes up to her bed shifting and she smiles and turns over, cuddling into her mother’s arms. “Don’t cry, Mom,” she whispers when she feels Addison start to shake. “You said I was going to be okay.” Though there were times in the hospital when she truly hated her mother for making that promise when it looked to be so certain that it wasn’t going to come true, some small part of her held tightly to the belief that her mother doesn’t lie.
Addison holds her daughter closer and sniffles, crying for that exact reason. She’s sure that she would never really get over the grief of losing her child but she knows that it would’ve been infinitely worse because that loss would be accompanied by the breaking of the most important promise she’d ever made since promising to stay by Mark until death did them part. “I know, sweetie,” she says softly once she’s sure her voice is steady enough. “I’m just glad you are.”
A Posteriori :: Goodbye, Milkway
--
Note: I know that most of us are college students, high school students, or people who really can’t spare the cash because we’re up to our eyeballs in loans, debt or our funds are otherwise wrapped up in food and shelter but the littlest bit helps. National Children’s Leukemia Foundation. The pay it forward thing is something a guy from Kansas (or an equally random state) started by donating a kidney to someone on the condition that one of their family members donate a kidney, bone marrow or some other transplantable organ to a total stranger with the same conditions, and so on.