Everett Ramos is a resident surgeon at Mercy West Hospital in Seattle, Washington. She's on the uphill climb to becoming one of the best orthopedic surgeons in the world, studying alongside her best friends and hoping one day to make a difference...
the space that stretches between sleeping and waking
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EVERETT AND April don't say anything to each other until they move into Meredith Grey's too-big-house on Queen Ann Hill.
It's been almost two weeks since the shooting and still, Everett is haunted by blood-splattered scrubs and men who scream as the bullet pierces their skin. Every night, she wakes with cold sweat sticking her hair to the back of her neck, heart hammering in her chest and eyes stinging with unshed tears. Every night, she sits on their falling-apart couch with a cup of hot cocoa, waiting for April to join her after her own inevitable nightmare that keeps them up until the sun rises and basks them in heat.
Now, they stand in front of the king-sized bed in the bedroom Meredith had gifted them. It's on the second floor, just across the hallway from the room that Alex and Jackson are being forced to share while the seven of them live in this house that somehow doesn't seem big enough and yet too big at the same time.
"I hope you don't mind sharing," Everett jokes glumly, words scratching against her throat. April stares at her with wide eyes full of grief. It's the first time they've said anything to one another. That's why they had to move out. Not because of their shitty apartment, not because of their lack of funding for rent, not because of the broken pipes. No, it's all down to the fact that all of Reed's stuff still sits on the opposite side of the room she shared with April and it was too much for the little redhead to cope with. Because, the two women couldn't speak to each other without being haunted by the pixie-haired, sex-hungry masochist with the bullet lodged in her skull.
"Don't, uh, hog the covers," April tries to joke, but her words come out too grief-stricken to really hit like they should. Everett offers up a breath of laughter as she dumps her suitcase full of clothes on her bed. All her other stuff sits in two other suitcases, but they've been shoved under the bed because there's no room for anything in this full house.
"I'm gonna see if Jackson needs any help." Everett waves April away, watching out of the corner of her eye to make sure she's out of the room before she collapses on the soft mattress beside her bashed suitcase with the wheel that doesn't roll and the handle that doesn't come all the way up.
She hadn't thought twice about handing over the keys to their shitty apartment on the other side of Seattle. Nostalgia hadn't torn her apart as she walked out of the knife-scratched door with the seven locks she could never get open. Melancholy hadn't settled in the crevices of her heart as she paid the last remnants of their shared rent.
