invasion ↠ jackson avery ✓

40

[JACKSON AVERY]
Seattle, Washington

˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚

Jackson was rolling way over his hours but patients seemed to flow in one after another. Being aware of his busy schedule, he felt it to be better to stay at the hospital and sneak off for an hour to nap then get back onto the floor and get on with his surgeries. Taking an extended period of time off for the holidays set him back slightly but he wasn't angry about it. Surgery was everything to him and being so busy was fantastic, even if it meant not getting to see Bella all that much.

Upon their return to Seattle, the first week they spent at work consisted mainly of paperwork. It appeared as though Jackson had missed a ton of what he felt he should've been present for, but at the same time, he was glad he didn't have to deal with any of it. He wasn't sure how he would've gone about Ben Warren performing an emergency C-section during a lockdown, the latter which happened due to a missing child. From what Jackson concluded, after further surgery, both the pregnant woman and her child had passed.

Throughout the past week, he managed to find one day where Bella was also available, and so, they booked out one of the meeting rooms and caught up with their respective departments. Bella had told him that while she was off, she placed Dr Marcus as her interim head of department but now that she was back, and in control again, she realised she made a mistake. She found that the surgeon was not made for scheduling or any sort of paperwork. Nothing more than what was required of him as an attending. Though, even Jackson knew very well, that Bella was extremely specific about how she got things done. She had a system. She had ways in which everything was recorded, scheduled, carried out.

The thought of her made him text her. Jackson hadn't seen Bella since—well, he couldn't be sure. Not with how much he allowed his schedule to fall out of sync. The last time he remembered pulling such long days was during his residency, but even then, it wasn't like this. His head didn't feel as scrambled as it did now. Perhaps all the work he had to do for the board then link it with the foundation, on top of his surgeries, and patients, it was getting to him.

Hey, sweetheart, he started out the text, then immediately hit the backspace button to delete the last word. They had lunch together the other day and Bella told him she didn't want to be called sweetheart. Faintly, he remembered the occasion where she showed up to work drunk, just after she had quit for reasons still unbeknownst to him, and she displayed some distaste towards the pet name, too.

Hey, Bells, he started again and stuck to what he knew would be safe. I miss you. Lunch with me?

Sent. It said it delivered on his phone but Bella didn't have her read receipts on, so Jackson wouldn't know if she saw it until she replied. It caused to him sigh and slide his phone into his pocket. He hadn't thought of what would await him for the rest of the day. Frankly, he just spent the last four hours he had left of the night sleeping in one of the on-call rooms. Though, he used the word 'night' loosely. It was currently ten-thirty in the morning.