Jily oneshots

The Yeast I Can Do

by elanev91

It was, easily, one of her favourite shops in all of London. She'd never been inside, but it was still, without a doubt, her favourite. Marlene routinely told her that loving a shop she'd never been into made her certifiably mad, but Lily just told her to shove off. She had her reasons.

Bread Head, easily the most amusing bakery name in the world, was right on her walk to work (sort of), the smell coming out of there in the early morning was absolutely fucking divine, and the men she'd seen behind the counter weren't bad either. She'd noticed the "Classes Offered" sign in the window, made a mental note every morning to call them and ask when they were hosting them, but, upon entering the hospital, she was always swept up in something or another and she always forgot.

Maybe that was why she was here today. Today had been a rough fucking day and she needed something, anything to distract her.

She'd known, going into the operating theatre, that it was going to be a difficult surgery. That there was a sizeable chance of failure. That her patient's parents were prepared, as prepared as they could be, for the very real possibility that their baby wouldn't be coming out of surgery. But when it had come down to it, and she'd been so close to finishing it successfully before… fuck, before she'd bled out on the table, it ripped her heart apart. She had been so fucking close, so close to giving this little girl back to her parents, to giving her a future.

Lily tried to do all the normal things, all the things that you're supposed to do after a loss.

She reminded herself that the little girl, Olivia, Olivia, wouldn't have been able to live long with that heart defect. That she'd had to undergo surgery or she definitely wouldn't have had a future. That she had a teeny tiny little heart and Lily had almost fixed it - she'd done all she could have done. Every single bloody thing. It just hadn't been enough.

She wasn't normally the dramatic type - she was easy going, even-keeled when she had a scalpel in her hand. She had losses, everyone had losses, but she'd always dealt with them soberly, always steadied herself before she went back to report the devastating news to the family. But this case was different. She was attached. She wanted, no, needed, this victory - for Olivia, for her parents… for herself. She'd come to love the little girl, her bright laugh, her brilliant smiles, the babble she emitted in a near constant stream as she tried to figure out what in the hell language was and how to wield it.

About fifteen minutes after Olivia had flatlined, after her fellow surgeons had finally managed to still Lily's hands, to keep them from reaching for the tiny little internal paddles again and again, she felt numb. She'd thrown her instruments back into the tray, screamed a colourful variety of obscenities, and stormed out of theatre. Her mask, gowns, cap were off in a matter of moments and she scrubbed her hands furiously under water that was far too hot for her skin, staring, just staring at them all in there, watching as they stitched her tiny chest back up, cleaned her off, wrapped her up in blankets, placed her back into the isolation crib that had brought her there.

She'd braced herself against the metal surgical sink, her fingers gripping onto the sides like it was the only thing tethering her to the fucking planet. Screaming 'FUCK!' had helped, momentarily, but it had done nothing to steady her nerves and she was going to need them. She was going to have, easily, the toughest conversation of her career, with a family she'd come to love, and she needed to be okay. She needed to be their rock, what they held onto, because this was their daughter, their infant fucking daughter, and she'd died and they were going to need someone to tell them, earnestly, that they would get through this. That this wouldn't sink them, that they could carry on.

She took a deep breath and focused her eyes on her reflection in the window to the operating theatre. You can do this, Evans. You're a fucking surgeon for god's sake, you knew this was part of the job. You did your bloody best. You can do this.