Army Goddess

Chapter 34: Guilt-Trip

♤Season 9, Episode 9♤

Angela walks out of her room to see Jackson sitting shirtless at the kitchen counter as he looks over a bunch of files, "You know, the Ancient Egyptians invented this thing called a shirt."

Jackson looks up from the files, "Haha, very funny."

"Why are you shirtless?" Angela asks as she moves to the fridge and pours herself a glass of milk before standing opposite of Jackson, "And what are you looking over so deeply?"

"It's Shepherd's case. Lizzie Shepherd is flying out today to try and talk about donating her nerve."

"You mean convince Derek that he needs to get the stick out of his ass and let his sister help him?" Angela asks, sipping her milk.

He nods, sighing, "How the hell am I supposed to convince Shepherd to accept the nerve?"

Angela chuckles, shaking her head and shrugging, "Um, try guilt tripping. It works for me."

Jackson gives her a deadpan look, "I'll call that option z."

She tosses a shirt at him, "That'd be more impressive if you had any plans a-y."

"Shut up," Jackson tells her, hitting her butt with one of the files as she walks away.

"Put your shirt on!"

♤♤♤♤

Angela sits at the nurses station when a brunette comes up to her, "Do you know where I could find Dr. Shepherd or Dr. Grey?"

Looking up, Angela sees some of the similarities between her and Derek, "You must be Lizzie. Hi, I'm Dr. Angela Karev."

"Oh, Mark's Angela. How are you doing? With your pregnancy?" Lizzie asks, leaning on the counter to look at Angela.

"Oh, um, well, there are hard days and even harder days," Angela nods, a little uncomfortable with the questions, "Uh, I can page Derek or Meredith for you."

Lizzie shakes her head, "No need. I just was looking for someone to have a conversation with. Lucky for me, you're here. Now, tell me all about you. I want to know more about the woman Mark talked so highly about to my mother."

Angela smiles sadly, tears welling up in her eyes a little, "Mark talked to Mrs. Shepherd about me?"

"Yeah. How after Lexie, he wasn't sure if he was gonna find someone who he could ever connect with like that again. Then you came in, saved his daughter and baby momma's life. He talked as if you'd hung the moon and the stars."

"W-would you excuse me, for a second?" Angela asks, sniffling as she made her way to the nearest on-call room and sits on the bed before she finally allows herself to break down and cry.

♤♤♤♤

Finding Derek in an office, looking at scans, Angela knocks on the doorframe, "According to Lizzie, you aren't willing to do the surgery anymore."

Derek looks back at her, "You met Lizzie? I feel like I should apologize."

"It's fine. She asked me a bunch of personal questions and told me that Mark talked about me to your mother like I was the best thing to walk the planet."

"I'm sorry if that brought up any grief," Derek tells her as she waddles over to the couch next to where Derek was sitting in an office chair and sits down, "But I'm not doing the surgery."

Angela nods, whispering, "Yes you are."

"And why is that?" He asks.

"Because it's what you need to do. For you, for Meredith, for Zola. And especially for that little baby that's growing inside Meredith," Angela smirks as Derek perks up at this.