Pretty Boy • Jackson Avery

chapter thirteen

TW: shooting, death, gore, self harm
(Skip this chapter if you are not up for it)

6x23 | 6x24

A hospital is a place where people receive the worst news of their life. It's a place where people get sick, where people die, and where people grieve, mourn, and cry. But for surgeons, a hospital was home. It was where you saved lives, where you got to tell a family their child would live, or where you could experience the greatest high of your entire life.

    The hospital was where friendships were forged, where relationships started, ended, where everything moved so quickly that you never had a chance to dwell on anything real. It was a distraction, but also a purpose. The hospital is a surgeon's life.

    So what does a surgeon do when that life is suddenly uprooted? When the room you saved a child's life in the day prior turns into the room you were held at gunpoint? When the hallway turns into a corridor of death?

    Nothing. Because in that situation, you have no power. You can't make a cut and save a life, you can't fix anything.

    And you're alone.

•꒰ঌ໒꒱•

That morning had been just like any other. She'd woken up in her own bed, crawled over Jackson's sleeping body and made her way into the kitchen to make them both coffee. Things were good with them. From an outside perspective it might've looked like they were dating, but they weren't. They were just friends, really good friends, who happened to have sex.

    She made them coffee, woke him up, gave it to him, drank hers while staring out the window and watching the sun rise. Then she'd showered, gotten ready while he showered next, and then she drove them to work.

    She made her rounds with Altman, scrubbed in on a surgery, and was checking on Altman's post-ops when she heard the first scream. It wasn't nearby, and she couldn't quite tell what direction it had come from.

    Her brows furrowed, but she brushed it off. Screams weren't entirely uncommon in a hospital, when a family member died, it was a pretty standard reaction.

    She continued walking, one hand holding her coffee, sipping mindlessly as she looked over the chart in her hand. It was from a patient that had come into the E.R. for cardiac related symptoms. Teddy had done a consult and they were waiting on some tests.

    The next scream was closer, and it was bloodcurdling. Violet stopped walking, turning towards the clear direction of the sound. Down the hallway, she watched a nurse run towards her. She continued to scream, rushing towards Violet and clamping her hands on her shoulder. Violet was beyond confused, and tried getting the nurse whose name she couldn't quite recall to explain what the issue was, but she was hysterical, and just as her mouth opened to speak, a loud sound rang out, and the world stopped spinning.

    The nurse collapsed in Violet's arms, but there was no blood, nothing, until Violet caught the back of her head as they crumbled to the ground, she pulled her hand away, covered in blood, and finally looked up.

    The man in front of them said nothing as he watched Violet begin to hyperventilate as she realized what had just happened.

    That loud sound rang out again, and all Violet knew in that moment was blistering pain.

    The world went black.

•꒰ঌ໒꒱•

Violet didn't fully remember waking up, she only remembered looking into that nurse's lifeless, wide eyes. She remembered crawling into the nearest supply closet to get away from the corpse. She remembered feeling herself losing blood, too much blood.