𝓛𝓘𝓛𝓘𝓐𝓝 - ᵃ ᵍʳᵉʸ'ˢ ᵃⁿᵃᵗᵒᵐʸ ᶠᵃⁿᶠⁱᶜᵗⁱᵒⁿ

ix

"Knew you'd be here," she heard Alex's voice behind her.

"You followed me," Lily corrected him. "You followed me to my spot on the roof," she pretty much complained. Alex chuckled and sat on the bench beside her.

"You know, at first I thought it was weird when you freaked out when I called you for a consult," he started. "I thought, maybe you just didn't like babies." Lily flinched when she realised where this conversation was going. "But then I remembered; when we were residents, you wanted to go to peds, you were always after Addison and that creep that used to be the chief of peds."

"Alex, please," she said, a little too quietly.

"And then I had a conversation with DeLuca, and he told me about his experiences with peds, which was why he didn't want to do peds."

Lily sighed. There was no escaping this conversation.

"So what's your dark experience?" Alex asked her. "What happened to you that made you leave the area you were so talented in?"

"I lost a baby," she said, then realising how the sentence sounded. "Not my baby. One of my sister's. It was a small hospital in Nevada, they didn't have trauma. There were no surgeons on call, and they wouldn't allow me to operate."

"I'm sorry."

"I just.. sometimes with kids, no matter how much effort you put into it, it's just not enough," she explained to him. "So then I decided no more peds for me."

A warm silence crept its way into them, until Alex stood up.

"You know, DeLuca told me the same thing," he told her, a hand on her shoulder rin confort before walking away. "You two would go well together." Lily sighed at the comment, shaking her head.

*flashback*

"I'll be right back, I promise," Derek told her, his signature smile on his face. "Take care of Amelia." Lily scoffed.

"You do know I'm the youngest, don't you?" Lily smirked, hitting him in the side with her elbow.

"And you're the new head of neuro," he reminded her sister. "The youngest this hospital had ever seen. You'll be fine."

"Will you?" Lily asked her brother. The two weren't very big on planes, and Derek had to leave for D.C.. He only smiled at her.

"See, you're the responsible one. Take care of her," Derek said, kissing Lily's forehead.

That had been the last time she had seen her brother alive.

*end of flashback*

Lilian sighed as she looked at the board. She walked to Bailey.

"Can I scrub in in one of your surgeries?" She asked Bailey. The woman squinted her eyes at her.

"What did you do? Who are you running from?" Bailey demanded. Lilian sighed. She really didn't want to talk about it, but is she was to scrub in, she had to find some excuse.

"I didn't do anything, I just -- I don't have any surgeries-"

"Mkay, now tell me the truth," Bailey said, not even looking at Lily. She sighed.

"I just lost a kid," she told Bailey. "I had a newborn with a stem tumor, and he died on me. Please let me scrub in." Bailey gave her the Bailey Look. The one she did when she pitied someone, or felt any emotion at all, but didn't want people to know she had emotions.

"Grab a resident," Bailey told her after a few seconds of silence. "You do my appy and have a resident scrub in with you." Lilian gave her a faint smile.

"Thank you Bailey!" She quickly hugged the woman before she could step away.

"Uh, he's in 2304, the chart's in the room," Bailey told Lily as she walked away towards the elevator. "And don't hug me again, Sheppard!"