Code Blue • Jackson Avery

Chapter Thirty Five

My dad was a complete and utter mess. He hasn't left Meredith's couch in about a week and to make matters worse Izzy just told us a few days ago she has cancer, aggressive cancer.

She's been admitted as a patient to Seattle Grace and needs my dad's help. So that's what I'm doing, I'm heading to talk some sense into him.

I knocked on Meredith's door to find out that he took all his clothes to the camper. So I drove to the forest.

Beer cans and trash lined the lawn. It closely resembled a frat house with the mess.

I knocked on the door to reveal my disheveled dad. He clearly hasn't shaved or showered as the smell of beer radiated from his pores.

"Bella leave" he said trying to close the door.

"You don't get to act like this" I said holding the door open with my foot.

"Excuse me?" My dad said turning around.

"I said you don't get to act like this. You lose one person and you crawl in a hole. So many surgeons lose a patient. You don't get to act like an asshole" I spat.

"You don't know"

"I don't know what? How it feels to be judged and overlooked? Left behind? I know how it feels to be a lot of things. Maybe not a great surgeon but that's you. You can't throw it away" I said turning around to leave.

"You're right" he said catching me off guard.

"I know I am now get back to Seattle Grace. They need you" I said.

I headed to the hospital the next day to find out George has enlisted in the army. The bad just kept coming and it had no end in sight.

"George, our George" I said to Meredith who told me.

"Yes, we are going to deal with it. By the way, your dad and I are getting married today. At the courthouse" Meredith said before she was paged to deal with a John Doe case.

Doe cases were the worst. The patient had no identification and no family to rally behind them. We as doctors had no medical history, no backstory which made the job a lot harder.

The man's face was beyond swollen, bruised and battered. John Doe saved a woman's life. As nice as this heroic act was this man is now suffering. I stood at the nurses station watching the patient and the woman who brought him here.

You could tell she felt guilt and sorrow for him. We all did but what most consumed my feelings was George. George enlisting as a trauma surgeon was the worst decision he could make.

I tried to carry on with the duties for the day, checking on patients, scrubbing in on a minor surgery and stopping by Izzy's room.

Just as I was about to enter Izzy's room I heard Alex yelling from outside the room.

"You made me promise you that you wouldn't be like like this. So now what the hell am I supposed to do, smother you with a pillow, shoot you up with a an overdose of morphine? I'm not really psyched about that"

"Alex you need a break" I said grabbing his arm and escorting him out of the room.

"Why would you yell at her like that?" I asked Alex outside of the room.

"Because I'm frustrated, I'm tired, and I have the weight of her life in my hands" Alex said walking off.

I looked into Izzy's room to see her glancing all around at the post it notes.

"Can you prep my John Doe?" Meredith asked me walking by. She was gleaming from ear to ear.

"Yeah. Excited to get married?" I asked.

"We signed a post it. We got married" Meredith rejoiced. At first I smiled giving her a hug. After all, this technically made her my step-mom.

I looked quite strangely at her as I headed to the patients room. As I began to prep him he grabbed my hand scribbling with his finger nail.

"You want to write?" I asked handing him a pen. He dropped the pen and used his nail on my palm.

"0...0...7" I said.

"Double o 7" I said. Instantly I knew who the John Doe was.

I sprinted through the halls trying to run as fast as I could. Yet I felt like my feet were moving a mile a second.

"John Doe. It's George O'Malley" I yelled as I pushed through the double doors. Torres, Hunt and my dad all looked at me for a second before sprinting towards his room.

He was instantly rushed into surgery but was soon crashing. I stood in the corner of the OR room, watching George die.

Callie instantly went into shock.

"Time of death 15:22" my dad said. Tears began to roll down my face.

Lexie came barging in to the scrub room.

"Who said that's George?" Lexie asked.

"Bella why?" Callie asked. I looked up to see Lexie unfazed.

"That's not George. Look how long his legs are. That's not George" she said.

I was immediately called for questioning on why I suspected it was George in the first place.

"He wrote in my hand. 007 he wrote it on my palm" I explained. All the doctors and interns around me erupted into questions.

"He squeezed my hand" I said. I was beginning to feel guilty that I made this accusation and was wrong.

Callie went in to see if he had the freckle George had. She examined his arm and began to break down. I knew I was right, sadly.

Seven days later...
Was the funeral.

George was buried. It was a wonderful, sunny day. Yet all we could do as a group was laugh, laugh out of sadness.

We were all twisty in our own ways. The laughter ended and we all looked at each other, George was really dead.