chapter sixty-five ━ two of their own
( season ten, episodes one & two )

❝He'd be happy, sunshine.❞

ELLIE GAZED DOWN at the little, newborn baby in her arms, marveling at the resemblance between both his mother and father. "He's so cute," she said, looking up at Meredith and Derek with a smile. "Congratulations. You can make a cute kid."

The hospital board, as well as Callie and Bailey, were inside the new parents' hospital room once the storm outside had died down. Jackson leaned against the doorframe, grinning softly as Ellie bounced gently with her new nephew. It was hard to believe that that would be them in the foreseeable future.

The ring on Ellie's finger sparkled in the light and Meredith glanced at it, looking between her and Jackson. She pressed her lips together and leaned back in her bed with a knowing smile.

Nothing got passed Meredith Grey.

Or the others were not very observant.

"Okay, we should get started," Owen said, interrupting the moment and Ellie handed over the baby to one of his namesakes. "Uh—Bailey, Torres, we have some board business we need to discuss—"

"I'm not going anywhere," Bailey cut him off and he raised his eyebrows. Callie nodded in agreement, looking down at the newest Shepherd. "Me and this baby got Bailey business to discuss. Don't we? Yes, Mr. Derek Bailey Shepherd. Yes, we do."

Ellie chuckled to herself. "What does Zola think of her new baby brother?" she asked them.

"Oh, she wants to take him to daycare for show and tell," Meredith replied with a laugh and Derek let out a breath.

"Where's Richard?"

Owen shrugged. "I paged all the board members," he said before frowning. "Avery, you shouldn't even be here. You should be resting."

Derek furrowed his brows. "Why?"

"Oh, because Superman here dislocated his shoulder saving a little girl from the bus crash," Ellie answered, giving him a playful look. "He gave me a heart attack in the process."

Meredith looked around. "What bus crash?"

Everybody turned to her and Cristina cleared her throat. "She had a baby," she told the room. "She doesn't know things."

"So tell me!"

"A church was evacuating some people," Ellie explained to her. "And their bus overturned. Caught on fire, too."

"Good news is, everyone survived," Owen added and she nodded. "And there are no major injuries."

Arizona looked at him. "And the bad news?"

"Everything else," Ellie replied, letting out a breath and standing between Jackson and Owen, the former on the phone. "The blood bank is flooded, and the ER looks like it was ransacked."

"So we need to close the ER?" Derek asked.

Owen nodded. "We're dangerously low on meds," he told them. "Personnel can't make it in due to the flooding."

Cristina looked at him. "So we need to close the ER?"

"Can we do that?"

"We're the board," Ellie said with a small sigh. "Of course we can. We need to close the ER, okay, it cannot open today. We're not at all prepared with what we have."

"Well, what do we need?" Meredith asked her. "I mean, I can try to coordinate with our suppliers." Arizona scoffed and the new mother frowned. "I had a baby, I'm not dead."

Ellie nodded. "If they have it, we want it."

"In the meantime, let's make sure that our inpatients are taken care of and discharge who we can," Owen said.

"Like me."

Derek shook his head. "No, you just had a major abdominal surgery," he said to his wife. "You're gonna stay right there."

"Airport's just reopened," Jackson told the room, letting his arm dangle around Ellie's shoulder. "I just had Dr. Boswell be put in a cab."

"Who's Dr. Boswell?" Cristina asked.

"She's the woman Arizona slept with last night," Callie answered and the occupants of the room paused. Bailey slowly looked up from baby Bailey and Arizona pressed her lips together.

Ellie cleared her throat and pulled on Jackson and Owen's arms. "That's our cue to leave." The three surgeons left the room and made their way down to the disaster-ridden ER where they found a group of surgeons waiting in the ambulance bay with trauma gowns on. "What are you guys doing?" she asked them, walking over with the two men. "We're closed to incoming traumas."

"Tell that to them," April replied, pointing at the line of police cars coming toward them. "There was a mudslide near Madrona. A bunch of cops and firefighters got hurt doing evacuations. There are also a bunch of civilian casualties, as well."

"What about Seattle Pres?" Jackson asked.

Ellie shook her head. "No, they're worse off than we are."

He sighed and nodded. "Alright, let's do it. Help me get this sling off."

She undid the straps and handed it to a nearby nurse while Owen faced his surgeons. "Get me every suture kit, laceration tray, foley, and chest tube that you can."

"Let's get to work..."

☀️

"MR. MAYOR, FOR the last time, I don't know how many casualties there are yet." Ellie held her head in her hand while standing at the ER desk. "It's too soon to tell. But as soon as we have a number, and everyone has been rescued from the mudslide, I will inform you myself."

"Ellie!"

She looked over to see Jackson waving her over. She held up a finger and turned back to her phone call. "Mr. Mayor, please, I really need to go, but you will be the first to know whenever there's something worth sharing. Okay, thank you." She let out a breath. "If the Mayor calls again, direct him to Hunt."

A nurse nodded. "Of course, doctor."

She hurriedly put on a pair of gloves before joining Jackson in the trauma room. He motioned to the patient's left foot and she looked down to begin examining the injury, noticing how swollen it was.

"And I'm walking toward the car, and suddenly the hillside just goes..." Sasha, their patient, was telling them, grimacing whenever Ellie pressed against her foot. "And I'm falling. I see my squad car coming down on top of me, so I managed to roll out of the way, but my... my leg was caught under it." She groaned and looked at Ellie who was still examining her. "Can you salvage it?"

She nodded. "I think so. I'd like to get an X-ray to see what other damage there might be."

"In the meantime, I want to have a look at that nasty laceration on your neck," Jackson added, gesturing to the cloth that covered the wound. "It has a lot of embedded debris."

"Hey, Tilden?" A passing firefighter in the ER paused at the entrance of the trauma room. "Everyone make it out of the mud?"

He nodded. "Everyone's accounted for except Lauenstein, Phil G., and... Brian."

Ellie glanced between them and Sasha pressed her lips together. "Brian's my fiancé."

"Don't worry," Tilden assured her. "You know him, he's gonna be fine. Look, he's probably giving himself a mud facial." Ellie and Jackson looked at each other. "You know, look good for the wedding."

"Yeah, well, if he had cold feet, he shoulda just said so."

☀️

"HEY—UH—THERE'S something that I need to tell you," Ellie said, standing beside Derek in the ER while she waited for Sasha's X-ray results. "Um—"

"Jackson proposed," he interrupted and she looked up at him. Derek was smiling and he nodded to the ring on her left hand. "I was wondering when he was finally gonna ask."

"You—You knew?"

He nodded. "He asked for my blessing," he replied softly. "Said I was the only family you had left and he wanted to do it properly. Though... it should have been Mark." She looked down and played with the ring. "He'd be happy, sunshine."

She smiled softly. "Yeah... But—uh—there's something else—"

"Coming through!"

Ellie looked over at the shout and saw Bailey wheeling Richard out of the elevator. "Webber's pulse is thready," the general surgeon said urgently. "Systolic's eighty. Brooks has massive head trauma. Pupils are unresponsive."

"Brooks—?" Her gaze shifted to the intern who was being rolled out of the elevator behind Bailey and Richard. "She's seizing."

Derek jumped into action, hurrying over to her. "Let's get her on her side," he said, pushing down the sides of the gurney and Ellie went to the other side. "Ready? One, two, three, go."

"She needs a CT," Ellie told him while keeping Heather steady and he nodded. She looked over at the man at the end of the gurney who was frozen in shock. "Ross. Ross!" When he didn't answer, she groaned. "Fine. I'll help."

"Let's go. Go!"

A short time later, Ellie and Derek were waiting for Heather's CT results with Ross who was still unusually quiet. "Well, thank God you found them, Ross," Derek said while Ellie leaned against the wall behind him. "Let's just hope you found them in time."

"What was she even doing down by the generators?" Ellie asked, furrowing her brows. "Richard I might understand, but Brooks?"

Ross shrugged, watching Heather in the machine intently. "Dr. Bailey had been going around asking anyone if they had seen Dr. Webber. Maybe Brooks knew where he was..."

She sighed. "Terrible that it came to this."

Derek groaned when he saw the CT results. "Damn it. Subdural."

"Oh, God..."

Ellie looked over at Ross who looked more freaked than before. She quirked an eyebrow upward, glancing between him and the woman in the CT machine. "Let's go."

She followed after Derek, glancing at Ross briefly on the way out of the room. "Hey, are you okay to do this?" she asked Derek who stopped. "I know that you've taken her under your wing. We can find someone else—"

"She needs the best, Ellie," he interrupted and she sighed. "And I'm the best. It has to be me."

She nodded slowly. "Okay. I don't know how much help I can be. I haven't done neurosurgery in years and—"

"I can do it," he said and she fluttered her lips. "I got Ross. Go. See how Richard is and be the boss."

"Alright." She patted him on the shoulder and looked into his blue eyes. "But you page me the minute something happens with Brooks. Me and Owen, are we clear?"

"Yes, ma'am."

☀️

"WHY DID WE call her again?" Jackson asked Ellie as he paced in front of the closed elevator doors and she watched him move back and forth.

"Because she cares about him and Richard's in surgery right now," she replied calmly. "None of us know how it's going to turn out, and she deserves to know."

He frowned, still pacing. "You know, this isn't at all how my life would turn out. Needing to inform my mother about her maybe-boyfriend's health. That maybe-boyfriend being my former chief of surgery."

She shrugged. "It's life."

He sighed and handed her the granola bar he had been carrying around. "You gotta eat," he said when she looked down at it. "Besides, I've been watching you hold onto your stomach. You're feeling sick. Just eat it."

"I both love and hate that you know me so well," she replied, opening the package and breaking off half of the bar. "So long as you eat, too." He took it with a chuckle. "Oh, Derek knows about the engagement. He said it before I could!"

"And the pregnancy?"

"It got interrupted..."

The elevator doors opened and Catherine Avery stepped off. Jackson let out a breath when he saw his mother and she immediately walked over to them, looking him over for injuries.

"Hey, I'm fine."

She nodded and turned to Ellie. "Catherine," she said, accepting the hug from the woman. "Jackson and I have surgery soon, but Richard is in cardiogenic shock."

"No."

"Bailey feels like there's likely some internal necrosis," she continued as Catherine looked through the chart her son had given her. "So she took him up to the OR."

"With this kind of cardiac compromise?"

She nodded. "Yeah, and she—she—Catherine? Catherine?"

Jackson started after her and Ellie was about to follow when her pager went off. She looked down at it and her eyes widened. "Brooks... No, no, no!"

She dropped her half-eaten granola bar and ran in the direction of the OR. Doctors and nurses alike watched her run passed them as she tied on her scrub cap while hurrying down the stairs. When she arrived at Derek's OR, she ran into Owen and Derek was stepping away from Heather as the continuous tone filled the room.

He looked up at them as soon as the door opened and he shook his head while a nurse looked down sadly at Heather. Ellie let out a breath and Ross hurried out of the OR, breathing heavily and passing Jackson who had noticed Ellie run off. He looked back at her and she shook her head, glancing at the intern on the table. She turned to Derek who was staring down at his intern with sad eyes and she walked over to him.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, pulling him away from the table. "I'm sorry, Derek."

☀️

"DR. AVERY, IF you have any issues with—"

"Does he know why you cut open a man in severe cardiac distress just so you could poke around and see what's going on?"

Ellie followed the frustrated shouts of Catherine Avery and found her, Owen, and Bailey arguing in front of the OR board. "We looked at all of the options."

"Tell him." Catherine turned to Bailey. "You tell him you feel guilty because the last thing Richard Webber heard from you is that he's a drunk who ruined your life. After all he's done for you."

"Okay, that's enough." They looked over when they heard Ellie's unusually calm voice despite all that had happened. "I know that we're all strung out in emotions, but I don't tolerate shouting in my hospital. Look, we all care about Richard and we all want him to get better. But to do that, you all need to focus and talk to each other. Shouting doesn't accomplish that.

"We lost a good intern today," she continued, letting out a breath. "A good, talented intern who had a bright future ahead of her. We are not losing a good surgeon, too. So put aside your problems and your pride, and find a way to help him. Are we all in agreement on that?" They all nodded and she pressed her lips together. "Good. Catherine, I've seen to it that you have access to his chart, but that does not mean there will be more fighting."

She rolled her neck and returned to the ER where she found Jackson at the desk and walked over to him. "Oh, good, I was just about to page you. Sasha's results are in." She looked down at the tablet she held out to him and her face fell as she read them. "We have to go tell a young couple that their future might never happen."

"Haven't we had enough tragedy today?" she asked with a sigh, setting the tablet down. "First Heather and Richard, and now this?"

He rubbed her shoulder and she followed him into Sasha and Brian's room. He stood at the foot of her bed and cleared his throat. "So, I was able to remove all of the necrotic tissue," he began, looking between them. "But the labs suggest that your organs are beginning to fail."

"Well... isn't there anything we can do?" Brian asked them.

Ellie let out a small breath. "We're giving you powerful antibiotics," she replied softly. "And we're hoping that that stops the process. But..."

"But I might not make it," Sasha finished quietly.

"We are going to do everything that we possibly can," Jackson said and Ellie nodded in agreement.

"Bri—"

"We want to get married," he told them and Ellie raised her eyebrows. "Right now. No matter what happens, we want to be married. We need a chaplain."

She looked at Jackson before nodding. "We'll find you someone." They left the room and she paused. "Do we even have a chaplain in this hospital?"

"I have no idea."

☀️

THE INTERNS WERE crowded outside of Meredith's room when Ellie furrowed her brows, having gone to visit the blonde. "What are you people doing?"

They all jumped at her voice. "Dr. Sloan—um..." Jo looked around and sighed. "Dr. Shepherd told us we needed to think of some good Heather stories for when her mom gets here." She nodded. "The trouble is... we don't have any..."

"You spent the past year with her and you don't have a single story about her?" Ellie asked.

Stephanie shrugged. "We thought that if we read some of Dr. Shepherd's charts—cases that Heather worked on—we could tell her that."

"Her mom isn't gonna want to hear about a craniotomy that she did on a random Thursday," Ellie told them with a sigh. "She's gonna want to hear about how much you guys liked her, that her daughter had friends. Believe me, I know..."

"You do?" Stephanie asked, raising her eyebrows. "Can—Can I ask how?"

She rubbed her lips together, clearing her throat. "When I was in my third year of residency, there was a shooting here at the hospital," she said quietly. "Two friends of mine were killed."

"Dr. Sloan, I'm so sorry."

"I still call Reed and Charlie's parents every so often, just to check in," she continued, her mind wandering to her late friends. "And when I was telling them stories, I talked about the time Charlie ran into a door because he was distracted by a dog cartoon. Or—" She chuckled to herself. "—when Reed was so drunk she fell asleep upside down on the couch. They don't have to be the biggest moments of their lives, just something that, for the briefest moment, they're smiling and not crying."

"So it doesn't have to be the best story?" Jo asked.

Ellie shook her head with a small smile. "No. You just need to give her some comfort before she gets the worst news of her life. I'm sure you guys will find something." She looked to the back of the group. "Ross? Are you okay?" He ran off wordlessly and she raised her eyebrows. "Is he okay?"

"He's been doing that since Heather died," Jo replied with a sigh. "We don't know why."

"Well, someone should check on him," Ellie said, turning back to them. "You guys are going through residency together. You need to lean on each other. Good luck, guys."

"Come on. What about... Hassan?" Jackson was saying on the phone, holding his head in frustration. "He's our at the pile, too? You realize they can't all be out at the damn pile!" He looked over when he felt somebody next to him and saw Ellie. "No, I don't care what religion they are, just give me somebody—anybody—who can officiate this—" He rolled his eyes and Ellie tilted her head. "Yeah, as a member of the board, I'm gonna say you want to stay away from phrases like 'Even a Catholic?'." He glanced over and saw his mother. "Yeah, alright—uh—just call me back." He hung up the phone with a huff. "How is Richard?"

"Hanging on by a thread, thank you very much!"

Jackson frowned. "You gonna scream at me, too, now? I heard you already had a go at Hunt and Bailey."

"I just wanna know what in God's name was going through your head—"

"Stop!" he exclaimed, cutting her off. "You are terrified, I get that. You love him. And you are as scared as you have ever been. But marching through this hospital telling everybody that they are incompetent is not gonna fix that situation. We are all doing our best and we are gonna take good care of him."

Ellie nudged Jackson and he looked down at her. She nodded towards his mother making him furrow his brows. She shrugged wordlessly and he hummed with a nod.

"Oh. Mom, can we talk to you for a second?"

"Is it urgent?"

"Well, no, but you'll like it," Jackson replied and she nodded. "It won't take long. Uh—so..." He cleared his throat. "I asked Ellie to marry me yesterday. And—"

"Oh!" Catherine exclaimed, interrupting Jackson and hugging Ellie tightly. "This is wonderful news!"

Jackson frowned. "She didn't even let me finish," he grumbled. "What if I was about to say you said no? I mean, you're wearing the ring, but still."

Ellie patted him on the shoulder. "It's a tough life you live," she told him before looking back at Catherine. "There was one more thing. Um—I'm pregnant."

Catherine looked between them, a smile growing on her face. "I'm gonna be a grandma?" she asked and Ellie nodded, being pulled into another tight hug. "Oh, you've made this day so much better. Congratulations!"

"I told you that you'd like it," Jackson said with a chuckle.

"I love it!"

Ellie sighed when her pager went off. "Oh, perfect timing..." she muttered, looking up at the mother and son. "Sorry. I have to go."

Jackson turned back to his mother when Ellie had left. "Do you want to call the lawyers or should I?" he asked.

She shook her head. "No. You don't need a prenup, Jackson, because she's always loved you for you. Not your last name. That's enough for me."

☀️

BRIAN AND SASHA had successfully gotten married, and Ellie had finally gotten a chance to tell everybody else that she was pregnant and that she and Jackson were engaged. Derek, due to potential sleep deprivation, would not stop crying when she told him the news. Meredith was happy for them but spent much of the time laughing at her husband and his tears.

Cristina had her typical response; she was happy for Ellie but made sure to tell her that in eight short months, she would be covered in milk and incredibly tired.

Owen was very happy for them both, though he was kicking himself that he didn't put two and two together when Ellie asked him to draw her blood for tests. Callie was crying because Sofia would have a cousin and Arizona was happy that, for a brief moment, tensions between her and Callie were briefly gone.

With the birth of Meredith and Derek's son, Ellie and Jackson's engagement and pregnancy, and April and Andy's engagement, times at the hospital were finally becoming happier.

Something that was much needed and very welcomed.

☀️

━ author's note:

every so often, I remind you guys that reed & charles were ellie & jackson's best friends...

also, I did the math and there's eighteen more chapters until we get to the point of the book before it was taken down! I can't wait to write past the original chapters!