Chapter 80

"How are you enjoying D.C.?" I ask Derek as we facetime. He's in Washington D.C. today for a meeting with the president about his project that he's been working on for the white house.

"It's great. You should've came, then I could've made good on my promise and introduced you to the president." He smirks.

"Believe me I wanted to, but my husband and I are finally back on good terms and everything in the Avery home is positive and cheerful and I just want to enjoy that for right now." I smile.

"And you still get scared at the thought of being on a plane." He adds.

"Okay, well yeah. That too." I agree. I've been scared of flying ever since the plane crash. The only time I've been on a plane since then was for my honeymoon and the only thing that kept me from having a nervous breakdown on that plane was that I took ambien before I got on the plane, which made me sleep almost the whole time and even then I still had a panic attack before the flight.

"You know you have to conquer that fear one day, Liliana." He says.

"I will one day, but I can't risk getting on a plane and it crashing again right now, especially not while I'm pregnant." I say.

"Okay, I understand that. How's my niece or nephew doing anyways?"

"Well at my last appointment the doctor said everything looked great so far and I have another appointment today." I smile.

"And how are you feeling?" He asks.

"Tired, all of the time. I don't know how being pregnant takes this much energy, I'm not even that far along."

"Your bodies adjusting to carrying a baby it's normal to be tired, maybe you should take it easy and slow down a little bit." He says.

"Derek, I'm pregnant not sick." I smile.

"The same thing Meredith used to tell me when she was pregnant." He laughs.

"Well, I have to go. I need to get to my appointment and you need to finish preparing for your meeting." I say.

"Okay, I'll text you later." He smiles.

"Okay, bye." I say.

"Bye." He says before we end the facetime.

"You ready?" Jackson asks, handing me a cup of coffee as I walk into the kitchen where he's waiting.

"Yeah," I smile kissing him before taking a sip of my coffee. We leave to go to the hospital and once we get there, we get dressed in our scrubs, before going up to O.B. for my appointment.

"Oh my goodness. Look at this cute little fetus. I can't wait to show Derek this picture." I smile looking at the photo from the ultrasound as Jackson and I leave my check up.

"I know, I can't wait to show my mom." He says.

"Yeah, you can show her as soon as my first trimester is over." I say. Jackson and I agreed we wouldn't tell anyone about my pregnancy until my first trimester is over, so right now the only person besides us that knows about the pregnancy is Derek.

"In two weeks." He smiles.

"Yep, I can't believe I'm already ten weeks along."

"Me either. I still can't believe we're actually having a baby." He says.

"I know. We're going to be someone's parents." I smile.

"I still don't know how we're going to tell my mom."

"We? That's all you, Avery." I laugh.

"Of course it is." He smiles kissing me, before I have to leave to meet Meredith, because we're operating together today. I go to CT where she's waiting for me.

"So you'll access the spine through the retroperitoneum and I will perform the fusion with bone graft between L5 and S1." I say.

"Okay, sounds like a plan." She agrees.

"So, Cristina's really moving to Zurich?" I ask Meredith. Apparently Cristina is supposed to move to Zurich to run a cardio facility that Burke gave her. I haven't gotten a chance to talk to her about it yet, because I've been so busy with everything going on in my life, but if she is taking this opportunity I'm happy for her. That's a big step for her career.

"Yeah, she's interviewing for replacements today." She sighs.

"Leave it to Cristina Yang to show us all up by getting her own medical facility." I laugh.

"I know, I can't believe it's actually happening. Have you seen Amelia around the hospital? She started her first official day as a surgeon here today." Meredith says.

"No, I haven't seen her." I say. Derek's sister Amelia has been in town for the last couple of weeks and she decided that she's relocating to Seattle, so Owen hired her as a surgeon at the hospital. I like having her around. Since Derek has been so busy with his project, having her around helps lift some of the work load off of me. "Well I need to go, I have another surgery to get to. I will see you later." I say before leaving C.T. I get my patient prepped for surgery then I take him to the O.R. I'm inserting a shunt, which doesn't take that long, as long as you know what you're doing. I finish the surgery after 3 hours and take my patient to recovery, before grabbing something to eat, then going to a on call room to take a nap. I get a little bit of rest before waking up because it's time for my surgery with Meredith.

"I'm sorry, I'm having trouble dividing these branching vessels." Meredith says as we operate,

"I can retract the Iliac vein medially to help with exposure." I say.

"Thanks." She says."Something about you seems different. I just can't tell what it is." She smiles glancing up at me.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Whatever, I'm sure I'll figure it out." She says.

"Good luck with that." I smile as we continue operating. We finish a short while later then I go get changed out of my scrubs since that was my last surgery of the day. Jackson meets me a little while later then we head home.

"Hey, you made it home safe?" I ask Derek as we speak on the phone while I sit at the kitchen that night chewing on a apple and working on my laptop.

"Yeah, I just made it home." He says cheerfully.

"Why so happy?" I smile.

"I met with the president and walked him through everything we've been working on and at the end of it he said that he wanted to make this a weekly thing. They offered me a position at N.I.H."

"N.I.H.! That's the dream job. You'll be right there on the ground doing the actual brain mapping work yourself." I say excitedly.

"I know." He says cheerfully.

"What did Meredith say about it?" I ask.

"It's going to take some work to convince her to pick up and move, but I think I can do it." He says.

"Well if you're sure this is something you want to do you have my full support." I smile. Derek always has my support no matter what. Of course I want my best friend to be in Seattle with me especially at this time in my life, but a opportunity to work for the president of the United States is to big to turn down, so I'm happy for him.