Chapter 70

"Liliana, hey. Can you write down you and Jackson's address. I'm sending out invitations to my wedding." April smiles cheerfully handing me a notepad and a pen as I stand at the front desk.

"Sure." I say taking the notepad and pen and beginning to write down my address.

"I thought about doing them online. It's better for the environment, I know, but I..." April begins to ramble.

"April, April. Calm down. It's fine. This is your wedding, you can send out invites however you want." I remind her.

"You're right, this is my wedding. I'm getting married." She smiles excitedly as I hand her the notepad with my address, before walking away. I leave to go prep my patient for surgery, before starting the operation. I had a tumor removal surgery today, which is one of my favorite surgeries to perform. Tumor removals are complex and take a lot of focus, which is why I love them. For those hours while I'm in the O.R. my mind is completely focused on the surgery and I get to shut out everything going on in the outside world. I'm in a great place in life now, but during times when my life wasn't so great, surgery therapy. I scrub into my surgery, which takes 5 hours. Once I finish I scrub out and take my patient to recovery.

"Hey, so I invited Dr. Webber to thanksgiving, so now it really has to happen." Meredith says walking over to the front desk where Derek, Ben, Owen, and I stood.

"His lady is cooking Thanksgiving dinner at our house." Meredith says pointing at Owen. Owen's been dating this doctor named Emma that he met at the gala a couple of weeks ago, everyone seems to like her so far. I personally don't really have an opinion of her. I've met her and she seems nice, but I don't know her enough like her.

"Oh that's nice." Derek says.

"Should we invite more people?" Meredith asks.

"Well, uh, if we're making a whole turkey we can invite a few more." Owen says.

"Okay. Let's get Dr. Yang here, please." Meredith says to the nurse sitting at the front desk.

"You and Jackson are obviously invited." Derek says to me.

"I know that." I smirk.

"You and Bailey can come too." Derek says to Ben.

"We're going to my families, assuming she's still speaking to me by then." Ben says.

"We should probably invite Callie. I'm sure with the trial, I'm sure she didn't have time to make plans." Meredith says.

"So we're not inviting Arizona. We can't have both." Derek says.

"Well, they're back together so..." Owen says.

"They are?" Meredith and I both say surprised.

"Hey, can you go do your thing, so we can get to our thing?" Ben asks Owen.

"Yes." Owen answers.

"So we're not inviting Yang, right because that wouldn't be..." Derek says.

"Uh, she probably has plans." Meredith interjects. For some reasons her and Cristina are mad at each other. I'm not really sure why and I haven't asked since it isn't really my business. If they wanted me to know they'd tell me.

"No, she probably doesn't" Owen says before walking away.

"Do you have thanksgiving plans?" Meredith asks Alex when he walks to the front desk.

"What do you think?" He scoffs.

"My house 3:00." She says to him.

"Alright, I'm bringing Jo."

"I figured." Meredith smirks.

"Don't sound so excited. You know, you were an intern balling an attending once." He says walking away making me laugh.

"You kiss my kids with that mouth." Meredith says following behind him.

"I got a pre-op. It'll be fast, but do not start with Hunt until I get back." Ben says to Derek before walking away.

"I won't." Derek says.

"What's that about?" I ask.

"You don't wanna know."

"Dr. Garcia." Anurse says walking over to me.

"Yes." I answer looking up from my iPad that contains my patients files.

"There's a man in the lobby who is insisting to see you." She says.

"Well, does this man have a name and is there anything medically wrong with him?" I ask.

"No, there's nothing wrong with him. He didn't say who he was or why he's here , he's just insisting to see you. If you don't want to see him, I can have security make him leave." she says

"No, it's fine. I'll see who it is." I sigh.

"Well, I'm coming to. I'm not letting you meet up with some random stranger alone." Derek says handing his iPad to another nurse that sat at the front desk.

"Derek, it's fine. You can stay here and wait for Ben. We're in a hospital full of people, I'll be fine." I say,

"Nope, I'm coming with you."

"Okay." I sigh before we follow behind the nurse to the waiting area.

"There he is." The nurse says pointing to the man as he sat in the waiting area. As soon as I looked at his face my heart dropped. I felt like my whole body went numb and anger ran through me. Even though I'd only seen this man in person once in my life, I had so much hatred and resentment for him. There was a battle in my mind that had me trying to decide if I wanted to give him the time of day or leave and have security escort him out.

"Lily, what's wrong? Are you okay? Do you know him?" Derek asks looking at the expression on my face as I stood there frozen.

"That...that's my father." I stutter as my heart beats out of my chest as he begins to walk towards me. I hadn't seen him since I was 10 years old. He had aged a little bit. His once jet black hair, had hints of grey in it and he had a little bit of stubble on his face, but overall he still looked the same.

"Liliana, it's been a long time." He smiles as he stops and stands infront of me. I was still so shocked that I couldn't even say anything, I just stood there staring at him. Derek knew that this situation was not one that could be confronted in the middle of the waiting area, so he took us to a empty conference room. I asked him to leave once we got to the conference room, because this is something I need to handle by myself. My dad and I sat there staring at each other in silence. I honestly had nothing to say and he's the one who popped up out of nowhere, so it was his job to speak.