chapter sixty six

holidaze.season six, episode ten.

THANKSGIVING DAY

. Just after she took a bite, he appeared by her side holding the lab results they'd been waiting on. "Wan' a cookie?" Cassie offered in the midst of chewing, making him cringe. Derek glanced down at the box, seeing about a dozen sugar cookies, each of them frosted to look like a turkey.

Derek shook his head. "Where did you get those?"

"Mama Shepherd sent them to me," she shrugged, once again holding out the box for him to take one. "Seriously, they're really good, you should try one."

"Wait, mom sent you cookies?"

Cassie nodded, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Yeah, she does every holiday. Why?" Glancing up to see the upset and slightly distraught frown on his face, Cassie paused, a small smile growing on her features. She let out a snort of amusement, teasingly waving the cookie in his face. "You didn't get any, did you?"

"No, I—" Derek stuttered, tripping over his words. Sending a resentful look at the half eaten turkey cookie in her hand, he narrowed his eyes at her. "Yes, I-I , it's just—"

"," Cassie sing-songed, a wide grin taking residence on her face. "It's a bit ironic, if you consider the fact that we're not even related."

"You're not funny."

"Who said I was joking?"

With a roll of his eyes, Derek elbowed her in the ribs, making her let out a hearty chuckle as he handed her the lab results for their patient, Nicholas. "When you're done bullying me, feel free to take a look."

"So ," she mumbled with a smile, which soon vanished as she read over the paper in her hands. "He has an arteriovenous malformation?" Derek nodded, taking the paper from her hands once she read through it all. "Poor kid."

"We've gotta get him into surgery right away," he sighed, motioning towards Nicholas' room where he was being checked over by Lexie. "Page Caldwell, have him meet us up in the OR."

"Page Robbins?" Cassie replied with faux obliviousness, reaching down to her pager and quickly typing in the blonde attending's number before he could do anything about it. "Yeah, you got it."

"No, I said—"

"Say no more, it's already done."

"I said , not—"

"Cool, see you up there!"

Stunned as she hurried away without another word, Derek scoffed in disbelief, the box of cookies she'd forgotten to take with her catching his eye. One of the frosted turkeys stared right at him, making him shift slightly in place.

"She doesn't..." he mumbled to himself, shaking his head in denial. "No, she doesn't love her more than me... does she?"

☆

Cassie entered the scrub room with a frown after Nicholas' surgery, tearing off her mask in frustration and shoving it into the trash bin. In the OR, they realized that without an instrument small enough to fit through the eight year old's nose, there was no possible way of doing the surgery he needed to live. "So what, we're just sending him home to die?"

Arizona and Derek shared a glance, looking back to Cassie with matching frowns. "It's an inoperable AVM, Cass. There's nothing we can do."

"That's the thing," she shook her head, violently scrubbing off her hands in the sink. "It's inoperable, we just don't have the right size tools to save him."

Arizona began washing her hands on Cassie's left, humming to herself in thought. "What if we the tools?" Derek and Cassie turned to face her, heads tilted in inquiry. "I mean, we just need a smaller scope, right? Doctors invent stuff all the time, what's stopping us from doing the same?"

"We could get Mark to help," Derek added, looking over Cassie's shoulder at the blonde attending. "Ask the Chief to help fund the equipment—"

"And hopefully, Nicholas will be able to hang on long enough for us to finish it before the AVM blows," Arizona finished his thought, her face brightening up. "You really think we can do it?"

Derek shrugged. "It's worth a shot."

Cassie let a hopeful smile come over her features, eyes sparkling as she sent Arizona a grin. "Have I ever told you how much I love you?"

Laughing with a friendly wink, Arizona wiped off her hands with a towel, opening the door to the hallway as she made her exit. "Yeah, but I wouldn't mind hearing it again."

After the blonde left the room, there was a comfortable quietness for a moment, each of the siblings brainstorming ways to create the instrument as quick as possible.

Hesitantly, Cassie turned to Derek with a tense smile. "Hey, so we don't really Mark for this, do we?" Derek sent her a deadpan look. "Listen, I-I'm just saying—"

"We need a plastic surgeon."

"I'm a genius, there's nothing he can do that I can't."

"Mark's an attending," Derek reminded her. "No offense, but despite your IQ, you're only a third year. So to answer your question, yes, we need him."

"If you would just hear me out—"

"Cass, I love you," he prefaced, an exhausted sigh coming out of his mouth. "But I'm not getting in the middle of whatever relationship crap you and Mark have going on this week."

"We're not in a relationship," Cassie corrected him, before giving him a once over with narrowed eyes. "Oh, and you suck, by the way."