Playing with fire (Amelia Shepherd) ABANDONED

Twenty one

•sorry not sorry. or maybe a little bit sorry•

"I'm so sorry, Ms. Cruz," the doctor shook Mallie's hand.

"Thank you," Mallie said numbly.

She stared down at the babies in the baskets in the nursery, seeing them staring back at her with their blue eyes, identical to Saffie's. The babies both had brown curly hair, like Mallie and Saffie, and their same skin tone. It was clear these boys were Saffie's sons.

And now, Mallie had to make the decision on whether these boys would grow up with a dead mother or a vegetable mother.

The car accident had caused too much damage to Saffie's brain. She was now on a vent, with a machine keeping her heart beating. Saffie's directory had said that Mallie was her POA and she got to make the decision, and she'd signed a will when she'd found out she was pregnant saying her children would go to Mallie if she died.

Saffie had probably figured she'd die from an overdose, if anything. But a car accident? Saffie had probably never even thought about that.

"What do I do?" Mallie whispered at the babies. They stared back at her with blank faces.

Mallie sighed and walked out of the nursery, heading to Saffie's room to talk to her doctor. She stopped in the doorway, looking between the babies and her phone. She knew she should probably call Amelia, or just call anyone to come with her, but Mallie felt like making this decision about her sister was something she had to do alone.

She also knew how triggering this could be for Amelia, or even for Meredith. Derek had died in an accident and Amelia had lost her son. Mallie couldn't ask either of them to come, and she couldn't ask Maggie because then she'd tell them. She could ask someone from the station, but she didn't really know who she'd ask and how she'd deal with them seeing her so vulnerable.

So, Mallie took a deep breath and headed towards Saffie's room. She was going to be brave and do this alone.

"You understand how this will work. We'll turn everything off and she'll go in her own time," the doctor said.

Mallie nodded from her seat at Saffie's bedside. Mallie couldn't even look at her sister's face, too scared to see herself staring back at her. She knew that her dying in a bed like this could be very possible with her line of work and now she had twins to think about.

She didn't even have a crib. She had a crazy job, for fuck's sake, and now she was turning her sister's life support off and taking Saffie's children home to the apartment Mallie shared with her girlfriend who had actually lost her own child before, and a sibling the exact same way.

Said girlfriend had caught wind of Mallie being escorted out of the Station by police officers, probably because Ben would've called Bailey to ask if she knew anything, and had been blowing up Mallie's phone. She hadn't even opened the messages she'd sent, or the ones from the rest of her weird dysfunctional families. She didn't think she could handle it.

The doctor unplugged the machines and Mallie held Saffie's bruised hand tightly, keeping her eyes on Saffie's monitors as she watched her heart rate slow down.

Mallie panicked when she saw it was getting low enough to be near the end. She looked at her sister's face for the first time, feeling tears spilling down her cheeks as she saw how hurt she actually was.

"I'm so sorry, Saffie," Mallie whispered. "You're my favourite sister and I love you so much. I promise that I'm gonna take care of your sons. I promise, they're gonna be so loved and taken care of. They're not gonna be firefighters, either, 'cause I know you wouldn't want that," Mallie whispered.