𝐉𝐔𝐋𝐈𝐀𝐍𝐀 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐉𝐔𝐋𝐈𝐄𝐓, 𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐚 𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐩𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐝₁

𝐢𝐱. 𝐩𝐡𝐨𝐭𝐨𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐤 𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐬

Later on in the night, Amelia had to head into the hospital so she could perform the surgery.

Athena joins everyone else in the waiting room, anxiety running through hers—and everyone else's—veins.

Cooper returns with a bunch of water bottles.

"Here," Sheldon throws his hands up, motioning for a water.

He tosses one to Sheldon and one to Pete.

Pete offers it to Violet, but she declines.

Athena sits in the chair beside Dell.

"I'll take one," Dell leans forward and takes Pete's.

"Yeah, me too," Athena puts her hands up and caught one from Cooper.

Cooper hands another water to Pete and he stares at Violet.

Athena subtly looks over at her, but Violet sees it.

"Are we all just waiting for me to have a PTSD freak out?" Violet looks from Athena to Sheldon.

Sheldon chuckles, "No."

"What? Of course not," Cooper says sarcastically.

"Why would.." Pete asks, still staring.

"Uh uh," Athena shakes her head.

"Oh, who am I kidding?" Violet sighs. "I am freaking out. We should all be freaking out. I mean, a year ago.. a year ago, I was dying. And we got through that. We got another year under our belts. And..once again, here we are in the same place..with somebody else..I just want to scream to whoever keeps doing this to just stop..stop bringing us here with another one of our own dying."

"She's not dying," Athena interrupts. "She's not. So stop saying that. She's going to be fine. Amelia is going to do her best, and Maya and her baby will be fine." Athena sighs and everyone looks at her. "I'm sorry. I'm just— stressed."

Athena rests her arms on her thighs and leans down, rubbing her eyes.

"Almost worse being the ones out here waiting for the news, right?" Cooper nods his head with everyone else. Although Athena had always been the one to be in the waiting room.

Always.

"You know, I— I— I got be honest. It's actually worse being the one sliced open and bleeding on the table. It's—" Violet starts laughing as Pete breaks out into laughter. Everyone joins along, minus Naomi and Sam, no matter how much they want to find light in the situation, they can't. "I'm sorry. I know it was a bad day for you, too. It was a really bad day." Violet looks over at Pete. "Anyway, uh..let's not talk about anything so morbid. Okay? I— I have something." Violet starts digging through her purse. "This was supposed to be..for, uh..Lucas' birthday, because I wanted to do something.." She looks to Pete for permission.

"Of course, yeah," Pete nods.

"Okay, well, this might be blowing the surprise, but, um..I wanted to get a picture of you and Lucas. So I swiped your camera because I was gonna download one. but you're a single dad, so all the pictures are just of Lucas. There's none of you two together. So I looked at all your phones," Everyone throws their hands up in disagreement, as to how and why Violet got and hold, and onto their phones. "and everybody has at least one picture of Pete and Lucas. But..if this isn't the crappiest collection of out-of-focus cell phone pictures. I mean, look." Violet hands photos out.

"Yeah, that's bad," Pete hands Naomi the picture.

"I mean, I can't put any of these in a frame. It just embarrassing," Violet laughs.