Chapter Text
She’s honestly not expecting it when Jules walks on stage for the panel.
She should have known. Or maybe she should have looked more closely at the brochure with its list of speakers. She knows that Jules has been working in Cardio, and has been doing research, and has been making big strides in her field. And it’s a Cardio conference, one of the biggest events of the year. So it’s not crazy that Jules would be here, or that she’d be presenting some of her case studies. But she figured that Jules was still in Seattle, and wouldn’t be coming all the way out to Miami for a three day conference.
Which leaves Mika in the third row of the lecture hall, seeing her ex for the first time in seven years, and feeling totally unprepared.
She’d been looking forward to this panel, actually. Advancing Minimally Invasive Techniques in Cardiothoracic Surgery. Four surgeons talking about their developments in patient care and surgery techniques. When she’d gotten the program for the conference, she’d circled this presentation twice around with her pen, knowing that she wanted to hear what these speakers had to say. She’s just finished her residency, and has been busy deciding on which fellowship to accept to get her Cardio certification. With the International Cardiothoracic Conference being hosted in Miami, where she lives and works, and many of the doctors she could be working with presenting at the conference, it was an obvious decision to register and spend the weekend here. She just hadn’t expected to see Jules.
Mika can’t keep her eyes off of her.
She looks different now. Older, yes, but there’s an air of stillness, or confidence, maybe, that’s new. Her hair is a little shorter, just past her shoulders. She’s wearing a dress, plum purple, that is fully professional but still makes her look stunning. She hasn’t noticed Mika yet. Mika’s sure of that. Instead, Jules is facing towards the other speakers, nodding along and taking notes on the tablet in front of her, completely unaware of the crisis Mika is having, less than thirty feet away from her.
It’s been seven years. Almost a decade since Mika walked out the doors of Grey-Sloan and out of that part of her life. Six and a half years since Mika stopped responding to Jules’s texts and calls. Six years since Jules had tried to reach out at all.
She’s not proud of how she acted back then. She’d been drowning, and hadn’t had many options, but she knew she’d hurt people regardless. It had been a dark, awful time in Mika’s life, and she’d isolated herself from everyone. She’d needed the time; to grieve, and process, and keep on living. And eventually she’d found her way back to some new normal; some life where Chloe wasn’t there to laugh with or call or talk to. She’s created a new space for herself, somewhere that doesn’t feel haunted by the ghost of her sister and her own mistakes. She doesn’t regret leaving; doesn’t regret starting over. But she knows that it had cost her some immeasurable things.
Such as Jules. Who is sitting in the same room as her, about to lead a presentation on a subject Mika is keenly interested in, and looking even more beautiful than the last time Mika saw her.
Mika wants to be paying attention to the other speakers. The first woman is talking about aneurysm management; the second about stem cell research. These are topics that she’s interested in! Things she’s considering dedicating her life to studying! But despite it all, she’s unable to listen to a single word of the first three presenters; instead, she’s tuned in to Jules and Jules alone. Watching the way Jules tucks her loose hair out of her face, the way she frowns in confusion and raises her pen to her mouth in thought until the speaker clarifies a point. Mika feels like she’s in high school, with a crush on someone in her English class, fully missing the conversation about Shakespeare because she’s distracted by a pretty girl. But this isn’t just some pretty girl. This is Jules Millin, who she fell in love with much too quickly many years ago, before disappearing into thin air. This is Jules, who opened her up and shook her loose, who Mika didn’t think she’d ever get the chance to see again. This is Jules.
So it’s no wonder that it’s hard for Mika to pay attention.
Jules is the fourth and final speaker to go. When the applause for the previous presentation concludes, she stands up in her seat, smooths her dress with her hands, and moves to the podium. Mika can’t take her eyes off of her. “Good afternoon, everyone. I’m Doctor Jules Millin, and today I’ll be speaking about robot-assisted thoracic surgeries.” She smiles as she faces the audience. She’s always been good with a crowd; always known how to talk to people in a way they’d understand. “As we all know, many have been hesitant to explore this field due to the—”
She cuts herself off as her eyes land on Mika. Mika can see it flash across her face, the confusion and then recognition and then something else Mika can’t place. She wonders what her own expression shows. She watches as Jules swallows, then tears her eyes away from Mika, continuing her speech. “Due to the limitations of cost and scale, but I’m here to tell you how we at the Heart Center of Chicago have moved past that.”
It’s a great presentation. Of course it is. Jules is smart, has always been, and she’s charismatic, and well-spoken, and the audience reacts well to her. She explains the technology being developed at her center, and the precision of nanoscopic cameras and tools, and the algorithms that she has personally developed to help with internal navigation mid-surgery. It’s genius. She’s asked various questions by the audience, poking deeper at her research and methods, and she handles them well, explaining her reasonings and the results they’ve achieved, and the doctors in the crowd nod, approving. She doesn’t look at Mika or her section for the entirety of her presentation. Once the questions wrap up, and the audience stands in applause for both her and her fellow speakers, her eyes meet Mika’s once again, and the message on her face is loud and clear. Wait there.
So Mika waits. She busies herself with gathering her things, shuffling her notebooks and papers in her lap and then into her bag. She wants to talk to Jules. She needs to. She has no idea what she wants to say, but she knows that she couldn’t live with herself if she walked away right now, not with Jules so close to her. She watches as Jules greets and speaks with other doctors; doctors who Mika knows are leading forces in their fields; greats with numerous awards behind their names. Even from afar she can tell that they’re praising Jules and her research.
She feels something in her chest, this pride for Jules and her accomplishments, that she knows she doesn’t deserve to feel. Not when she’s the one who left, the one who broke things off all those years ago. But still. Of course Jules would already be presenting her own successful studies at nationwide conferences. Mika could have predicted that ages ago.
She stays at her seat. Eventually Jules finishes speaking with other researchers and walks over to her. Her expression is measured; not revealing anything about how she may be feeling. She’s added a black duster jacket on top of her dress and has a large handbag by her side. Mika doesn’t think she’s ever seen her wear anything so formal. She is captivating.
“That was a really great talk,” Mika says before Jules can say anything. “I was really impressed with what you said about magnetic precision.”
“Mika, what are you doing here?” Jules asks. And god, her voice. Hearing it projected across the room was one thing. But here, in person, just a few feet away from her? It’s enrapturing, and it pulls her back into memories she can’t afford to focus on. God, did she miss the sound of that voice.
“I’m here for the conference,” Mika explains, holding her hands up in front of her in surrender. “I didn’t know you were speaking. I didn’t even know that you’d be here. I swear, if I’d known, I wouldn’t have sat so close to the front like that.”
Jules looks unconvinced. “I thought you quit medicine,” she says, measured.
“I did,” Mika allows. She bites the inside of her cheek before continuing. “But then I came back.”
“But just not to Seattle,” Jules nods, her expression cold. “And you didn’t think I might want to know about that.”
“Jules, I didn’t—” Mika starts.
“It’s fine,” she interrupts. “You don’t owe me anything.” Mika can hear the hurt in her voice. Mika hates knowing that she caused it. Jules turns away from her and Mika can see her chances of fixing this slipping out of reach.
“Can I buy you a drink?” Mika asks. It’s impulsive, and a little reckless, but it gets Jules to pause. “There’s a bar at the hotel here. Let me get you a drink, and we can sit, and catch up, and I can explain what’s been going on with me. It’s been seven years, Jules. I— I miss you.” Jules turns back to her. Her face is still guarded, but Mika allows herself to hope that there’s something else bleeding through, something that’s glad to see Mika in one way or another.
“Fine,” Jules says. “One drink. And then I’m leaving.”
They move to the hotel bar, finding a table tucked away in the back. Mika steps away to order their drinks, and takes a moment to breathe, to compose herself, before sitting back down across from Jules. She remembers the last time they were in a bar together, one of the only dates they’d ever had, right when she’d found out Chloe was sick. When she’d ended things with Jules for the first time. She shakes that memory out of her head. It doesn’t have space here tonight.
“Here’s your whiskey sour,” she says, setting the glass down in front of Jules. She slides in at the opposite booth, cradling her cup in her hands.
Jules lifts her glass, inspects it, then takes a sip. When she puts it down, her eyes bore into Mika, analyzing her. “What do you want?” she asks. And it’s not cruel, but genuine, like she’s trying to understand what Mika’s getting at and can’t see it.
Mika, to be fair, doesn’t really know what she wants, either. “I just– wanted to catch up,” Mika says. She doesn’t know if it’s a lie.
“Okay,” Jules says. “So— what happened? Because last I heard, you didn’t want anything to do with medicine anymore. And now you’re here, at a Cardio conference in Miami. What changed?” she asks.
And that’s the question, isn’t it?
“It took a while for anything to change. A really long time,” she begins. She watches as Jules shifts, her defensive stance opening up a bit. “I didn’t really do anything that first year. I stayed at home, with my parents and some of my sisters. Planned Chloe’s memorial. I picked up some shifts at the local bar, just for something to do. But I would get mad at the customers, and start yelling, so they fired me pretty quickly.” She laughs, remembering the panic attacks, the way she was riled up so easily, the way almost anything would set her off. It was awful, and embarrassing, but she’d moved through it. She’s past it. She sees the concern that hovers in Jules’s eyes. She doesn’t dwell on it.
“I went for a lot of walks, just hours at a time, walking around the streets by my house. Places where Chloe and I used to play together. Somewhere with memories of her that were good, not painful. And then eventually… well, it didn’t get easier, but I got stronger. I went to this support group for people dealing with grief. That helped a lot; talking with other people who were going through the same thing, or who were even further along in the process than me. And I went to therapy, for all the guilt that I was feeling. I started some new hobbies, stuff that didn’t make me think of Chloe at all. I got really into painting.” She smiles. There’s canvas upon canvas of landscapes and abstracts and portraits piled up in her parents’ garage. Most of the portraits are of Chloe or her other siblings. Some of them are of Jules. She doesn’t tell her that.“And I was good at it, too. Steady hands and all that. It kept my skills sharp.”
She takes a sip of her drink. She glances at Jules’s face. Jules looks contemplative but still guarded. She’ll take it. She pushes on. “And then, a year after she died, I felt ready to try again. And I thought about going back to Seattle—Bailey actually reached out to me with an offer—but I needed somewhere new. Somewhere that didn’t remind me of her. So I started at Miami Medical, somewhere where I could have a fresh start. No memories of Chloe; no memories of who I used to be. And I repeated my intern year. And I did great, because I had experience already, and nobody there knew about what had happened with Chloe. Some of them knew that I had a sister who died, but they didn’t know how, or that I had gotten hurt, too. I did well, and they trained me up, and I finished my residency. I loved Cardio, and I want to do more, and now I’m looking at some fellowship opportunities across the country. So when the biggest Cardio conference was coming to my city, I knew I had to go. And now I’m here,” she finishes. Jules doesn’t say anything. Her fingers are moving slightly, against the condensation on her glass, making patterns and smudging them. Mika, as usual, can’t read her.
“Do you like Miami?” Jules asks eventually.
“It’s even rainier here than in Seattle. Nobody told me that when I signed up.” Mika tells her. It gets a small smile to appear on Jules’s face. “But it’s twice as warm, so I can deal. And the people here are kind of rude, but you get used to it. It has its charm.”
Jules nods. She’s quiet again, for a long moment, and Mika is about to start talking again, maybe expound the virtues of Miami a bit more, when she speaks up. “I’m glad you’re back in medicine,” she says, soft and genuine. It strikes Mika deep in the chest. “You were the best in our class. You had the instincts. It always felt— wrong, that you were the one who left.”
Mika suddenly feels off-kilter. She doesn’t know how to react to that; how to feel. “I’m sorry I couldn’t go back to Seattle,” she says, and it feels like she’s apologizing for so much more. Jules nods, acknowledging, but doesn’t say anything. Mika takes a breath. “What about you? And the rest of our intern class— how are they?”
Jules takes another moment before answering. “Everyone’s well,” she says. “Adams and Griffith are still together. They’re both still at Grey-Sloan. Adams is doing Neuro, and Griffith is doing General. Kwan moved to Pittsburgh about a year and a half ago. He’s doing Peds, of all things. Seems to really like working with kids, though he hates to admit it.”
“And what about you?” Mika presses.
Jules takes the straw of her drink and swirls around the ice. “I’m in Chicago now. Working with Maggie Pierce, and cutting into hearts, and saving people’s lives. No complaints there.”
There must be more to it than that. Mika wants to push, wants to probe deep and know more. But she’s not sure how far Jules will let her go.
Mika takes a long sip from her glass. Then, feeling brave, or maybe just reckless, she asks the question she’s been wondering for the past seven years. “What would have happened to us, do you think? If I’d stayed.”
Jules sighs and looks away from her, running a hand through her hair and pushing it behind her ear. “We probably would have broken up eventually. I bet we would have had a few good months before we got too busy with work, and couldn’t prioritize each other, or something like that.”
No. Mika knows she’s wrong. “I don’t think so,” she says. “I would have fought for us.”
Jules looks at her, her expression unreadable. Mika has never been good at knowing what Jules is thinking, but right now, she has nothing to lose.
“If I had been stronger back then… or if I hadn’t gotten into that car accident. I would have fought for us. The way you made me feel… I’d never had that before. If there had been any other option for me, I would have stayed. And fought for you.”
Jules looks at her for a long moment, then shakes her head. She lets out a laugh. “God, Mika, you can’t tell me that,” she says. She takes a long sip of her drink, finishing it off.
“What?” Mika asks.
She sets her drink back on the table. The glass clinks against the table top. “When you left… it broke me. I wasn’t okay, for a long time. And I had to tell myself that we hadn’t been that serious. It was only a few weeks together. That we would have found out that we were incompatible in some other way, and we would have broken up eventually. Something to make your leaving feel less tragic.” She sighs. “So you can’t just say we would have made it. I’ve healed my heart; you don’t get to break it again.”
“I’m not trying to break your heart, Jules!” Mika protests.
“Then what are you doing? What do you want, Mika?” Jules asks.
“I’m trying—” she starts. She takes a breath, steadying herself. “I’m trying again.”
“I need another drink,” Jules says. She flags down a waiter, who appears by their table. “We’ll have another round. Her tab,” she gestures at Mika.
Jules had only promised she’d stay for one drink. It feels like a win to Mika, small but still there, burning hot in her chest. Mika waits until the waiter brings their drinks before speaking again. “I’m sorry,” she says, and she watches Jules glance at her in surprise. “I am. I’m sorry for hurting you. I was drowning, Jules, and I had to get out. But I never meant to hurt you. And that’s awful and so unhelpful to say, but it’s true.”
Jules laughs. It’s not cruel, but the sound of it still startles Mika. “Do you know what the worst part was?” Jules asks.
And Mika doesn’t know if she wants to hear this, but she thinks she might need to. “What?”
“I didn’t get to be mad at you. Because you left me, Mika. You broke my heart. I wanted to hate you. But I couldn’t, because I knew you were hurting even more than me. And so where did that leave me? How was I supposed to move on from that?” The emotion in her voice is raw. It makes Mika want to crumble, want to get on her knees and plead forgiveness for ever hurting her like that.
Impulsively, Mika reaches out, grabbing Jules’s hand from where it rests on the opposite side of the table. Jules looks down at their hands, shocked. And it’s not electricity that races through at the touch, but something steadier; familiar. Something vitalizing. Like one pulse connecting both of their bloodstreams. Mika can feel the thrum of it through her entire body. She wonders if Jules feels it, too.
“You can be mad at me,” Mika says. “I’m sorry if it’s like, literally seven years too late. But you can hate me now.”
She feels Jules’s fingers wrap around her own, squeezing. “I’m never going to hate you,” she says. It feels almost like a confession. She sighs, deflating. “Did you ever think about me? These past years?” she asks.
“Constantly,” Mika admits. It hovers around their table like smoke, filling in the space between them.
She watches as Jules bites her lip, then pulls her hand back from Mika’s. Her empty palm suddenly feels cold. “Then why didn’t you ever reach out?” Jules asks. Mika can hear the pain in her words, the hurt that has remained, all these years.
And Mika wishes she had a better answer for this. “I don’t know,” she says. “I was afraid. I knew I hurt you. I didn’t know if you’d want to hear from me.” That’s not it. That’s not everything. And Jules deserves to hear everything. “But also, you had seen some really ugly parts of me. Parts that I was trying to move away from. I didn’t want to be reminded of all that.”
Jules looks at her with comprehension in her eyes, like maybe she understands what Mika’s trying to say. “Are you reminded of that now?”
“Yes,” Mika admits. “But it doesn’t hurt as much as I thought it would.” She chews on her lip, wondering how much to say. “I think you were always better at understanding me than I gave you credit for.”
Jules smiles then, and it’s something soft and sad. “We’ve always been alike in that way. Pushing people away rather than letting them in.”
“You let me in,” Mika says. She remembers. She could never forget.
“And then you broke my heart,” Jules reminds her.
“I did,” Mika acknowledges. “And I wish I could have found a way to have avoided that.”
“I know,” Jules says. She exhales and pushes her hair out of her face. “And I’m really not mad at you, I promise. I just wish it all could have gone down differently.”
“Me too,” Mika agrees.
And suddenly this moment feels so fleeting. Jules has stayed for more than the one drink she’d agreed to, but this conversation could be over soon, and Jules could be out of Mika’s life again all too easily. And Mika— she doesn’t want that. She knows what it’s like to lose Jules, and she doesn’t want it to happen again. And right now she has Jules sitting just two feet away from her, for the first time in nearly a decade, and she’s still the most beautiful person Mika has ever seen, and Mika’s glass and a half of whiskey sour is making her feel brave.
She takes a breath. “Are you seeing anyone right now?” Mika asks.
Jules shoots her a look. God, she’s missed those looks. “No,” she says evenly.
“Great. Me neither. I’ve dated some people, but nobody ever compared to you. Do you like Chicago?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Jules says. “Mika, what are you doing?”
“I’ve always wanted to visit.” Jules glares at her. She keeps going. “Look, I fucked this up a few years ago. I wasn’t in a good place, and I needed to go, but I’m always going to regret that I had to leave you. And now I’ve found you again, at the same conference in Miami, and we’re both single, and we’re both still into each other.”
“Half the Cardio surgeons in this country are at this conference,” Jules says, shaking her head dismissively. Mika notes that she doesn’t deny that she’s into Mika.
“Jules, I’ll put my cards on the table. I’m the one who messed this up last time. You asked what I want? You, however you’ll have me. If it’s just one night together, for old time’s sake, I’ll take it. Or if you want more than just one night; if you’ll let me try again with a relationship, I swear I’ll fight for it to work. I have an offer in Milwaukee. That’s not far from Chicago. They have a good program. I’ll accept it, if you wanted me to try. Because I will. I’ll try. And if you don’t want anything, you can just tell me to fuck off, and I’ll leave you alone for the rest of the conference. But god, Jules, if I have another chance— I’d hate myself if I didn’t take it.”
Mika watches as Jules clenches her jaw. Watches as her proposition crosses over Jules’s face. It’s not an immediate no, which is something. Jules lifts her cup and drains the rest of her drink. There’s a ring of water underneath the glass, on the dark wood of the table. The glass hits the table with an audible clink.
“They gave me a room in the hotel. Because I was on the panel. It’s upstairs,” Jules says. She pulls her bottom lip between her teeth before continuing. Mika feels her heart speed up. “I’m not promising anything more than the night,” she warns.
“I’ll take it,” Mika says openly.
For a split second, she sees a smile slip onto Jules’s face. That small, self-conscious smile that she hasn’t seen in years; that she used to crave. It’s gone after a moment, but Mika has a photographic memory. She knows it was there.
She’ll take it.