He tosses and turns, sweat-drenched limbs tangled up in the sheets. As if he doesn't feel constricted enough. He hasn't had nightmare-free sleep since before taking a bullet in his chest; the time he spent sedated with tubes doing all the work doesn't count. He's desperate; he's alienated everyone around him but what he really wants is for someone to reach out and touch him. Instead, they seem like they're poised to run at any second—and he has no one to blame but himself.
He wakes with a start, checking for bullet-holes. He turns his head into his pillow to muffle his scream. It wouldn't do to actually give Mer a reason to make him call that psychiatrist. It's written all over her face whenever he makes the effort to look her straight in the eye. He doesn't do that often; it makes him feel like a specimen smeared on a glass slide. A walking disease that has yet to be named.
He doesn't know how much longer his job will be on hold, and he doesn't care. The idea of stepping foot back in that hospital makes him break out in a cold sweat and struggle to keep the bile from rising too far up his throat. Besides, no one wants a surgeon with shaky hands.
"Alex?" Mer knocks once and comes in without waiting for a reply. "Alex, there's breakfast served. You should come downstairs and eat."
"Yeah. Ok." They both know he has no intention and mercifully she doesn't push. They're beyond that. She knows he'll just get angry and he knows he can scare her. Sometimes he'd like to scare her bad enough that she'll do the one thing he can't bring himself to do.
"We have to do something."
They all turn to look at her, but it is Cristina who speaks first. "And what, Mer, would you have us do? He doesn't want our help. He's made that clear. And frankly, we're all dealing with enough of our own post trauma issues."
"How can you say that, Cristina?" Meredith has had it up to here with the group's lack of concern for Alex. "He's one of us. He deserves for us not to let him push as away."
Derek is the first to get up, pushing his chair back in harder than is necessary. "You know I'm behind you, Meredith, but there's nothing any of us can do that's going to break through. We can't give him what he needs." He notices Lexie avoids his gaze as he walks out of the kitchen.
"Lexie."
"Hmm?" She looks up at her sister, her mind working on an excuse to leave.
"Come on. You don't even try to talk to him anymore. Aren't you supposed to be his…whatever?"
At the reminder, Lexie gets up and shoves her chair in—also harder than is necessary. "I'm not the 'whatever' he needs me to be. I'm not the 'whatever' he wants."
She's almost out the door before the solution comes tumbling out of her mouth. "It's Izzie. That's what it's going to take for him to come out of this." She leaves, knowing that if she loved him better, she'd have called Izzie herself just as soon as she knew he'd survive.
Alex stumbles into the kitchen when everyone is gone and shoves some leftover French toast in his mouth.
He doesn't bother to heat it up.
They go on that way a few more days before Mer picks up the phone. She's not sleeping any better than Alex is but it's concern instead of nightmares that keeps her up.
"Iz. It's Mer."
It's a night she's happy to spend awake when Izzie tells her she'll be on the next plane there.
This time he forgets to muffle his scream and Mer comes running. Her arms are around him before he has time to let go of the nightmare. In an instant he's shoved her away so hard that one of those arms is bent unnaturally behind her back as she lies on the floor.
"What the hell?" Derek is suddenly there, angry and ready to attack.
"Derek, don't."
"Don't what, Meredith?" He kneels. "Does it hurt? Let me see." He keeps Karev in his peripheral vision while he assesses to see whether her arm is broken.
Alex holds his head in his hands, shaking it back and forth as if he can deny away the fact that he just physically assaulted a woman. His friend. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry."
"Get out. I want you out by the time we get back from the hospital. You need to deal with this, Karev, and until you do, you're not welcome here. Get out."
He doesn't look Mer in the eye when she stops him downstairs, pressing the keys to the trailer in his hands. "Stay there, Alex. He'll calm down. I know you didn't mean it."
She invades his dreams that night, and for the first time in a long time he doesn't wake up drenched in sweat.
There's a knock at the door a few days later, but he hasn't gotten out of bed since that first night.
"Go away."
"No."
He thinks he might have a spot in the Guinness Book for the speed with which he's opening the door. When he opens it, he thinks he must be dreaming.
He cries in her arms until he's so dry his lips are cracked, and she lets him.
"You know you have to get it together, right?"
"I know."
It's the first time he's felt…well, anything, since before the shooting.
"You have to let them in. They're your friends, Alex. They want to help you."
He knows this to be true, even appreciates them all for it, but none of them give him reason to fight for his sanity.
All he needs, all he wants, is here with him now.
He has no intention of letting her go again.