A/N: Right, so, I wasn't planning on writing more GA for a while, but Alex and Izzie would leave me alone. Anyway, this is most definitely an AU fic. It works under the idea that Izzie transfers to Mercy West to finish her residency, and is set about a year after the events of "There's No 'I' in Team." Anyway, it should all make sense soon. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, and I also don't own the song Can't Help Falling In Love (I was listening to the Ingrid Michaelson version, by the way). I'm also not a doctor, so apologies to any medical errors.

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"It's time to call it, Dr. Stevens."

The attending, Dennis Hayward, was the one who had spoken, but although he was standing next to me, his voice barely registered. I was too focused on saving the patient who had begun to crash minutes before.

"We can't stop," I said, shaking my head. "We have to keep trying." I was frantically calling out orders to charge the paddles, to pump the patient with one last dose of medicine, but nothing was working.

"You're done here, Stevens," Dr. Hayward said. "There's nothing else you can do."

"No!" My voice was unnecessarily loud, the one word clearly audible over the loud flatline. I looked down at the little boy lying on the table. He had just turned nine – my parents told me I can have my party when I get out of the hospital, Dr. Stevens – and he was dying. "We can't stop, we can't."

"Dr. Stevens." Hayward was firmer now, insisting. "If you're not going to call it, I'd be happy to do it myself."

No, no, I was wrong. He wasn't dying; he was already dead.

My eyes met Hayward's. I blinked once, twice. "T-time of d-death: 10:39 pm," I said finally, silently cursing my shaking voice. I knew better than this. Hadn't I done this – see patients die – so many times before? I was a resident now, not an intern. Seriously. I shouldn't be upset over the death of a patient. Even if that patient was a nine-year-old whose smile was enough to make someone's heart melt.

What would Cristina or Bailey tell me, I wondered suddenly, if they could see me now? Suck it up, Stevens. People die everyday, and it's not your job to cry for each one.

I swallowed once, my throat burning painfully. Then, after telling the nurse standing next to me to close up the patient, I hurried out of the O.R, ignoring Hayward's sharp call of Stevens! as I left. I took a sharp right down the hallway, and it was all I could do to keep from sprinting down the corridor. I barely managed to limit myself to a walk that must have looked ridiculously ungainly.

As I moved further down the hall, not quite knowing where I was headed, I heard my footsteps echoing in the hall.

Thump, thump.

Thump, thump.

It sounded like the beating heart I couldn't save.

At this thought, Cristina burst back into my head. Get it together, Izzie. Quit waxing poetic and go back to work. Are you a doctor or not?

Really, Cristina had picked a wonderful day to get her voice stuck in my mind. I finally stopped walk-running when I reached the waiting room. It was full of family members worried about their loved ones, full of people who wouldn't notice an upset resident unless it was their loved one's doctor. I sat down on an uncomfortable chair and risked a brief glance to the person on my left. It was a young woman, who had curly brown hair sticking out wildly and a photograph clutched tightly in her hand. She didn't bother to look up at me, but I did manage to catch a glimpse of the person in the picture. It was a young man, her husband, I guessed, and he was smiling broadly at whoever had taken the photo.

I tore my eyes away from the photograph, ignoring the whispers in my mind that the man looked a little like someone else I knew. I brushed back an escaped blonde tendril with a little more force than necessary, and then looked around. I caught sight of the clock; it was nearly the end of my shift, which was welcome news. If I could just stick it out for fifteen more minutes, then I could go home and crash on my apartment couch.

I gave myself one last minute to collect myself and then stood. I didn't want to go find Hayward and see if he needed me to do anything other than check on my patients one last time, but I really had no choice. I was pretty sure he wouldn't be too happy about my little act earlier, but at the very least, no one had been hurt by it. It had just been unprofessional and something I should have known better than to do at this point. You think after Denny, after everything at Seattle Grace, that I'd have learned to keep my caring to myself.

Fortunately, I found Hayward easily enough; he was just leaving the operating room when I walked by. He fell into stride next to me, the lighting in the hallway making the lines on his face look deeper than normal. He was about forty-five, I thought, older than most of the residents at Seattle Grace had bee. And less attractive than them, too, I thought with a small smile.

"Don't pull anything like that again, Stevens," he said at once. "You can't always save your patients, and you can't just storm out at the end of the surgery. I know you've have a history of becoming too attached to patients, but let's try and break that."

I nodded, shaking off the small hint at my past. As much as I didn't want to be having this conversation, I was happy that he wasn't actually angry. "Yes, Dr. Hayward. It was a one time thing; I'll be better tomorrow, I promise."

He gave me a rare smile and then said, "Just a last check on patients and you're free for the day."

And with that, I watched as Hayward disappeared down the hallway, and then took off for my patients' rooms.

---

Thirty minutes later – which was fifteen minutes after I wanted to be leaving – I was walking out of the Mercy West doors and outside to my car. The air was freezing, and the rain from earlier had turned into snow. If the snowfall picked up much more, then I'd probably be called back into work early tomorrow. Drivers and bad weather were a horrible combination.

I readjusted my scarf as the bitter gusts bit at my cheeks and neck, and then began walking a little faster. The sooner I got home, the better. The wind blew again and I shivered, wishing, not for the first time, that I had chosen to be a doctor somewhere it wasn't cold. I'd bet in places like Texas they didn't have to worry about getting a rush of injuries because of black ice and blizzards.

Instead, I'd chosen Seattle Grace, which had been, well, it had been a lot of different things. Now, though, I was at Mercy West to finish my residency. I'd made the decision to transfer a year ago to the day, and that, I'd begun to realize, was the reason I'd been so flustered at work recently. Ah, who was I kidding? I'd been a damn mess. Crying over patients dying, hiding in the waiting room, and –

I stopped mid-thought. Actually, I was forced to stop mid-thought because I had decided to step on a patch of ice and fall on my ass.

"Jesus Christ," I muttered, gingerly standing back up and hoping nothing was permanently injured. I took a slow step forward and seemed to still be in one piece. Right, so where had I stopped? Yeah, me being a mess. The reason behind my leaving was a lot of different things. Sure, there was one thing – one person – in particular, which I was sure as hell not thinking about right then, but other stuff happened that had made me transfer, too. Maybe in another year I'd be able to think about that – about him – without wanting to start baking muffins like crazy, but not yet.

I sighed and resumed my earlier, brisker walking pace, only to find I'd reached my car. I climbed in, started the engine, turned on the heater at once, and pulled out of my parking space. The drive back to my (really crappy and small) apartment took about twenty minutes (which makes it closer to Seattle Grace than Mercy), and it was days like this one that made me want to speed the whole way home. I resisted the urge to go flying down the street ten miles faster than I should – my paranoid side kicking in, I guess.

I was nearly home when I started hitting every red light possible. The last light, in particular, seemed hell-bent on keeping me in my car all night. Finally, finally, the light turned green and I accelerated into the intersection.

You know what they say about time nearly stopping? About everything seeming to go in slow motion? Yeah, that never happened for me. What did happen is that I heard a skidding sound, turned my head, and then felt my head slam against my window. I might have heard the glass shatter, too, but maybe not.

Then I flew through the air, and believe me, there was nothing slow about that. But that flipping is the last thing I registered. That and a flood of pain.

After that, everything went black.