Chapter 1

When an earthquake hits Seattle and with that Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital not only the patient's lifes are on the line ...Way to go, Jo! Alex's girlfriend lets slips with a not-easily-dismissed fact about Meredith's performance as a surgeon ever since… well, since Derek left for D.C. What does Mer herself make of the remarkable revelation? Does she see a correlation?

"If everyone will just shut up." Meredith said loudly as she and Alex and Jo are operating on a patient. "And give me to freaking seconds to get the sutures to hold." Concentrated, Meredith was totally focused on the patient on the table and on getting this suture the way she wanted it - perfect. The other residents were watching attentively her technique. "There, Edwards." Instruments clatter on a tray.

"At least it looks good." Stephanie Edwards comments.

Jo replies quietly: "The streak's a lie." Meredith notices the commotion between the two residents and cut in: "What was that, Wilson?" Meredith demanded an answer from her subordinate. "Nothing." Jo denies she had said anything that goes that way. Of course, Meredith was to clever not to believe that.

"Oh no." Edwards mumbles under a surgical mask.

"But nothing, I didn't say anything." Jo tries to explain. "You said the streak is a lie."

"No. No. I said … the freak is alive." "No, you didn't, she didn't." Meredith is sure of that. There was no way Josephine Wilson could deny that, but except she does actually deny it.

"I didn't hear anything." Alex tells her as Meredith looked at him with a questioning glance. "You're pitching a no hitter." Jo said suddenly.

She inhales before she continues: "You haven't lost a single patient since November 14th. 89 surgeries in row with good outcomes …" Meredith shot her resident a glance as it hit her. Had she said November 14th? "Did you say November 14th?" She asks, not letting on what that did to her. Her voice doesn't shake as she asks that question.

"And twenty two traumas. I mean who does that?" She says chuckling, "You. Because of your magic …" The whole OR goes quiet as Meredith Grey looks over to Alex.

"Edwards you can close." Meredith told her resident, then hands the scalpel over to her. "Wilson can assist." Then she leaves the OR, steps away from the table. Stephanie Edwards and Josephine Wilson exchanged bewildered glances to each other. Steph shrugs she doesn't know what this was about.

"What did I tell you?" Alex hisses at his girlfriend.

"Way to go, Jo." Alex follows Meredith in the scrub room where she pulls off her mask abruptly and faces him. Meredith had a somber expression covering her face. Something was telling him that this was serious.

"Look. I told her not to tell you but …" Alex waves his hand to underline that sentence but … "It messes with her head." Alex explained. "I am on a streak." Meredith told him. "There is no such thing. It's just dumb luck. But you can't agree - so just forget about it." Alex advises her.

"No, no, it's not that." Meredith relented. "It's another thing. It's the date it had started. The fact that the 14th of November is the night …" Meredith inhales and exhales slowly. "What's about it?" Alex responds. Meredith looks aside.

"It's the date Derek left."

Alex breathes in sharply. No, this wasn't good at all. She thinks now Derek is the reason for this streak, that she is better off without him. "Ever since he left I have been great. All my surgeries so far were a success. I have not lost one patient since that date." Meredith shakes her head as if she doesn't want to believe it.

"Not one." She repeats.

"Since the day he left for D.C. What does that tell you that I am better off without him? That you're right and …"

Now she is thinking that her relationship to Derek affects her skills as a surgeon in a bad way. Like he was right when he had told her that he is some kind of tyrant keeping her down.

"Mer, it is just dumb luck. It has nothing to do with Derek leaving and going to Washington D.C. You are just more focused because you haven't got anything here besides your kids. So you focus on surgery. This in your mind, and only in your mind, Meredith."

Meredith leaned against the sink.

She glares at the pediatric surgeon, hoping desperately he is right. He just has to be right. "I don't know what to think anymore, Alex. This whole thing just kills me, I have no idea what to do. What is right and what's not. I can't differentiate between right and wrong." She looks at Alex, tears are shimmering in her eyes. He could tell after one gaze that she is devastated and had no single idea what to do.

"You, Meredith Grey, don't just see things in right or wrong. It's not what you do. See, after you switched that drug in the Alzheimer's trial you though your marriage was going towards an end. But it didn't, you and Shepherd got through it. It won't be different here."

At least, I don't hope it will be different, he adds silently.

"How can you possibly know?" Her voice shakes now.

"You and Shepherd always get it together. You always do. You broke up so many times, more than I can count and still – you keep coming back to each other. That has to mean something. Surgery or any kind of streaks have nothing to do with your marriage to Derek." Alex assured her.

"Well, I need to get going now." Meredith turns and leaves without another word the scrub room.

Alex leans against the sink and exhales loudly. In this moment Jo enters the scrub room. They have finished the surgery. "What is going on with Grey? Why did she react like she did?" Jo couldn't help but ask Alex about Meredith. "Way to go, Jo. You have gotten her into questioning her marriage to Derek with that comment." "What? I have no idea what you are talking about." Jo seems confused.

"The fricking date, Hairball." Alex hissed.

"The date. It's the date Derek has left for D.C. Do you get it now?"

Jo Wilson stares at him then she exclaims: "Oh, god, I am an idiot. I really shouldn't have said that."

"Well, now it's too late." Alex reminds her ironically.

"Yes, I do know that now."

"Kinda too late now, don't ya think?"

Meredith Grey is lost in thoughts and doesn't seem to notice that the earth under her feet begins to vibrate slightly. Or maybe she just doesn't care. Then someone is paging her down to radiology. Meredith groans as she looks at her pager. It is Amelia. She has no idea why Amelia was paging her. When she enters the room she sees Amelia Shepherd staring at some images of someone's brain.

"Hey." Meredith greets her. "Mer." She replies as she recognizes her sister in law. "You have paged me?" The general surgeon questions her.

"Look at these scans." Amelia orders her to.

"Why should I? I am not a neurosurgeon." She gives back. "That I know but look." Amelia stays adamant about it.

"Fine." After Meredith scanned the MRI images she nods knowingly. She knows what she is looking at. A malignant glioma is what she is looking at. "So I thought, since you and Derek invented this method, you and I could scrub in on this together. I really could use your help." Amelia tells her.

Meredith still looks unsure about it.

"I don't know. This surgery only has been a success in what, maybe three cases. You are sure you want to do this?"

"Yes, I mean I got Herman's tumor out, and it was a tricky one - and I still got it. She is alive. Blind but alive. So yes, I'd like to try. Are you in?"

"I need time to think." Meredith objected.

"But don't think too long, these tumors are fast - growing." Amelia only replies.

Meredith nods.

"I'll come back to you." Funny, one more thing that reminds her of Derek. And now Amelia wants her to scrub in on this malignant glioma. "Yes, I know that. I scrubbed in on all our trial cases, even our success case, Beth Monroe. She was the one who made the trial a success by surviving."

When Amelia finally had given up on convincing her to scrub in she asks her sister in law if she wants to go to the cafeteria with her, to eat. Why not, Meredith thought and shrugs. She follows her sister in law to the cafeteria.

But when they halfway reached the cafeteria a soft vibrate makes them stop dead in their tracks. It feels weird, Meredith thought to herself. This isn't meaning something good.

The vibration races from her feet to her spine.

Shocked and terrified, she looks up and over to Amelia who stands there like frozen.

"Did you feel this?" Amelia asks, her voice hoarse. She did feel this too? Oh, god, this really wasn't a good sign. Meredith nods and says: "Weird."

"You're right about that, what was that sensation?" Amelia replies and glances around. Suddenly both surgeons were swallowed up by great, resounding boom. It came out sudden.

Just then, Meredith was going up the stairs.

Neither of them were prepared of what happened, the ground under their feet started moving. Dizziness swept over Meredith as she loses hold of herself. She tries to grab the railing to stop herself from losing balance. In the next moment she finds herself falling and screaming loudly.

She fell, exactly the way she did with Bailey which resulted in a splenectomy. But this wasn't her being angry, this was a fricking force of nature.

She had no control over things ...

Then, Meredith landed on the ground. On the way to the ground she smacked her head against the wall as an earthquake hits Seattle and the west coast with full force. When her head hit the wall, she cried out with an almost unhuman voice that didn't sounded like her. Amelia's blood froze when she heard that.

Amelia has no time to look if her sister in law was okay.

She needed to find a safe place for herself. Maybe that's selfish but she's no use if she hurts herself too. She could hear people screaming and running like crazy to find a safe place. Amelia tried to stand up and walk over to Meredith but somehow she is unable to do this. The floor seems to be moving. How could a floor be moving? Did something hit the building? Like a plane or something?

Then it got to her.

Earthquake ..

This was her only thought that circles in her mind.

It was impossible to walk and so ends up on the ground too, sprawling towards the floor as the floor begins to shake. A paralyzing fear overcomes her.

Amelia gasps for air as she looks up hoping to see Meredith was okay. But obviously she wasn't. Her eyes are semi - closed and she is lying slumped against the wall.

The hospital walls were swinging and ripped into shrambles and there are more shrieks and more shouting accompanioned from the rumbling of the debris falling to the ground, as if it were raining brick walls - the earthquake left a wake of destroyed floors and people who are shocked by what has happened in the last seconds.

Really, it only has been seconds not as many might think minutes or hours.

When the earth finally stopped moving, Amelia slowly sat up. She wiped off the dirt off her clothes and was convinced that the world was still moving even though it wasn't. She heard a groan coming from Meredith, then she hear her saying: "Are you okay?" "I am." Amelia responds as she crawles over to Meredith.

"But are you? You fell down those stairs."

Amelia sounds really worried. Derek had told her what happened on Bailey's birth. The C-section that almost resulted in Meredith dying 'cause she ruptured her spleen and went into disseminated intravascular coagulopathy due to the fall she took on the stairs - anyway, right now that's irrelevant.

"I am fine." Meredith slowly sits up straight.

"Let me give you a neuro exam, just to be sure." Amelia persisted.

"You could have a bleed or something."

"I am so not bleeding in my brain. You won't allow you poking around in my brain 'cause there is no bleed. End of discussion-" Meredith insists on being fine.

"I mean you banged your head pretty hard on the wall." Amelia still wasn't convinced. "Any blurry vision, double vision, headache ... anything that could indicate head injury?" She asks, hoping her sister in law would be honest if she was experiencing symptoms.

Meredith reflects if she had any symptoms.

Well, her head hurt a bit but that was to be expected. "I am fine, really." She tells her. "Derek will kill me if you have a bleed and I haven't seen the signs." She mutters under her breath.

"Will they even let you operate on me?" Meredith asks back sarcastically. "If it's an emergency and they have a choice between me operating and you dying because they have done nothing - I'll bet they take they first one." "Which isn't important right now because I don't need brain surgery."

Amelia stands up which was feeling kinda surreal. She helps Meredith up.

"Still thinking you're okay?" Amelia presses for an answer. Meredith only nods. In this moment both of their pagers shriek and they flinch at the sound. Amelia unhooked it from her scrubs and stares at it. "Hospital's calling a code." She finally says. Also, Meredith's pager starts vibrating against her hip.

They are calling a code white.

Natural disaster.

"We should go." Amelia says. "Come." Meredith just follows her.

They still can't believe that it's over, really over. But there was always the possibility of an aftershock. "Hopefully there won't be any aftershocks." Meredith says as they walk to the emergency department. On the way Meredith notices the crowd of people standing around the elevator.

Total chaos was everywhere. Also the television was on, a reporter was talking about the earthquake that just hit Seattle and caused several accidents and collisions due to people losing control over their vehicles when the quake hit.

... The initial seismographic reading are placing the magnitude at 6.2 ...

"6.2. Wow, that's ..." Amelia began but was cut off by Owen's voice who interrupted all conversations: "Listen up, people. As you might have heard by now. Seattle has been hit by an earthquake which means we're getting patients. Also, let's get a count on all our staff. Everyone checks with his direct superiors. Interns, report to your residents, residents to attendings. Got it?" His voice was loud and clear to hear.

Murmur of voices could be heard and a few people were running around around.

Meredith now has another surgery, one victim of the earthquake that hit Seattle a few minutes ago.

She admits that she misses Derek a bit ...

Now that he isn't here when the earthquake thing happened.

She hopes that there won't be any aftershocks. While she is paged to attend to another patient that is now lying in her OR, waiting to be cut open and saved by her, the others work on freeing Maggie who was trapped in an elevator.

She had been in there when the earthquake had hit Seattle.

All the doctors were totally unprepared for the disaster that was about to happen that day. That day an earthquake had hit Seattle without warnings or anything. It happened out of sudden. Like a real disaster does – it hits us when we at last expect it.

Meredith's view on the surgical area out of sudden goes blurry after the general surgeon had opened up her patient. She still has a ten blade in her hand.

A few seconds pass and her vision clears up.

She doesn't think it meant anything serious.

So she, Jo Wilson who assists in this procedure and Alex Karev who happens to be another attending scrubbing in on this surgery; since the patient was a kid with a life-threatening liver damage due to sustained trauma in the earthquake that happened a few minutes ago; keep operating.

Time passes only slowly.

When they were four hours into the surgery, both Alex and Meredith noticed that one of the boy's kidneys has been damaged.

"Oh, no, look, Alex, there is renal trauma, why haven't we seen this on the scans? His right kidney is completely crushed." Meredith exclaims and Alex echoes: "Holy crap, that kidney is no use to him anymore. There is no way we can repair it."

Meredith glances at the destroyed kidney.

"We could try. I mean, we can give it a shot."

The general surgeon glances at the pediatric surgeon and says, sighing: "It is your shot, Alex. Your patient, your decision." Meredith lets him decide what they should do. In this moment the patient's blood pressure went downhill.

"Crap, he is getting unstable. There is still bleeding, have you checked his renal artery?" Meredith reacted and traces the source of the bleeding.

"From where comes all this blood?" Jo asked as she starts suctioning.

"We don't know." The general surgeon replied hastily, with her hands sticking in the body cavity.

"Do you really think that kidney's salvageable?" Alex Karev asked with a frown.

"I mean it looks like it's completely …" The peds surgeon never is able to finish his sentence. In this moment an aftershock hit Seattle and Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital with full force. And another factor was that it was that unexpected.

The scalpel in Meredith's hand clatters to the ground as the ground under their feet shook. Meredith loses balance and stumbled backwards without coordination, finding herself falling into a tray of medical instruments that clattered on the ground as well and caused a deafening noise. Meredith herself tries to get a hold of herself but her knees buckle …

The ground vibrates heavily, sending her instincts into overdrive but she is helpless when it comes to the force of nature. An earthquake was a force of nature and she cannot do anything to prevent it from happening. Another lurch strikes the hospital. The whole building shook under the rocking motion. Jo lets out a small scream when she feels the earth move under her feet.

"What just happened?"

"Aftershock. It happens." Alex is fine too as was Jo.

But is with the other surgeon in the operating room? "Are you okay?" Jo couldn't help but worry about her boyfriend which is completely reasonable in the whole situation. "I am good, Jo. No need to worry about me. We need to get this bleeding under control. Can you see what is going on with Dr. Grey?" Alex tries to keep his worries aside and in place. "Wha …" Jo has trouble forming a real sentence because the ground was still swirling, moving under them.

"She is on the floor, not moving. I can't see whether she is injured or not. All I know is that she is unconscious or semi-conscious." She calls back. "Damn earthquake. As if a husband in Washington D.C. isn't enough." Alex mumbles under his breath and hopes the aftershock would soon cease. Jo Wilson looked shocked over to her superior as she shields the patient with her own body. The ground under their feet is still moving uncontrollably.

Glass shatters in a million pieces, sharp pieces and suddenly, the ceiling crumbled at bit.

"Alex." Jo Wilson motioned to the ceiling.

"Alex, look, the ceiling is coming down." Alex tosses a worried glance up to the ceiling, water was dripping and leaking down. Apparently, the water supply has been damaged. If that is going to be okay is highly questionable. And if it is, it will be problematic because this operating room needs to be shut down if water is leaking into a sterile or supposed to be sterile environment.

Meredith groaned suppressed as she regained back consciousness. Slowly, but she did. At first she didn't really know where she was. Then it practically hit her: on an OR floor. Literally. Her blood ran cold as she sees that the ceiling was about to fall down. On her. But she is frozen.

In this moment the pediatric surgeon noticed that Meredith is still lying face down on the hard cold ground. "What the …" He murmurs to himself as he tried to assess the situation.

"Meredith." Alex Karev calls out, worry evident in his voice.

Then the fricking ceiling falls.

With a loud thud debris land on the ground, contaminate the OR floor. Some of the debris also hit Meredith who sits up as the sky starts falling.

With a loud crackle, "Why isn't she answering?" Jo Wilson asks as she keeps an eye on the patient's vital signs and rhythm.

"Stay there. Don't move, you don't know if this was it or if another aftershock is going to come. I need to see what is going on with Meredith."

"Please, Alex, be careful."

Jo's voice shakes as she sees Alex attending to the obviously injured Meredith.

"Mer, come on, don't do this now." He said concerned. He is relieved when he hears her cough loudly and then the peds surgeon sees her sitting up. "Are you okay?" Meredith at first doesn't react properly. She seems unfocused and the blood on her forehead only confirms his suspicions that something is horribly wrong.

"'m fine." Meredith answers as a wave of dizziness hit her though the aftershock had stopped seconds ago.

Meredith still feels weird as she wants to stand up.

"Mer, stop." Alex tries to reason with her. He fears that she could have injured herself in the process.

"Mer, you need to get yourself checked out. Let me do that for you."

"Alex, drop it. I am fine. It was an aftershock, nothing more." Meredith answers wearily, ignoring the stabbing pain in her lower flank. "Grey, the freaking ceiling collapsed on you." Alex Karev told her. "Debris have fallen on you. You could have hurt something in your abdomen." He sounded now very worried. Meredith eyed him shortly before she pulls herself off of the ground. She sways for a moment but then steadies herself.

"I am fine, really, Alex." The general surgeon reassured Alex who didn't seem to believe her.

Her voice was now stronger than it was before.

"I'll scrub again and then I am back." Meredith tells the waiting OR cast as she leaves the OR to get herself cleaned up. After a while, Meredith Grey is back. She enters the OR under the concerned glances of the OR staff. "I am really okay." Mer says for another time.

"But I don't have to believe you, do I?" Alex asks back sarcastically.

"It's a free country, Alex. I can't you know tell you how you're supposed to feel or what to believe in." Meredith rolled her eyes. "Where are we?" She now wants to finish up that damn surgery so she can get out of here to embrace her kids. They must have been so terrified when they experienced the earth is moving.

"Wilson and I decided to remove the kidney. Hopefully the other one is fully functioning, but as a precaution I recommend dialysis." Alex says, glancing at the surgical area. Meredith nodded as another wave of dizziness hit her hard. For a moment she thought she was going to pass out anytime soon.

Maybe she wasn't okay. Isn't okay.

She shakes off that thought as a sharp and agonizing pain shot through her abdomen.

Another wave of dizziness washes over her. Simultaneously, another sharp pain that is stabbong her causes her to cry out in agony. Alex looks up, worry on his face.

"Meredith, are you okay?" He asks.

She winces suppressed, hoping desperately that Wilson and Alex wouldn't notice. But the pain didn't stop. Instead of stopping it flares up. In addition to that her head really hurt, in an excruciating way that makes her want to curl up and die.

But she can't, she has a surgery to finish. But everything was a blur, everything even the OR staff was moving before her very eyes. Amelia had been right.

She had been right- and Meredith had turned her help down.

The damned lucid interval ...

She couldn't get the world around her to stop moving. Faintly, she focused on Wilson, on handing her the scalpel: "Take ... take over for me." She gets out before she stumbles backwards. Her voice was strained. Jo glances over to Alex, he is supposed to be doing something. It was clear that Grey wasn't exactly feeling well.

It seems like she had sustained injuries in the earthquake and the following aftershock.

Once again, the pain in her upper right quadrant intensified as another wave of dizziness and wooziness came over her accompanied by a wave of uncontrollable nausea and that together almost knocked her out.

She couldn't suppress a groan any longer as a sharp, ripping pain seared through her head, nearly causing her to collapse.

Meredith was pale. She stepped away from the OR table, the world still seemed to be spinning. She could vaguely make out the voices of Josephine Wilson and Alex Karev who are shouting at her to stay awake and response. They are now really getting worried. "Dr. Grey." Jo asks as she saw the unsteady balance of her superior and teacher.

"What is going on with you?"

But she gets no answer, Alex scans his colleague - and friend - with a worried expression on his face. She is really pale, as pale as a white wall, she is sweating and she seems like she is in pain, also she is unfocused. She sways as horrible pain hammers through her body.

She couldn't tell if it was coming from her head pr from any other body part ...

There was just ... pain ripping her insides apart.

Soon it becomes unbearable. The pain was no longer on a manageable level. Her breathing quickens and also shallows out ...# Her heartbeat gets irregular as we speak and which was followed by the burning sensation of not beig able to breathe-

She started gasping for air helplessly, turning cyanotic due to lack of oxygen.

Her lungs stop doing the work they are supposed to do. Meredith's eyes are wide open with fear and she continued to have trouble breathing which got worse over seconds and suddenly, along with a sharp pain shooting through her she collapses on the floor.

"Meredith." Alex calls out in fear.

"Crap. Page anybody. She needs a CT, stat."

One of the OR nurses reacts and starts paging someone.

"Who should I page?" Bokey wanted to know as she holds a cell in her hand ready to tipe numbers in it.

"Page Shepherd, her left pupil's blown and unresponsie." Alex says shocked when he checked her pupil reaction.

/

Darkness surrounded Meredith and she welcomed it because the pain she was in, faded away ...

Meredith was no longer conscious.

A/N: This is a double - shot based on the promo for episode 15 in season 11. PLEASE REVIEW ...