Wake Up

Spoilers: Season 5 finale, "Now or Never"

Did you say it?
I love you.
I don't ever want to live without you.
You changed my life.
Did you say it?
Make a plan.
Set a goal.
Work toward it.
But every now and then, look around.
Drink it in.
'Cause...this is it.
It might all be gone tomorrow.

-Meredith Grey, Grey's Anatomy (Season 5, Episode 24 – "Now or Never")

Notes: Spoilers for the Season 5 finale, don't read if you haven't seen the episode yet. I almost cried at that ending scene in the elevator and my muse demanded that I put my thoughts to paper (or Microsoft Word, as it were). I'm pretty George is the one who dies, although I'd rather it be Izzie. We'll just have to wait and see what Shonda Rhimes has planned.

x

The scream of her heart monitor flatlining recedes into the background as Izzie carefully smoothes the fabric of her lavender prom dress and the elevator begins its journey up. She's not sure where she's going, but she knows it has to be better than what she's leaving behind. That's what she told Alex, isn't it? "Just…if it comes down to it, just let me go."

The elevator suddenly slows to a halt, the doors slide open, and Izzie is greeted by the last person she expected to be waiting on the other side for her. Her face breaks into a smile at the familiar face, but something keeps her from taking the necessary steps forward to get off the elevator.

Wake up, Stevens. Please. Wake up wake up wake up.

"Hey, Izzie."

"George? Not that I'm not glad to see you, but…I don't understand. I thought it'd be Denny," Izzie breathes, taking in the sharp cut of his uniform, his handsome face, the calmness he radiates.

"I was hit by a bus," he tells her ruefully. "I pushed a woman out of the way."

"You're a hero," Izzie murmurs. Not like her. She's crashing after a surgery to remove a brain tumor, nothing noble or glorious or even dignified about it at all. She knew, from the moment she heard her diagnosis, the hell she would have to go through to even fight to be part of that 5% survival rate and it had all been for nothing, in the end. She's been living on borrowed time and now she's run out.

"I'm a hero," he agrees. "Wasn't really what I had in mind when I said I wanted to make a difference, but I guess fate had other plans for me. And here we are."

She's not quite sure where "here" is but she moves to take a step towards him, still in the elevator. "George, I'm scared," she admits.

"Don't be," he tells her gently. He reaches out to touch her face and she feels him brush away tears she didn't even know she had been crying.

Wake up, Stevens. Come on, wake up!

"You're going to be with me the whole way, right?" Izzie tries to smile at him. "I'll be okay if you're with me, I just don't want to be alone, and god, I am so scared." The words tumble out of her mouth, fear and relief and panic sliding them all together in a rushed gasp.

Slowly, he shakes his head. "You still have time, Izzie," he whispers. "Time to make a life with Alex, have kids, be the brilliant surgeon I know you are and save so many more lives…time to grow old and do all the things I can't anymore. You still have time."

"George?"

"Go back, Izzie. They're waiting for you."

Panic seizes her. "No, not without you!" She tries to take those final steps across the threshold of the elevator, reaching for George, but she can't, she can't, and dimly she hears sobbing. Is it her or someone else? She can't think, she can't breathe, and all she wants is for George to come into the elevator with her.

Come on, Izzie. Come on.

"I love you, Iz. But you have to go back."

"Come back with me then." Izzie extends her hand out to him, but George shakes his head, regretfully.

"I can't."

"Don't leave me," she begs. "I need my George. Come with me."

"I'm already lost, Iz," he tells her, the ghost of a sad smile gracing his face. "But you can still go back. I'll watch after you, I promise."

"George, please!" The doors slowly close and the last glimpse Izzie has of George, of her awkward, sweet, endearing best friend, is of him saluting her, calm and confident and at peace as he never was in life and then the elevator begins to move again but in the opposite direction.

And her eyes open in time for all her senses to come crashing back, a cacophony of noise and tears and confusion and pain, oh god the pain, slamming into her body.

Wake up.

x

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