Never Say Never

by forgivenotforget

"You've been walking around this hospital, pretending that I don't exist. You haven't said a word to me in three weeks, and now you're standing here, expecting me to forgive you, and raise a baby with you?" Alex/Izzie.

1. Prologue

A/N: This is the first fanfic I've ever written :) And I love feedback, so please comment. I don't quite know where I want to go with this yet, but I guess I'll find out soon enough. Here we go!

Background info: Post season 4 finale, before 5x01.

Disclaimer: None of these characters belong to me. They are all owned by ABC, and Shonda Rhimes.

Prologue:

The worst feeling is when time seems to slow down when you're waiting for something really important. It's like the world gets a kick out of watching you wait for minutes that seem like hours. Time seems to slow down so much that you actually wonder if the little hand on your watch has stopped moving. It's like in movies when things are in slow motion; the only catch is that you know that that would never happen in real life.

Being a surgeon, everything happens quickly. Nobody warns you about the heart attack your post-operative patient is about to have, or the fever that your newborn patient will spike in the middle of the night. Even the slowest of surgeries happen almost rapidly. You're in the OR at one minute, and the next minute you're doing charts. Surgeons do not like to wait. If we wait, people can die. That's what they tell you in medical school; hesitation only causes harm.

Patience is a virtue, but that all changes when you live the life that I do. When you're up at 4 A.M. obsessing over what emergent patients could have come into the hospital, you don't have time for patience. Patient people get left behind. You want things quickly, and you want them done right. Especially things that could change your life so significantly. A tolerant person has an advantage in any job, except for surgery. I used to be a patient person; I used to be able to wait for things like old ladies driving twenty miles under the speed limit, or people putting you on hold over the phone. But when I became a doctor, everything changed. I lost any amount of patience that I had, which may have been the reason I was pacing around the bathroom like someone who belonged on the psychiatric floor.

And at that moment, as if on cue, a bright pink 'positive' boldly popped up on the pregnancy test I was holding.