A/N: Wow, thank you all for your lovely reviews. Enjoy!

Fine. That's exactly what she was—fine. The word was so overused she wasn't sure she even knew the definition of it anymore. She tossed it around so carelessly to Derek as he texted and called her every twenty-three minutes, and then to Cristina, who would casually bring it up in the best way she knew how every so often. Yes, fine, that was her.

She made it to lunch. She was alive. She hadn't had any near-death experiences. She was fine.

"Meredith… Mer?" Cristina's voice called to her, snapping her out of her trance of fineness.

"I'm fine," Meredith automatically responded, eyeing Cristina from across the table.

"You haven't touched your salad."

Meredith looked down, the mere possibility of glass between the green leafs sent a shudder down her spine. Would she die from her insides getting chopped up? "I'm not really hungry…"

Cristina, ever the comforter, reached for the plate and started on the salad. She looked at Meredith's face and shrugged. "What? Why let it go to waste?"

Meredith shook her head slightly, a smile finding its way to her face.

"Besides, I highly doubt you're going to die from starvation, I'm pretty sure that takes a while."

Yes, ever the comforter. "You think I'm being ridiculous."

Cristina paused, then calmly laid down her fork and folded her hands. "Mer, last time you had this feeling I gave you my, well, my pep talk to get you out of bed. You got blown up. You could have died. I don't think you're being ridiculous." That was it; she picked up the fork and shoved some greens into her mouth.

"Thank you." Only in her mind would Cristina's words be of comfort. Her phone vibrated in her pocket. She picked it up and read her text. "Do you think if I 'forgot' to text him back he'd freak?"

"I think he'd lock down the entire hospital until he found you."

"Yeah…" Meredith said with a smile, quickly texting back her husband. "He loves me."

Cristina rolled her eyes at the love gooiness. "Whatever. Let's find us another case, since Evil Sperm stole our last one."

"Get out of the way!" Meredith Grey hollered as she followed the EMT's pushing a gurney through the doors of the ER. "Make a hole!"

The young male on the gurney began coughing profusely, blood spilling from his mouth as they parked him in a corner of the crowded room. "Can't… breathe…"

Meredith applied a handful of gauze onto the man's stomach. "It's okay, you're going to be fine. We're going to help you." She reached for more gauze to replace the now bloodstained ones. "I need you to stay with me, okay? Tell me what happened."

His dark brown, chocolate eyes, matching his skin, opened wide as a surge of pain hit him. "It was an accident." He responded through gritted teeth.

"You sure?" Meredith questioned, eyeing dubiously the dozen of knife wounds that sprayed across his body.

The boy nodded. "Yeah dude," he said between breaths, "of course."

Meredith wanted to roll her eyes, but Cristina came over before she could say anything else. "Hey, Cristina, can you stay with him for a minute? I need—"

"Yeah, yeah," Cristina responded quickly, anxious for a case herself. "Take your time."

"Thanks," Meredith said, peeling off her gloves and disposing them. She didn't take two steps before she bumped into a hooded figure. "Oh! Sorry!"

"Are you a doctor?" It was a male's voice, sounding nervous and unsure. She couldn't make out his face as he towered over her, his face shadowed by his hood.

Something shot through Meredith's body, an impulse telling her to run. She ignored it, and nodded in reply. "Yes, I am. Do you need a doctor?"

"Yes, my friend… he's… he's… he's outside. Please, you have to help me."

Meredith looked around, looking for someone to assign to his friend. "Well, I-" She didn't have time to say anything else as the man stepped behind her and she suddenly felt a sharp pain to her lower back.

"Do as I say," the voice didn't seem as nervous now, it spoke with a sort of authority. "Do as I say or I'll kill you."

Her heart felt like it stopped. She couldn't breathe. She was frozen. She wanted to turn around, to call for help, but her slightest movement sent the knife slicing through her scrubs easily, the blade touching her bare skin. She didn't move. Her heart, now working again, started beating twice its normal rhythm.

"Okay, good." The man's praise was laced with sarcasm. "Now we're going to walk out of this hospital, do you understand?" He leaned his head right next her, whispering in her ear. "You are not going to say anything, you're not gong to gesture anything, and you're going to do exactly as I say."

Meredith nodded unsteadily. "I understand." Her voice was weak, pathetic even.

"Okay, move."

They took their steps slowly and carefully, the knife staying steady. Meredith kept her head up, keeping her eyes on the doors. Thoughts passed through her head so quickly she could barely keep up with them. What was going on? What did he want from her? She didn't want to die. Then all of the sudden one word caused her to halt. One word, said by one man. That was enough for the blade to slide through her skin. She gasped.

"Meredith…"

The pain barely registered as she recognized the voice. It was Derek, he was looking for her, he was going to save her. He had promised.

"Keep moving," another voice, not as pleasant, hissed in her ear.

She shuffled her feet slowly, wanting to be in earshot of her savior.

"Faster!" It wasn't a whisper anymore.

"Meredith?" Derek's voice filled with confusion, and coming closer.

Meredith held her breath, for fear she would speak. She let the man practically pull her through the doors of the ER. She strained her ears to hear footsteps walking faster, jogging, now running. She prayed it was him.

The man with the knife pulled her to the side of the building, where a van was parked, its side door opened wide. "Get it!" He threw her inside, her body colliding with the hard, cold metal. The man jumped beside her and slammed the door shut. "Go, go, go!"

The van started with a screech and zoomed out of the parking lot. Meredith lifted herself up in time to see Derek's face as he ran toward the moving vehicle that was now so very far away. His mouth was moving— he was calling her name. She pounded on the window with her tiny fists pitifully. "DEREK!" Tears now slid from her eyes, she didn't remember when she started crying. "DER—!" She stopped short as a familiar blade was pushed to her throat.

Derek ran. He ran and he ran. Breathing was no longer an option as his mind was working hard to catch up with his demanding legs that it could no longer multi-task. The van was fading into traffic, he could barely keep his eyes on it, but he ran away. Every muscle in his body hurt screamed at him to stop until eventually he had to. He held his gaze onto the truck until it turned a corner at rapid speed, disappearing from sight.

He collapsed to his knees, trying to catch his breath. Derek's hands shook vigorously as he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, dialing the three-digit number. A voice spoke to him on the other end, a calm woman's voice. "I-I… I uh," he tried to breathe normally, swallowing salvia down his dry, burning throat. "I think my wife was just kidnapped."

And that's all for now. Reviews will speed the next chapter along. :)