Chapter 2: Emergency Surgery

As the ambulance pulled into the trauma wing of the hospital lot, Mark swung open the doors and hopped out. As they carefully unloaded Lexie, Mark ran ahead, barging into the trauma room. Bailey and Hunt were both doing paperwork for lack of action on the slow night working the pit. April was off in the corner as well tending to her days pile of charts. The vast ER room was only occupied by four other patients that night. All stable with minor injuries sustained, and all were taken or being taken care of. Nothing for the surgeons to cut, which was a rare in Seattle Grace. So when Mark came running in, stained with Lexie's blood and causing a commotion in the steady peace of calm late night in the hospital, it didn't go unnoticed. Mark looked like a mad man, raving in a loud uproar as he paced around with a spaced out look in his eyes.
"I need surgeons now! Ready an OR!" He screamed around at nurses and other people he spotted.

Bailey got up from her chair and scuttled over to him, grabbing his arms to stop him from his madness, "Dr. Sloan, what's going on? You….You're covered in blood. What's happened to you?" She asked with concern.

"It's not me," He said, out of breath and panting. Bailey could see the hurt and fear in his eyes. " Its," But before he could give her the answer the medical technicians rushed in with Lexie on the gurney. She was intubated to help her breathe in her unconscious state. She looked so frail and lifeless to Mark. It was heart wrenching to see her in this way. She barely looked herself, she barely looked human. The blood was dried and plastered onto her skin and clothing.

"28 year old female," The male technician announced, "Found on the scene when a man called 9-1-1 for a break-in. She has trauma to the head and face as well as abdomen."

Bailey and hunt rushed over to see the patient but before they could connect that the patient was one of their doctors Mark released under his breath, "its Lexie,"

Bailey and Hunt's faces dropped as they latched onto the stretcher and moved with the techs, staring down at the familiar face our one of their well acquainted residents. The color was draining from her body so that she was ghastly looking behind the dark colored blood.

"Oh Lexie Grey," Bailey said, tears forming in her eyes. "Don't take another one of our surgeons. We've all been through enough here, don't you think?" she continued speaking to herself, or God, or whoever it was.

As they passed by the desk a nurse that had a phone held up to her ear informed that OR two was waiting for them. "Alright, let's go. MOVE IT PEOPLE!" Bailey hollered, coming out of her little personal chat.

Hunt had pulled back her shirt to examine the damage to her abdomen, "Alright I can already tell we're going to need to open her up. She's got bad bruising here and the tech says she already threw up blood. It sounds like internal bleeding in the stomach."

The doctors pushed furiously towards the operating room, clouded in fear and worry. Mark barely felt like he was himself, it was like an out of body experience. But it was real, this was happening. What if she died? No, Mark. He couldn't handle thinking that way. She was going to make it, she had to. He couldn't let her go now.

"I wanna know what happened here? What in the hell?" Bailey suddenly screamed in anger, "Lexie Grey is no burglar, unless she's been living some twisted kind of double life all along. This woman is a skilled, top-of-her-game surgeon. So what's the real story here?"

"Well the real story is that the dumbass who called it in as a robbery happens to be a very drunk Thatcher Grey, in fact he was so drunk that he didn't recognize his own daughter when she went to help him and so he clunked her in the head with a bottle of liquor," Mark answered in a loud, and mad voice.

Bailey cringed at the thought. She knew Thatcher Grey. She had known that he had once been a drunk, but she thought that after he had to get a liver transplant that he'd leave the nasty habit behind for good and only think about his own health. Well she must have overestimated that, because he was right back to his old tricks. Staring down at a bloody and banged up Lexie Grey made Bailey realize how cruel the world could be. And how she'd kill the man if it were her son that was lying on the bed rather than Lexie, assaulted by their own parent. The doctors came to the OR doors, but Bailey stopped and held Mark back.

"You can't go in there Mark," She said sympathetically. His face distorted to more anger.

"Why the hell not? I want to help! That is the woman I love in there. She's dying I need to be here to help save her Bailey. She isn't my family, I get to be in there," He cried out in angry yelps, making her jump.

"See Mark, that's just the thing. You are too emotionally connected to her Mark….You love her. The best thing you can do is wait for her up in the gallery, and be there for her to help her get better once we finish this surgery."

Mark was disappointed but he knew she was right. He wasn't emotionally fit for surgery right now. He'd gone through this same thing when Callie's life was on the line after her car crash.

"We'll do everything…I mean absolutely everything, possible to save her Mark," She said before turning around and entering the scrub room.

Meredith arrived in the hospital about twenty minutes after Mark's call. She'd found it strange that Mark had called her but she hadn't questioned.

"On my night off," She muttered under breath as she entered the doors to the hospital. She immediately went to the lady at the desk to ask if a patient under the name Thatcher Grey had arrived in the ER that night. The woman pointed in the direction of an area covered by a blue drapery. Meredith quickly walked across the almost empty emergency room to the exact area the nurse had pointed out and pulled back the privacy barrier to see her Dad with a look of drunken stupor. Oh yeah, he was under the influence alright. His, what is called a "banana bag", which is just an IV line that has vitamins and minerals, was almost half empty now. When Thatcher looked up his eyes were reddish, baggy and rolling back and forth, and his mouth was opened wide with a dribble of spit in the corner.

"Muh…Meredith!" He exclaimed in a boozed up, slurred and overly excited voice.

"Dad? What is going on?" Meredith said calmly so it wouldn't aggravate him, as she bent down next to him. She knew drunks were prone to fits of rage for no apparent reason.

"Uh I," Thatcher said between burps, "I just had a little to drink honestly."

"This isn't like the new you Dad. Why'd you do this? What did Dr. Sloan say to you? He's the one who called me. Where did he go?" Meredith asked, wanting to know more about what'd happened with her father.

"I didn't talk to no one by that name," He answered while hiccupping and staring into space.

"Are you sure?" Meredith said in confusion, not sure if he could be trusted in this state.

"I only talked to the police and that nice nurse lady and the loud ambulance guy,"

Now Meredith was extremely confused. What the hell was he talking about? Police and ambulance? Mark hadn't said anything about either of those? He'd sounded out of breath and scared and she thought she'd heard something loud in the background but she couldn't be sure. She needed to find him.

She called Mark's cell phone but got no answer. Strange. Then she started wondering where Lexie was, and why on earth Mark would go to her first instead of the daughter that cared about Thatcher more. Was she in the OR maybe? And Mark didn't want to worry her during a surgery? But now he wasn't answering his phone.

"Dad, where's Lexie?" Meredith came forward and asked after clicking out of the call to Mark. But Thatcher just stared around the room in his daze. "Dad?" Meredith asked again without an answer back. Right then a nurse walked by and Meredith grabbed her attention.

"Excuse me Miss, I know you're probably busy but this is urgent. Dr. Mark Sloan isn't answering his cell phone or pager; I need you to find a way to get a hold of him. Tell him Meredith Grey needs him in the ER if he's not in a surgery or something. He might know something about my Dad,"

The nurse nodded and then left. When Meredith looked back at her Dad who was squirming in the hospital bed she noticed something that struck her very odd, extremely odd. His left hand was cuffed to the railing on the bed.

"Dad, why do you have that hand-cuff?" She asked.

"The police said he didn't wanna risk me wandering away because he needed to question me about the break-in. He said he was coming back soon after the bitch that tried to attack me gets out of surgery."

Nothing was making sense now. Where in the hell was Mark? She thought to herself.

Mark watched in dismay in the gallery as Hunt and Bailey and Kepner all operated on her. The thought that she was laying there open on the table with other people's hands inside her body. Sewing her up. It made him sick. He didn't ever realize how sickening it was until now.

It made him come to a conclusion though. One he thought he knew all along subconsciously, but tried to hide away. She was the one. She was the one that he loved; the one he cherished and adored the girl he wanted to be with most on this planet and the one he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. No matter the obstacles or circumstances, he wanted to always wake up next to her and have a family with her, not Julia. But now she was fighting for her life and he couldn't do anything about it but watch. And she could possibly die without him ever getting the chance to tell her what he felt.

"Excuse me, Dr. Mark Sloan?" Mark heard a female voice call his name. He turned his view to the door where a woman in nurse scrubs was standing halfway inside the gallery and halfway out in the hallway.

"Yeah," He confirmed.

"I'm sorry to bother you; we've been trying to reach you for quite a while. A Meredith Grey is in the ER. She's been looking for you; she says you might know something about her Dad."

"Uh yeah," Mark said forcing himself up out of the seat and wiping his teary eyes.

Mark walked back to the ER where Meredith spotted him and called him over to the bed where her father was.

"Oh Mark, thank God, you need to help me out here. I can't make sense of anything he's saying."

"Where's Derek?" Was the first thing he said, with confusion, and Meredith almost thought she could see tears in his eyes.

"Well, I…He had to stay home because of…Zola. There wasn't anyone else who could stay with her and we didn't want to lug her up here this late."

"You need to get him up here!" Mark exclaimed sounding angry.

"Can I please know what's going on here? What the hell?" Meredith shouted, "This one's talking about police and a break-in. I'm really confused here! Why did you call me Mark? Where is my sister? She never came home tonight and I thought she'd said she was off early because she didn't have any surgeries scheduled and now she's M.I.A.! I can't find the policeman that my Dad's talking about so I don't know if he made this all up or not but he's hand-cuffed to the bed! Can you explain to me?"

"He's hand-cuffed because I told them to make sure he did not leave this hospital." Mark answered.

"That's it? That can't be it!" Meredith shouted more. That was when she noticed April walking up behind them.

"Uh April, do you know anything?" Meredith called to her. As April came closer she noticed that she was teary eyed as well, and on the verge of crying. What was going on here? She thought. Nothing was adding up.

"Meredith," She said in a feeble voice. "It's ...its L...Lexie. We had to rush her into emergency surgery. You're Dad almost killed her,"

Those words. You're Dad almost killed her. Meredith felt like she'd just been punched in the gut. She could see that both of them had blood on themselves. Oh God no, it couldn't be. She had to be alright. April did say almost killed, not that he did kill. She was alive then.

"What the hell? Where is she? Where is my sister? What did that bastard do to her?" She screamed, breaking down into tears. By now Mark was crying a bit too, not as bad as the girls though.

"I want to see her. Is she still in surgery?" Meredith asked.

"We handled the internal bleeding. When I left they were taking her to her room to be monitored for the night. They don't know how bad the head trauma is, she… She might have permanent damage Meredith." April cried.

The three of them rushed to Lexie's room where they were still getting her settled in. Bailey and Hunt turned to see the three of them, all hysterical. Meredith's mouth was hung open as she looked at her sister who was comatose in the bed. Machines hooked up to her were beeping obnoxiously.

Bailey walked over to Meredith and embraced her, "Meredith, she's alright for now. Everything is stable but, she just…She hasn't woken up yet… She was barely conscious for more than a minute since it happened. Derek can assess her and then figure out what we're going to do."

"I need to know what happened. I mean, how did this happen?" Meredith cried out between choking sobs.

"Mark is the only one that knows." Bailey said staring at him. He was crying now. Truly crying.

He walked into the room and stopped next to Lexie. She looked peaceful in her sleep. Mark pushed her bangs out of her face. They'd clean her up so she didn't look as bad with all that blood covering her but now you could see all the cuts and stitches on her.

"I'll tell you everything alright. But we need the police in here to record it cos I can't relive the whole thing more than once more." Mark answered, stroking the side of Lexie's face.

Once the officers were found they were brought into Lexie's room and Mark had himself prepared to relive the dreadful heart aching experience again.

"Me and Lexie were leaving Seattle Grace at the same time last night. We rode the elevator down together and right as we were about to go into the parking lot her phone rang. I waited for her while she answered it but she sounded frantic and confused while she was talking. I'd heard her say 'Dad' that was when I knew it was Thatcher on the line. When she hung up I tried to talk to her but she printed into the lot and was gone before I could catch up. I didn't know where she was going but I'd figured something was up with her Dad and she was going to fix it but I was still worried. I phoned her after a fight with my girlfriend Julia because it was all I could think of. It went to voicemail and as I was leaving a message she picked up. But all her words were nonsense, like she couldn't talk, but I heard her say help. I booked it to Thatcher's and found her there, unconscious and bleeding to death. That sonofabitch was so drunk that he didn't recognize her or something and knocked her out and kicked her while she was down." Mark told the whole story, keeping himself together pretty well except for a few parts where he had to stop to calm himself. "He's responsible for her if she dies."

Meredith brushed away her tears and cleared her throat, "Call Derek now,"

End of Chapter 2 (Chapter three will be on its way )