The One With the Zombie...

Author: ohcyfan

Voiceovers. They are a monumental pain in the ass, and the bane of any self-respecting fanfic writer. They require a certain comfort level with platitudes, and an ability to wax poetic over the kind of bullshit that most people just live with and shut up about. Personally, I hate 'em. I hated writing them for 5.5, I hate writing this one, and you are NOT getting one at the end of this episode. So there.

It was 5:58pm when David Young showed up in the Pit, seemingly intact and bearing no signs of the kind of injury one would associate with a visit to an emergency room. Owen was just about to go off shift, preparing for an intimate evening with Cristina, when he spotted David wandering around the waiting room looking confused. He scanned around for an intern or a nurse, but everyone was busy so he approached the man himself.

"Can I help you?"

"Yes, um... oh! Dr. Hunt! How nice to see you again!"

"Have we met?" Owen studied the handsome face in front of him. It didn't ring a bell.

"Yes, of course! Well, I didn't look like this at the time. I'm David Young - your face transplant?"

"Mr. Young! How are you?" Owen was genuinely surprised to see David again. Young's follow-ups had all been with Sloan, and he had not laid eyes on him since the operation. Young was looking fantastic. The transplant had clearly been a huge success.

"I'm okay, Dr. Hunt, but something strange is going on. I... I didn't know where to turn, so I thought I'd come here."

"Come on in, Mr. Young. We'll see if I can help you." Owen led him to an empty exam room and closed the door. David boosted himself up on the table and looked around, seemingly not knowing where to begin.

"Why don't you tell me about it?" Owen prodded gently.

"Okay, but I'm afraid you'll think I'm crazy."

"Try me."

"All right, then. Everything was going fine. I finally had a life. I mean, I was making friends - real friends - not just a crazy bunch of fangirls off some online message board. But then I started to have these... dreams... or visions... of the man whose face I took." Owen could see that David was getting increasingly agitated as he spoke, and he worked to keep his expression neutral despite the feeling that this was going nowhere fast. "Now, everywhere I look, I keep seeing this man with his skin ripped off - following me! He... he keeps showing up and demanding his face back!"

Owen's neutral demeanor was beginning to crack. This guy had clearly gone off the deep end. Didn't they do a psych screening on these patients before approving them for such radical surgery? Here was a waste of a perfectly good face on a guy who was totally out to lunch. "Uh, let me go get one of my colleagues, okay? I think...."

"You don't believe me, do you?" David challenged him. "You think I'm nuts. I was starting to think so too, until he came after me in my own house. He was holding this thing in his hand, like he was going to stab me. And I have proof! He left it behind... Here! Take a look..." David opened his coat and, out of an interior pocket, extracted a gigantic dirty icicle. Owen's eyes widened. Was that... No, it couldn't be... But it sure did look like the same icicle he'd pulled out of Cristina Yang all those months ago. And it still hadn't melted.

Owen felt a chill run down the back of his neck.

Just then, Cristina breezed into the exam room and jumped into Owen's arms. She wrapped her legs around his waist and planted a big one on him, oblivious to the fact that a patient was sitting right there on the table.

"Um, Cristina..." Owen managed to say in between kisses, his hands roaming along the sides of her face and into her hair, "We have company."

Cristina looked to the side and saw that they were, indeed, not alone. She dropped to the ground and smoothed out her lab coat. "Sorry. Just getting a jump start on tonight, so to speak. Hey, aren't you that Blowhole guy?"

"Cristina!" Owen barked in shock, "We don't address our patients as 'guys'!"

"Yeah!" said David, "That's Mister Blowhole to you."

"Oh, sorry. But that's you, right? Hey, how's the face? You look pretty good. Of course, if I'd been allowed to scrub in on this surgery..."

"That's enough, Cristina." Owen put a hand on her shoulder in an attempt to shut her up. "Would you mind calling in Dr. Wyatt? You know, the specialist?"

"Oh, you mean the shrink? Sure, I'll have her paged. Be right back." She winked at David and strolled out of the room.

"So you still don't believe me, even though I've brought evidence?"

"Look, that's not for me to judge, Mr. Blow... Mr. Young. You came to me for help, and I'm trying to help you. Besides, I have a hot date with my girlfriend, and my shift ended ten minutes ago."

"Oh, I see all right. I see everything." David began to clutch at his shirt collar, and his breath grew ragged. His face took on an agonized expression and his eyes darted around the room. Owen could see that he was having a panic attack. "I'm outta here," said David, leaping off the table and heading for the door. Owen stopped him, grabbing him from behind in a bear hug and squeezing tightly. David struggled, but to no avail, and Owen tried to coax him through the attack by speaking softly into his ear. "I'm applying deep pressure here... to relax your sympathetic nervous system. It will decrease your metabolic rate. You'll feel more panicked at first. You'll try to resist it, but eventually you will feel your pulse rate slow. It's okay. Your breath will come easier." David began to calm down. "It's okay," said Owen, "It's okay... and besides... I like the back of your neck."

"Get off me, you freak!" David yelled, stomping on Owen's foot and then bolting out the door. Owen followed him as he headed for the ambulance bay, trying to head him off. The last time a patient had escaped from his ER, they had jumped out a window and landed on someone's car. The auto insurance company had had a field day with the hospital, and Owen had had to explain the negligence of his Residents to the hospital Trustees. No way was he wasting another lunch hour on shit like that.

In the meantime, sensing the pursuit, David broke into a run. He made for the ambulance bay doors, which sprang open suddenly just as he reached them. To Owen's surprise, one of the living dead came lurching in the door.

"You see?" David yelled over his shoulder, "I wasn't making this up. There he is!"

Owen stared at the grotesque figure, whose flesh was peeling off him in sheets. His face was, in fact, completely gone. When the zombie spied David, he changed course and began staggering in his direction. "Give...me...my...face..." he groaned. David stumbled in terror and ran back in Owen's direction.

By now the commotion had drawn a crowd, with doctors and nurses watching in horror as the zombie headed their way. People began screaming and running. Owen knew he had to think fast, but at the moment the only thing on his mind was Cristina's moist panties. He shook his head to clear it and spied Miranda Bailey. If anyone could take care of this situation, she could.

"Um... Dr. Bailey... you think you could...?" Owen gestured in the direction of their uninvited and rather unseemly guest.

"Hmph," Miranda hmphed. "Aint no rotting corpse gonna mess up my hospital. Look at that, leaving dead skin all over my clean floor..." She pointed at their visitor, "Hey, you! Mr. Zombie! Get your raggedy ass over here!"

The zombie, no more able to refuse Dr. Bailey than anyone else at Seattle Grace, changed course yet again and headed for Miranda. He stopped obediently in front of her, as if waiting for instructions.

"Listen," she began, "I need you to go out into the woods and talk Derek Shepherd into coming back here. And I believe you might also run into Callie Torres - but you should leave her alone because she's sure to think you're an axe-wielding serial killer."

"Seriously?" the zombie asked.

"You see, I sent Torres after Shepherd and she's fallen off the grid..."

"I'm...kinda...busy...here," he replied, in the halting speech characteristic of those caught between the coffin and the grave. "Can't you send someone else?"

"Zombie!" she said brightly, but with attitude, "You've survived death and having your entire face removed. You can DO this!"

"I know... I... can... do ... this. I'm saying... I don't... want to."

Bailey just stared at him. The zombie fidgeted uncomfortably, an exasperated expression on his nonexistent face. "People... don't... really... say... no... to you... do they?" he asked.

"Not if they know what's good for them, they don't."

The zombie headed back out the door, to a collective sigh of relief from everyone present. They watched in amazement as he jumped in front of a bus, and was promptly smashed flat.

"Hey, are you sure that's not George?" asked Alex, who had been observing from the sidelines.

"Looks like we got rid of your problem for you, Mr. Young," Owen announced proudly.

"Well, one of them..." David muttered.

"What?" Owen asked, "You mean there's another one?"

"Oh, yeah," David pleaded. "Can you please take care of the blond chick now?"

Owen looked around. "What blond chick? You mean one of the three lesbians we tried to hook up with Dr. Torres?"

"Uh, I don't think she's a lesbian. She keeps following the zombie around, trying to have sex with him. Just last night, they were doing it on my kitchen table."

"Uh, dude?" Alex broke in, "I think that's my dead wife you're talking about... and that's a whole other episode."

THE END