A/N – I know I haven't updated in a while and I have, what I consider to be, a valid reason, I've been busy with my business studies assessment and my short film for media studies. I know I'm terrible but here it is: Chapter Three.

Now here you go again
You say you want your freedom
Well who am I to keep you down
It's only right that you should
Play the way you feel it
But listen carefully to the sound
Of your loneliness
Like a heartbeat, drives you mad
In the stillness of remembering
What you had, And what you lost
And what you had, And what you lost

Lexie looked at the scans as she stood in the examination room; her suspicions had been confirmed and Amy needed a craniotomy to reduce the swelling in her brain but Lexie's thoughts of Mark were clouding her mind 'If Amy's here and I saw Liz when I spoke to Jackson where on earth are Mark and Derek? What if Mark was hurt? What if he's dying?' she thought and allowed the tears to stream down her face. Then Meredith's unknown patient popped into her mind 'What if Mark was the patient Mer was taking to surgery? Is it that bad that she couldn't tell me?' she stopped thinking when she heard the door open, she turned to see Shadow Shepherd shut the door "Dr Nelson," she exclaimed, completely unable to hide the shock in her voice and on her face.

"Dr Grey, what have we got?" he said curtly.

"Amelia Shepherd, aged 36, needs a craniotomy due to swelling in the brain," Lexie replied, her voice equally as curt. Dr Nelson had stopped liking Lexie when she became Derek's star resident and so the pair didn't get on.

"Okay well, I'll do the procedure, I'm sure you've heard about Dr Sloan and wish to see him," Nelson told her with no attempt to hide the contempt that he felt.

"No, no I haven't I knew he was in the same car accident as this patient but that's all," Lexie told her colleague watching his laughing eyes.

"Dr Grey and Dr Torres had to do an emergency procedure, I believe he's in recovery now," he told her "You go and I'll do the surgery,"

Lexie knew that Nelson just wanted the surgery but she wanted to see Mark and so she thanked Nelson before running off to the nurses' station. "Can you tell me which room Dr Mark Sloan is in?" she asked Olivia, one of the nurses whom she'd known since beginning her internship at Seattle Grace Mercy West.

"He's in Room 201 Lexie," Olivia told her and Lexie ran down the hallway and into Mark's very white room.

When she first saw her boyfriend, Lexie was shocked, he looked nowhere near as bad as he had after the plane crash but he was still bad. His skin looked almost grey in colour as Lexie pulled up a chair and sat at his bedside holding right hand. Callie walked into the room with Sofia half asleep in her arms; she saw Lexie and smiled "He's not too bad you know, he got out with a dislocated hip, a broken tibia and a ruptured appendix. In comparison to Derek he's doing well," Callie told the woman who'd become a close friend over the space of a year.

"Why? What's wrong with him?" Lexie asked concerned for her brother-in-law and mentor. If his hand was screwed up again there was no hope of fixing it at all and Lexie hoped that wasn't the case.

"Cardiac Tamponade I'm afraid, the paramedics didn't notice it because he was high on adrenaline, I thank god Hunt noticed it in time," Callie replied as she sat down in the chair next to Lexie with Sofia in her lap, the toddler nuzzling into her mother's chest. Lexie remembered Mark and how he kept going into cardiac arrest and how many times she'd had to watch Christina revive him, she shuddered and her heart practically leapt up into her throat at the thought of it.

Suddenly Sofia began to cry for her father and both Lexie and Callie had to calm her down with soothing words like "It's okay baby girl, daddy's just sleeping," Callie remembered having to say similar things to her daughter when Mark was in a coma after the plane crash, everything about the earthquake reminded the doctors at Seattle Grace Mercy West hospital of the horrific plane crash.

"Why don't you go and see if you're needed in the ER, I can look after Sofia," Lexie said softly to her friend.

Callie pondered the idea for a few moments before asking "Are you sure?"

"Yeah," Lexie said and Callie passed Sofia to Lexie and left the room. Lexie allowed Sofia to nuzzle into her until the child fell asleep in her arms. Since Lexie and Mark had gotten back together and out of the hospital Sofia had come to see Lexie as a third mother and Lexie had come to see the young girl as a daughter.

It was only four in the afternoon but Lexie felt slightly sleepy, she put it down to the stress of the day and allowed her eyes to rest for a few minutes.

She could move her legs, that was good, they hurt like a bitch but at least she could feel and move them. She tried to wriggle her way out from whatever was crushing her but she couldn't, she used her left hand to search the floor for something to make noise with knowing that if she made enough noise, she'd be heard, found and hopefully saved.

When she found the buckle to what must have been a seatbelt she banged it against whatever was crushing her, soon enough Mark, Meredith and Christina were there and Mark was kneeling beside her, telling her that he loved her. She could feel her chest ooze what she guessed was blood, it wasn't something she'd noticed until that point. The pain was unbearable and she slowly closed her eyes.

She opened her eyes and had to assure herself that it was just a dream. She'd had the self-same dream many, many times over the previous year but never had it felt so real. She soon realised that she'd been asleep for over an hour; she sat up and hoped that Mark would wake up sooner rather than later so that she could tell him about it.

Sofia woke up soon after Lexie and Lexie bounced the child up and down in her lap as the little girl screamed with delight. Lexie beamed at the little girl as she giggled and laughed happily and they heard a deep bellow of laughter and Lexie looked up from Sofia's face to see Mark's eyelids flutter open as he laughed. "Mark!" Lexie exclaimed happily.

"Daddy! Daddy!" Sofia screamed delightedly.

"Hey Sofia, how's my special girl?" he asked with a big beaming smile plastered on his face.

"I'm good daddy!" Lexie put Sofia on the floor and let her rush over to her father with a smile on her face that matched her father's, Lexie smiled as she walked over to her boyfriend and planted a kiss on his forehead. She had no idea as to how she'd tell him that his best friend was currently in a medically induced coma or that said best friend's younger sister was having a craniotomy done by Shadow Shepherd.

"Lex, what's wrong?" he asked knowing that something was wrong; her eyes betrayed her as they always did.

"Nothing," she lied terribly, it must have been a Grey family trait.

"Lex, you've got that look in your eyes," he declared with a smile and Lexie babbled on about Derek and Amy's conditions and he tried to keep a smile on his face for the sake of his daughter but he couldn't hide the sadness that he felt. He knew the pain that his best friend was going through and he also knew the fear that Meredith was feeling, the fear of whether their significant other was going to survive or not he'd felt exactly that when Lexie was recovering after the plane crash.

"How's Meredith taking it?" he asked, the first words he'd said since Lexie had told him.

"I don't know, I've not seen her," and just then Mark let all of his emotions out as his blue eyes misted up and he let the coming tears fall down his face. The man he'd called a brother was near death and he was lying in a hospital bed because he'd needed a stupid appendectomy. Never in his life had Mark Sloan felt more helpless.