[Thanks so much for all of the reviews! I know some of you are angry that Derek is still being a bit of an ass. I know a lot of you are angry with me for continuing with this story given the current state of things on the show (from which I am, following the events of 11.21, taking a hiatus). All I ask is for trust and patience. I believe in this couple. I believe in who they could be together. They won't get there immediately, because that's not how life works, but they WILL get there. I understand that this chapter may be even more controversial than the last, but...have faith. Please. And thank you, thank you, thank you to those who are still invested in seeing this story through. Suggested listening: "Emergency" by Paramore.]

EMERGENCY

It was still dark outside. The sun hadn't yet breathed through the clouds, casting the Seattle streets in a chalky grey light. Instead, birds were chirping enthusiastically into street lamps as Mark Sloan's brand new Nikes struck the pavement, sending shockwaves through his shins and slowly but surely prying his tired eyes open.

Mark hated mornings. Mornings were a constant, unwelcome reminder that, despite his best efforts, the woman of his dreams was catching rays in southern California while he struggled to pretend that he didn't miss her scent on his sheets and the way her soft red hair pooled in the crease of his shoulder. His crush on Erica Hahn had been a forced, desperate distraction. But when he fantasized about looking into a woman's eyes while her naked skin slid against his torso, Erica Hahn's were not the blue he envisioned.

He glanced down at his runner's watch and groaned. Five miles in, and I still can't outrun Addison.

He was trotting down the alley and remembering a particularly delicious brownstone encounter when a pair of sparkly flats caught his eye.

"What the…?"

With an exaggerated eye-roll, Mark jogged towards the feet peeking out from behind the dumpster and heaved a sigh. This, he thought in annoyance. This is why I didn't want to live next to a bar.

"Hey, excuse me…"

As soon as he rounded the dumpster, he jerked to a startled stop. Nothing could've prepared him for the sight on the other side of the rusted green metal.

A woman was lying against the grimy red brick of the back of Linda's Tavern. Her arm was bent at such an awkward angle that Mark knew it was broken. Her jeans had been pulled down to her ankles, and lacerations lined her thighs, weaving in and out of dark purple, finger-shaped bruises. Blood marred the lilac sweater that covered her upper half and matted the dark blonde hair that had fallen like a curtain over her face.

Mark abandoned mile six to crouch down by her side, and retrieving his cell phone with one hand while he felt for a pulse with the other.

"Fire and emergency. Do you have an emergency?"

His deep voice was steady and sure. "Yes. I found a woman in the alley behind Linda's Tavern in Capitol Hill. Left arm shows a displaced fracture and apparent dislocation at the elbow, pulse is weak, and she's unconscious. She seems to have been attacked, and there are indications of sexual assault." He reached toward her mouth to feel for breath, smoothing her hair away. Once he saw her face, though, his confident tone vanished, and his strong surgeon's hands began to shake. "Oh, God…"

"Sir? Sir, we're sending someone out right now. Can you give me your name, sir?"

"I…I know her," Mark stammered. Suddenly, tears were pricking the backs of his eyes. "I…she needs to go to Seattle Grace. We have to get her to Seattle Grace. She has to…"

"Sir," the operator interrupted firmly. "I'm going to need you to calm down. Can you tell me your name?"

"Mark Sloan," Mark breathed. "I…look, I know her, okay? She's my…" He trailed off. Somehow, "fellow dirty mistress" didn't seem like an appropriate identifier for the 9-1-1 dispatcher.

"Meredith Grey," he choked out finally. "She's Meredith Grey."

Cristina was almost asleep on a gurney in the tunnels when a familiar beep permeated the silence. Much to her chagrin, another beep soon joined in.

"I hate my life," she grumbled. Beside her, Alex smirked.

"You mean you're not being paged to the pit for an incoming trauma?"

"I'm not being paged," George offered. "You know, 'cause I'm an intern, and my resident hasn't shown up yet." He paused. "Where do you think she is, anyway?"

"That thing you do? Where you can't stay on track to save your life?" Alex prompted expectantly, leaping to his feet. "That's why you failed the intern exam."

"Yeah, well," Izzie snorted. "With an attitude like yours, it's a miracle that you passed."

"Oh my God," Cristina interjected, hopping off the gurney before Alex could retort. "I have not had enough sleep to listen to you two bicker like an old married couple."

"Please," Izzie muttered. "Like I would marry that?"

"Yeah, Yang, haven't you heard? Izzie only goes for weaklings."

"Hey!" George protested. "Izzie slept with me!"

Alex smirked. "Exactly."

George opened his mouth to whine, but Cristina halted him with an open hand. "Bambi, please. I cannot save you from punchlines you walk right into."

"Especially not when we're being paged to the pit," Alex finished, striding purposefully towards the ambulance bay. He was moving too quickly to hear George's pathetic comeback, but he did hear Cristina's groan as the cardio resident raced alongside him.

"I still can't believe they had sex," she muttered. "I mean, seriously? Talk about a match made in genetic hell."

Alex grimaced. "Dude, no joke. Their kids would be totally spineless."

"And fat," Cristina added, reaching around her neck to fasten her trauma gown. "With all the crap Izzie bakes, obesity is inevitable. She'd have to roll them through the house."

"Totally," Alex agreed, "'cause there's no way O'Malley'd be strong enough to…"

His quip was lot in the high-pitched wail of a siren as an ambulance came tearing into the driveway. Lights flashed, the tires squealed to a stop, and the back doors flew open. As an EMT crawled out with one hand on the guardrail of the transport gurney, Cristina shook off the last of her exhaustion.

"Thirty-four-year-old female, tachycardic. Angulation on left arm suggests a closed fracture of both radius and ulna. Prominent lac on the back of the head, still bleeding. BP is stable, but oxygen levels are low. You might need to check for..."

"Cracked ribs or pneumothorax," Mark finished, jumping out of the ambulance in a sweat-soaked t-shirt with his hair matted to his head at an unflattering angle. "There's a lot of bruising. Lots of…"

"Not so McSteamy at 4 AM," Cristina remarked dryly as she reached for the gurney. She was in the process of pushing forward when she felt a strong hand grip her bicep. Irritated, she attempted to shrug it off, but Mark's ragged tone stopped her.

"Yang," he panted. "Wait."

"Sloan," she snapped, "I have a job to do."

"It's Grey."

Mark watched as Cristina's every muscle froze. "Meredith Grey?" He could only nod in response, his chest heaving from the shock of the morning's events.

Cristina arched a single eyebrow expectantly. "What about Meredith?"

Mark jerked his head helplessly toward the double doors leading to the pit. "On the gurney. It's…"

Cristina's porcelain visage was a mask of calm for the briefest of moments before she burst into heavy, raucous laughter.

"Oh, that's good," she gasped, reaching out to smack his sweaty tricep. "You're hilarious."

"No, really," Mark bleated, blinking against a sudden onslaught of tears. "I was running, and…"

"Meredith went drinking," Cristina interrupted, her smile a sparkling contrast to the dark Seattle morning. "I was supposed to join her at Joe's, but I got stuck doing Hahn's paperwork." She glanced down at her watch with a grin. "She's probably still drinking. She texted me at one o'clock to say she was…"

"Barhopping," Mark finished, trying to ignore the grief that tore at his abdomen. Cristina's smile immediately began to melt into the more down-turned expression for which she was infamous. "I found her outside Linda's Tavern."

Cristina blinked once. Twice. "No."

Mark closed his eyes for a moment, trying desperately to summon the right combination of words. Or any words, really. Any words that don't make me sound like an ass.

When he finally opened his eyes, Cristina Yang was gone.

Cristina found Alex Karev pacing outside Trauma Room 1, his paper gown fluttering in his wake and giving the baffled nursing staff intermittent glimpses of his light blue scrubs. Her sneakers squeaked against the linoleum as she approached, and Alex scowled.

"Sloan told you?"

"Yeah." Cristina inhaled sharply. "It's really her?"

Alex gave a terse nod. "They won't let me inside," he grumbled. "Something about a conflict of interest."

"Bullshit," Cristina hissed, banging her fist against the door. "We're her family."

The door opened just a crack, and Dr. Callie Torres poked her head out. "Yang, I'm going to tell you exactly what I told Karev: back off."

"YOU back off!" Cristina snapped. "I'm her person! If something happened to her…"

"You are her family," Callie interrupted firmly. "Families stay in the waiting room so the doctors can work."

"I'm a surgeon," Cristina bit out ferociously. "I don't wait. I work. Let me in."

Callie arched a menacing eyebrow. "You want me to tell Dr. Hahn that you don't know how to cooperate?"

Cristina's eyes widened incredulously. "Do you seriously think I give a shit about cardio right now?"

"Yang's right, Torres," Alex argued, fighting his way forward for a peek inside. "We have a right to know how she's doing."

"You're right. As her family, here's your update: Right now, I'm setting her left arm," Callie relayed curtly. "When I have more information, you'll be the first to know."

"Oh, come on," Alex retorted. "Don't be a bitch."

For a brief moment, Callie's expression grew uncharacteristically soft. "Alex," she entreated gently, "She's not in great shape, okay? Right now, she needs me to be her doctor, not her friend. And, as her doctor, I'm officially kicking you out of the trauma room. If you continue to push me, I'll have Bailey send you into the waiting room."

The door slammed, and Alex kicked angrily at the wall. "This sucks."

Cristina buried her face in her hands and slid down the wall with her back to the door, acquiescing. Alex pounded the door one last time before collapsing beside her. "Should we tell Iz and O'Malley?"

"No," Cristina mumbled into the floor tiles. "Look, it's…it's Meredith, right? She's going to be fine."

It started when Derek asked Dr. Bailey to put Meredith on his service.

"She's busy," Miranda Bailey had snapped without glancing up from her paperwork.

"With what?" Derek had demanded.

"Someone else, for once. Get lost, Shepherd."

Then, he'd run into Alex Karev, holding a stack of charts and looking surly.

"Dr. Karev," he'd called out delightedly. "Have you seen Dr. Grey?"

"Bite me, McDouchebag," Alex had muttered once he'd been close enough for Derek—and only Derek—to hear.

Derek wasn't surprised to find himself on the receiving end of collective resident wrath. He was mildly aware of the fact that his romantic tryst with Rose had given him prime placement in the hospital's gossip stream, and he knew the reactions were less than favorable. Thankfully, he was enjoying himself too much to care.

As the silver streak of her tear glittered in his mind's eye, Derek told himself firmly that his request for Meredith Grey had everything to do with his investment in her neuro education and nothing to do with the leaden lump of discomfort that had settled in his gut upon her exit from Joe's the evening prior.

With a resolved sigh, he shook his head and summoned the elevator. The car announced its arrival with a cheerful ping, and the doors spread to reveal Mark, still dressed in running clothes and looking decidedly worse for the wear. Derek's brow furrowed in confusion.

"Nursing a hangover?" he teased.

"No," Mark ground out, his voice raspy. "Not even close."

With his half-finished cup of Rose's coffee delivery still in hand, Derek wasn't about to let Mark's pouting dampen his good mood. "Hey, do you know where Meredith is this morning?"

Mark shot Derek a look of unveiled repulsion. "Is that supposed to be a joke?"

"What? No! She ran out of the Joe's last night, and I wanted to…"

"Rub in her face how happy you and Rose are? I think she gets it, Shepherd."

Derek's eyebrows pulled together just above the bridge of his nose. "What's your deal this morning?"

"Nothing," Mark muttered. "Just…"

He trailed off, devastation making deep grooves around the corners of his mouth. The lump in Derek's stomach began to churn.

"Mark," he began haltingly, "did you…did you sleep with Meredith?"

It was the wrong question. Mark's blue eyes darkened to a stormy gray, and his lips curled in a disgusted sneer. "You're a real dick, you know that?"

Derek threw his arms up defensively. "It's a valid question!"

Mark leaned in and lowered his voice to an angry whisper. "No, it's not," he returned lowly, "but it's good that you left her for that sickly sweet scrub nurse. Meredith Grey deserves better than you."

Derek's cerulean eyes narrowed. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Mark shook his head incredulously. "I don't have time for this shit right now. I need to change."

He left Derek standing at the nurse's station, running a hand through his McDreamy curls as he mulled over the morning's bizarre events. He was so distracted that he didn't even register the squeak of familiar pink sneakers behind him.

"Hello, lover," Rose murmured, her voice an alto hum in his ear. "I'm surprised to see you here. I thought for sure you'd be in the crowd outside Trauma 1."

Derek spun her around, grateful for the balm her smile allowed his bruised ego. "Oh? What's happening in Trauma 1?"

Rose's expression faded to something slightly more solemn. "You don't know?"

"Know what?"

"Derek," Rose began gently, "Meredith Grey's in Trauma 1."

Derek blinked, and a vision of Meredith, pale blue and floating in the murky green of Elliott Bay, flitted across his vision. "Oh." He cleared his throat. "With a patient, right? Why didn't anyone tell me that? I was going to invite her to join me on the glioma case today, but no one would…"

"Derek," Rose interrupted, placing a firm hand on his chest. "Meredith Grey is the patient."

Derek's skin tingled uncomfortably where the warmth of Rose's palm soaked into his navy scrubs. Wrong. This is all wrong.

"What?"

Rose heaved a sigh that held a ghost of exasperation. "Dr. Grey was brought in with some pretty serious injuries. Apparently Mark found her outside of some bar in Capitol Hill this morning. They've been treating her in the pit since 4 AM."

Derek stumbled back and scrubbed at his face with a clumsy palm. "Treating…" He shook his head incredulously. "For what?"

"I don't know," Rose admitted, reaching out to stroke his hair. She tried to ignore the speed with which he jerked away from her touch. "They're keeping it all pretty hush-hush. So far, they've called Dr. Torres and Dr. Weller for consults, but..."

"Dr. Weller?" Derek spat, his features contorting as though he'd tasted something sour. "They needed a neuro consult, and they called Dr. Weller?"

"Dr. Bailey made the page," Rose offered. "I think she thought that…well…" She paused, watching Derek shuffle clumsily from foot to foot. "Look, Derek, the whole hospital knows that you two have a history…"

He wasn't listening anymore, though. He was running. Past nurses, carts, beeping machines and the sickening smell of antiseptic. Pale blue scrubs danced along the edges of his vision, rippling like gauze in the water.

He rounded corner after corner, his heart pounding his sternum like a vehement, unwelcome visitor. He knew he'd found the right place when he saw George and Izzie sitting on the floor, sharing an apple and looking as though someone had taken them apart and put them back together incorrectly.

He was about to approach them when a growl caught his attention.

"Try. Just try to take another step towards that room. See what happens."

Derek whirled around and bent over under the full weight of Cristina Yang's glare.

"Dr. Yang," he pleaded, grabbing his chin with desperate fingers, holding his jaw in place in case he actually, physically began to fall apart. "I need to see her."

"No," Cristina bit out, jabbing the air in front of her with a shaky index finger. "What you need is to stay the hell away, you stupid fucking..."

"Dr. Yang!" Derek admonished. "Watch your language! I'm your superior!"

"Not today!" Cristina yelled, the force of her ire making it difficult for her to juggle the stack of charts in her hands. "Today, I'm her person, and you're just some asshole who won't let her drink you away."

Derek tried not to be horrified by the stares she was accumulating with her antics. He suddenly felt as if even the walls had eyes, and they were all on him. "She ended it!" he hissed, lowering his voice to avoid causing a scene.

"No, YOU did." The accusation was punctuated by the return of Cristina's judge-y, persistent finger. "YOU pulled the fucking plug when you kissed that slutty scrub nurse." The resident exhaled forcefully and ran a hand through her wild mane of curls. "She was going to stomach it all, you know? Your stupid threat of a proposal, your Barbie Dream House blueprints, your need for a complete fucking breakfast…she was going to stomach it. She was going to sit there with her fucking psych books and breathe for herself while you rushed a happily ever after, because she loved you that much."

He couldn't breathe. He couldn't…

"This is me, trying to evolve. I'm trying here, so…"

He rubbed his hands together, wiping away the nonexistent remnants of ashes.

"She was trying." Cristina's voice came at him like a train whistle through a tunnel, far away and unrelenting and so, so angry. "But it didn't matter, did it, McDreamy? No. Because no matter how many pretty words you throw at her, no matter how many guilt trips you send her on, it always comes down to you and some other woman."

He shook his head slowly, painstakingly, and the world shook with it. "Dr. Yang," he began, clearing his throat when he heard how small and dry his voice sounded. "Rose was not a threat to Meredith."

Cristina's derisive snort echoed along the hallway. "Oh, wake the fuck up, would you? You had a wife, Shepherd. You had a wife, and you kept her a secret for two months while Meredith fell blindly, disgustingly in love with you. EVERY other woman is a threat! Especially another woman that you didn't tell her about!"

Somewhere in his peripheral vision, he saw George's—Izzie's?—apple rolling around on the floor.

"You're the girl from the bar."

"I'M the girl from the bar. Me."

People were definitely beginning to stare. He could feel their eyes burning into his skin as he swallowed forcefully. "I…"

"You know what? I don't want to hear your fucking lame-ass excuses." Cristina threw her arms open, and the charts clattered to the floor. "She was FINE, you asshole! She came home the night she found out about your stupid-ass scrub nurse…" Cristina paused and shot Derek a sarcastic thumbs-up. "Which, by the way…a scrub nurse? Really? At least have an ounce of self-respect—and she was FINE."

Over Cristina's shoulder, he saw Izzie, her mouth open and gaping like a fish. More than that, though, he saw a malicious glint in her eyes that seemed totally out of character.

"We had tequila and ice cream and pizza, and she didn't touch any of it!" Cristina ranted. "Said she didn't need it. Said she was tired of falling apart over you. And you know what? We were proud of her, because she was FINE."

George's jaw clenched, and something in Derek's chest came undone.

"Mark found her behind a bar, probably drunk off her ass," Derek shot back angrily. "Clearly, she wasn't fine."

"Not anymore! You know why? Because of your thoughtless, arrogant ass! She was FINE until you went and told her that you'd never really loved her!"

The hallway tilted, and his mind reeled. Did I? Did I really say that?

Cristina came so close that he felt her the heat of her ire against every inch of his skin. "You couldn't admit that maybe, just maybe, you were partially to blame for what happened to the two of you," Cristina all but whispered. "You had to twist the knife. You had to make sure you got the last word." She paused for a breath, but her eyes continued to shoot daggers in his direction.

Floundering. He was floundering. Did I really tell her I'd never loved her?

"You sorry son of a bitch," she growled angrily. "If you really cared about her, you wouldn't keep walking away."

He felt hollow inside. Weightless in the worst kind of way.

"She's in critical condition, Shepherd," Cristina leveled, and Derek felt it like a blow to the jaw. "She might not make it. She can't take another one of your misguided hero speeches today."

Suddenly, Izzie was beside Cristina, placing a hand on Cristina's shoulder that was immediately shaken off. "She needs her family," Izzie added in a quiet soprano. "She needs loyalty."

"No shit," came Alex Karev's voice from down the hall. He was walking toward them with a sandwich in hand, looking every bit as murderous as Cristina. "She needs people who are willing to fight for her. And, frankly, dude, " he added with a sneer, "you've never been one of those people."

Derek's gaze ping-ponged from resident to resident as his jaw worked to form words—any words—that might grant him momentary reprieve from the blinding ache in his chest.

Mark, freshly showered and clad in navy, wandered through Derek's field of vision and knocked on the door to Trauma Room 1. Immediately, the residents surrounded him, peering over his shoulders and tugging at his scrubs and demanding to be let in.

"Torres," Mark growled from the door. "Let me in there. She needs sutures."

The door cracked open, and the former chief resident poked her head out. "Sloan, they're simple sutures. An intern could…"

"I'm not letting an intern touch her," Mark snapped. "She doesn't need anymore scars."

Reluctantly, Callie opened the door a bit wider, and Mark slipped in amidst protest from the residents.

"I will update you when I have something else to say!" Callie yelled through the closed door.

Hopes dashed, they fell back into their former holding pattern, picking at their lunches on the floor of the hallway. Derek watched in amazement as Alex Karev offered Cristina Yang a juice box, and she took it. She offered Alex money as compensation, and he refused.

Derek wasn't entirely sure he'd ever seen Alex be nice to anyone before. He'd definitely never seen Cristina do a favor for anyone who wasn't Meredith.

"McDreamy."

At the detested moniker, he tried like hell to focus on Cristina's expression of unbridled hatred.

"You don't belong here. Go back to your girlfriend."

Derek released a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. Oh, right. Rose. He'd almost forgotten about her.

"Look," Cristina muttered, "you can start shooting Mere forlorn looks and playing hard to get when she wakes up. Until then, just…stay the fuck away from her. You've done enough."

Hours ago—minutes ago, even—he might've agreed with her. Now, though, he wasn't so sure.